I recovered at the Hotel for another week and then did some more flea work. I got a tip about a good killing spree from Reddington that I was actually thinking of doing. I didn't know when I was going to tell the pack about my miscarriage. I so wanted to tell Damon in detail how awful the whole jelly thing had been but then again I'd just give up the weapon for next time if I admitted it was awful. Thank goodness at least Magnum and Higgins knew about it, because I didn't feel comfortable keeping all the horrors to myself all the time and being so damn strong all the time. But fine. Let's go take a bit of the pharmacy bosses out of the day.
I'd left for the gig three days ago after recovering from my miscarriage. I hadn't told anyone in the pack about it yet, nor had Higgins or Magnum. I'd got a list from Reddington of the new pharma bosses again and when I got here I found that this was a pretty fucking much bigger institution than I'd expected. That wasn't the problem. I thought bitterly as I discovered a couple of things again that this gig has gone as fucked as it can. This was supposed to be a simple killing spree, but no. Fine. I was at the edge of the forest watching.
The problem was that two guards were dragging the now unconscious Damon inside and the next pair came in with Adam, If this place is nasty there's no way those two are getting out. Should I go in and try to free them? What if I get caught? Would it then become a new jelly when I came home sometime? Oh, how tricky. I decided to keep watching, but then I saw Mr. Sark. And I thought, yes, I must go and free the men because that's bad bad news.
I'd been to see Mr. Sark myself a couple of times and I knew what he was up to. Damon in a drugged state or Adam in nitrogen-silver madness didn't seem like a terribly good option. So I backed out to my car and piled on a bit more gear. Fortunately, this was a fully equipped car. I called Bran and explained the situation. He ordered me to rescue the men. That would be priority number one.
Then I could go after Sark if I had the chance. I also left Samuel a voice message telling him the time and place and that I was going to rescue the men. I started creeping along the property's edges toward the backyard, which was not so well-lit. Luckily it was already 11 pm so it was suitably dark as I quickly slipped across the yard into the shadows of the building and eventually got in through one of the service doors. This was the tricky part. I made my way down the corridors, gun in hand, a silencer in place. Good, no cameras, at least not on these lower floors. Floor by floor, I started to climb.
The third floor was already brightly lit, almost white, with a black and white tiled floor. And security cameras. I didn't hit any of the cameras yet but I wouldn't get much further than this floor. I could shoot the camera but that might alert the guards. My only hope was to move the camera so that I could walk without being seen to the next camera I could move. I found a cleaning closet and took a long-handled brush. Gently I touched the camera and tried to move it now bingo! It moved. No problem, next camera, same thing. Gun in hand, brush in hand, you just have to remember that you shoot the bad guys, not sweep them up. I looked through all the rooms, empty on the next floor. I was just getting on the floor when I saw Sark, jackpot!
No big deal, I thought, the whole floor is just swarming with people, probably going after Damon and Adam. I waited my time, slowly people were either going home or on to other things. Mr. Sark went upstairs. Fine, he'd get himself killed somewhere in between. I crept into the room where everyone had come from. Damon and Adam were lying topless, unconscious with oxygen masks on their faces and a thousand IV bags dripping. I started to work, first the tubes of both of them and the masks. There was no oxygen, by the way.
I got Adam off and then again I took the wolf's front teeth and bit my wrists open. I put my wrist in Adam's mouth so I could see Adam swallowing. And again. Soon Adam's eyes opened. He was awake but medicated. "Adam, we have to escape now. You're already loose. Sit up. "The building was built on a slope and on this side of the house, this third floor was at ground level. There were windows in the doorway of the room that you could get out of.
The men were tall enough that they wouldn't have a problem but someone would have to hold the window open while I came out that way. I helped Adam to stand, repeating what had to be done. Adam stayed standing while Damon started to move. I went over to Damon and gave him my wrist, I didn't need to be told, he took a surprisingly strong grip on my hand, sank his teeth in deep, and started drinking greedily. He was hungry or some medicine was increasing his bloodlust. Finally, he released my wrist and licked his lips. I kept repeating to Damon how to escape.
I got up on the table and got the window open, holding it open with my hand. Adam went first. I helped him through the window and watched him run away. Damon then. Same thing Damon went through the window and bent down and slammed the window shut. Locking it from the outside. Oh, fuck. I heard a thud behind me as I felt the darts hit my back. I watched as Damon ran off with Adam and no one gave chase, even though the guards could clearly see the men running away. I felt my legs start to go out from under me and my last thought was if this was a trap just to catch me, I fell to the ground and someone kicked the gun out of my hand. All I saw was Sark's shoes then nothing.
I woke up in some kind of rack. I was on my stomach my head was like a massage table in a hole and I felt how tightly I was tied to the table. The examiners were moving around me and I felt fingers feeling the spaces between my vertebrae as well as my vertebrae, they were listing some readings, but I couldn't understand what. The cold metal touched the back of my neck and the next sensation came from below. There was a metal pin against each vertebra, all the way to the tailbone, the pins kept moving in one direction and then it started.
They started beating my spinal vertebrae. They were not just pins, they were designed to break my vertebrae in several places, they also hit the sides of the vertebrae and caused waves of pain all over my body. I was propped up on the table so that even though I felt my neck vertebrae break first, my spinal cord was not severed. My vocal cords were not working and the head-confusing medicine was doing its little thing. The hammers beat relentlessly. Whenever a vertebra was broken, the hammer would stop and if the vertebra was repaired, it would be broken again.
Eventually, my whole spine was just a crushed mess that didn't heal. The hammer device was taken away and I was wheeled into some kind of operating theatre. They removed and recovered all the bone fragments and then they removed my spinal cord and waited for a new one to grow in its place. I realized at that point that there was always another patient in the operating room who had my spinal cord. I was in the operating room for 60 hours, I don't know how many got a piece of my spinal cord, but many. Then they took me back to the room and put me on a drip full blast, everything went black pretty soon.
This time I woke up on my back. Mr. Sark sounded disappointed that none of the grafts had survived. But he would like to try another experiment. My carotid artery and carotid vein were cannulated. Then I was well sedated, with the panic drugs, of course, in barbed handcuffs. They took me to a room where lay a man of perhaps 50 or 60, pale, almost yellow, breathing raggedly. The man had a cannula in his arm. They directed the man's blood to circulate through me. The cannula in my carotid artery was connected to the man's artery and the man's vein to my vein. My sedative would not work on a human, so there was no fear of that.
The man's blood was sick, he hadn't been able to breathe properly. His liver and kidneys were failing and the blood was full of all kinds of toxins. His blood made me breathe more efficiently and I could feel my heart now having to circulate the blood of two. To cleanse. The man began to improve within three hours. He was attached to me for 24 hours. Sark was pleased. The man had just been bought more time to get a new heart. A living dialysis/heart-lung machine like this would be a sought-after commodity. I was tired. Repairing the man's body and cleansing his toxins was hard work. Again I was taken to a room with a new IV stand, it now had 12 different bags. Sark did the math and set the pace for each one to be all inside me in four hours.
I was feeling confused on that side. I had now cleansed 12 people's blood. I was being pumped with so much medicine that I was hallucinating. Damon is here. He was wearing a white jacket with the words "D. Salvatore" across his chest. He stroked my hair " Hello baby, how are you feeling?" Damon asked. I wondered if I dared speak to the harpy " Help, take me away Damon. please. Take me home, save me. Why did you abandon me here?" Damon looked at me for a moment and turned, adjusted my IV faster, and stroked my hair until I fell asleep.
Sark was at it again. Now I was a guinea pig for medical students. My vocal cords had been paralyzed and given a strong muscle relaxant. All I could do was feel everything. I was hurt, I was out of my mind. Sark showed me how silver would hurt me, then they tried different herbs. The students brought in all the plants from outside, which they made pastes and rubbed into my body or preferably directly into my organs.
Sark boasted about how much he was learning about what worked for me. He showed the students how immortal I actually am. The name of the game was, Find a way to kill the target. I didn't like that game, not one bit. There were 56 students, each of whom got to do three ways. I can say that at least they tried to destroy me. It must have been ten years since I had last played this game. And it hadn't gotten any better.
Then the guests came. Alfas, they were ready to put the heat on me. Again. Sark agreed. He wanted to examine the heat. First, how to change into wolf form. Some drug had put Mimosa to sleep, so I started to change, the fucking lamp. And then when I'm in the middle of everything, the frequency of that lamp changed so that I was halfway through the transformation.
I never want to go through that pain again. I was between forms for a week. My tissues were probed and photographed and sampled. Then to the wolf form. Sark wanted me in wolf form for the entire rutting process. As soon as I got into the wolf form, the alphas had already brought the rutting party, the mating party. They tied me up and taped my tail. Wolf after wolf jumped on my back and stepped into me, stuffing the heat substances inside me. Values were measured, ultrasounded and stepped on. After two weeks, I was in heat. Sark examined he gave meds and took samples and tried different stimulators, electricity, dildos, alphas were ready.
These were Bran's opponents. They wanted women's heat to be shared and examined and judged and this is what they did. I was in wolf form all the time, the men fucked sometimes as humans, sometimes as wolves. Even up my ass because Sark wanted to explore. I was deeply grateful that Mimosa was asleep. The heat lasted four weeks. I was pregnant again. I knew how this was going to end. They made me change back to human after confirming I was pregnant. Now I only lasted 10 days pregnant when the green discharge and cramping and fever started.
They did not treat the symptoms. They just cleaned up and measured how high the fever would get, 48 degrees was the record, they pushed panic medications so I was less anxious. Then they made their mistake. They thought I was too weak and didn't tie me down anymore. After the nurses left, I ripped the tubes out. I took out my rage. Now nothing mattered. Now I left. Once again I was finished.
But my rage helped. I wouldn't stay here, no matter what happened. I killed a nurse by breaking her neck. I'm good at it, I robbed her of her clothes, killed her, shot her, destroyed her, and finally got out. I went running into the woods and the building was already burning merrily, I wasn't sure if the whole big facility was destroyed but part of it was. I ran deep into the woods as far as I could. It was early winter and it was starting to snow.
My strength was gone. I saw a cave and crept to the back of the cave past a mother bear who was sleeping. I curled up into a ball and went to sleep. My body couldn't take it anymore, so it went into hibernation mode. My body dried up, I became mummified. My heart beat once every five minutes and a feathery breath escaped my lips once every ten.
I was back on the beach. The cat came next to me again and said " You started to hibernate, now you can stay here as long as your hibernation lasts. Don't be afraid, it's not forever. Enjoy. You know I'm a male, so if you need that kind of company..." I looked at the cat for a long time and said " Really? I'm not about to do that right now, but there are a couple of guys over there I could talk to for a minute." God got up and walked away. I went to see my family, my mother and sister. This would apparently be my reward. I gladly accepted it.
Damon didn't want to feel. Ever since he'd realized he'd run away from the pharmacy with Adam and they'd left Mimi behind, he'd been trying to save Mimi. But Mimi had been moved elsewhere and though Damon searched and searched he couldn't find her. He was having blackouts, he was restless. He knew that Mimi was going through something really bad and somehow she was guilty or she hadn't done enough.
Mimi had been gone for 8 months. Damon had gone away when he couldn't stand to be around Bran after Magnum and Higgins had told him what it had been like, the gelling, and what had happened during and after. Bran was a beast. A rapist. Damon thought that if he ever got Mimi back he would take Mimi far away. For himself. Then he kept getting blackouts again and again. Even now he was walking in the woods, suddenly filled with rage against Mimi. He wanted to show Mimi, to beat her, to stab her.
His teeth spilled various substances as he reeled in his head what he wanted Mimi to experience. A mother bear and her cub came into view. He considered attacking her, but he let her go. For some reason the bear smelled familiar, it immediately brought Mimi to her mind. He was still wandering in his thoughts, that smell again. Damon went to investigate the cave where he had located the scent. right at the back of the cave was a clothes mound, Damon crept closer. It was a human. Must have been around for a while, a mummy. Until he saw the ring on its left hand. That thing was Mimi.
What had they done to Mimi? Killed because he couldn't sense his wife or hear her heartbeat. He has to take Mimi to the show. The others must be allowed to say goodbye, too. He had betrayed her, and she paid a terrible, final price for it. He felt that terrible emptiness again when he could no longer sense her. Apparently, Mimi had hibernated and then her strength was no longer enough for that either.
He had never seen Mimi hibernate. All he knew was that Mimi tried every now and then and Samuel wouldn't let her, because he didn't know how hard it would be to undo such a hibernation and what would even be involved. He gently lifted her body, it didn't weigh much. And carried it through the snowy woods to his car. Every now and then at regular intervals his heart seemed to beat one beat harder than just one. And even less often, it was as if a spring wind blew gently against his neck.