Authors Note: My apologies for the delay in updating. I hope two chapters tonight make it up to you all!
"Doc, you need to figure out what's making her so shakey." Derek orders as he holds onto Lissa's upper right arm. He's brought her straight from the Battle Ground to Lincoln's medical lab.
Lincoln looks up from a gurney she's at. Her face is pale and there's blood splattered all on her pale blue scrubs.
Lissa takes in the sight of gore around the medical lab and knows it's from her. Wounded Battle Ground fighters are pulled out by the guards, as they become too injured to fight, to see if they could be patched up and fight another day. There's very few survivors from her little show. Her stomach clenches and she feels ill. But she forces the thoughts away, she can't let Derek know she's fighting the protocols.
"I'll be back soon. Stay with Lincoln." Derek orders her, "Do whatever she tells you."
Lincoln leads Lissa to a spare gurney and as soon as the door shuts leaving them alone, Lincoln hurries to grab supplies. "We don't have much time." Lincoln tells her.
"Why couldn't you save them?" Lissa asks. There's only two people unconscious and restrained to beds the other twelve beds have sheets over them.
"I had sabotaged the blood supply so we would be forced to get a delivery." Lincoln tells her, "I didn't have enough blood, which they needed. And what I had I used on my brother."
Lissa looks to the two alive contestants, but neither look anything like Lincoln.
"He didn't make it." Lincoln says, her voice shaking. "But we can't focus on that. We need to transfuse you. Derek's been injecting you with a serum to make the mind control protocols more effective. We take that out and you can fight them 100%." Lincoln says and then slides a needle into a vein in Lissa's arm.
"But you don't have blood." Lissa says confused.
"That's why we're using mine." Lincoln tells her and holds up the end of the tube connected to Lissa's arm, on it is a needle which she slides into her neck with ease. Blood flows from it right away and into Lissa's arm. "Buddy transfer. I'll give you as much as my blood as you can. It will dilute your blood and make the serum far less effective."
"But what about you?" Lissa asks panicked. After seeing firsthand the death and destruction she's capable of, she doesn't want to risk Lincoln being another body on a gurney.
Lincoln gives her a small smile, "I can handle it." The smile fades as she looks over to a gurney, "I've gone through worse."
Two minutes tick by in silence and then Lincoln pulls the needles from both of them. She's pale now and looks tired, but she stays on her feet.
"How are you feeling?" Lincoln asks her.
That's when Lissa realizes the ever present hum of the mind control protocols in her mind is nearly silenced. It's faintly there but she isn't struggling to fight it. "Better."
"Good. I'm going to need you at your best if we're going to leave here." Lincoln tells her and looks down at her watch, "The blood transport is due to arrive in exactly seven minutes. We'll sneak up on the driver, steal the vehicle and get the hell out of here."
"Barney." Lissa says, "I can't leave Barney."
"I tried to get him here, but he wasn't in the Battle Field. He's still in a cell. We can't get to the plane and get him Lissa." Lincoln says sadly.
Lissa knows she should leave rather than risk becoming Derek's puppet again, but she can't leave Barney. Even if he'll be pissed at her for staying she can't do it. "Chaos? Did he get brought in?" Lissa asks Lincoln, now aware of her fallen friend.
"He didn't make it." Lincoln says, "I'm sorry."
"He did, I shot him with the bullet met for your brother." Lissa tells her and then starts to the sheet covered gurneys, "Which one is he? He should be waking soon."
"Third down on the right." Lincoln tells her and then jumps into doctor mood, grabbing a syringe and filling it with a clear liquid from a medicine bottle, "It'll help him come back sooner." She explains. When they get to Chaos's nearly lifeless bottle she injects him with the solution and within a minute he gains color to his face and his breathing becomes more noticeable. He awakes not long after with a loud gasp. He looks around the room and then at them, taking it all in.
"I knew you wouldn't kill me." Chaos tells Lissa with a small laugh, "Though next time don't shoot me in my good arm." He whines at her as Lincoln works to bandage it, "Wait I'm not a zombie am I? Right Doc?"
Lincoln lets out a laugh, "Obnoxious? Yes. Zombie. No." She answers.
"The two of you get out of here, hijack the blood transport." Lissa tells them, "Once you get acess to any means of communication reach out to Billy. Tell him I need a New York. He'll know to come."
"You have to come with us." Chaos protests, "You're the badass one."
Lissa grabs one of Chaos's hands and gives it a squeeze, "You're pretty badass yourself. You can do this, you need to do it."
Lincoln helps Chaos to his feet and she grabs a backpack from a nearby table. "We'll get help here as fast as we can, I promise you that." She tells Lissa.
"One more thing." Lissa tells her, "Derek will want to know where you two went. You're going to have to make this look good." She grabs a metal bed pan, which she can only hope is clean, from a nearby table and holds it out to Lincoln.
Lincoln takes ahold of it and with ease raises it up and hits Lissa in the head.
Lissa hits the floor and just before all goes black, she sees Lincoln and Chaos rushing down the hallway towards wherever the blood transport is. A small smile forms on her face, "Screw you Derek." And then it goes dark.