When the door fully closes, I walk out in front of the tree where I've been hiding and peer over at where
he left his truck, wondering if he maybe left anything of value there. If I'm cutting my losses, and
running, then he might have something. He didn't lock it, and he was alone. Maybe a medipack, food,
clothes, or something that I can use.
He obviously isn't coming out right away, and I should make the most of his absence before he does
come back. He might not stay and judging by the fact abandoned his truck and never brought it into the
compound, I don't think he is. I have to be quick and go.
I run along the tree line keeping to the inner side and within its shadow and make a dash for his truck,
using hyper speed to get to it fast and peek inside when I slide up against the door on the far side from
the building. It's an off road four by four, covered in mud, and debris, and obviously the perfect vehicle
for moving around this terrain. I can tell right away there's nothing in it at all. Not even general trash, or
even anything in view that I would want. It's clean and free of anything worthwhile. Not what I would
expect for a truck with frequent use, so it makes this even weirder. He obviously doesn't use it all too
much to come and go. One last fleeting run over with my eyes, convinced he has nothing of worth.
I dash back to the closest border of brush and start making my way back to my own temporary camp
without looking back, this time keeping behind the trees by two rows. My breathing labored with the
heavy weight of mounting panic growing inside of me like a warning signal. Heartbeat pounding in my
ears as it batters my rib cage and adds to my terror. I don't feel safe this close anymore and I should
never have ventured to find this building. I don't know what I was thinking, and the last thing I need are
complications from wolves, and James Bond type buildings in the middle of forests. This has spy movie
all over it, and I'm in no mood to be dangled headfirst over a vat of sharks for information I don't have.
When the noise of the building cranks up again, I don't know if it's the floor moving up again to reset, or
if he's coming back. It stops me in my tracks and I instinctively drop to the dirt and turn around. I crouch
where I am, and watch, waiting with held breath, peering through the trunks and bushes to see the
door, until the moaning cranking noise of heavy innards moving comes to a halt. Yet the door doesn't
open. Nothing happens at all, except the return to a previous hum. I don't think it was him, I think
maybe the floor comes up again when they reach a destination, and I relax a little, blowing out my air
with relief, moving again from this tree base to the next to make my way back to my perch.
I almost make it all the way in when another loud thumping noise pauses me in my tracks and makes
me look back nervously, so jumpy and on edge, with all my senses kicking into a higher mode of
efficiency. This time the noises are less intense, less mechanical, and more like regular people noises.
The building appears to be coming to life as it increase, the doors make swooshing noise, but nothing
seems to open. There's a bang, sliding of maybe bolts, I can't tell. A beep, a woosh, like the noise a
piston makes, and then I can make out the swing of a heavy metal door and gravel rolling and sliding
from it.
Lights flick on all around me, so suddenly from concealed posts further out in the trees it makes me
jump, my heart misses a beat and frozen ice flairs in my veins, and I find myself illuminated in the
previously dark space. Blinded by the sudden solar strength, blazing pain that hits me in the eyeballs. I
start blinking, shielding my eyes as my nocturnal vision craps out and gives me an instant headache,
like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
I wasn't expecting this entire area to be brightened up like standing under a sun lamp at close range
and pull my wits back around me. I dart as fast as I can for the nearest sign of darkness and hope they
didn't see me. The lights must be extended above the canopy on masts further out that I didn't see, as
everything around me is brighter than daylight, and I have no one direction to go to that will get me out
of it faster. The entire space is bright as hell. I run, heading towards my mountain in the far distance,
and concentrate on nothing else except escape. Screw my backpack and furs, I don't need them right
now.
I sprint, dodging, jumping, clearing fallen logs as twigs and leaves scratch my face and hands, and rip
at my skin in passing. Breathing labored and loud, panting. I aim for the shadows, not looking back, in
case this is because of me, that maybe he did see me out there and whatever this place is, no one is
meant to know. I put my head down and hyper speed the best to my ability, only just make it to a
skidding halt into darker bushes when an alarming piercing noise fills the air around me. It has a
horrible effect on my body and senses, rattling my brain inside my skull, as my physical self crunches
up, instantly immobile and I grab my ears.
It's a siren, honking hard and loud, in a pitch that causes me physical pain with its sheer volume,
echoing in the air and making the surroundings shudder in trembling response. My heart elevates, until
I think my chest is going to explode, my body straining to turn to wolf to get away faster, but I don't let it.
I need to keep these clothes, more than ever now, and I need to get back to my tree to grab my stuff
and go at some point too.
My gut tells me to abandon it all, forget about the clothes issue for now, and just run, but my logic is
telling me to calm down, and halt, and rationalize about this, and stop reacting. That they couldn't have
seen me, as the cameras point down, and I didn't venture near the fences. That he maybe just looked
my way, but I saw no sign of reaction or recognition that someone was out here.
This could just be coincidence and something they do, even without someone like me lurking nearby.
They couldn't know I was there if there even was a 'they', and what really would they react like this for?
What could they possibly be hiding that a young girl like me posed a threat against?
That wolf, he might have been solitary, although he did talk to someone on whatever that intercom
thing was, so maybe there's only two of them and this is still a power grid of some sort. I know a lot of
that contradicts what the other parts of my brain are telling me, but self-preservation has a funny way of
trying to shake you into being less manic. Lying to myself can help abate the fear and get me moving,
instead of freaking out.
I try to take some calming breaths as it all filters through my head, and I keep on telling myself I'm
overreacting. This is just a drill, or a thing, or normal. I'm fine…. I'm sure I am.
The whizzing whistle of air that skids past my left ear and physically inflicts a searing pain with the high
pitch velocity it passes me with, makes me jump sideways and crash into bushes as I run at speed. I
almost swallow my own tongue and my stomach lurches, about jumps out of my body with the scare. It
gives me a near heart attack, and I scramble in stinging, scratching bushes to fight my way back out. I
get caught up in thorn heavy vines and trip back over my own muddled legs.
The fall makes me tumble and roll into hedge way, knocking my shoulder on rocks and stops my
scrambling for a second. I take a moment to look back at the surging sunlit bright area I left behind,
gasping as I see the pouring of black dressed men coming from some ground level hatch near the main
door, like a concealed lid lifted from the gravel, and four maybe five bodies appear on the ground
above. There are already two outside the gates and both are facing this way, looking intensely into the
wood where I ran, and pointing big ass guns with sights trained in here.
I don't know what flew past me, I don't think I want to know, and my doubt that I wasn't in any kind of
danger, dies an instant death. The blood draining from my body so I turn cold and statue like as it sinks
in, they are definitely looking for me. I don't stop to wait for even a blink longer, terror once again
ripping through me at speed and activating my run like shit button. They all face this way and come
thundering after me as soon as they see the rustle of the bushes I dart from.
Gifts that are remarkable or not, I can smell them from here, wolves, and they are all armed. A little
patrol of male wolves in black uniforms and they're clearly coming at me. I don't care who you are, what
story you're in, that never bodes well in any situation and I don't think they're trying to invite me in for
coffee and cake. I've obviously stumbled across something I shouldn't have.
Pure instinct takes over and the urge to turn is almost killing me with the rate my human body is
pounding itself to shreds with sheer adrenalin. I run, I trip, I fall, and I know that human form is only
slowing me down and making it more likely they catch up with me. I know only too well that wolves will
not be kind and show me mercy at being caught in their lands. I have one set of clothes… and that's it.
I need to think about survival now, even if that means ending up naked, and backpack less, miles
further into the undergrowth. I just need to find another way to gather the things I need later and curse
myself stupid for ever venturing this way, near this dammed building. It's obviously not an
inconspicuous power station. Those men were guards, and whatever they're guarding, is important
enough to carry weapons and stay in the multiples.
I'm so god damn stupid. Fuck you, Sierra, and your damn dreams and pushing me East. Fuck the
fates. Fuck Colton for making me leave the mountain and fuck Juan for being the root of all my woes
and how shitty my life has been for a decade. This is all his fault!
I turn. My inner wolf almost howling with an intense release, glad to be free finally. Head down, clothes
shredding pitifully as I leave the last of my worldly possessions in the dirt and run like the wind. Nothing
else that I can do about it now, and they are in fast pursuit.
I fall, wedging between trees that are too close to get through and break free noisily with sheer strength
and will power. Wood splintering, branches crackling, but being silent is no longer my concern as the
noise of their pursuit out sounds mine. I can feel them coming, hear them, smell them, I can even feel
their heart beats synching with mine as scent follows me close on my heels.
Panic spreads through my veins and I hope that angry numb I gained with the bear, kicks in soon, or
else I'm screwed. I can't even stop to try and use any sort of gift right now, when I don't even know
how. The last few days of trying to conjure it up proved futile. I'm scared right now, not angry, and I
have no hope in hell of conjuring any other feeling.
Something else whizzes over my head, like a small shooting tunnel of air that makes my hair tingle and
pull in its passing. It shoots directly into the tree several feet in front of me, and stabs viciously into the
trunk, standing proud and straight when it comes to an instant halt. I only catch sight of it for a split
second, a clear tube, filled with watery liquid, a red feather tail, embedded deeply in the rough wooden
skin of the poor tree. It catches me eye, draws my attention, and before I can run past it while still trying
to figure out what it is, something fires into my spine insanely stab-like, right between my shoulder
blades with a stinging pain so intense it makes me howl involuntarily. A loud wailing noise that hurts my
own ears.
The impact is hard, the pain unexpected, and the combination makes me trip and crash face first into
the branches and rocks on the ground I'm crossing at speed. I roll, hitting the rough floor of the forest
like a dead weight and skid ungracefully, pulling debris and dried leaves with me, kicking up a cloud of
dust and choking on it, across a tiny clearing knocking whatever was sticking in my back off as I do so.
I feel it being yanked out with a stomach-churning tug.
I land on my face, legs sprawled as my body betrays me and turns back to human form without my say
so, and my eyes focus on the tiny thing only feet on front of me. Dazed, trying to catch my breath as
this unearthly warm and strange sensation pours through me from the connect spot in the center of my
back.
It's the same as what hit the tree. A clear tube, only empty this time, with a red brush tail, only now I
can see the tip and its long, silver, extremely pointy, and looks a lot like a dart for taking large animals
down. I've seen them on African game reserve documentaries. The needle is thick and huge, so no
wonder it felt like something stabbed me with a big pointy object; they literally did… at bullet speed. I let
out a groan and try to roll and move, aware that an empty tube suggests the contents are inside of me.
I attempt to get up, but my limbs give out like useless heavy weights of flesh with no control, and my
vision begins to spin. My head turning woozy as everything around me sways crazily, like I just got on
the deck of a boat amid a rolling storm.
I don't like this, and I can feel the thundering of feet fast approaching me as wolves' growls turn to
human voices. I can make them out ever so slightly, coming at me on the gentle breeze of the rustling
trees as silence begins to take over. My hearing and head fading out despite trying to fight it.
"I hit her… she's to the left. Split up and spread out in case we need to double dose her."
I can't grasp anything as my hands claw at the dirty muck strewn ground below me, desperate to keep
trying to run. As futile as I know it is, something in me is refusing to give up the fight and urging me to
get to my feet. Like a tiny warm voice in my mind, softly calling out to me.
I swear, I hear Sierra drifting my way in the wind as she reminds me of the same thing she has been
saying all along, yet it somehow means something else in my drugged stupor.
"Save us"
I reach out to it in my oncoming delirium with weak grasping fingers, sure I see her face in the canopy
above as my eyesight obscures.
"I can't. I'm not strong enough." It's a pathetic whisper at no one, as my eyes blur with tears at my own
failure, and my heart aches that somehow, I let her down, even if it makes no sense. Maybe it's the
pain of failing myself. Weeks of running, hiding, and I can't do anything about what I've gotten myself
into. I was stupid to think I was special.
I can feel them so close now, and as I try to lift my head and shoulders up from the soggy earth in one
last ditch attempt to save myself, my vision blanks our completely and I lose consciousness.
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