Chapter 9 - Only Human

"Find me here
And speak to me
I want to feel you
I need to hear you
You are the light
That's leading me
To the place where I find peace
Again"

Jack. He was her first thought, always, when she woke or came to; he filtered through her dreams and for those few precious seconds after waking, Kate's mind didn't let her remember the darkness, or the cave, or the weakness eating into her; just the memory of something he had said, the bittersweet roughness of his palm, his eyes that locked on to hers and never looked away. The thought of him would push through, trying to merge with reality; trying to fit that feeling of safety with the bewilderment of stale air and paralysis. And then the dream would fade again, seeing it had no place in this dark world she now inhabited; slip away into the shadows, and leave her with nothing but memories she was terrified of forgetting, or never living again.

Today was different. There was a conscious thought in her head, not just the clarity that so contradicted every other time she had woken, dipped in haze and confusion; but something definitively different. The fact her captor had allowed her to see her. The initial shock and fear, that kick of adrenaline like a glass of ice water; had faded somehow into ambivalence. Kate had guessed that even without an obvious other physical presence in the cave most of the other times she had regained consciousness, someone had to be guarding her. Someone had to be watching, cowardly from the shadows, waiting until the drowsiness once again overtook her. She could vaguely remember waking once before and hearing the same voice; the shock at the pitch and fact her captor was female. She smiled at this thought, despite herself. Kate always had gotten on better with the boys. Even as a toddler she joined in the tag games over doll houses.

She was surprised she wasn't more afraid. It had been maybe thirty seconds since the other voice had spoken. Kate was somewhat unsure how to react. She assumed she had been left with clarity and rational through for a reason this time, but was shocked at how little she cared anymore to ask the questions she knew she was unlikely to get answers to. All she wanted was to see Jack even just once more. Tell him all the secrets she had hidden for so long. Tell him she was sorry for running off that day. Tell him how she felt. She could feel her body aching for strength; the energy even to form questions, words, lacking. Her tongue felt huge, like a heavy dry weight in her mouth; she could not recall taking water, or any food, for as long as she had been here. She walked around in circles in her own head; there was too much she needed to know and too much she didn't understand. Kate was used to being in control, of every detail of her life; new license plates, new hair colour, new state. Now she could barely organise her own thoughts, had no idea how long she had been tied and held; she wanted to fight against the weakness and disorder, but knew not where to begin.

"Get up." The voice demanded. She was still right above Kate. Kate opened her mouth to protest, the bonds and ropes which bound her; but then after long seconds, realised, that was what was different. Her hands and feel were still in the same positions, but no longer detained there. It felt like she had forgotten how to move. It felt so, so long since she had had control of her own physical being.

Kate gingerly, almost afraid of trickery, lifted her hands down; her fingers, which had been numb for days for want of blood, still lacking proper feeling. Her hands were swollen; long coarse cuts and lesions encircled her wrists, weeping and bleeding, unable to heal without a proper blood supply or less humid environment. Her arms fell to her sides, the sensation of muscle exertion so lost and unfamiliar; her once toned biceps showing the first signs of wastage. Hesitantly pushing herself to a sitting position, Kate drew her legs up to her chest, could feel the dull septic ache of infection from the cuts in her feet. And pressure sores, all along her spine and down the shadows of her shoulder blades; pressure sores that throbbed with foreign movement. Her world swayed with the action, sharp red spots that danced before her eyes and wouldn't seem to clear. What was already so black seemed to grow ever more intense and infinite; and then all those questions she had seemed to push forward at once, and that image of Jack covered in sand, and the memory of her father walking from her bedside, and her voice lost in the tube down her throat… Kate tipped forward, falling to an oblivion, and the reflex action of putting her hands out to stop the fall, just never kicked in.

It was other hands that caught her. Not the hands she wanted, not hands that held her soft and secure, but ones that pinched at her skin, deliberately coarse and careless. "You think I'm gonna fall for that one, bitch?" The cry cut into Kate's conscious and dragged her back to the surface. "You ain't fooling me. You think you're a right clever little bitch, don't you? You think he'd be with you if you gave him the choice of coming back to me?" The hands threw Kate back to the platform. "I don't know what you told him so he hasn't come to find me now you're gone, but we're going to find him."

Kate's mind somersaulted, tripped up, tried to make sense of this information. She was desperately trying not to scream at herself; it took the longest time for her decimated mind to focus on even the simplest word, and process it, and try to fit the pieces all together. A jigsaw she was rapidly losing patience with.

"Who are you speaking about?" She managed, her voice barely a hoarse whisper.

Kate saw the shadow above her move, turn away, a soft sigh mixed with a chuckle escaping her captor's lips. "Don't act dumb, Kate. We both know you're not dumb." The voice moved, but Kate couldn't follow its progress, her mind reeling with confusion. "You stole him from me. You've brainwashed him, or something, into staying with you; you don't call him his real name and, hell, now you've even gotten him to kiss you." There was silence for a second, a slight rush of air, a storm brewing in the limited, dead space.

And then her lips were right beside Kate's ear, and she could feel the hiss of saliva, smell the rancid odour of uncaring breath, and the threat that dripped like blood from the words spoken.

"He's not Jack. He's Aidan. And he's mine. And I'm going to save him."

A cold steely ring, the butt of a gun pressed to the side of Kate's head, and her breath catching with the solid finality of the object.

And the scream that left her lips.

She looked so peaceful, so fragile… a mere child, a china doll, white skin and lips still so full of colour; plum, a rich satiny pink, like a prom dress she might have one day worn, or a sunset. Lips too young to have grown thin and splintered. Lips too young to have kissed in anything other than familial affection. Lips that would never meet a lover's in ecstasy. Lips that would never kiss again.

Her eyes were closed; Jack's own hand had stroked, trembling, over them, as his voice spoke the time of her death, that minute that changed so many lives inexorably, forever. He could remember the warmth still in her, clinging in falsity; knew how the chill of lost life would gradually filter into her as all her homeostatic temperature monitoring systems became null and defunct, and shut down along with everything else. How when her parents came to see her, these fragile people waiting outside as he checked she was here and looking as much as possible like the daughter they still held so alive in their heads; how the first thing they would notice was the pallor of her skin, the stillness of her chest, but more than anything the cold. The ice in her as they held her hand and stroked her cheek. They'd ask for another blanket, irrational and desperate minds forgetting that no amount of blankets could warm her again. Forgetting she was gone; that she would no longer grow or laugh or complain about getting up in the morning, never grow to become anything less than perfect, or challenge authority, or stay out past curfew. They'd forget to speak of her in the past tense. They'd gradually, tragically and with each passing day, begin to realise that asking for blankets, feeding and watering her…just parenting and protecting her; these things they had been doing for as long as either cared to remember, were no longer needed. No longer valid. All those years of protection, of early nights and ABC's and limited junk food and no soda at breakfast, had come down to a fast car and a mangle of internal injuries, a crushed and splintered spine that even Jack couldn't fix. And neither he, nor they, would ever forgive themselves, for letting her down, and letting her go. For not saving her, for not fixing her, those things Jack had promised when he shouldn't have; and those promises he had broken.

Her hair hung in dark, non-growing tendrils around her face; compounding the ivory white of her skin, the purity of the fresh hospital sheets; those ones with red blemishes gone and replaced with false peace. And Jack knew; knew that for as long as he lived, he would never forget that moment, of opening the door to two parents who loved this little girl more than life itself; this little girl who had no life left in her. Their sobs which echoed like damning curses down the corridors and up the stairwells and striking into his heart. And he couldn't understand; even with every practical piece of knowledge he held, of the human body and its finite limitations; how he hadn't been able to save her, hadn't been able to stop the bleeding or control the endless damage within her. Find each tiny fragment of bone and somehow wire them all together again; restart her heart, stop her brain from swelling, transfuse unit after unit of blood into her. But none of it was possible and none of it was done. There were too many pieces to put the jigsaw together in time, and too many pieces missing for it to ever make sense again. They were both only human, after all; her little body that had too much to repair alone, and he, who could only do so much.

She was seven, and her bangs fell before her face, and her mother fell to her knees. And Jack whispered condolences, his eyes never leaving that tiny immobile face; rushed to the restroom next door, and threw up as tears streamed down his face.

It was the first time he realised, the first time he saw; not everyone can be saved.

But he had to save Kate. There was no reason for him to return to camp without her; no reason for him to go anywhere, do anything, anymore… it was like the stars had left his sky, every ray and twinkle of hope, bar one; the snatch of fabric grasped in his left hand, and the thick weighty clump of metal in his right. Jack picked his way through thick vegetation that lay like a barrier to the cave system; he had stashed his rucksack and tarp in a dimple in the ground beneath a large flat rock, took with him only the necessities of a couple of bandages and his powerful little LED torch. And the gun, each bullet slid perfectly into position, each moving freely and easily and ready to fire. Jack had once thought he'd never willingly carry a gun. But then he'd also once believed he'd never kill, even to relieve the suffering of someone who'd wanted to die. That he could save anyone, no matter how dire the situation.

He could still the memory of that tiny little girl as he reached the first tunnel into the labyrinth of caves; how her body had been too small for the hospital gown, or the gurney. How thinking about it now, with those dots of freckles and hazelnut hair, she could have been Kate eighteen or twenty years previous. Jack had been over the whole thing, from when he first heard of her as needing emergency surgery, to donning his scrubs, to that first cut with the scalpel, a million times afterwards; lying in bed at night, on early morning jogs, even whilst shaving. It had seemed ridiculous, to be cutting her again, with all the blood that was already oozing from every surface. But, he kept telling himself; that little girl wasn't Kate. Kate was someone else; somewhere close, he could feel it, the draw of her like a magnet which attracted his own.

The cavernous system seemed to be mainly under the ground; he could see the humps of different caves but the actual route in sloped downwards and out of Jack's line of sight. Instead of being above ground like back at camp, the hollowing was a catacomb, hidden; and he quickly realised how ideal a spot it was for holding someone captive. A passer-by could easily miss the narrow entrance. Kate, his Kate… was she here? Was she near, within shouting distance, would she hear him? He was suddenly terrified. This was it. She was here, but exactly where and in what kind of state… there were too many ideas suddenly crashing, burning within Jack's head, her image mixing with bloodied and battered patients on his operating table, and compounding his fears. What if he was too late? What if she was unconscious, or hurt, or worse? Jack exhaled slowly, tried to decelerate the fears that were escalating through him. You'll see her again, he told himself over and over. You'll see her soon, and then you can save her and fix her and tell her exactly how much she means to you. He counted to five, slowly and deliberately, fighting not against fear for himself but fears for her.

And then the scream came.