Early update since it's the Christmas holidays…Thanks to everyone who's still reading!
Chapter 7:
There was light above him. Faint pinpricks penetrating the heavy darkness of his unconsciousness. Slowly they widened, faint and dim and blurred. It was then that Sam noticed the pain-his head throbbed painfully and his left arm seemed to be on fire. His mouth was dry as ash. It was the discomfort that roused the fear in him-where am I?
"New kid's waking up," a voice drawled from above. Sam did not understand the meaning of these words, trying to summon the energy to move. He finally opened his eyes fully to find himself staring up at a whitewashed ceiling, the paint cracked and stained in places. He blinked, confused, tried to sit up. Panic blasted through him at the realisation-he was tied down to the hard surface he lay on, restraints tight around his wrists and ankles. He struggled to free himself but they held tight, the pain in his arm exploding outwards and he could feel himself almost hyperventilating in terror.
Focus, Sam Winchester. Focus. You're kidnapped or something. Think-what happened? Don't panic. Whatever you do, don't panic. Winchesters don't panic. He struggled with his sluggish mind, remembered shouting at his father, fighting...fighting with a man in a black cloak...yes! That man had been about to inject him with some drug, he had shouted out for Dean...then nothing. So the hooded man must have kidnapped him...brought him here and tied him down. He took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself.
"He's much calmer than the last one," the other voice observed dryly. Sam had forgotten it until now-he started, tried to turn his head to look around.
"Yeah. Kenny went crazy, remember? Nearly killed himself trying to shift there on the table with the silver chains and everything..." It was a girl's voice this time. "Who's there?" Sam croaked hoarsely. "Where are we?"
"He's comprehensible much faster too," the other voice, a boy's, observed. Sam was beginning to get both scared and angry at their ignoring of his questions. "Hey! Why am I restrained? Whoever you are?"
"Take it easy," the girl's voice urged. "They always tie up the new kids. For good reason, usually."
Sam could not move his head far and both of them were out of his line of vision. "Who are you?" he repeated, now that he was no longer being ignored. "Where are we?"
"Now there's a good question," the boy quipped.
"I'm serious," Sam said angrily.
"Don't panic," the girl said suddenly. "They'll drug you again, and you don't want that. We're meant to be guarding you, at least I think that's what he meant, right Jake?"
"Something like that," the boy, Jake, agreed.
"This is some kind of training camp," the girl said. "Think of it as summer school, except they're teaching us to kill, we're tortured if we try to get out and you'll never find better racial diversity anywhere else. My name is Niki Freelands, and I'll be your hostess tonight. Pleasant flight." She snickered. "Sorry, no free drinks guys. Oh, and he's Jake Talley."
"Now you're just confusing him," Jake commented.
Sam blinked at the ceiling. "We're at a camp? But-why?"
"Why'd you think?" Niki said cryptically. "What can you do?"
Sam was surprised. "Uh-nothing."
"Still just me, then," she said cheerfully. "You're like Jake. He doesn't know what he's doing here either."
Sam was just getting more confused by the minute. "What the hell are you talking about?"
She came into his line of sight then and he was shocked-she was far younger than he had thought, only about his own age, tall and skinny with untidy black hair falling past her shoulders, high cheekbones and dark eyes filled with defiance. "You'll find out," she said softly, suddenly gentle. "Sorry, but there's only one person can really explain, and he's gonna want to talk to you himself now you've woken up."
"Niki," Jake's voice said softly from behind. "He's here."
Niki nodded. "Good luck," she said to Sam, and turned, moving out of his sight. "Hey!" he called. "Hey, wait! Who's here? What's going on?" But he heard a door bang, and knew that Jake and Niki were gone. He just did not think that he was alone; it was more a sense than anything else. Like last time. He lay motionless, trying to think what to do, waiting for his companion to act first.
"I am glad to see that you suffer no lasting hurt," a familiar voice said. The low, cultured, oddly hollow voice of the hooded man who had kidnapped him...Sam fought down the urge of panic inside, wishing fiercely that he was not in this position, that he could face him, that he could see him...
"Who are you and what do you want from me?" he said, trying to keep his voice calm. The man came round into his line of sight then, though it did not help much since he remained hooded, and Sam could not see his face.
"You may refer to me as Commander," the man said. "And as to the rest...there is much I want from you, Sam Winchester. You are...more special than you know."
Sam scowled. He wasn't special. He was a selfish, sorry excuse for a bad son, a failure and a disappointment, and one who, also, had managed to get himself kidnapped-again. But what he would not be was the loser of this battle, however it was to be fought and whatever it meant. He would not lose.
"Look," he said. "Clearly you're mistaken. There's nothing I can do. So can you please just untie me and give me a real reason why I'm here?"
Soft laughter. "I'm not untying you, Sam. You may not know what you are capable of yet but you could still cause quite some trouble. It's lucky for both of us that you were trained as a hunter, believe me. It's going to come very much in handy...my friend Bates does have his uses after all, aside from the odd hypnotism."
Bates is working for him? Well, that explains a lot...this guy actually does know who I am...he shivered at the implications. He knows about Dean and Dad and he still took me? So either he's crazy or he's just really sure that whatever he's doing with me will work out...either way it's not good...
"What is it you want?" Sam said again, flat-voiced to try and hide his fear.
"I am in the process of forming a select group of teenagers...with certain abilities, shall we say. What I want, Sam, is your co-operation. I want you to become a member of the Darkling Guard and train in my personal army."
"You're crazy if you think I'd do that," Sam snarled, turning his face away.
"What is there for you to go back to?" the Commander asked him softly. "Your father hates you, your brother let you down. You lived a life you hated, and now that life is over. The Guard is all that is left for you."
"That's not true," Sam whispered. "My family'll find me, and they'll kill you."
The Commander straightened up. "Somehow, I don't think so." He turned to leave, swinging his long cloak after him. "I will leave you some time to think on this-"
"Wait," Sam said, suddenly struck by an idea. If he pretended to go along with this, to start training, then he would be untied, given a weapon and allowed to assess his surroundings. Be able to escape! "Wait," he said. "Okay, I'll do it."
The Commander turned back and Sam was suddenly struck by the notion that the man must know what was going through his head, must understand the deception. And yet still he smiled below the cowl, and crossed the room, drawing his knife to cut the ropes tying Sam to the table.
"Welcome to the Guard, Sam Winchester," he breathed, and both were lying, and both knew that the other was doing so. War had just been declared.
…...
Sam stepped out of the door behind the Commander into the outside night and was immediately stunned. He had never seen anything like it; a huge compound ringed by a spiked wall-and a wall like none Sam had ever seen before, of some strangle silver-gold-bronze-grey coloured alloy of countless metals, and what was more it was electrified as well-with ranks of long, low wooden huts set against each one. There were also some clearly made of the same metal as the walls, like the one Sam had just come out of and judging by the cages and cells he had seen inside it-all, thankfully, currently empty-was some kind of prison block. Below the night sky the concrete and dull uniformity of the compound made for a forbidding sight, despite the darkness and the blazing torches placed around the place on tall brackets, illuminating the entire compound. But it was not this that amazed Sam-it was the people.
They ranged in age from children of about thirteen to young men and women who could have been twenty at least, and there must have been a hundred or more of them all at work in the enormous central yard upon which the entire compound had been constructed around. The work itself was the last thing Sam had expected-they were training. He could see two tiny children lunging at each other with wooden swords; not far away a boy of about his own age was practising throwing knives into a target several metres away. In fact throughout the compound every single teenager was engaged in some form of arms practise, from some kind of karate to what looked scarily like machine gunnery. Sam stared, open-mouthed-he himself had been through this kind of training already, of course, had been learning how to be a hunter, how to defend himself and his family since he was six years old. But to see so many kids, at the same time...it was disturbing. And even that was not the most shocking thing of all.
About two thirds of them were quite clearly not human.
Before his eyes he watched a little girl stop, shiver, and abruptly shrink, twist and transform into some kind of wildcat, and promptly leap on the boy she had been fighting. Skinwalker. Another youth, chained to a wall, gazed out through hungry red eyes at the proceedings, his enlarged and vicious teeth sprouting right out of his mouth. Vampire. A young woman sat cross-legged over a small fire above which was suspended a battered cauldron; she reached up to drop a pinch of something into it and green flames billowed up from inside it, eerily illuminating her skeletal face, casting demonic shadows about her sunken eyes. Witch. Sam was simply bowled over by this sudden rush of creatures-so many of the kids here were the exact same things he had hunted over his life, some that he had not even known existed. There were a few who looked human-he saw Jake Talley, his erstwhile guard, loading a pistol a short distance away. But most of them-his natural enemies, things he had hunted ever since he could remember. Monsters-creatures of the night.
The Commander met his amazed eyes with a cruel kind of smile. "You like my collection?" he asked Sam. "This, Sam Winchester, is the Darkling Guard."
Niki Freelands is my OC, based on nobody except a little bit Madison from Heart, I guess. I hope you like her, I know OC s can sometimes be annoying but I'm going to try really hard not to let her be...and yes, the Darkling Guard is revealed! Not much happened here I know, but I hope it explained a few things…please leave me a review! :)
