Chapter Text
I groan as I wake up, I feel sore as all hell. Probably from sleeping on a floor with the blunt end of a knife jabbed against my ribs.
I'm about to sit up when I hear footsteps and suddenly Kaiden's voice… he's outside. Fuck. I need to be quiet and I can't panic.
Breathe. In 4 out 8. In 4 out 8. I repeat this breathing pattern. Sargent Collins taught me… how I wish he was here right now.
I start to look to see if there's a way out of this freezer but there's nothing. No doors other than the one I came in, I don't have much of a choice right now. I need to stay hidden and pray I don't get caught. There's not many things I can do that aren't risky so I'm stuck with a gun on my hip and a knife jabbing into my ribs, well at least I'm holding the knife. It would've been much worse if I wasn't.
I try to put myself in the head space of hiding from a mutt, I'm good at that, hiding, I mean. I've always been good at hiding. Though I guess this would be a very smart mutt that I spent however long technically working with. Okay never mind. Just focus on myself, not the threat. If I get too focused on the threat I won't be ready to try to escape when or if I need to.
I take a quiet breath and wait, listening for footsteps.
There aren't any, everything seems to have gone silent… except a ringing in my ears that gets louder, slowly but the longer the silence lasts the more I feel control over my body slip and my breathing speed up. I close my eyes and try to focus on my breathing. I can't be panicking. Not now. Not when I'm being hunted by a group of dangerous people. No murders, they're not people, they're murders.
I try and look back on what Sargent Collins told me. He said something about an anxiety disorder and something about random bouts of anxiety that are completely uncontrollable. He said to look back on something calming, or at least that's what helped him. Maybe if I can think of one of my, few, friends. There was this one girl, we barely talked. The only main conversation I remember from her was about our parents.
She went to juvie to escape her mother. Her father was out of the picture like mine though. Eventually she was eligible to be sent to that stupid school.
+++
"So your mom was also shit?" The girl asks me, her face is blurry, I don't remember it at all, the only thing I can remember about her is she always wore a baggy hoodie, had dark curly hair, and her skin always reminded me of onyx. She was honestly really attractive.
"I wouldn't say shit, she wasn't the best. She did send me here… but it was out of, well um, it was out of love." I'm lying to both myself and her here, I couldn't accept my own mother didn't want me after my father left with my brother so I didn't, I made myself believe she did this out of love. "She wouldn't have been able to take care of me so she sent me here so I would be better taken care of" I explain.
"I put myself in juvie because it was safer." The girl responds with her own story.
"So we're both fucked up in the head as a therapist would want to say but can't? Since they're paid to be nice and everything." I joke, I was such a shy kid when I first went to the military school. I could barely make any friends.
"Yeah, I guess." She answers with a huff.
We continue to exchange stories of our shitty parents. I'd talk about my dad's abuse and make up stories of my mom defending me. None of it was true but I couldn't accept that I was unloved by both parents so I just acted like my mother did love me.
The girl told me about how her father would threaten her when she came home, I in return told her about how my father would hit me for keeping my brother out of fights because I was keeping him from "being a man". It was a while of us just trauma dumping about our home lives, or well, old home lives.
We end up making fun of our abuse. Right, she's the one who taught me how to make jokes to cope. Most of the kids with shitty home lives made jokes about it actually. They usually connected over it. Though there was always this girl, the outlier, she made the same jokes, told the same stories, but for some reason she was just too different for them. So she went to me. Talked to me. I honestly wished our conversations never ended.
One of the stories I remember from her was her mother starved her until she passed out during school and a whole investigation went on looking for neglect.
+++
The sound of glass breaking startles me and I quickly pull the gun tighter to my chest, holding my breath.
They'll pass me. They will pass me. They won't check. I tell myself, it's hard to believe it but I have to otherwise I'll just spiral again. Why do I have to be better at pointing out my own lies?
I don't dare peak out from behind the box, not wanting to risk getting spotted by them. "No unnecessary risks" as Sargent Collins would say. He was always strict about that, but I guess that's good for me now, that might even be the reason I make it out of this alive.
I take a silent breath through my nose and start to focus on the familiar breathing pattern I figured out when I used to run. It was quiet and kept air flowing through my lungs. It's also a pattern that's kept me calm throughout this whole hell. Especially during… that.
I miss Collins.
I shake my head and continue to strain my ears to listen, there's still nothing but my slowing heartbeat.
It doesn't take long for the adrenaline to slow and reveal just how little energy I actually had left after running and the adrenaline spike that just wouldn't let me calm down. With my slowing heartbeat I slump back and just try to focus on my surroundings but my heartbeat slowly becomes the only thing I can hear as I pass out in that old walk in freezer.
+++
I suppress and groan when I wake up, not wanting to risk anyone near by overhearing me.
Though I hear footsteps not too far away so I might be screwed, it just depends on if I can figure out who they belong to. Maybe if I could peak out from behind the box I'd be able to find out, though that would be pretty risky for me to try. Especially since I'm currently being hunted by that one group.
"Sera, you smell somethin'?" A woman's voice asks… a familiar woman's voice. Her voice makes me wanna look out and see who it is.
I have a mental list forming of pros and cons of looking, the cons heavily outweigh the pros but I really can't care at this point.
I sigh, giving in to the curiosity to look, before peaking out from behind the crates and seeing that massive fluffy cat that carried me after I got hurt and a few steps behind her is… Lizzy. The EMS woman who saved my life, the woman who made me feel at least a little safe since this whole thing started, the woman who's cat made me sleep comfortably. The woman who I have so desperately wanted to find.
"Lizzy?" I quietly call out, this feels too good to be true. There's no way Lizzy actually found me… right? There's no way.
I duck down when her head whips over to where I am and wait for her to respond.
"Meyers? Meyers are you here?" She asks, her voice is scratchier than when we first met but it's still distinctly her.
I take a breath before standing up and walking out to Lizzy, though I only make it half way before Sera is tackling me to the ground and laying on my legs.
I can only let out a winded chuckle at the cat's over eagerness and her excitement to see me again. Though when I glance up Lizzy is walking over, she seems so confused. Which is fair but it's not impossible to escape something like that just extremely unlikely.
"How did you get here?" She asks as she reaches to get Sera off me.
"Um… well I basically just stabbed someone and ran. The people that took me never really stuck around long enough to find me." I explain to her, standing up and giving Sera some scratches. She definitely needs those after all this bullshit that has happened over the past couple weeks. "Also I know what month we're in now. It's December so it's going to get cold fast, you have a jacket right?" I ask looking at Lizzy, I know Sera will be fine, her fur is thick as hell, she'll stay warm for a good while.
"No, but I doubt every clothing store was raided, let's see if we can find something." Lizzy answers as she starts to lead the way down the streets. Sera follows right beside her and I stay a pace or two behind her. She's not making it difficult to keep pace or anything I'm just tired from the stress. Fuck it's been way too long since I last got to just explore a little.
"So, kid, what exactly was this group like and do you know anything about them?" Lizzy asks though she doesn't look back at me.
"Uhh well they're in Canada so that's something I guess. They are pretty militaristic, I think their leader was named like Robinson or Robins something like that." I explain speeding up to walk beside Lizzy.
"Wait… Robins? Kid did you watch the news before this whole thing went down?" She suddenly asks stopping dead in her tracks. She looks tense, like there's something gravely wrong with what I just said.
"Uhh not really, I was at a military school and I was kinda just separated from people for quite a while." I explain to her, still really confused on why she's so concerned. "Is there something wrong?"
" Oh kid, you truly don't know." She mumbles. "Robins is the last name of the terrorist organization that started this."
I freeze… I was with a terrorist? Not just that I befriended a terrorist. Magnus is a terrorist.
No… he can't be, he wasn't allowed to do everything. He has to have been kidnapped and forced into this some how… right? The only person that I took a chance on wanting to be around isn't actually a terrorist.
There's a muffled sound before I feel a dull pain of my knees hitting concrete. I brace myself to pass out but that doesn't happen instead I feel something soft curling around my body protectively.
My vision blurs and suddenly nothing feels real anymore, everything is just quiet now. My body has this dull ache that makes moving difficult but it's not impossible to deal with. My brain feels like it's stuffed with cotton. I just end up passing out in my panicked haze while only being able to remember that Sera and Lizzy are with me. That they'll keep me safe from the fuckers–mutts.
Except I never fully pass out, my body shuts down but it's like my brain doesn't. I'm still awake but it's like I'm in the passenger seat of a car if that car was my body. I try to shout but nothing happens… maybe this is what death is like? Just watching my body slowly decompose? It feels like I'm a ghost in my mind. Everything is dark. There's nothing to indicate if I'm alive or dead.
Is this hell? I start to try and call out, to find anything to save me from here but there's nothing. I can't escape this place can I? I can't just kill someone and run like with Shell's group. I have to face this.
But I'm a kid… I shouldn't be here, I should've been taken away like I was told I would be. Please someone take me away from here, I can't deal with this anymore.
I feel like my body is cracking and slowly breaking. This is all too much.
+++
"Kid?" I hear a calm voice ask.
I can't quite open my eyes yet, my body just doesn't cooperate with my brain. I feel how I did whenever I had just woken up from the drugs that Shell had given me.
"Kid, can you answer me? If you can't speak just turn to nod."
I eventually realize that this voice belongs to Lizzy, it actually kind of makes sense, she did tell me she was an EMS so I guess I can trust her to take care of me.
I try to nod but it's just too difficult to focus with my head throbbing so instead I try to grab anything or at least move one finger, some sign to her that I can hear her.
I feel fabric, it's rough and and there's something, maybe blood, dried in it. But it's something. At least I'm feeling something, it's an improvement.
"Okay, you're hear with me. I know you're here." Lizzy responds. " You can relax now. You're just fine, I promise your that you're safe here."
I let my mind relax and this time everything actually goes away, my thoughts stop and I feel free? No that's not the right word, closer to non-existent. That feels more accurate. Freedom isn't being trapped within your mind.