Author's Note: We just wanted to say the reviews after posting that last chapter were really appreciated. It brought huge smiles to our faces, but we're also really humbled by them. Thank you so very much! Enjoy!

Chapter 21: "Plan B"

RPOV

My captor, Peter, paced back and forth in front of the back door. He had one eye on me as he slowly wore a dent into the wooden flooring. I was tempted to try to rush past him, to rush through the house to search for another exit, but every attempt had been met with me locked in an uncomfortable embrace until I stopped struggling. It was endlessly infuriating. I wanted to get back to my Mistress. I knew these people wanted to hurt her. I had to stop them; but they were too experienced, there were too many of them. I was the least of my Mistress' soldiers. I was helpless against them. I could do nothing. It was the most frustrating feeling I had ever experienced.

"They haven't come back yet," Peter said tersely. "They should have been back by now."

"Who's they?" I demanded. "Are you talking about the Major?"

"Yes." He looked at me meaningfully for a long moment, as if he expected me to say more. I remained silent, so he turned to his mate, Charlotte, who had been eerily quiet.

"Something's happened." She confirmed. "Time for plan B."

"What's plan B?" They both looked rather suspect at my sudden show of interest. They were right to be. I had no intention of allowing them to rescue the Major, or hurt my Mistress. Maria had changed me—she had made something out of nothing. I owed her everything. I wasn't especially strong, or especially fast, but I could still prove myself. I would be loyal to the end. There would be something, some opportunity for me to help, for me to prove myself.

"We rescue our allies, of course," Peter said smoothly, as if mistrust hadn't been rolling off of him in waves. I wanted to push the annoying emotions away, but I knew they could help me, so I dealt with them for the moment. After all, there were less than a dozen sets of emotions in this house; that was nothing compared to what I had dealt with back at camp. "We need to create a distraction, cause some chaos. Maria will flee, but that will be more or less unavoidable. In present circumstances, the best we can do is extract the Major and Christian and hope to decimate her forces as much as possible."

"We'll need explosives, of course, and a distraction so we can plant them." Charlotte nodded, as if she had expected as much. I fought not to react myself. "I'll get the C-4 ready. Do you think you can handle her by yourself while I get it prepped and alert the others?"

I glared overtly at her, but she only smiled at my hostility. Her warmth made me wary. No vampire treated another this way back at camp. I expected to be bullied, physically and verbally, to be ordered to do their bidding. Each moment those expectations weren't met, I grew more and more suspicious as to my place here. What did they want with me? Why had the Major arranged for Peter to take me? If they wanted me for something, why didn't they ask me, why didn't they use me? I had no answers. Every thought I had only led to more questions.

"I think I can handle a single newborn, darlin'." Peter winked at his mate playfully. However, his expression returned to its earlier, grim state the moment she left the room. "Don't you even think about running away again. When I threatened to lock you up earlier, I wasn't kidding. I have a cage that can hold you."

The memory of a cage, dim and blurry, immediately sprang to mind. There was pain, so much pain. Burning, itching, tearing pain, like some foreign creature had been trying to claw at me from the inside out. The image was so dark, the bars were barely discernible, but the feeling was so real, so intense. Pain. Fear. Anger. Desperation. Hopelessness.

"Stop! Robyn, you need to stop!" A loud, commanding voice drew me out of my thoughts. It was Peter, half bent over, his expression hard and wrinkled slightly, as if in distress.

"What's wrong with you?" I pushed the whisper of the memory far, far out of mind and focused on the crisp, clear reality of the present. "Are you... sick?"

Without waiting for an answer, I fled. He hesitated for a moment as I moved past him to rush out the door, taking an extra second to straighten himself back out. That extra second was all I needed to get around him. I knew he was on my heels. I also knew I was tripping ungracefully across the terrain as I went. All I knew was that I had to get away. I had to return to my Mistress. I had to tell her what I knew; I had to help her, even if it was only in some small way. Just when I thought I might be getting away, I was driven hard into the dirt from the right.

Whoever it was that tackled me wasn't Peter. He had a heartbeat, but he was still strong and fast, like me. Not to mention the fact that he smelled outright terrible. I felt myself gagging slightly, resisting the urge to bite him, as I tried to weasel my way out of his grasp.

"Get. Off. Of. Me!" I snarled.

His grasp had been nothing like the Major's or Peter's. A few jerks and a well-aimed kick and he flew back a few feet, clutching at the arm I was sure I had injured, but couldn't quite remember when. Was it the punch I threw? That last kick? Whatever it was, I was glad to be free of him, but my freedom didn't last long. I wasn't even properly standing before Peter was in front of me, his fists clenched to convey that he would attack me, if provoked.

"Captain, calm down." A feminine voice called from the same direction the man who had tackled me came from. But she only addressed Peter briefly before looking worriedly at the man who seemed to be resetting his arm. "Are you alright, Seth?" When he nodded, what little tension that seemed to hang on her melted away. She finally turned to fully speak with Peter. "You know she's a newborn, she's out of her element, and she's frightened. Just... let me try a softer hand with her, please? You know we won't be able to deal with her running away from us every five minutes indefinitely."

"Fine," Peter bit out. "But, you'll be having your little heart-to-heart inside the house. I promised the Major I would keep her safe, and it is not safe out in the open right now. Not until we know what happened."

"Alright, alright," she sighed, holding a hand out to me. I balked at the gesture at first, but she kept her hand extended calmly towards me. "Come on, let's go inside."

I sighed in resignation, not taking her hand, but stepping towards her, following her in the direction of the house. I could hear Peter and Seth talking about his arm. I tuned out the conversation, as I did many other background noises as I followed the woman inside the house.

"I'm Sarah." She said gently, after she had closed the door behind us. "You're Robyn, aren't you?"

I nodded, eyeing her warily. "How does everyone know my name? The Major said... Said he knew me... But, I don't... I don't remember anything before."

I knew that wasn't entirely true. I remembered things, but they didn't seem like memories. They were daydreams, visions, wisps of my imagination.

"You'll remember with time," Sarah soothed. "It's not easy, at first. I know. I remember what it was like. Waking up so different. Struggling to remember who I was, how everything came to pass..." She trailed off, sorrow and regret forming a cloud around her.

I sighed, pushing the emotions away. I remained seated on the chair she had guided me to, waiting for my moment, waiting for my time. All my attempts at escaping so far had failed. I had to bide my time. I had to gain the trust of my captors. Then, I would strike.

'Plan B,' as they had taken to calling it, was taking longer than I would have liked to put into action. By the end of the day I'd been captured, I felt as if I was dying of thirst, even with the disgusting, haunting musk that Seth and his fellow mostly-humans, as I called them, gave off lingering in the air. I all but begged Peter to let me hunt, but he was adamant that I not leave the house. I ended up drinking blood from a plastic bag. It was cold. It tasted stale. There had been no thrill and little bliss in the action, only the absence of burning in my throat and a renewal of my strength. The entire experience was very off-putting. It was unnatural, I had complained, but my captors remained firm. I tried to resign myself to the circumstances, at least for the time being. It was difficult when I had no outlet, no one to fight, no one to feed on.

It became more and more difficult to push away the emotions around me, even as few as they were. By the third day, I felt ready to explode.

"I don't want bagged blood!" I snarled, glowering at the suggestion. "I want to be outside! I want to run! I want to hunt! I want to feed! You can't keep me caged up in here forever!" I could feel the rage and frustration boiling over inside me, little bits spilling out over the edge here and there. "What the hell is wrong with you people?! Why do you keep me locked up in here?! What do you want from me?! Stop staring at me and say something—damn you!" I dove forward, ready to fight, but Peter bypassed me easily. I slammed myself into the wall, even as I tried to stop the movement, leaving a decent dent in my wake.

"I knew it." He whispered, his eyes lit up like he had solved a riddle. "I suspected it before, but now, this is the second time you've done that. You're like him. An Empath."

"What?" I tried to act confused, like I didn't know what he was talking about. I had been so careful to hide the fact that I felt the emotions of others. I knew no one else at camp had felt what I did, experiencing everything those around me felt. It was an oddity. I was shocked. How had he guessed it? How did he know I was an 'empath'? "What are you talking about? Like who?"

"The Major." He met my eyes evenly, even as I twitched at the sound of his name. And why shouldn't I be irritated? All my misery began with him. He was the one who had cornered me, who had forced me to cower with the threat of his physical prowess. He was the one who had me kidnapped, forced me to stay in this house, in these unnatural conditions. He was the one who had rendered me useless to my Mistress.

"What do you care?" I spat. "What do any of you care? Even if I was his friend before—which I don't believe for a moment—why would you keep me here?"

"You'll understand soon," Peter said the words with a sigh, as if he had been placed with a heavy burden.

I rolled my eyes flippantly at him. It was an action I knew from his emotions aggravated him greatly. However, he had never reprimanded me for it, not physically or verbally. I had expected some sort of retribution the first few times I had felt him flare with irritation, but it had never come. He had never punished me for the disrespect. He had never punished me for anything, in fact, aside from my attempts to escape.

"Help us rescue him." He suggested. His emotions were markedly even now, to my disappointment, but I didn't need them to read the situation. I knew from the many conversations I overheard from 'The Major's League'—I laughed at the name the first time I heard it, the first time I could remember laughing—that they had been met with a snag in their plan. They had planned to use C-4 to destroy Maria's camp and her troops, however they needed a distraction not only to allow them to extricate the Major, but also a way to draw the soldiers toward where the C-4 had been planted and keep them in place so they could be destroyed, and not given the chance to run.

I nodded my head in agreement. I would help them.

I slipped into the camp without garnering much notice. It was my home, the only home I had ever known. I knew it like it was the back of my hand. It was easy enough to move throughout the area, between the tents, around the training field. I shoulder checked anyone who walked too closely to me. I kept my eyes level with theirs, never looking away. I bared my teeth and growled when necessary. No one dared attack me outright on the open field. Anyone caught starting an unsanctioned fight was dragged kicking and screaming to the torture tent. And so, I arrived at the center of the encampment, so close to my Mistress' tent.

My first instinct was to run to her, to tell her what had happened, what was happening, but I knew that was premature. My captors still didn't trust me entirely. One false move and Peter would silence me forever. He was littered with marks that were so like the Major's, so like the General's. Though I had been bold enough to run from him more than once while he'd had me under house arrest, I never, ever would have openly picked a fight with him. Up until now, he had handled me with kid gloves, but those scars didn't speak of gentleness. They spoke of death.

I sucked in a deep breath and prepared myself to play my part. In that breath, I not only inhaled the familiar smells of camp, the dirt, the venom, the blood, but I also inhaled the emotions that were scattered all around me. I focused on the deepest, darkest ones, letting them fill me up like a pitcher. Horror. Loneliness. Despair. Anger. Fear. Helplessness. Hopelessness. I took them in until I was close to reaching my limit, close to the apex of feeling. Then I released it all, in a heavy, sudden exhale. I felt it ripple outwards from me, stronger than before, making everyone collapse in its wake. There were cries, screams, whimpers, growls. I ignored them all. Like my comrades, my captors, too, would be incapacitated for a short time. They would recover more quickly than the soldiers who hadn't been expecting it, but I could still warn her. My Mistress could still escape.

"Mistress! Mistress!" I screamed as I raced towards her tent. My voice was ineffective against the din around me. She wasn't in her tent. I couldn't find her. Where was she? I had to find her, I had to. I had to help her escape. She had to live. She had to leave.

She wasn't in her tent. She hadn't been out on the field, had she? I searched my memory in a flash; no, she hadn't been. She could be in another tent. She could be out hunting, out recruiting.

"What are you doing in here?" Charlotte hissed, as she appeared in the doorway. "We've planted the bombs, we have to hurry, come on!"

"No!" I screamed in protest, kicking and whimpering when she grabbed me. "No! I have to warn my Mistress! I have to save her! You don't understand! You don't—!" I roared when words couldn't covey my meaning, when her grip shifted into that utterly impossible to break strait-jacket hold.

She raced away from the camp. I turned back towards it just in time to watch it all go up in flames. I screamed for a full minute before breaking down into dry sobs.

"It's alright." She tried to soothe me, but still refused to relinquish her grasp. "It's alright. We rescued Jasper. He's safe."

"Who's Jasper?" I asked, feeling quite hollow. I didn't listen to the answer. My Mistress was gone. What was I supposed to do now? She created me. I was nothing before her, there was nothing before the pain. I was supposed to serve her, supposed to help her, supposed to save her. Instead, I had helped kill her. When Charlotte released me, I dropped to the ground, to my knees. There was no more Maria. No more General. No more camp. I was alone.