Page 1 of Guarded from Corruption

CHAPTER ONE

JADE

I’m not going to get another chance at this.

If my plan doesn’t work, I won’t get the opportunity to try again.

The consequences of failing are terrifying. More drugs. More restraints. More tests. And more?—

No. I can’t let myself think about that. Not now.

Not when so much is riding on me getting this right.

In the week since I’ve been here—I’m almost sure it’s a week, though the first days are fuzzy—I’ve been frantically trying to come up with some way to get out.

If I hadn’t been so terrified at the beginning, maybe I’d have already escaped. If I hadn’t been paralyzed with fear, I might have found an opening sooner.

But how could I not be terrified? I was snatched from my bed in the middle of the night, drugged, and woke up restrained to a bed by these weird velvet-lined cuffs in a mysterious medical facility like nothing I’ve seen before. Surrounded by expressionless doctors and silent nurses and eerie instrumental music punctuated by echoing chimes.

Sick to my stomach, confused, scared, I begged someone, anyone, to let me go. Or at the very least, explain what was going on. But the only response I received was another injection.

Maybe it was a blessing I didn’t know right away. It might have been too much to take.

On that first scary day, while I lay there helpless, a lengthy series of tests were done on me. Echocardiograms and ultrasounds and X-rays and blood draws—even in my drugged haze I knew what they all were—and as the drugs were beginning to wear off, even a polygraph given by a stern-faced doctor who asked me about my sexual history.

So that was pretty terrible.

On the third day, it got even worse. That was when the men came.

One at a time, masked men came into my room and stared at me with hungry eyes, their gazes dragging across my body. It was like how the creepy phlebotomist at work looks at me except a hundred times worse. Gary the phlebotomist is odd and discomfiting, but too shy to actually do anything. These men…

No. Just no. Not now.

Not when the blonde nurse is due to come in soon. I need to be ready to make my move, and I’m already second-guessing my ability to do this enough without adding an emotional breakdown to the mix.

I need to focus. Think this through, step-by-step, just like I do when I’m treating one of my patients.

Am I clear-headed? Mostly. On the third day, when I was moved to a different room to do a stress test, I saw another woman—a captive, that’s what we are—being given a pill instead of an injection. And she was sitting on her bed, unrestrained, passively swallowing the medicine down without argument.

That’s when I had the idea.

I needed to pretend. To convince the doctors I was cowed; willing to do anything to make things easier on myself. So I did.

When the nurse came in to give me my next injection, I asked timidly if I could take the pills instead.

And when she came in the next time, I pleaded to just be out of my restraints for a minute. I wouldn’t try anything. I was too dizzy. Too weak. The medicine made me sick.

Two days ago, the nurse finally agreed. But she brought a security-type guy in with her, not entirely trusting I wouldn’t try to escape. I wanted to, desperately. It was the first time I’d been free aside from my escorted trips to the bathroom, and my body was screaming at me to flee.

I didn’t. I just sat there and gave the nurse a pitifully thankful look and held out my hand for the pills.

What she didn’t know? As soon as she left the room, I spit them out.

Yes, she checked my mouth. But back in PA school, I did a rotation in a psych unit, so I learned about all the tricky ways to hide pills. It’s not completely effective; I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy and off-balance, but it’s miles better than how I used to feel.

Then it was on to the planning.

What could I do? How could I escape?

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