A/N: Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer, but her characters are fun to play with so I'm making them do my bidding for the foreseeable future. Jasper as the God of War and Peter 'just knowing shit' are ideas that belong to IDreamofEddy.
Thank you so much to my amazing beta Laurie Whitlock, my equally amazing pre-readers Shadman and AlwaysJASPERsLOVE, and my sister, Shelljayz. As you know, she is also a pre-reader as well as many other things for this story, and she caught some very important inconsistencies in this chapter. Thanks so much for noticing them sis! You are awesome and I love you! :)
Once again, thank you to everyone who has followed, favorited, and reviewed. You guys amaze me and I love you all to death. 303 reviews? Holy crap! The only thing I can say to that is WOW! I feel so honored by that and I reiterate, I love you all. :)
I noticed a mistake I made in chapter 17. Mr. Conroy would be a public defender not a public prosecutor, so I fixed that. I'm a perfectionist, it's a sickness.
One other thing before I get onto things. The chapters will be getting longer from now on, between 8,000-10,000 words, sometimes a little over that. I have a lot of plot to cover and Longing is going to be long enough as it is, not word-wise obviously, but in chapter number. I hope y'all don't mind. :)
And on to the morgue!
Chapter 19
oOo
September 2080
BPOV
-Flashback-
I left Churchill Downs to return to the Jones' house at ten after 8, staying with Wildfire for as long as I could since I knew it was the last time I would ever see him. It would take me about twenty minutes to walk back to their house at a typical human pace, and since Rafe got off of work at 8:30 pm, getting there around that time would give me a few minutes to prepare to put my plan into action.
As far as plans go, it was pretty straight forward. According to all my research, Lydia had never reported the abuse. Because of this, I had to get it on record but I was going to leave Mr. Conroy out of it. The thing was I couldn't just go to the Louisville PD and tell them the things I had discovered. Since I was under suspicion of violating the Safe Citizens Act, my word wasn't exactly golden at the moment and I hardly expected to be taken seriously. There was also the fact that Rafe and Lydia Jones were well-respected foster parents. Mr. Conroy wasn't the type of man who would just dump me in the first foster home that popped up with an available space. He would have done his research and made sure I went to a place he thought would be the best one to care for me until he got my situation resolved, so that had to mean that the Jones' looked like stellar caretakers on paper. This meant I had to do something drastic, something the police would not be able to ignore, but something that couldn't be traced directly back to me. It had to be something that would force an investigation, one that couldn't be dropped or half-assed, and during my time with Wildfire I had come up with that something …
Any more thoughts I might have had or plans I might have made flew out of my head as I walked closer toward the Jones' house. I had just turned onto their street, taking the time to soak up the sounds of Louisville at night - sounds I would likely never hear again - when I heard Rafe shouting. From the slur of his words, it was clear that he was drunk, but he wasn't supposed to be off of work until 8:30 pm. What the hell was he doing home and when had he had time to get drunk?
"Fucking hell," I cursed, picking up my pace.
"This is all your fault!" I heard Rafe growl, presumably to Lydia, as I was ten houses down. "I gave you what you fuckin' wanted after the hysterectomy, filled this house with kids, but it's never enough for you is it? I work my ass off to give you and the fuckin' kid, and all the other kids that aren't mine, everything and this is what I get? Always in my fuckin' way, always givin' me shit! Why the fuck do you think I drink?"
I heard the telltale sound of fist meeting flesh - Lydia's face if I had to guess from the loud crack of the blow. That sound was generally only made from the impact of bone on bone. The cracking noise that followed confirmed it. He'd fractured her cheekbone.
I was two houses down at that point and couldn't wait any longer.
Fuck it, I decided, completely abandoning the pretense that I was normal and taking off in a flash of movement that a regular person would only have been able to register as a blur.
"Don't you fuckin' cry, bitch," Rafe growled again. "I lost my job because of you-"
That explains why he's home early.
He didn't have a chance to finish because I had burst through the door. It banged open, bouncing off the wall hard enough for it to rebound back and slam shut. Racing into the living room, I stood there for a moment, taking in the scene before me. Rafe Jones was six feet tall and built similarly to Emmett Cullen. To anyone else he would definitely have been frightening in his rage. Lydia, who was in a heap on the floor, her hand pressed to her swelling and bloody cheek, certainly found him so. Her husband was hovering over her with his arm pulled back in preparation to hit her again. He didn't have time to turn toward the doorway to see what the commotion was before I shot forward, ripping him away from Lydia, twisting his right arm painfully behind his back and shoving him up against the nearest wall face first.
"How about I make you cry, asshole?" I hissed, pulling up on his arm until he grunted in pain.
"Who the hell are you?" Rafe managed to get out even though I had his face pressed so hard against the wall his teeth were digging into his lips. The smell of whiskey on his breath was strong, stinging my nose.
"The newest addition to your family," I answered derisively. "Welcome home, Daddy."
"Let me go you bitch," he demanded as well as he could with his mouth so hindered, "or I'll make you and you really don't want me to do that."
Rafe was really making my plan a hell of a lot easier to implement, and it was moving along quickly too; which was all the better for me. The idea had been to provoke him into beating on me rather than his wife or the kids, and to provoke him so strongly that he wouldn't be able to stop himself until he'd beaten me badly enough to put me in the hospital. It would take quite a bit of doing on his part considering what I was, especially since he was drunk, but just as I had done with Rosalie Cullen, I would pick apart his weaknesses and insecurities and use them against him. I was certainly good enough at goading people that I knew I could get him to do it even if that wasn't a talent of mine. Once I was taken to the hospital, no matter what story Rafe came up with to cover his ass, the emergency room doctors would be able to tell he was lying through his teeth. There was a difference between injuries incurred from beatings, those obtained from falls, and those a person got from any other type of accident. Doctors were trained to be able to discern those differences. Plus, he would have evidence of his part in my condition that he wouldn't be able to hide. There would be cuts, bruising, and swelling on his knuckles from all the blows he'd deliver, and I had every intention of hitting him in the face once or twice to draw attention to him and his involvement. Plus, hitting him would be downright fun. Mr. Conroy would be notified immediately when I arrived at the hospital and I knew he would do anything I asked of him. I would request to make a videotaped statement right then and there since I wouldn't be there to testify against my attacker, and as soon as the doctors, nurses, and he would have left me alone to give me a chance to rest, I would slip out of the hospital and leave Louisville behind just as I'd planned to do nearly twenty-four hours before.
Of course, I did have a back-up plan. If I couldn't provoke him into attacking me quickly enough for my taste, I would have injured him in such a way that he'd never be able to hurt anyone again. It would have involved his spinal cord, quadriplegia, a wheelchair, a nursing home, a catheter, and a never-ending river of drool leaking down his chin for the rest of his life. I really did prefer my original plan since it included the very real possibility of him becoming someone's bitch in prison. His playing into the original one had been easy, so call me a happy camper.
"Please do try," I said, my voice an unmistakable taunt. "I just don't think you can do it. See I'm not your ninety pound wife or any of the little kids in this house."
"Those are brave words for a little girl," Rafe responded with a drunken laugh, emphasizing 'little girl' to piss me off and then jabbing his free left elbow back into my stomach.
My immediate instinct was to react to his show of aggression but I didn't. It went against everything in me - my very genetic code, and it took every bit of willpower and restraint I could muster not to do it.
This is going to be harder than I thought, I mused.
Instead, I let my muscles relax so that the blow took the wind out of me and pushed me backward off him. I watched as he spun around, a smug and rather sadistic smile on his face, as if landing one hit proved he had what it took to make me believe he wasn't pathetic.
I rolled my eyes, but waited until I was no longer gasping to speak again. Emphasizing the fact that I was absolutely unimpressed wouldn't have been nearly as effective if my voice was still hoarse from lack of oxygen. I smirked at him, "That all you got, jackass?"
Rafe snarled and came at me swinging, surprisingly coordinated for a man with a .13 blood alcohol level, which was the scent of the alcohol ratio in his blood. As his fist flew at my jaw, I didn't bring my forearm up to block the punch and as it connected, I let my head snap to the side, purposely stumbling with the impact. I found myself again noting how odd and unnatural it felt not to fight back. Generally, if I didn't block a punch it collided with my face without so much as making me flinch or I used the momentum of the blow to spin around and return an offensive strike of my own. I had only ever not blocked one for training purposes, just so I would know what to do if I ever couldn't but since there was no one else like me, I didn't see that happening, and this didn't count.
The hit didn't hurt. It felt like a quick jab of pressure to my face and I'm sure it hurt him, but I flinched noticeably anyway. A big part of this plan depended on how well I could act as he was beating the shit out of me. Lydia had to believe I was afraid for my life and in serious pain. She would already assume I was to a certain extent since she'd suffered abuse at his hand before, but I still had to sell it. The kids had to believe it too because this fight of ours was sure to draw their attention. Some of them would probably cower in their rooms pretending like it wasn't happening. It was a coping mechanism, one I was glad for since I didn't want them to have to see this whole thing, but if any of them did venture out to see what was going on, they still had to unequivocally buy my victim act. It wasn't the right time to let him think I was afraid though, so I turned back to my attacker and continued to bait him, "You punch like a little bitch!"
The blow to his ego worked wonderfully to further enrage Rafe, and he dove at me, knocking me off my feet. I landed on my back, hard, with him on top of me and he kneed me in the kidney which was a particularly tender spot to hit ... on anyone else. On me it twinged, with him as the aggressor anyway. He landed two more blows to my face: one to my right eye and one to my nose. They were jarring but he hadn't yet succeeded in drawing any blood.
Shit! He needs to draw blood!
I wasn't bruising or bleeding yet and if I didn't start looking like a raw piece of meat soon, Rafe may run out of the stamina required to get me that way. I closed my eyes and concentrated, once again irritatedly thankful to Project Apotheosis for all the abilities they'd blessed me with and the skills they'd taught me, taking control of my heart rate and blood flow. If I could manage to push more of my blood toward the surface of my skin, every punch and kick he delivered would burst enough capillaries to form some nasty surface bruising and make me bleed like a stuck pig if he ever managed to hit me hard enough to break skin. Once he accomplished that, I'd just have to make sure to keep my heart rate and blood flow slow enough to prevent myself from healing too quickly. The more slowly my heart pumped the blood through my body, the longer it would take for all the stem cells in my blood to start fixing the damage.
"I think you're overcompensating for what obviously is not in your pants," I sing-songed raspily, presumably from the knee to my kidney. "Translation: your dick is so small it takes a microscope to find it."
Rafe roared and let loose a flurry of punches and when he wasn't using his fists, he was using his knees to punish every part of my body he could reach. I felt the mildly dull ache as bruises started to form and the sting of skin splitting open. Hot blood started running from open wounds.
Finally we're getting somewhere.
"You feeling better now, Rafey?" I spat. "Does beating on a teenage girl make you feel like a man? News flash, you've gotta have balls to be a man so I guess you'll never be one."
He let out another furious howl and wrapped both hands around my throat, squeezing for all he was worth. I couldn't let him choke me out, not that he really could unless I allowed him to. I could hold my breath for twenty minutes without losing consciousness, but there was the minor likelihood that my less than perfect health might bite me in the ass during this little showdown, especially since he was trying to cut off my oxygen supply in such a dramatic way. On the other hand, a crushed trachea would definitely land him in hot water by the bucketful once I was carted off to the hospital. I let artificial fear cloud my eyes and I knew he saw it from the way his smile both brightened in delight and darkened in menace as he held me down. He must have squeezed for a good minute, choking me with all his might before my trachea started to give. That was when Lydia finally decided to do something to help me.
"Rafe no!" she cried in horror, rushing toward us. She placed her tiny, ineffectual hands on his shoulder and pushed without moving him a centimeter.
At the feel of her hands on him, he removed one of his from my throat to backhand her across the same cheek he'd hit earlier, sending her flying away from him and crashing to the floor, unconscious. I took his distraction as an opportunity to slide my legs underneath his and up toward my chest. Then I pressed my feet against his sternum and pushed with a fraction of my strength and power. Rafe was the one who went flying this time, shooting three feet into the air and several feet away from me. He crashed into the coffee table, the impact of his 260 pound frame cleaving it in two with a deafening crack, leaving him dazed and from the wholly new and distinct smell of blood that filled the air I knew he'd been injured.
Now that he was off me, I staggered to my feet, fighting against the residual dizziness I'd been struggling with the last two days, and made my way to Lydia's side. She wasn't supposed to try to help me. She was supposed to stand idly by, her backbone relaxing in a hammock in the Bahamas for the duration of my confrontation with her husband. Thankfully, her pulse was steady though her already swollen cheek was darkening to an even nastier shade of purple, her eye was now swollen shut, and blood was still pouring down her face. Still, I checked the rest of her over to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything. I knew a lot about field medicine and assessing damage.
Rafe recovered much more quickly than I'd expected him to because the next thing I knew, I was getting hit upside the head with a cast iron skillet. Had I been normal, that blow would have cracked my skull open like a walnut in a fucking nutcracker, and it did make me see stars; which was another thing that should not have happened. I had to say I'd really underestimated him. I knew he was an abusive douchebag, but I hadn't pegged him as a man capable of murder. He had struck me as too cowardly for that. When he took a second swing, arcing the skillet up under my chin in the way he would have if he was delivering an uppercut in a boxing ring, it jolted me off my feet and I went crashing into the wall. I slid down to the floor and didn't get up.
I lost track of what was going on around me for a little while as my head spun, and I felt like I wanted to throw up.
What the fuck? I may or may not have said this out loud. No matter what he'd hit me with, Rafe Jones was not strong enough to disorient me. I knew this from experience. The only plausible explanation for the fact that he had was whatever had fucked me up the night I'd been arrested and, as if the thought of it brought it on, I felt warm blood trickling out of my ear. I don't know how long I lay there, not quite sure what was going on. It could have been seconds or minutes; either way I thought it was odd that Rafe hadn't descended on me like a buzzard on carrion.
Vaguely I heard moaning, screaming, the colliding of flesh against bone, and the breaking of it. Luckily, the stars and dizziness had cleared enough for me to launch myself back into the fray, but before I could do that, I needed to see what the hell I had missed.
Lydia was still a lifeless mass on the floor from where I was standing but she was in a different spot, a new bruise blooming across her collarbone, which suggested that at some point she had gotten back up to try to defend me.
The woman's made of tougher stuff than I gave her credit for.
Elizabeth was standing protectively over her mother, her lip split and bleeding, and her arm was hanging at an unnatural angle. It was broken. Tears were streaming down her face as she begged, "Daddy please stop!"
I came up noiselessly behind him and called, "Hey Rafe!"
He spun around to face me and I raised up on the balls of my feet, whipping my right leg up and around in a windmill-like motion, my foot striking his face hard enough to knock him off his feet but not hard enough to snap his neck even though that idea had crossed my mind. I had to admit after seeing the condition of his wife and daughter, I had seriously considered it. When he hit the floor, he slid across it and into the open kitchen. I didn't turn to see if I'd knocked him out.
Closing the remaining distance between myself, Elizabeth, and Lydia, I knelt down next to the little girl who was shaking in terror.
"Help my Mommy," she begged, her sage green eyes that matched her mother's perfectly so miserable it broke my heart. "Please."
I nodded at her, the motion hurting my head, "I will."
Lydia's pulse was racing but the isolated chemical smell of adrenaline in her blood told me it was nothing life-threatening. I felt her collarbone gingerly, hating myself when I confirmed what I'd already suspected. It was fractured and I should have been fucking there to protect her from it.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Other than that and the wound to her face, she would be fine; facing quite a bit of pain for the next few weeks but fine. Having concluded this, I reassured Elizabeth. It took some convincing but eventually she believed me, especially since Lydia was coming to.
Mari ventured tentatively into the living room just after this, clearing her throat. It was clear from the look on her face and the hoarse tone of her voice as she quietly said, "I just called 911," that she'd been crying. Then she continued with, "They said they'd be here in five minutes. I'm sorry I didn't call sooner but I was trying to keep the others calm."
"It's okay," I told her, my tone consoling, as I smiled at her. "Please go back upstairs and continue to do that. Do not, under any circumstances, let any of them come down here, okay?"
Mari nodded and disappeared back up the stairs.
I then turned to Elizabeth to examine her wounds. Her lip was worse than I'd initially thought. In addition to the split skin of her bottom lip itself, the indentation of her bottom row of teeth, some of which were loose, was cut into the flesh half an inch below the opening to her mouth. It was a mess of blood and mangled flesh and it was no wonder she was crying. The arm that was broken was her left, and from what I knew of broken bones, she had a compound fracture in the upper part of her humerus. I could set the bone right there but thought it best to wait to let a doctor do it.
I was so focused on tending to Lydia and Elizabeth that I didn't hear Rafe come up behind me until Elizabeth and Lydia simultaneously shrieked, "Jane!" and I felt the sharp prick of a knife piercing my skin and sliding through the flesh between my fourth and fifth ribs until the hilt was flush with my skin. He pulled the blade out, that of a paring knife I believed, with a vicious swipe that ripped the wound upward in a jagged slash about 3 inches long.
"Son of a bitch!" I gasped in surprise, my eyes going wide.
My skin was thicker than a typical human's, like kevlar in a way, but I'm not bulletproof by any means. It could ward off glancing blows from knives with the end result of bruising instead of flesh wounds, but I was not immune to the direct downward force of a sharp, pointed weapon wielded by a person intending to stab me in the way Rafe had. It took more 'oomph' but it could be done as the puncture wound in my chest could attest to.
Whipping around, I came face-to-face with the man who had just stabbed me. He was smirking in triumph and I was beyond done with this. I punched him in the jaw with crushing force, shattering it, and targeting the nerve that would send his brain to oblivion long enough that I could try to figure out what the hell to do now.
The fucker had nicked an artery in addition to puncturing my left lung, and I was losing blood at an alarming rate. That's right, I may be a genetically-engineered super soldier but I still bled like everyone else. I healed exponentially faster than a normal person, but it still took time and in order to heal I had to have enough blood running through my veins to kickstart the process since that's where all the stem cells resided. It was true my DNA was chock full of other regenerative properties but that wasn't instantaneous either, and at the rate I was losing blood it was unlikely that those properties would be coming to my aid in time to do much good.
Shit!
I stumbled toward the wall, using it to prop myself up. I wasn't at the point where I really needed it but that time was fast approaching and I needed to think quickly. My plan had been going swimmingly up until now. Rafe had certainly beaten me badly enough to require an investigation into whether or not he was fit to be a parent, and whether he ended up in jail or not, at the very least he'd never have kids in this house again. That didn't bode well for Lydia but at this point, I had to take what I could get. However, the bastard had just tried to murder me, so maybe I could try to make sure he got put away for that, and there was one way I might be able to pull it off - hibernation. If I combined the main elements of hibernation (lowering my body temperature, slowing my breathing, and lowering my metabolic rate), minus the fucking with my body temperature, with air tight control over my heart rate and blood flow to a minimal enough degree, there was a chance I could convincingly make it appear as though I was dead.
I did have to stay warm at all costs though. Letting myself go into complete hibernation was asking never to wake up again and I had to keep as much warmth in my body as I could to help aid in keeping the blood flowing through my veins. Since it took a little while for dead bodies to cool down and I would likely be carted off by an ambulance immediately, I didn't have to be too concerned as to how my not so frigid body temperature might be taken by the medical examiner. As for the other elements, with the amount of blood I had already lost and the fact that I had a punctured lung slowing my breathing would be a piece of cake, and with less blood to pump through my body it would be relatively easy to slow my pulse enough to make it seem as though my heart had stopped beating. As long as I got a flawless grip on the flow of the remaining blood in my body to make sure I didn't lose much more, which I wasn't sure was actually possible, I might have a chance of getting out of this alive and succeeding in getting Rafe thrown in jail for murder. I was aware it was a long shot but I was willing to risk it to make sure this asshole never got a chance to hurt anyone again, and if my last thoughts were of him making special friends with Roscoe the weightlifter in prison I'd go to the afterlife happy.
I let my knees give out, crashing to the floor in a bloody heap, my limbs splayed out in uncomfortable and unnatural angles. Choked, gurgly breaths escaped my lungs and Lydia and Elizabeth rushed to my side.
"Jane!" Lydia and Elizabeth cried in synchrony, tears streaming down their faces. "Jane!"
I coughed once, my breathing going into overdrive before I shifted into hibernation mode and let my body shut down.
-End Flashback-
And that is how I ended up in a cold storage unit in the University of Louisville Hospital morgue with a tag marked "Jane Doe" looped around my right big toe.
oOo
I had been biding my time in this damn cold storage unit for an hour since I had started reflecting on the events that had gotten me here. All those events had done was reinforce the convictions and rules I'd developed and religiously followed since I had escaped Project Apotheosis: do not trust anyone and do not form attachments. While I didn't regret the things I'd done to help Shiri, Lydia, Elizabeth, and the other kids, even the most minor violations of those rules in the past forty-eight hours had blown up in my face so catastrophically I was surprised there was anything left of me. In actuality, there really wasn't much left of me seeing as how I was dying and all. My imminent death was the only plausible explanation for the fact that I was freezing.
I only had to wait another ten minutes before I could begin to carry out the plan I'd come up with to get myself out of here. That was when the morgue attendants were supposed to switch shifts and the person relieving the current attendant on duty had called to explain that they would be thirty minutes late. The current attendant had gotten permission from their boss to leave at their regularly scheduled time since they had kids and, since it was the middle of the night, their supervisor had felt the morgue could be left unattended despite how busy they had been; thus, presenting me with my window of opportunity. So I mustered all the strength, energy, and fortitude I still possessed, pulled myself out of hibernation mode, and prepared to take action.
For the first time in my life, I was only going to focus on this strategy. Was I still thinking three steps ahead? Of course. That was a trait I couldn't just turn off, but I was only going to worry about surviving this for now because I really only had the stamina to concentrate on one step at a time.
Step One: Wait for the morgue attendant to leave and get the fuck out of this cold storage unit.
As I heard the door to the morgue slam shut and the sound of the attendant's footsteps fading as she walked down the hallway, I turned slowly onto my side. I pulled my knees to my chest carefully so as not to stretch my wound, rotated so that my head was now at the door and then stretched back out so that I was now lying on my stomach. Five other bodies had come into the morgue besides mine that night and that wasn't including the deaths of people that had already been checked in as patients at the hospital. Because of this my autopsy wasn't scheduled until 9:00 am, which worked out well for me. Otherwise, I would have been butt ass naked. As it was, the only things that had been removed were the tracking anklet and my shoes, and the feeling of the tag looped around my toe was fucking disturbing. If it wasn't for the bracelet I never took off, I'd have been left with no other option than to break the lock on my icy, coffinesque prison, and if I had to do that it would complicate things. Needless to say, I was thankful I had access to something with a sharp point. It made things less complicated and in this case, the less complicated things were the better.
Now that I was facing the right way, I pressed in the locking mechanism on my bracelet, releasing the clasp that held it together and studiously ignoring the Omega tattoo that it covered on my left wrist. The bracelet was titanium and had been custom made so that the inside was curved to fit the shape of my wrist exactly while the outside edges extended past my wrist a little and were squared off. It had special properties that allowed for modification if my wrist size changed - a rather brilliant invention on my part. It was two and a half inches long and half an inch thick with hinges on the top and sides to give it a semi-fashionable appearance even though it served a far more practical purpose. The bottom of the bracelet, the part with no hinges, had a hollow space in the center where a blade was hidden. Once pulled free, all I had to do was twist the middle section in the opposite direction of the one closest to the blade and the one at the bottom so that handle didn't curve, and I had a very effective weapon that was highly concealable. The bracelet served other purposes as well, but I didn't want to think about those at the moment.
Once I had locked everything into place and gotten a good grip on my knife, I wedged the tip of the blade into the crevice between the wall and the door of this godforsaken drawer, starting at the bottom and sliding it upward until I felt the resistance that indicated I'd hit the point where the lock was located. I hoped it was the latch type because that would make my life so much easier.
Note to self: research all types of morgue cold storage unit locks. If I ever found myself alive in a morgue again, at least I wouldn't be blindsided.
After I wriggled the blade in a little farther, I applied pressure until I heard a pop and the door cracked open. I let out a relieved breath - the first real breath I'd taken since I had come out of hibernation and it fucking hurt. I really was not a fan of punctured lungs.
Pushing the door the rest of the way open, I gripped the wall and pulled so that the gurney glided forward smoothly. I put a little too much force into it, causing the gurney to shoot out a little too fast. When it hit the end of the wheel track, it slammed to a stop with a resounding clang and started to retreat back into the compartment. I had already propped myself up into a sitting position and swung my legs off the side to put my feet to the floor, so the friction of my toes against the linoleum kept me from getting pummelled by the still open door as the gurney creeped back toward it. Then I dropped my weight onto the balls of my feet, needing to see if I was still capable of standing upright. My knees were a little wobbly, but they would hold.
I twisted my bracelet back into its shape and slapped it onto my wrist. Turning back toward the box I'd spent the last several hours of my life in, I studied the shiny, stainless steel surface, checking for blood or any other evidence that this particular unit had been occupied recently. Thankfully, it had remained clean so I pushed the gurney back inside and shut the door, satisfied when the lock clicked into place.
I had to pause to rest after that. Any form of exertion screwed with my control over my heart rate and blood flow and if I wanted to make it out of here alive, which I did, I couldn't let that control slip. Plus, all the exertion wasn't exactly pleasant in my current condition. I was once again simultaneously grateful to Project Apotheosis for teaching me to power through shit like this and so bitter because of it I could hardly see straight. Well, the not seeing straight part could have had more to do with the fact that I was nearly exsanguinated, but I was still bitter.
It took me thirty seconds to regulate myself, and I lost a little more of the blood I still had left in my body than I'd anticipated I would.
Fuck! I cursed, wanting to panic but refusing to let myself. You can do this Bella. You can!
Twenty-seven minutes ...
Step Two: Make myself presentable.
By the time I'd carried out the bulk of my plan, if I hadn't dropped dead, I'd need to look relatively human to tie up the loose ends and actually escape. Even without seeing my reflection, I was reasonably certain I could score a guest spot as a walker on The Walking Dead at the moment. That had to be fixed. Scanning my surroundings, I noticed one of the male morgue attendants had left an oversized, black hoodie draped across a chair, so I snagged it and pulled it on. It was so long it hung just passed my mid-thighs, covering the most gruesome looking bloodstains and, as long as I kept the hood up, it would hide the mess that was my face until I could do something about it. Now I just had to make my way to the employee locker room without running into anyone.
Good luck with that, Bella.
Knowing I didn't have any time to waste on thinking about how many ways all this could blow up in my face, I inhaled deeply even though it hurt. The morgue attendant who had just gone off shift had worn a distinctive lavender perfume, so I homed in on that scent and relied on my nose to guide me in the right direction. Thankfully, I didn't run into anyone on my way there and the locker room was deserted save for one occupied shower stall.
Looking in the mirror was a nerve-wracking experience. The state of my face would tell me just how creative I'd have to get with a backstory and I was hoping for something more in the way of a short story as opposed to a novel. I couldn't help but grin when I saw that aside from some very faint, almost nonexistent yellowish bruising under my left eye and the blood that was still crusted to my hairline, I looked pretty fucking normal. My DNA had come through for me after all.
Halle-fucking-lujah! I cheered on the inside. The giddy laugh that bubbled up in my chest and gurgled painfully reminded me that what it had come through for me on paled in comparison to what it had really needed to. It was sobering.
Taking advantage of the time I had in the locker room before the person in the shower finished up, I started breaking into lockers by listening for when the pin clicked into the right numbers on the combination locks. I found one pair of scrubs in the second locker that would fit me decently enough, a pair of jeans and a t-shirt in the fourth locker that would be big on me but not obscenely so, and a pair of tennis shoes in the seventh one that were a half size too small for when I made a break for it. It was the the best I could do but it was more than good enough.
That taken care of, I stole a random towel, slipped into the shower stall furthest from the door and stripped down, turning the water to scalding and letting it cascade over me as I breathed as deeply and evenly as a person could with a damaged lung. I watched as the pink-tinted water swirled down the drain with fascination and a strange sort of detachment, twisting my neck so that I could survey the stab wound to my rib cage. As I had surmised at the time of the attack, it was jagged and about three inches long. It did show minute signs of healing but the reality was, it should have taken an hour, no more than two, to heal completely and it was pushing five since I'd procured it. I knew a nicked artery and punctured lung were injuries quite a bit more serious than any I'd had in a long time, especially without immediate access to medical attention by doctors that knew my background, but remove the fact that they were damage to vital organs and they were essentially just glorified cuts. On a scale of 1 to 10 on the quickness to heal factor they ranked at a 3, if that … easy-peasy.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I'd lost track of how many times I'd asked myself that in the past two days, which was also troubling. I didn't forget things.
My heart rate and blood flow hadn't gotten any more difficult for me to control, which was a good sign, but standing under the blistering heat of the water wasn't taking the edge off the chill in my bones. I couldn't think about that though. I had to keep going.
Shutting off the water, I quickly scrubbed myself dry, careful to pat my wound gently. Then I pulled on the scrub pants but not the shirt, instead going with the hoodie. My wound was still oozing droplets of blood and I couldn't afford to get the scrub shirt stained. After that I slipped my feet into the shoes, tossed my old, ruined clothes in a plastic biohazard bag I'd pilfered from the morgue before I'd come to the locker room, and then made my way back to it to continue on with my plan.
Twenty minutes ...
Step Three: Bandage myself as best I could to prevent as much blood loss as possible and so that any blood that did leak from my chest wound didn't soak through my clothes.
The best thing really would have been for me to stitch the wound closed, but that would only have taken care of the surface problem. Plus, it was in too awkward a place for me to be able to manage it in a reasonable amount of time. I had to settle for taping it closed with surgical tape and wrapping several layers of gauze tightly around my rib cage. Then I applied several more strips of tape so that if blood managed to worm its way through the initial layer of tape and soak through the gauze it would be harder to stain my clothing. Then I pulled the scrub shirt over my head. It was a difficult and awkward task but I managed.
Eighteen minutes …
Step Four: Peruse the records of all corpses logged into the morgue within the last week and hope like hell that there was another unidentified woman who was actually dead somewhere in this cold and miserable place.
It took the scanning of four pages … Hot damn that's a lot of bodies for a week … before I found one that was actually remarkably similar to me in height and weight as well as how she'd ended up here - a stab wound to the abdomen. She remained unidentified because the tips of her fingers had been removed. Without fingerprints, that was how she would stay.
Luck was apparently with me today, not just in this but in how smoothly everything else had gone thus far. Some people would say it was God's doing but I do not. I wasn't sure if God existed, but a lot of people thought he did so I was inclined to believe his existence had at least some merit. According to the reading I'd done on religion, he loved all of his creations unconditionally but since I had been slapped together in a Petrie dish and not conceived like a normal person I had a hard time believing that applied to me.
Sixteen minutes ...
Step Five: Alter all documents, both paper and digital, pertaining to me and Jane Doe so that, essentially, she became me on all hospital records; and then erase all evidence that she'd ever been in the morgue in the first place.
Because of my background, I was an expert forger so it wasn't hard for me to do this and do it quickly; and that's a good damn thing.
The fact that the morgue had been swamped to the point where they were out of space as well as understaffed, as I had also overheard earlier, meant that there was a good chance no one would ever notice the changes I'd made; especially since they were flawless.
Nine minutes ...
Step Six: Liberate Jane Doe from her icy confines.
This was the easiest thing I had done so far but things were about to get a million times more difficult.
Jane Doe had blonde hair and even though she was cold and lifeless, that y-shaped incision carved into her chest and abdomen looking gruesome beyond all belief to me right then, I could tell she had been pretty in life. I could also tell that her life had been troubled from the faded track marks on her left arm. Looking at her face and knowing what I was about to do, I felt unbearably sad and more than a little sick; that sickness having absolutely nothing to do with my current condition. I gazed at her for much longer than I should have but I couldn't tear my eyes away. She deserved much better than what I was about to do, and I would try to make up for it as much as I could, though really, there was no way I'd ever be able to.
"If I survive this, I'll figure out who you are," I promised her, stroking her hair. "I'll figure out who did this to you and you will get your justice. I'll find your family too. I'll make sure you are remembered and mourned, no matter how long it takes. I'll never forget you and I'll always be grateful to you for this. I am so, so sorry."
I felt an errant tear slide down my cheek as I pressed a kiss to her forehead and gripped her wrist, taking her fingerprints so that I could fulfill my promise to her. Her fingertips weren't needed for me to duplicate them. As long as the rest of her hand remained intact, that didn't matter. Then I slipped the toe tag that had been mine around her right big toe.
Five minutes ...
Step Seven: Forge a cremation authorization.
Again, the fact that the morgue had been so swamped meant that mistakes were much more likely to be made. Jane Doe, as me, being erroneously cremated was plausible, and the lack of a body wouldn't hurt the murder case against Rafe Jones. There had been ample crime scene photos of my body taken, and Lydia and Elizabeth had witnessed the stabbing. I'd also learned as I lay there, mostly incoherent and pretending to be dead, that the neighbors had come over to see what was going on. They'd heard the commotion and gotten worried, and when they'd knocked the door had come open without preamble since I had broken it when I'd burst into the house in my haste to get to Lydia after hearing the confrontation between her and her husband. They had walked in the living room just in time to see Rafe sticking the knife between my ribs. The guy was fucked, body or no, and there obviously couldn't be a body.
There was a special place reserved for me in hell. I knew this. I had always known it and in all likelihood I would soon be inhabiting it. I was also pretty certain said place would be decorated with creepy kitten figurines and tea cozies as part of my punishment. I would deserve it. The sick feeling in my stomach told me so.
Two minutes … I had two minutes to spare before I could go any further with my plan.
I sank down into the chair the hoodie had been draped over to rest. I was so fucking tired.
Just a little longer, Bella. You can do this, I chanted. Just a little longer.
The male morgue attendant who should have been there thirty minutes ago walked in precisely when he swore to his boss and coworker he would, stopping short when he saw me.
"Who are you? Are you new?" he asked curiously.
I smiled at him and steeled myself to speak without sounding like I had a punctured lung. "I'm not new. I work in a different department. Your boss asked me to keep an eye on the place until you got here," I lied impeccably, thankful that I managed not to sound too out of breath.
"Oh," he said, a slightly guilty expression clouding his features. "Have I missed anything important?"
I shrugged, "Not really. I couldn't do much besides make sure any bodies that got brought in were checked in properly since this isn't my department and I'm not authorized. Thankfully, we didn't get any new residents," I said. Then I purposefully walked over to a stack of paperwork, on top of which was the forged cremation authorization, picked it up and held it out to him. "Your supervisor did want me to have you take care of this as soon as you got in though. We don't have anymore room down here, and apparently he was given permission to cremate the body. I couldn't do it because, like I said, not my department."
The attendant took the paper from me, studied it for a moment, compared the toe tag to the number on the sheet, and then nodded. "Alright."
Moving to the gurney with Jane Doe on it, he wheeled her out of the morgue and toward the cremation chamber.
I didn't stick around after that, heading to the lobby level of the hospital, avoiding the security cameras like the pro I was, finding the nearest handicapped bathroom, and swapping out the scrubs for the street clothes I had stolen.
Then I got the fuck out of there.
oOo
I was dying. There was no deluding myself into believing that I wasn't. I was bone tired, I'd only gotten colder, and since I'd come out of hibernation I hadn't stopped losing blood. Add to that that my limbs were locking up and my vision was turning hazy around the edges, and denial was not a land I could live in.
There really was no hope that I was going to survive this and I found that I couldn't decide how I felt about it. I suppose I didn't really care one way or another anymore. The only thing that I did feel was a sense of relief. There would be no more running, no more worry, no more fear, just peace. It sounded nice but there was one thing I wanted before I died. I wanted to see Wildfire one last time. His kind eyes were what I wanted to see as I took my last breath, so I rallied all my remaining strength and determinedly made my way to his stable at Churchill Downs.
I don't remember how I ended up in a heap in the hay that was layered over the dirt floor of Wildfire's stall, but that didn't really matter. All that did matter was that I was looking into his warm brown eyes just as I had wanted to, but they looked sad. I hated that they looked sad.
"It's okay buddy. It's okay," I said in a choked whisper, wanting to offer him some comfort, and barely feeling him nudge my leg with his nose and then nuzzle my neck.
I don't know how much time passed or if what I heard next was real; but it sounded as though Wildfire shrieked, spooking, and then disappeared from my view.
The last thing I registered before I died was that the moon was very bright.
oOo
A/N: Well guys, that was it.
This was another very difficult chapter to write for many reasons. I didn't enjoy writing a grown man beating up on kids, his wife, or a teenager, no matter how able-bodied Bella is. Trying to envision what Bella's thoughts might be during her ordeal, coming up with the most plausible strategy for her to escape the morgue despite the fact that the whole situation is not the least bit plausible, attempting to convey more of the type of person Bella is in the right way, to capture the emotion she's feeling in as best a way I could, to write my first action scene and still make it exciting even though Bella didn't really fight back ... it was all a huge undertaking, and I worked my ass off on it. I have poured my heart and soul into every chapter of this story I've written, especially this one. I wanted to do this part of the plot and the character of Bella I envision the justice they deserve. I hope I did that and that the conclusion of this part of the plot met any expectations you may have had. I am definitely pleased with it and hope you are too.
'Roscoe the weight lifter' is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference. I am referring to the TV show, not the movie, because when you compare the two, the movie sucked ass. In case you haven't previously come to this conclusion, I watch entirely too much TV. As much as I like movies, I just prefer TV. There are just so many more opportunities for character development and evolution when it's done right. Buffy was my was definitely done right and it was my favorite show as a teenager, it still continues to be an all time favorite, and Angel and Spike are the reason I'm hooked on vampires. :)
Bella sure has been through the ringer, huh? The cliffhanger is kind of evil but admittedly awesome ... to me, at least. Any theories?
I certainly would love to know what you think of this chapter.
