Page 78 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
Not that I'd say that where Blaze could hear.
"Damien." Dryad didn't touch him, but the urgency in her voice turned him as she pointed. "The experimental buildings are that way. Someone might be in the lab or in testing."
Eyes closed, Damien reached out into the compound, searching for that last, missing Academy student. He knew who it was now. Lori Teljan, listed in the files as a "minor sparker." She was close. He had a direction. A short, flickering trail.
"I'm going after the last one."
"Take your pipe. You're fucking Achilles with that thing." Blaze grabbed him by the coat lapel and planted a hard kiss on his lips. "Be careful, damn it."
Damien blinked up at him, shocked at the display of affection in front of strangers. "Do my best," he muttered before he raced off again.
Don't think, don't think… He tried his best to concentrate only on the trail screaming in his head. It helped but didn't erase the tingling on his lips or the desperate pounding of his heart. The admiration in Blaze's voice, the ferocious approval of that kiss left him baffled and reeling.
Later, time enough for over analysis later. He dodged around buildings, heading deeper into the compound, avoiding the few terrified people he spotted. Yet another long, low building turned out to be his target, though this one had a sturdier door. It was locked.
Frustrated, Damien rattled the door. With a snarl he felt Blaze would approve of, he turned to check the building for windows, vents—anything that might give him access. He had just begun to search for something he could use as a crowbar to force the door when the ground shivered and bucked beneath his feet. He stumbled and clutched at the wall for support. Something must have threatened Shudder's position for him to start another earthquake, threatened enough for him to lose his tight focus on localizing the tremors.
The out-of-control quake came with beneficial consequences, though. A crack appeared in the side of Damien's building, and the door slammed open. Several people in lab coats stumbled out, their eyes wide in terror. They headed toward the front gate, lurching in a panicked clump.
Damien's opinion of them didn't improve when he realized they had abandoned Lori inside a building they assumed would collapse. When the earth under his feet quieted, he rushed in, the trail in his head leading him unerringly through the corridors, around an L-bend, to a room at the back. Another locked door stopped him, but by now, his body shook with adrenaline. He slammed his shoulder against the door until the flimsy plascrete bent and cracked, popping inward with a jolt.
Mechanical hisses and whirring greeted him, and whimpering. The room was obviously a laboratory, the walls lined with banks of data screens and equipment. An examination table occupied the center of the room, numerous leads running from the wall units to the table's occupant, a teenage girl with long dark hair who lay on her back in nothing but a shift. She had squeezed her eyes shut tight, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, maybe to keep from screaming. Her hands lay flat against the metal table, pinned down with straps. Tiny sparks jumped from her fingers, the machines on the walls clicking and enumerating with every spark.
It took all of his hard-won self-control, but he tamped down on his rage and started pulling leads. They were forcing her variant talent, forcing it and then measuring it. The screens showed clear readings of vitals and blood chemistry levels, probably brain chemistry as well, though he couldn't be sure. With the huge variety of readouts, the variant phenomenon was most likely being measured on every cellular and subcellular level imaginable.
The urge to swing his pipe club and smash the machines slammed up sharp and hard. Damien shut his eyes and deliberately placed his pipe on the counter. This was evidence, all the data, all the machinery. If he destroyed it, all the pain these kids endured would be wiped out, their word against that of adult scientists.
Lori opened her eyes, jerking away from him as he started to peel the leads from her scalp. "Who the hell are you?"
He kept peeling, concentrating on getting her free as quickly as possible. "My name is Damien Hazelwood. I was sent to find you. All of you."
"Great. So you found me. So now you get shot and I get dragged back to my cell."
"I'm not alone." He tipped his face toward the ceiling. The whine of jet rotors trickled through, growing closer. "Guild ships are landing. We're getting you out of here."
She sat up slowly, her limbs shaking. Damien's heart went out to this brave girl, so obviously hurting but neither cowed nor broken. "If they're landing, why not just wait for them?"
Damien met her sharp gaze. "The whole point to me coming in first was to secure all of you. To prevent the people here from using you as hostages. You're the last one."
"Oh." She considered this as she slid cautiously from the table. Damien reached a hand out when her knees buckled, but she caught herself on the edge. "That makes sense. So you have all the others? Sean?"
Sean… Damien searched his memory and found the boy, the one with the broken ankle. "Yes. He's hurt but he was safe when I left him with my partner."
Her eyes hardened, but he realized it was determination rather than mistrust when she reached for his arm. "Get me to him, then, Mr. Damien Hazelwood. He's not good with pain."
Odd how she reminded him of Blaze. Maybe it was something inherent in sparkers, this outer shell of hardness, this stubborn, fuck-you-universe courage. He let her lean on him as he retrieved his pipe and retraced his way back through the still-deserted building. On the way out, he snagged an abandoned lab coat for her, unhappy that he couldn't stop to search for shoes.
They'd reached the doorway, Damien hesitating to listen for running footsteps or gunfire, when the door slammed open. He stumbled back, an arm in front of Lori to keep her behind him. The figure loomed in the open frame, backlit by the afternoon sun.
"You. Of course it's you." The cold voice dripped with loathing. "Dr. Parma's own sideshow."
Damien fought to find words as his thoughts spun. "Hippocrata?"
Why would the Guild send her on a retrieval? Maybe in case there were critical injuries? Maybe… But the Guild ships were still in the air.Oh god. They haven't landed yet. Hippocrata is here. And they haven't landed yet.
"Psychotic, mishandled freak. They should've locked you up as a test subject a long time ago." Hippocrata kept an eye on Damien's piece of pipe as she stepped into the building. "But you didn't get in here alone. Not with all the craziness going on out there. Who's with you? Emerson and who else?"
"Guild's on the way," Damien managed, though his voice shook. "Landing any second."
