Disclaimer: Marvel owns these characters, not me.
Rating: Rated M for strong language, sex and violence.
Summary for this chapter: Anna and Remy both deal with captivity in Empharma Headquarters...
Author notes: Sorry, only light editing on this chapter this week. I've been super busy! D:
Ana Xpert: Sooooo glad you liked the last chapter, girl! Yep, Anna was finally willing to give up her past for Remy - hopefully it's not all too late! Warrior-princess1980: Yeah, Raven better watch the hell out! :p LEGNA: D: ! ishandahalf: Yeah, it had to get to the point where Anna would willingly give up that chip (and her quest) for Remy... Painful though that chapter was, it was necessary to finally force Anna to confront her emotions. Glad you liked it. :) Sweetsonu: Wow - that was a wonderful review. I'm so glad I got the timing of Anna's realisation right. It was so hard to get to that crescendo. You're so sweet xxx Hardkandy: Hopefully this chapter will answer some questions for you - at least partially! Don't worry, I'll get back to Coda when this story is wrapped up. :) WhenInRomy: Haha, believe me, sometimes I don't know how I managed to balance everything... I think Romy is one of the main things that got me through. Not even joking! :p slightlyxjaded: Thanks, dear! Yes, Anna is very much aware of her feelings now, and no, Essex doesn't want to kill either her or Remy. ;) PKS: Sorry to make you cry... But glad you felt so much reading the story! You might get an answer on Raven's true loyalties in this chapter... or maybe not. Anyways... Hope you're feeling better now. Take care! x bustedflipflop: Always happy to serve up a delicious and nutritious meal, my friend! :D jpraner: OMG! I am SOOOOO happy to hear from you again! Glad you're approving of the edits so far. Dunno if you'll continue to like this story, but I always appreciate your constructive criticism, so don't hesitate to throw them at me! :) x Silent reader: Thanks! Good to hear from you again! Maybe your questions will be answered further in this chapter - enjoy! :)
And the story continues...
-Ludi x
- 52 PICKUP -
Chapter 36
He was dreaming of her.
Belladonna Boudreaux, her voice, the last message he'd got from her.
I still love ya, she'd said, the words soft and slurred like she was drunk, or half asleep. Y'think I made a mistake, Rem? Lord knows I didn't wanna send ya those divorce papers, but I was so angry an' hurt an' grievin' and… … … But everythin's so cold now… so empty… so dark… I'm so alone… Everyone's gone… You're the only thing I have left, and… …
She'd never hung up the phone. The message had gone on and on into silence.
Later, when he'd finally arrived at her place, as soon as he'd stepped through the door, he'd known she was dead. Even now he wasn't able to say how or why he'd known, but he'd known. Perhaps it had been the silence – the same silence he'd heard on her message, on his phone – honest and impartial and devastatingly final.
And then she was there.
Anna.
Leaning her head against the window in his apartment, huddled up so small and insignificant on his windowsill in her green silk kimono with her back to him, saying: Now I feel so empty. So cold.
The words had hit him. Belle's last words, haunting him from the grave.
At the time the thought had entered his mind – a troubling, peripheral thought that he'd barely acknowledged then, but that now seemed all-consuming.
I don't want you to die.
I don't want you to die, Anna.
The thought swirled round him like smoke, softly insistent, dragging him up from the depths of sleep and slowly into consciousness. There was no pain, he realised. Perhaps he was the one who was dead.
"My apologies, LeBeau," Essex's voice said somewhere close by, accompanied by the steady beat of a heart monitor. "But I think even you can appreciate the rather tiresome predicament I was in."
The words were like ice on his senses, and in a nanosecond he was wide awake and in attack mode, ready to lunge from his prone position straight at the enemy. All he succeeded in doing was jolting the bed he was lying on violently. It was only then that he realised that he had been strapped down by his wrists and ankles; he fought them uselessly, his flesh grating against the bonds.
"I wouldn't do that, LeBeau," Essex commented without a trace of sarcasm, looking over Remy incuriously from his bedside. "You are still in quite a fragile state. I would take no pleasure in seeing you further injured."
Remy gave up, sinking back down onto the mattress and glaring back up at his captor.
"Bite me," he growled through gritted teeth. Essex's mouth jerked into a humourless little smile that disappeared just as quickly.
"You are a thoroughly foolish young man," he observed as if talking about an inanimate specimen. "Too much baggage, too much self-indulgence, too quick to anger and too quick to love. If only we had been able to erase those pesky memories of yours sooner."
He turned away, to a computer console that Remy knew held his vitals. He took Essex's momentary distraction to study his prison. It was a standard enclosed hospital room, one of the ones on the basement floors, just like the one he'd spent the first few months of his life at Empharma in. That at least gave him an advantage – he knew virtually every nook and cranny of these rooms already.
"If you've hurt Anna… …" he began, giving Essex exactly the kind of sentiment he knew he was expecting; and right on cue the scientist tutted.
"And why should I hurt Weapon Zero?" he queried, this time with a touch of sarcasm. "See – now your emotions speak. She's safe. Forget about her."
"Why? So's I can be exactly the sorta zombie you once turned her into?" Remy scoffed, slipping a finger up into one of the straps and testing it gingerly. "No thanks."
Pain was slowly beginning to leak into his consciousness, and he bit back on it, his finger continuing to feel inside the strap's fastening and not getting very far.
"You didn't mind the idea so much when you first came here," Essex noted dryly. "In fact, I seem to remember that that was the driving force behind most of the good work you accomplished here."
"Yeah, well… I may've changed my mind 'bout dat bullshit… Didn't know then that you basically planned t'have me turn into your new Weapon Zero… train me up to interface with all those peoples' mem'ries, their identities… You did a good job of makin' it seem like all I'd have t'do is carry out your dirty work for the parts of my past I wanted erased… Guess you conveniently forgot t' tell me I was gonna take Anna's place…"
He gave up on the fastening – for now, at least. The increasing pain in his body was too much of a distraction.
"Somehow, I doubt such a thing would've bothered you," Essex remarked. "Until you chose to become enamoured with my property, that is." He paused, staring at the computer console closely. "Your pain levels appear to be spiking. I would urge you to calm yourself, LeBeau. You are already on quite an inordinately high level of painkillers."
"She ain't your property," Remy seethed, ignoring him. "She's a fuckin' human bein'. She deserves to live a goddamn life like the rest of us."
Essex passed him a pointed look.
"Rich, coming from you," he commented.
Remy watched as he turned away, picking up a syringe and a vial of something from a nearby tray.
"The truth is," Essex continued flatly, "that Weapon Zero is not a human being like the rest of us. She has no memory of her childhood, no concept of what it is to be a child. If I hadn't lost sight of her, she would have had no concept of what it is to be an adult either." He stabbed the needle into the vial, slowly drawing its transparent contents into the syringe. "You've seen the image, LeBeau. Lady Justice, above nearly every courthouse in America. Sword in one hand, scale in the other. Blind and impartial. That was what Weapon Zero was supposed to be. Justice. Rewriting the wrongs of this world."
"Wrongs, what wrongs?" Remy muttered belligerently. There was a blazing pain in his abdomen that was hurting like hellfire.
"Oh, so many wrongs," Essex replied unsmilingly, turning back towards him, the syringe now full in his hand. "This world is in a tumult LeBeau, a chaos. Everyday humanity destroys itself, willingly. It marches towards an inevitable precipice of destruction as inexorably as our planet circles the sun. We know we are killing our world, killing our species, killing our resources, killing all life that inhabits this world along with us. Yet we refuse to stop. Why do you think that is, LeBeau? Why, in God's name, do you think we might wilfully want to destroy ourselves?"
The pain was snaking upwards, engulfing him. He could barely breathe.
"Maybe 'cos this world is fuckin' shit," he hissed. "And we all wanna die anyway, and take each other wit' us on the way out t'hell."
And Essex looked down on him with a smile that was almost sad.
"Yes. Exactly."
He lifted the syringe and began to inject it into Remy's saline drip.
"But what the hell has Anna gotta do wit' any o'dat…?" he wondered out loud; and again Essex looked at him as if studying a test subject.
"Try to think of a world," he murmured, "where all the hideous little details of life have been erased. Where all the traumas of this world have been destroyed. Where hate and jealousy and greed have become footnotes on the story of humanity. Where it becomes a senseless endeavour to destroy all the precious things one has."
The pain was slowly thinning, and Remy slowly began to relax as the painkiller threaded through his veins.
"Sounds like some fantasy to me…" he muttered.
"Far from it." Essex laid aside the syringe quietly. "Humans are a walking bundle of neuroses brought about by all the trauma they've suffered throughout their lives. Erase that trauma, and you make a perfectly happy, docile, pliable human being, who has no interest in violence, aggression and hate. Weapon Zero has that power. She has the power to completely rewrite the course of a person's life, to make all their pain go away. Imagine what that could do, to a scientist, a philosopher, a banker, a politician, a world leader. We can only save ourselves by wanting to. We can only save this world because it is what we really, truly desire. There is still time for that. There is still time to reverse the horrors we have inflicted upon this world. Weapon Zero can make that possibility a reality."
The pain was almost entirely gone again. He gazed over at Essex with a sorrowful grimace.
"And she'll be the only one who will ever remember it all – the whole world's sufferin', never forgotten, a burden carried by one. Anna Marie Raven, the trashcan of humankind. No fuckin' way am I gonna let that happen to her."
But Essex merely gave an irritable sigh.
"There are always sacrifices to be paid for the greater good, LeBeau."
"But she'll be the only one payin' that price. For an eternity. Hardly seems fair, does it?"
"There will be others."
"Ha. Like me?" He laughed derisively. "Sure, maybe the idea mighta been intriguin' once. But now, after seein' what that shit's done to Anna, I'm pretty sure I'm givin' you the appropriate response when I say this: Fuck. Off."
He would've given him the finger too if his hands hadn't been pinned down. As it was all he could do was stare Essex out with an insolent glare that was supposed to communicate the fact that trying to convince him otherwise was a complete and utter waste of time. The message wasn't lost on Essex. He pressed his lips together and gave a harassed sigh.
"You disappoint me, LeBeau," he said helplessly. "But don't worry. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to change your mind. In the meantime," and he went to the door, opening it up and looking back at Remy pointedly, "I suggest you recover. And think about all the things we've discussed. You hold great potential, LeBeau. There is much you can achieve in this world – if you cooperate."
He left, shutting the door firmly behind him. It was no surprise to Remy when he heard the electronic locks and bolts turning, and he swore under his breath. He yanked at his arm restraints, finding no give in the fastenings. An angry, pent-up breath surged out of his chest as he gave up on that and looked around the room again.
What's the fuckin' use if I'm tied down t'this bed?
He needed to get out. He needed to finish what he'd started. He needed his phone.
An' b'fore you get t'do any of that, LeBeau, he told himself sternly, ya gotta get outta these damn restraints.
He flopped back against the sheets, closed his eyes, and inhaled a deep, relaxing breath. He concentrated on the straps at his wrists and switched everything else off. And then, just like always, he silently got to work.
-oOo-
Time had merged into one huge, static, monolithic mass, and somewhere within it Anna sank and surfaced, a minnow against a colossal tide with no hope of escape.
Pinpoints of consciousness pierced the canvas of her existence, brief moments of clarity where she would be wracked with an unspeakable agony… Needles sinking into her skin, penetrating deep inside her body, deeper and deeper and deeper, right down into her bones, into her marrow… …
Screams would permeate her, reverberate inside her skull over and over; it wouldn't stop, wouldn't end, and somehow at some point she would realise… … The screams were her own, inarticulate cries of unbearable torment that brought a flurry of movement around her, of fevered whisperings… And then there would be the drugs coursing through her veins again, the blissful anaesthetic, and she would sink back inside the place where there was no time and there was no pain, and Anna Raven was finally a nothing.
.
She awakened right back where she had begun, 16 years ago – in a cell, no windows, no shade, no colour, nothing but lights and whiteness and a faint electrical hum that had been the soundtrack to her teenage years.
She lay on the bed, motionless, and imagined the sun rising, the sun falling, the moon shining its milky light on her, the things she had seen on the outside filling her up from the inside, laughter and tears and anger and hate and sorrow; the taste of crab salad and the cool of the rain on her skin; the searing heat of a wound and the pounding drumbeat of her footsteps as she ran.
Sex with a man who meant nothing, and sex with a man who meant the world.
The difference.
The difference between the two.
She closed her eyes and slept, or imagined she did; and then the virtually seamless door in her prison snapped open, jarring her into wakefulness… She sat up, shielding her eyes against the light, but they were already on top of her, and she struggled briefly until she felt the needle in her neck and they dropped her back against her cot like dropping a sack of potatoes, and she stared at the ceiling, the white white ceiling with the world spinning lazily above her.
And then suddenly she was moving, rough hands pulling her upward and arranging her in a seat, her arms being bound behind her back, and she looked down at her feet and the ground felt so close, so close… …
"Weapon Zero," said a hazy voice.
She made a noise in reply, a grunt or a moan or something. It was okay. It was okay. Everything felt so easy. So inoffensive. So open wide. No resistance.
"Weapon Zero," the voice said again, this time closer. "Can you hear me?"
She didn't answer. A part of her knew there were drugs in her, stealing away her inhibitions, her sense and reason, but… it didn't matter… it felt so good not to care… to just shut off… …
Fingers touched her chin and lifted her head up. There was someone sitting in front of her, a fuzzy shadow that was so familiar… Essex… … Her head lolled to one side slightly, her eyes rolling back in her head.
"Perhaps a touch too much sodium pentothal," the voice mused. "It is so hard to calibrate for you, my dear."
He dropped his hand and she slumped back against the chair, no fight left in her.
"You have something I need, Weapon Zero," he said. "I need to start the Machine, you see. But I need the codes, and I need them in the correct order. Usually LeBeau would be the one to do all the memory retrieval for me, but he is… rather indisposed at the moment. You, however… You've 'faced with all the mem-chips, or so Raven tells me. Give the codes to me, and the Machine will start again."
The Machine… start the Machine again. Yes. Yes, she wanted that. Or she had, once. She wasn't sure any more. Wasn't there something in the Machine she was supposed to want? That Remy was supposed to be helping her to get…?
She opened her mouth and a sound came out.
"Yes?" Essex said.
The word pushed at her mouth and she stammered it out slowly.
"Remy… …"
It was a few seconds before Essex answered.
"Ah yes." His tone was soft, serious. "I'd quite forgotten. You needn't worry yourself about that, Weapon Zero. He's alive and well. I admit, for a few moments I thought you would force me to dispose of one of my most prized possessions. Raven swore to me you wouldn't see him harmed. I'm glad to say she was right. Now," and he stood, his shadow towering over her. "The codes, Weapon Zero. I want to know the codes."
She stared up at him, almost uncomprehending, and he bent over her suddenly, taking her cheeks in his hands, getting right up in her face and hissing: "The codes, Weapon Zero. What. Are. They?"
The numbers welled up in her head, effortless memories that barely needed a prompt to recall, but there was something inside of her screaming that this was wrong, that she shouldn't give him what he wanted… …
But that was the plan, wasn't it? To restart the Machine?
Yes…
And she was so tired of fighting. So tired. She just wanted to lie down and sleep… …
One by one the numbers began to fall out of her mouth, drip, drip, drip, all her secrets bleeding free.
His hands pushed away her face, and she sagged forward over the irresistible weight of her own body. Essex said nothing more – he'd got what he'd come for. Almost immediately there were hands under her arms, and she was being dragged to her cot once more.
-oOo-
It was impossible for her to tell how many days had passed before the drugs finally wore off. There was still no way to tell the time, and so she sat in the silence and whiled it away like she'd always done as a kid – distracting herself with all the memories she'd interfaced with, the stories that she'd never lived but that were now irrevocably her own.
It didn't work, not anymore.
Her own mind kept distracting her, her own memories and experiences.
Thoughts of him plucked at her mind until she was almost driven to madness.
On the one hand he was a comfort, a thing to hold tight and give her sustenance through the lonely monotony of her captivity. On the other hand he was a torture, the idea that he might be dead or dying or maimed or locked up too a source of horrible pain. She had led him into a lion's den, but it wasn't the fact that she had done so willingly that hurt the most. It was that there were so many things she wanted to say to him, but that were now too late. Would she ever see him again? Would he still feel the same way about her when all this was done…?
After a while she began to measure time by the meals that they left her. The regular rhythm of these unseen deliveries would ebb and flow like the tides. A tray would be passed through the slot in the seamless door; she would leave it and wait for it to be taken away and replaced with her next meal. Her meds would never accompany them. At first she thought that was a good thing – the endless oblivion of a neural stutter somehow seemed like a blissfully convenient form of escape… Until she realised that something had changed. There were no more tremors, there was no more bleed effect. No more hallucinations and no more random memories resurfacing. Suddenly she found herself inflicted with a clarity of mind that was as unsettling as it was miraculous.
She sat on her cot and for the first time in years she was able to examine her thoughts, her feelings, without the confusion, the endless rush of distraction. She thought about starlight and gunpowder and the view from La Princesse… but most of all she thought of him. She held him close enough to comfort, but not to burn. Whatever she felt was quickly masked by the gnawing bite of hunger and soon she fell into a fevered sleep.
.
When she woke again there was breakfast by her door.
It was morning, but which morning she didn't know.
She sat up on her cot and tried to meditate, to switch herself off from everything. Yet again there were none of the usual symptoms of mem-intoxication, nor of withdrawal, which should have helped, but… still, there was hunger.
She turned her back on the food and waited for it to be taken away.
Perhaps two hours passed before she heard footsteps outside her cell – not that of the usual single person that usually brought her meals, but three different sets.
She swivelled round to face them just as the door opened.
In walked two men in tactical gear, armed enough to make her almost feel flattered.
The last person to walk in was Raven.
"Hello, Anna," she said.
Anna said nothing. She merely levelled her old mentor with a blank stare. Apparently it was what Raven had been expecting, as she drew up a small metal stool that one of her chaperones had brought for her, and sat down on it with an equally impassive stare. The only movement was from the guards, who took up their positions silently – one by the door, the other by the wall opposite. Between the three of them they had her fairly well fenced in, though not insurmountably so.
For several long seconds neither said a thing, Anna making it plain that she was not going to be the first to break. If Raven was here it had to be to parlay. There could be no other reason.
"You need to eat," she said at last.
Silence.
"We need you to be strong."
More silence.
"So that you can use the Machine."
Still Anna said nothing, sitting as still as statue, her hands in her lap. A small, wry smile finally touched Raven's lips.
"Is this how it's going to be, Anna? You're going to starve yourself to death? Rather petulant, don't you think?"
Anna blinked, slowly.
"I trusted you," she said. A visible breath surged through Raven's body. She stood abruptly and turned away, to the wall, pacing tensely. It was a sign of guilt that Anna grasped onto. "How long has it been, Raven?" she asked in a harder voice. "How long?"
That was when Raven stopped. She swivelled on the spot, turning to face Anna with that contemptuous smile on her face, saying:
"How long, Anna? I never stopped. I'm very much afraid to say that it's as simple as that." The smile slipped abruptly from her face, leaving her expression cold. "How else do you think Essex became Milbury? Went underground after he got out of jail? Got the capital to start up Empharma? Me, Anna. His person on the outside. The one person who never walked away, who stayed when everyone else had gone."
There was no pride in her voice. It was as if she were merely reeling off a list of impersonal facts.
"You were the one," Anna murmured slowly, suddenly realising. "You were the reason Essex came to find me the first time round. After he got out of prison…"
Raven was impassive.
"Yes. He wanted you. I knew how to find you." She paused, her eyes dropping briefly. "It… pained me, when he told me later of your death."
"I'm sure it did," Anna rejoined coldly. It was a coolness of tone that brought Raven's eyes back to hers, that coaxed a small, self-deprecating smile to her lips.
"Do you remember, Anna, when you turned up on my doorstop eight months later? A pale, underfed, half-dead little creature, covered in blood? Your own blood? You'd tried to kill yourself, and it was the first time you came to me for help. The first time you came to me for protection. The first time that you cried, that you let yourself be vulnerable. And I… I pitied you. I pitied you, Anna."
It was not the first time in recent memory that Anna had been made aware of her own weakness, of the scars on her wrist. She grimaced.
"I never wanted your pity," she whispered fiercely.
"Nevertheless, you had it," Raven returned unsmilingly. "Despite myself I learned to care for you. Enough, at least, to let this charade you were playing, this pretence at your death, continue."
She halted, shifted, bitterness touching her lips. It was only then that Anna noticed it – the pen in the breast pocket of her shirt, inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She fixed her gaze on it, the way its iridescent sheen shimmered in the light; an exercise, perhaps, in distraction, to stave off the anguish of this one cherished friendship that she had now lost forever.
"You should've let it continue," she half-whispered; and there it was again, Raven's glacial smile.
"Unfortunately," she replied, "Remy LeBeau made that impossible."
The words made Anna raise her eyes right back to Raven, with enough ferocity that the smile was wiped cleanly from the older woman's face.
"He exposed your existence to Essex," she explained darkly. "And once that had happened there was no turning back. I knew who he was, of course. What he was doing and who he was working for. Nathaniel's business was my business, after all. I knew it was only a matter of time before he handed you over."
"But he didn't," Anna murmured; and Raven nodded.
"No. He didn't. He did everything in his power not to. Which told me a great many things." She leaned in a little, her gaze penetrating. "He'd grown to care for you. Had become invested in you. And more to the point," she finished, "you'd grown to care for him."
So there it was. The stinging irony of it all. Raven had known her true feelings even before she had. Bitterness welled in her like something physical.
"You knew," she said, unravelling the story of this betrayal, putting together all the jigsaw pieces with each word she spoke. "You used him as bait to draw me out… You knew I'd try to extract him… Knew I couldn't just abandon him… You knew… Even before I did… …"
She stared down into her hands as if disbelieving.
"Of course I did," Raven replied disparagingly. "What amazes me is that the two of you never realised it yourselves. You both know what it is to fall in-love after all. Him, with that dead wife of his; and you, with that stupid boy who made you believe you were 'normal' when you were anything but and never will b—"
She didn't get the chance to finish the sentence – Anna had already launched herself off the cot and right at her, fists bared. The first punch connected with a crack to the jaw that toppled them both to the floor, metal chair and all. Almost immediately the guards were on them, tearing Anna away – but not before she'd managed to land a few more satisfying blows, blows that were almost worth the punishment meted out to her. The taser hit her with such force that she was almost rendered insensate by the shock. When she came back round again seconds or minutes later, it was to find herself lying face down on the bed, one guard holding her arms behind her back, the other grasping her ankles.
Raven was standing above her with a bloody lip, her eyes almost wild with exhilaration.
"I guess I was wrong," she mused almost with delight. "You still have it in you after all."
Anna struggled, only to have her captors slam her against the metal cot so violently it hurt.
"Go to hell, Raven!" was all she could rasp instead, which only earned her a strike on the head with a baton.
"I was consigned to hell a long time ago, my dear," Raven answered contemptuously. "So were you. So were all of us who were Weapon X. You feel that rage, that energy coursing through you right now? That's what we need more of, Anna. Eat. Get strong. Be Weapon Zero again. Then you can use the Machine."
"I can't," she spat out fiercely. "The process will kill me! My neural pathways are barely being held together by a thread, one more 'facing session and they could break… …"
And Raven gazed down upon her, a mirthless smile on her lips.
"It won't kill you. Not anymore. Haven't you noticed, Weapon Zero? You've been free of the tremors, the neural stutters, all the symptoms of mem-intoxication, for days now. Nathaniel gave you the new gene therapy he's been developing, the therapy that cured LeBeau." She cocked her head to one side, regarding Anna intently, almost relishing the expression of enlightenment that crossed her face. "So you see," she continued when she saw the news had finally sunk in, "this pathetic rebellion of yours is quite pointless. You're cured. You have something to live for again. Don't waste away in this cell like a weak fool. You're better than that."
"Good enough to be Essex's pawn again?" she spluttered in a low voice. "I don't think so."
Raven sighed, as if bored of what amounted to nothing more than a tiresome game.
"A pawn, Anna? Is that how you see yourself?" Her expression was now entirely serious. "You're the only one who can use the Machine. You are its master. Think of all you could achieve using it. And you know what your first order of business will be? – removing all those nasty memories from Mr. LeBeau's brain. Why don't you replace them with something nice? With a past where the two of you have always been together? It would be fitting, don't you think? You'll both get exactly what you want – each other."
She turned to the doorway, obviously finished with the interview.
"Now I suggest you eat, Weapon Zero. I'd really hate for us to have to force feed you."
She opened the door slightly and turned back, nodding to the two guards.
The one holding her arms tasered her again, just to make sure she didn't try to effect an escape while they were on the way out. She slumped back onto the mattress with a guttural cry, and when she opened her eyes again she was alone.
It hurt to move, and it took an age of painstaking manoeuvring to push herself up and into a sitting position. She winced slightly at the burning twinges in her tendons and propped her back up against the wall. It was only when she'd regained control of her breathing that she slipped Raven's pen out of her right sleeve.
The muscles in her fingers were slowly beginning to work again, and she quickly unscrewed the cap and looked inside. There was a thin strip of paper rolled neatly in there, and she teased it out carefully with the tip of her fingernail.
The message was short.
LB025 96552 106 B088.
It took only a few moments to commit the numbers and letters to memory. When she had she stuffed the paper into her mouth and swallowed it down whole.
Her breakfast was still sitting on its tray by the door and she got up and retrieved it. She ate hungrily, consuming every single scrap that had been left for her.
Raven was right.
She was going to need her strength for this. Every last ounce of it.
-oOo-