Chapter Three
F L O R E N C E
Instantly, I feel myself being lifted from the ground. The hands around my neck wind tighter, and all the air in my body leaves at once, leaving me gagging and gasping.
James backs against a tree and watches in horror as the thing behind me attempts to crush my windpipe.
“Run,” I rasp, pain erupting in my throat. “Run, now!”
The little boy hesitates, but in the end, he sprints away from me as fast as he can and I feel a bit of relief, enough for me to attempt to pry the thick fingers away from my neck.
But they only stick to me tighter.
Fear is flooding me now. The possibility of death is closer than ever. I use my elbow to hit this thing that’s trying to kill me, but I only find myself colliding against something hard, something solid. It’s almost like this creature is made of concrete.
“Don’t struggle,” it tells me, and its voice sounds as though darkness itself can speak. “You will only hurt yourself.”
“Florence?” Dad’s voice is ringing from the earpiece. “Florence, what’s happening? What’s that?”
The creature holding me lets out a cold laugh, lets me go, and rips off the earpiece from me while pulling some of my hair. I scamper to my feet to run and get away from it, but it catches me by the back of my neck and lifts me up again.
In the darkness I try to look at its face, to see what it looks like before it kills me, but it seems that it’s just pure shadow, emanating pure coldness and dread.
My whole body is shaking now. Tears are running down my cheeks. I can feel its nails digging into my skin and puncturing it, but all I can do is wait for it to slam me down or crack my neck.
A quick death. At this point, that is all I ask.
“Kill me,” I tell it, my voice broken. “Just kill me. Don’t find the little boy. Let him go home. Take me.”
I can’t see its face but I can feel its delight in my words. “Oh, I will. I believe you are what we’re looking for.”
With that, it presses a cloth on my mouth, doused in a liquid that smells like sulfur. “Just come peacefully, and perhaps you will live.”
I try to let out a scream, but suddenly I’m overcome with a strong feeling of drowsiness. My vision blurs and my head spins, and before I knew it...
I’m gone.
* * *
“...it’s been days, when will she wake up?”
I’m floating. Weightless. Free. Just a wavering form of consciousness.
Am I...dead?
I don’t feel my body anymore, and a big part of me wishes that this is death, because it actually doesn’t feel that bad. It just feels like the prelude to a good dream, that blissful moment of darkness before the colors and the shapes appear.
“...the formula was too strong for her...”
I let myself relax, letting everything go so I can finally pass on, but that’s when I feel something hard. Something solid.
It’s my body, and it’s lying down on a rough surface.
And I’m not alone. There are people talking around me.
I gasp, and all the sensations crash onto me one after the other. My eyes fly open, and I find myself in a grimy room with mold on the walls and the ceiling, and an entire wall made up of metal bars. On the other side of the bars are a man and a woman, staring at me with disgusted looks on their faces.
“Who are you?” I demand, jumping to my feet so fast that I crash against the metal bars, making them flinch. “Where am I?”
“You’re in prison,” the man answers with a smirk. “Boss’s orders.”
“What boss?” I shout. “Tell me!”
The woman shakes her head. “We can’t say.”
Memories start to flood my mind. Memories of how I got here. I remember seeing James’s scared face when he told me there was something behind me. I remember those tall shadow figures that cuffed me and drugged me. I remember my dad. I remember promising him to come home...
But I’m here stuck. Taken captive.
And from what I heard, it’s been days.
“Get me out of here,” I say in a shaky voice. When they both laugh, I kick my cell door. “LET ME OUT!”
“Kick that all you want,” the woman mocks, leaning close to my door teasingly. I notice a key dangling from her neck. “You will never get out of here. You’re as good as dead.”
Hysteria rises up my throat. I poise to kick the door again, but something stops me. The thought of my father mourning fills me with so much anguish that all thoughts in my head turn to violence.
I don’t know what comes over me. But before I knew it, I’m already sliding my arm through the gap in the metal bars. The woman gasps and tries to cuff me, but I grab her collar from behind the bars and slam her face on the metal.
Blood erupts from her nose. She passes out immediately, collapsing against the door. I slam her one more time for the hell of it, snatching the key around her neck and unlocking my cell door.
The male guard sees this and rushes to the alarm pulley, but I step out of my cell and grab the back of his head, slamming his face on the wall three times and feeling him get limp before turning to the exit.
I kick down the door and it swings right off its hinges. I know that more guards will come here any minute, so I decide to chance it and sprint through the narrow hallway, following the stairs that lead up.
I climb quickly and get faced with another door. I take a step back to gather the strength to kick it down, but then it swings open on its own, showing me a towering mass of a man.
I prepare myself for a fight, but the sight of him fills me with a strange sort of energy that snatches my strength, letting me utter a single word.
“Mate.”