AN: Guess who finally got around to writing a sequel? Yep. Me. Years later. Sorry about the long wait! Yes, this is the sequel to Curiosity Killed the Cat, and yes, you will have no idea what's going on if you don't read that first, so go read that first! It was the first multichap story I had ever actually finished, even if it ended on a huge cliffhanger (sorry about that), so I'm pretty proud of it? I'll admit it was a pretty simple plot, but hey, give me a break, it was my first long story and it was successful enough, I think. I promise this one will be better in quality, because, you know, I have twoish years of extra experience under my belt now AND I made it through a notoriously difficult English class that really helped me to improve my writing, even if it was hell to go through.
A quick timeframe recap: CKtC ended somewhere in 2013, my story begins in February of 2016.
Caterine DuRien came back to consciousness with spasming muscles and a painful tightness in her chest, a feeling that would have brought back ancient memories of her violent transformation a thousand years ago if she could think at all. Her throat closed up and her lungs heaved and pumped with no effect, not that she needed any air, and her jaw locked, the muscles twitching and clenching uncomfortably. She realized that she could not calm any part of her body. She almost panicked. A terrible ringing began in her ears, quiet at first, and then gradually louder until she was sure it would deafen her from the inside, and then the ringing gave way to real external sound: someone was worriedly repeating her name over and over. "Caterine, Caterine, can you hear me? Caterine, Caterine, Caterine, can you hear me?" the voice said.
Her eyes snapped open, she shot upright with a snarl, her hand shot out to the side, her fingers clenched around flesh-
"Caterine! Caterine, let go, let go, can you hear me, Caterine? Let go!" someone else shouted from her other side.
Her head snapped to the new voice, and then her eyes finally caught up with her brain. Cat winced at the blinding white around her. Quickly the light faded and she could make out blurry shapes of color, which sharpened and sharpened until she saw a slightly blurry woman with a large mass of dark hair and a white lab coat to her right, the woman's hands held up in what was either a calming, appealing, or surrendering manner. Cat's haywire senses swerved around to her other side, and suddenly she lost focus on the doctor-she was a doctor, wasn't she?-with the dark hair and she could hear the sounds of someone choking and sputtering. She snapped her head to her other side to see her own fuzzy hand gripping a fuzzy man's neck so tightly that he seemed to be turning a vague shade of purple, which registered somewhere in her scattered thoughts as very bad, but she found it difficult to let go, to make her muscles obey and release the man. She felt something pierce her in the back of the neck, then, and she found herself able to relax a moment later, and her thoughts slowed down, and she took her hand from the man's neck. He doubled over, taking in large gasps of air.
"Caterine, Caterine, look at me, face this way," the woman said gently. Cat turned her head to her other side again, slower this time. "I gave you a muscle relaxer, okay? We need to get some blood in you, get some oxygen to your brain. That will help you, I promise, blood will make you feel better," she continued, talking in soothing and even tones.
The doctor-Cat still assumed she was a doctor-held up a needle and catheter for Cat to see, and slowly advanced towards the vampire's neck. With gentle touches and pressure, the woman tilted Cat's head up and to the side, carefully inserting the equipment into her carotid artery, taped down the tubing, released Caterine and slowly backed away. Cat followed the woman with her eyes, remaining completely still, watching as she rolled a metal stand to the side of the bed Cat belatedly realized she was sitting in. She eyed the dangling bag of blood, suddenly yearning to sink her fangs into it. The woman returned to Caterine's neck, connected the tubes, slowly backed away again, set the drip to a fast pace and switched on the pump, and made her way, still moving slowly and smoothly, to the opposite side of Cat's bed to inspect the man Caterine had choked.
As soon as the blood hit her system, the pump pushing the oxidized fluid up to her brain, Cat's senses began to clear up: her vision gradually returned to normal from its blurriness; her ears stopped focusing on single directions at a time and sharpened to its usual state. Her head cleared next. She could think straight, and she didn't feel as distant or foggy as she did before.
"I'll be back in a few minutes, Caterine," the woman said, and led the man, who she now noticed was wearing scrubs, out of the room.
The blood continued to revive her, the muscle relaxer continued to keep her calm and somewhat sedated. Cat began recapping everything she remembered before her world dissolved into the fuzzy black of stasis. She remembered Adeline, she remembered Molly and John and Sherlock, she remembered how Adeline tampered with their memories, she remembered how Adeline had tackled Cat after the vampire threatened the mage, how Adeline forced Cat's mouth open, how Adeline poured the stasis serum into her mouth and over her fangs, how Adeline clamped down on her jaw and over her lips and forced the bitter stasis serum, never meant for anything other than intravenous administration, up Cat's fangs and to her brain with her magic, how Adeline had laughed and laughed as everything slowly went black, how Cat had been struggling and thrashing and angry and panicked the entire time.
There. That must be it. Stasis serum should only ever be administered when the individual is calm and relatively still. A calm entrance into stasis makes for a cam exit out of stasis. A violent entrance into stasis must've made for a doubly worse exit out of stasis. Her trouble also probably had something to do with the method of administration. Anything through the fangs that wasn't blood was always an awful idea.
The woman in the white coat returned with a scrub-wearing blonde this time. "How are you feeling, Caterine?"
The vampire cleared her throat and sucked in some air. "Better now," she croaked. "Thank you. I apologize-will he be okay? The man that was with you before?"
"He's bruised and shaken, but no lasting damage was done. You only had a hold on him for about a minute; he never lost consciousness. I'm sure there are no hard feelings. You reacted on instinct." The woman smiled. "I'm Dr. Awojobi."
"Nice to meet you. Where am I?" It was a little uncomfortable to talk with an IV hooked up to her neck.
"Hospital of the Underneath. You were in stasis for a little under three years. I'm...surprised that you came out of it so violently and so in need of blood. Three years is a short time compared to how long your usual stases are, according to our records."
"It was Adeline. She forced it through my fangs, I was struggling and panicked. Violent entrance..."
"And violent exit," Dr. Awojobi finished. She sighed, and Cat could smell the woman's pity. "Ms. Jacobs has been in custody with an eternal sentence. As I recall it, your unscheduled and multiple stases that night alerted the authorities down here, and our people apprehended Ms. Jacobs shortly after you entered your last stasis," she told Caterine. "She hadn't tampered with your memories yet; we had another mage check. All your memories are correct and your own."
"She tampered with three mortals," Caterine stated, thinking of her friends. "Did someone fix them, too?"
"We are bound by the Treaty to meddle as little as possible. You know this, I'm sure. We tracked where Ms. Jacobs teleported them to and returned them to their residences, buried their memories of the encounter with Ms. Jacobs."
"But did you reverse Adeline's damage?" Cat demanded.
Dr. Awojobi held her hands up in a calming gesture. "Ms. Jacobs hid your nature from them, which is in accordance with the Treaty. We did not reverse her work."
Caterine decided she needed to get away from the Congress right then and there. Of course she recalled her intent to do so before stasis, but now she made the resolve official in her mind. "When can I leave?"