That wolf might have been solitary, although he talked to someone on whatever that intercom was, so maybe there are only two of them, and this is a power plant. 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 shaking you into being less manic. Lying to myself can help lessen 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 telling myself I’m overreacting. This is just a drill, or a thing, or expected. I’m fine. I’m sure I am.
A whizzing whistle of air that skids past my left ear and inflicts a searing pain with the high-pitched velocity it passes me with makes me jump sideways and crash into bushes as I run at speed. I almost swallow my tongue; my stomach lurches and 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 out. I get caught up in heavy thorn vines and trip over my unsteady legs.
The fall makes me tumble and roll, knocking my shoulder on rocks, and stops my scrambling for a second. I take a moment to look back at the surging, bright sunlit area I left behind, gasping as I see the outpouring of men dressed in black coming from a concealed ground-level hatch near the main door. 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 trees where I ran and pointing big ass guns with their sights trained in here.
I don’t know what flew past me—I don’t think I want to know—and the doubt that I was in any kind of danger dies an instant death. The blood drains from my body, so I turn cold and statue-like as it sinks in: they are 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 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 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 adrenaline. 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 venturing this way, near this damned building. It’s not an inconspicuous power station. Those men were guards, and whatever they were guarding was important enough to carry weapons and stay in the multiples.
I’m so goddamn 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. I can do nothing else about it now, and they are in fast pursuit.
I fall, wedging between trees too close to get through and break free noisily with sheer strength and willpower. 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 heartbeats synching with mine as scent follows me close on my heels.
Panic spreads through my veins, and I hope that the angry numbness I gained with the bear kicks in soon, or I’m screwed. I can’t even stop and try to use any gift right now, especially when I don’t even know how. The last few days of trying to conjure it up proved futile. I’m scared now, not angry, and I have no hope of conjuring any other feeling.
Something else whizzes over my head, like a small shooting tunnel of air that makes my hair tingle and pulls as it passes. It shoots directly into the tree several feet in front of me and stabs viciously into the trunk, standing proud and straight as it comes to an instant halt. I only catch sight of it for a split second, a transparent tube filled with watery liquid, a red feather tail, embedded deeply in the rough wooden skin of the poor tree. It catches my eye and draws my attention, and before I can run past it while still trying to figure out what it is, something stabs into my spine, right between my shoulder blades, with a stinging pain so intense that it makes me howl involuntarily. A loud wailing noise that hurts my ears.
The impact is hard, the pain is unexpected, and the combination makes me trip and crash face-first into the branches and rocks on the ground I’m crossing. 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 off whatever was sticking in my back as I do. 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 into human form without my say-so, and my eyes focus on the tiny thing a few feet in front of me. Dazed, I try to catch my breath as this unearthly warm and strange sensation pours through me from the 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 brushtail. Only now can I see its long, silver, and highly pointy tip. It looks a lot like a dart for taking down large animals. I’ve seen them on African game reserve documentaries. The needle is thick and massive, so no wonder it feels like something stabbed me with a big pointy object at bullet speed—it did. I let out a groan and try to roll and move, aware that an empty tube suggests the contents are inside me.
I attempt to get up, but my limbs give out like useless heavy weights of flesh with no control, and my vision spins. My head turns 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 takes over. My hearing and head faded 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 state.
“Save us.”
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 failure, and my heart aches that, somehow, I let her down, even if it makes no sense. Maybe it’s a pain of failing myself. Weeks of running and 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 close now, and as I try to lift my head and shoulders from the soggy earth in one last-ditch attempt to save myself, my vision blanks out entirely, and I lose consciousness.