Chapter 5 - The One With the Introductions

Vanessa:

A cyclone ravaged my brain, sending jolts of pain across my head- I was concussed. But my head wasn’t the only source of pain- the skin around my ankle was red and abraded, a result of the spiked metal cuff around it. Luckily, the cuff was loose and the holes the spikes had gouged into my ankles weren’t too deep.

A scream belonging to a familiar voice caught my attention. “Vanessa? Vanessa?” “Nate?”, I called back in response, surprised by how loud my voice was. “Vanessa, where are you?”, he screamed back but before I could respond he replied, “I’ll come back for you” followed by a gunshot and a cry of pain. The door of the cell I was locked in was thrown open and two guards grabbed me by the arm, hauled me out and threw me down.

The cold, hard ground wasn’t an ideal landing, to say the least, and, despite my effort to pick myself up, I remained on the ground. Mustering all of the remaining energy I had left, I turned over and saw Nate and another man lying on the floor.

There are no words to describe the relief I was flooded with when I realised that Nate hadn’t been shot, not with a bullet at least, but one of the guards had zapped him with a stun gun baton. His body lay beside me, limp and still, but not dead.

I had forgotten about the other man when he shifted uneasily and said, “Told the kid to keep quiet, but hey, at least he found you. It’s Vanessa, right?”, seeing my nod, he held out his hand, “Azazel Morgan, currently being held captive and your brother’s cellmate”, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Hm, you look more similar than I thought”, he observed almost to himself, his gaze shifting from my hazel eyes to my chestnut hair. I eyed him warily; something didn’t seem right about him- not just his sarcasm and façade of not caring.

The guards dragged us to a room, hauled us in and left. A towering man with a deep but muffled voice reverberated, “You’ll have to excuse them for being harsh but it’s much better when you don’t resist”, he paused to look me in the eyes through his gas mask and continued sinisterly, “it always is”. Before we could react, he sprang on us and stabbed needles into our necks. He must have pumped us with some kind of sedative because what we woke up to rendered us speechless.