Page 98 of Finding Her
“Fuck. Send trackers out of the eastern exit to check for footprints. Maybe they escaped through the back.”
They were giving us too much credit. We werepainfullydistant from the outside. At least their suspicions were pointing them in the wrong direction. Maybe they’d be less inclined to consider our true strategy. How long would it take the trackers to confirm the lack of footprints? Hopefully, a very long time.
We continued in silence, the unchanging view making me feel like we were crawling in place. My muscles were tight from the tension required to move silently and quickly. My core and shoulders ached from supporting my upper body in a half plank. Sweat began to drip down my temple from the combination of mental stress and physical exertion.
Dia suddenly stopped, slowly lifting her arm from its station pressed against the bottom of the vent for the first time. My face twisted in anxiety as she stretched to set it further ahead of her with a soft creak that felt absurdly loud for how delicate it looked. What the fuck was she thinking? She moved one limb at a time in the same reaching manner, until I saw the grating of the ceiling vent we had to cross. Sliding silently over the hatch wasn’t an option.
It was my turn to cross without alerting anybody in the space below of our presence. I dragged myself to the square vent, looking down for some context on where we might be.
I immediately regretted indulging in the view. What I saw made my chest seize up. I suddenly struggled to pull airinto my terrified lungs. My arms rattled beneath my weight and threatened to cave in at the elbows. Just when I thought I might pass out from the lack of oxygen, my heartbeat went from frozen to racing.
Below me was a glass tube with switchboards lining its sides. Bags of liquids were hanging from hooks on a connected table, tubes running from their bases into the pod. Visible through the clear casing was a beautiful blonde woman, naked and sleeping. The way that the white padding was perfectly curved around her body made me think she’d been in there for quite some time; it almost looked like it was growing around her. Her perfect hands rested palms down on her stomach, an IV slipped under her skin.
There was whirring of machinery from all directions. The barbaric tubing fed blue liquid into her veins. The woman’s body suddenly tensed in apparent discomfort. Her muscles twitched in protest, and her face creased painfully. I wasn’t sure how long I stared before a loud voice suddenly filled the space as if it were coming from all directions.
“Come home,” the familiar, gentle words of a woman pleaded, and the blue liquid immediately stopped running through the tubes.
Tears pooled into my eyes on reflex.
“Come back to Earth.”
No. That couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the woman who had haunted my nightmares. The woman who pleaded every night for me to leave Graysen and return toE.A.R.T.H.
“We miss you. We are all waiting for you.”
The blonde woman in the pod’s face began to relax as the effects of whatever the fuck that blue liquid was began to wearoff. I felt the same relief deep in my gut, hating how my body responded to the voice against my conscious will.
Something touched my shoulder, and I jumped. Dia. Her eyes had softened as she craned her neck to look at me. She mouthed “what’s wrong”. I didn't know how to explain the horror of realizing I hadbeenthis woman below us. Of hearing the voice that was paired with whatever that blue drug was, awake and aware of how it had rewired my brain. They had stolen my memories, my life, and my sense of self. Despite it all, I had considered running to that voice so many times. I’d just wanted the pain to end.
I shook my head, trying to force controlled breaths. I needed to get out of here. I couldn’t be back in one of those pods. I’d rather die than let them turn me into a brainwashed husk of a person, again.
The panic that had already taken hold of my nerves was exacerbated by the voice returning to echo through the metal vents, repeating the same fucking phrases again and again. I lifted my hands and covered my ears, trying to muffle the script enough to regain my sanity. I was frozen and helpless, just as I had been before.
Dia mouthed my name, stroking my arm softly.
I tried rocking back to sit on my heels, desperate to curl up into a ball and wait this out. My body remembered everything. The hot nausea. The crawling under my skin. The sweating. Worst of all, it remembered thecomfort. It remembered how desperately it wanted to hear this voice. Even now, part of me wanted to be wrapped within its clutches to feel the pain fade away.
Without my weight distributed evenly, the fragile vent connecting point didn’t hold. I was aware of the squealing crunch of bending metal for only a moment before my ribsslammed on the hood of the pod, and I tumbled off its side. I looked up. Dia held onto the edge of the vent with her good hand, but its connection snapped, dumping her onto the floor inches away.
We found ourselves in a wide-open room. There must have been dozens of pods stretching across the floor, all filled with a haunting combination of medicine and science fiction.
Still disoriented from my panic and flashbacks, I used the cursed machine to pull myself up. Looking through the spill of my hair, I saw several armed people running in our direction, shouting updates on our status into their intercoms. My stomach free-fell. It was over. I felt Dia’s hand pulling on my arm in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t move. I wasn’t going to be Faeryn anymore. Everything I had worked for was gone. I would die in this room, wasting away as a living battery for the rich and powerful.
I was so focused on my impending doom, I almost didn’t register the orange glow overpowering the white lights of my nightmares. I could barely hear the screams of guards above the woman’s voice over the speakers. I could barely smell the smoke over the sterile facility of my torture.
“Faeryn!”
The voice was far away.
“Faeryn, baby girl.” Warmth pressed against my face, as the deep rumble of Graysen’s voice beckoned me back to reality.
I blinked several times, black fabric and hair filling my vision. His skin blanketed us in a golden glow. It was the comfort of our bedroom—warm and safe—in an embrace so tight, I could crumble. I threw my arms around Graysen’s neck and inhaled his welcoming campfire scent, drowning out the carnage surrounding us.
“Graysen, do you mind?!”
I lifted my head to see Mykie pulling a dagger out of a man’s jugular and turn to kick an approaching opponent square in the chest. Dia was engaged in a similar struggle nearby, unarmed and using every inch of her body to hold her own against the largest Arielna I had ever seen.
“Come on!” Graysen called, jerking his head towards the far side of the room.
