Chapter 54: Volume II: Chapter 21: It’s a rescue…

“It’s not ready, Johnson,” Melody said, back stiff, posture guarded. She stood in front of the holding chamber’s door, a subconscious effort to put more barriers between him and the kids. Lexy stood to the side doing the same with the serum.

“For your daughter’s sake, I hope you’re wrong,” he said. His head tilted, the slightest of motions. Guards rushed forward to hold the women back. “Make sure they have a good view. One should always have the opportunity to appreciate their work.”

He led the remaining guards into the chamber, one of them swiping the serum off the desk on their way. Melody struggled against the man pulling her toward the viewing window. If he noticed, he didn’t show it.

She felt them shove Lexy by her side, her eyes never leaving Chleo. From the corner of her eye, she saw Johnson walk to the far wall. The kids watched him, Chleo leaning against Will’s back, her legs shaking with effort, as he tried to block her from view. Johnson pushed a panel. There was a click and a hiss before the liquid metal melted from the wall and formed an examination chair.

“Go on then, Ms. Mathews,” Johnson said, snapping on a pair of gloves, “hop up.”

Will shuffled on his feet, trying to make himself bigger.

“No,” Chleo said. Her hand rested on Will’s shoulder. Melody wondered if it was the only thing keeping her legs from collapsing. After the day before, she wasn’t sure how she was even standing.

“You’re sure?” Johnson asked raising an eyebrow.

Chleo froze, eyes darting between him and the guards. Uncertainty danced across her face. She flicked a glance at the window. Melody’s breath caught in her throat as she met her gaze, the hands holding her in place tightening as she shifted. Chleo’s hand drifted up to touch her chest before she turned her attention back to Johnson.

“I’m not getting on that chair,” she said.

Before she could move, the guards ripped Will away and wrenched her arms behind her back. She struggled reaching for her chest again, Will mimicking her. The guards ignored their efforts, throwing Will against the wall and strapping Chleo to the chair in motions almost too quick to register. If Melody had one thing to say about Johnson’s contingent on Umbra, they were efficient in their cruelty.

Chleo pulled at her restraints, straining against the padded chains attaching her to the arms. Melody took a breath willing her heart to calm enough for her to think. She needed to get inside the room.

The serum wasn’t tested. She’d made sure of it. Every advance they made, she and Lexy covered. As interesting as the project was, they couldn’t afford to give Johnson a finished project.

Melody watched as he fished the serum from his pocket. She and Lexy did their best to create it from their notes and cobble together the solution they hypothesized would work. Her stomach clenched at the thought of her daughter being the first test. Nothing ever went right the first time.

Johnson raised the syringe and tapped it with a finger, pushing the plunger until all the air cleared the needle. It wasn’t ready. Melody pulled against the guard holding her in place. Patients flitted through her mind, humans, neons turning into abominations, bastardized versions of what they once were in the name of progress. Their bodies turned on them, fighting the change, until they finally failed.

“Chleo.” Her name fell from Melody’s mouth with a breath.

Johnson took a step to the chair. He yanked Chleo’s jacket to the side until he could reach her shoulder. She strained away eyes wide and wild. Her breaths came out in short gasps as she bucked in the chair, her chains rattling against the metal.

Melody had to get in. She needed to help. The guard tightened his grip. She ripped her arm out of his grasp anyway. It didn’t help. She was stuck, cursed to watch. Her fist pounded against the window in frustration.

Johnson glanced at her. His eyes gleamed as he plunged the needle into Chleo, the serum following its lead.

“No!” Will yelled, ramming his head back into the closest guard’s nose. The man barely flinched as it started gushing blood. He rammed Will into the wall with an unfeeling mechanical movement to keep him still before returning to a robotic stance.

Johnson leaned back, snapping off his gloves. A satisfied smile played on his lips. His eyes crinkled in the closest thing to joy Melody had ever seen on him.

“There,” he said. “How do you feel?”

Everyone stood frozen, waiting for the fallout. Melody ran her eyes over Chleo, searching for any of the thousands of side-effects she and Lexy had witnessed.

Nothing happened.

Chleo glared at Johnson. His eyes crinkled, amused. He waited another minute.

“Still alive,” he said turning to stare at Melody through the glass. She pressed her hand into it, letting the coolness seep into her sweaty palm. “How… predictable.”

Melody’s jaw clenched. He thought she’d lied. They delayed and dragged their feet, but they never lied. The serum wasn’t ready. It shouldn’t have worked. She was caught between wanting to prove him wrong and relieved that she didn’t.

Chleo’s jaw clenched, her body seized. Melody cursed her last thought throwing herself against the guard’s hold. He didn’t budge. Chleo seized again. Johnson watched with an interested eye, happy to observe.

Lexy pounded the glass next to her shouting orders for 20 cc’s of melofet-whatever and 10 cc’s of some other concoction that might counteract the effects. Will caught her eye with a quick nod and tried to rip out of his guard’s hold. Johnson raised a brow and watched. Chleo’s body bucked in the chair. Her eyes rolled back, the cuffs pinning her in place clacking against metal. Melody watched her veins grow and darken as Will failed to break his guard’s grip. Her heart wouldn’t take much more.

Was it the adrenaline she insisted Lexy add? She was there for hardware not medicine. What was she thinking? Lexy knew what she was doing. She should have trusted her.

Chleo’s body seized again, lifting her from the chair, her body straight and tense. It held, her muscles refusing to relax. Suddenly, she collapsed. Melody stared at her chest, willing it to rise and fall with a breath. It didn’t.

Johnson’s eyebrows squeezed together in thought. He took a step forward and checked her pulse. His jaw fluttered and Melody agonized over what it could mean. He stepped back head down, fists clenched.

“It should have worked,” she heard him mutter into the silence. Will slumped into his guard’s wooden arms. Lexy’s hand rested on the glass still poised to strike. Melody felt her heart slow, hope leaking down into the floor. First Mic, now Chleo, Johnson stole them both.

She leaned her forehead against the glass. Rage tempted her, but exhaustion overpowered it. She wanted Jack, his soft hand resting on her back instead of the guard’s bruising hold. She wanted Mic, a playful voice yammering about all the things he would teach his baby sister. Her eyes clouded staring at her daughter’s body. She wanted Chleo back.

The body jerked. The skin flickered green, lungs heaving in a breath. It convulsed, another flicker. Melody held her breath leaving all the air for her daughter. Chleo’s eyes snapped open. Another breath forced into her lungs. Her skin strobed as she gasped and coughed, gulping for more.

A slow smile spread across Johnson’s face.

~*~*~

Chleo felt the chair beneath her. It wasn’t there. Then it was. She knew it should be, but didn’t know why. Her world collapsed into her, the chair and the air. She’d never tasted anything so sweet.

It took hours, maybe seconds, to realize there wasn’t anything else. No light. No darkness. Nothing. Her, the chair, and air spiraled in a void. No, there was something else… sound. Her, the chair, and air spiraled through sound in the void.

Light strobed in the nothing. She looked down, no not looked— sensed down?— catching sight of a body, her body, before it blinked away again. Feeling crept back, the chair falling into the background. Pain filled her, wracking her chest. She heard the coughing then, close to her ears, felt them scratch her throat as she sucked at the air greedily.

She felt her eyes blink, still absorbed in the nothingness, lost in the void. She felt her fists clench, her legs, arms and back seize. Why couldn’t she see it? The flickering returned giving her something to focus on, a compass in a storm.

Everything stopped as suddenly as it started. Her compass, her light, faded, replaced by rough hands and a harsh voice.

“How many fingers?”

“Wha-” The word trailed off her tongue, mangled in her throat, as she tried to figure out who had asked. They were familiar. A spike of fear danced across her sore muscles.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” the person repeated. He repeated. A face flashed in her memory, something called from before the void when light and matter made images.

She searched, trying to find what he wanted her to see. The muscles around her eyes pulled and twisted, but she couldn’t tell if they moved. Chleo cleared her throat, swallowing against the scratchiness.

“I don’t know.”

Fingers snapped near her. She flinched at the sound.

“Stand.”

She froze. Could she? Before she could decide the rough hands were back, pressure around her wrists snapped away with a clatter, and they pulled her onto her feet.

Chleo spun in the void. Her feet hit something— the ground?— pressing her up… or maybe down… to the side? Everything tipped. Her legs faltered and a force pulled the rest of her… down. Yes, gravity pulled down.

Cool stone pressed into her side reminding her of a throne room from a lifetime ago. Pressure on her shoulder pushed her, and she rolled to her back. A weight fell on her chest, her locket.

She could reach for it, sling it around like a wounded animal. Her hand lifted. Pain shot through her arm, bruised around a single point. The phantom prick from a needle reminded her what the cruel voice wanted. A name floated with it… Johnson. Determined, she ignored the pain, hand landing over the lump hidden in the fabric.

He wouldn’t stop. Johnson would take and poke and experiment until there was nothing left. The void would take her and he would call it progress. She had to stop him. Her fingers fumbled, searching for the opening.

“Leave her alone.”

She froze. Will… right, Will was there. She couldn’t lash out, not when she couldn’t see, couldn’t keep him safe.

A pair scuffled to her side. The sound of flesh smacking flesh echoed through he room.

“Why would I do that?” Johnson asked, his voice slithering away, directed toward someone else.

There was a pause.

“She’s important,” Will almost whispered, then louder. “You said it yourself, no one else survived. She needs to rest or you’ll kill her before you get a chance to study the serum’s effects.”

Footsteps clicked against the floor, slow, measured. They stopped.

“Very good,” Johnson’s voice broke the silence. “Almost as skilled as your mother.” He let the words hang. Fabric snapped with another step. “Everyone out. We’ll begin the trials tomorrow.”

The words triggered motion and suddenly Chleo was surrounded by sound and currents in the air. They twisted around her snapping her hold on the ground until she spun with them. The void sucked her away until direction had no meaning. It was her, the air, and sound. She searched for Will among it.

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“Chleo.”

There. She centered on it. The ground was below her again. A hand clasped her shoulder, pulling her back against a warm chest. She flinched, biting back a yell.

“Chleo, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he whispered in her ear, repeating the mantra on a loop. She relaxed into him. For the first time, the void fell into the background. She knew where she was.

Everything tumbled back to her, stealing the ship, Mic, the Neons, their moms, Johnson and the serum, everything. He injected her again. The colors in their syringe danced in the tube acting more like a gas than a liquid, like last time.

A memory of a doctor and a growing blindspot with only a serum shining in the void whispered across her mind. It happened again, only this time the blindspot grew. She couldn’t see anything. Would they fix it? Could they? She couldn’t bare the thought of Johnson with another injection.

“Will,” she mumbled into his shoulder, interrupting his apologies, “we have to get out of here.”

He took a breath. “I know.” He choked on the words. She could hear the tears he refused to shed.

“Do you still have the hornet?” she asked barely above a whisper. Were they listening? Would Johnson hear the plan as they made it?

Will tensed under her. “You know I can’t.”

She leaned away, anger sparking and flaring in her chest. “We have to do something. I can’t exactly whip my locket around like this.” She tried not to snarl. She really did.

“Chleo, it’s wrong. Merk trusted me with it, me, a human, and on top of everything, I like the use of my hand, thank you very much.”

“Who would know?” she spat, trying to rein in her fury.

“Who would— What happened to you? What happened to the girl who badgered me about catching fish because it was against the rules, the girl who glared at me every time I snuck us a couple pieces of candy from Sugar Shoppe?”

“They belonged to you,” she said. It came out shrill. She didn’t care. “Your highness.”

“That’s not the point!”

“No, you’re right,” she hissed. “We should wait until he comes back, let him make me into one of the monsters we saw on the way here.”

“That won’t happen,” another voice joined them.

Chleo flinched back into Will’s chest, trying to look in the speaker’s direction.

“We won’t let it,” a second cut in, soft, warm, safe, the reason she couldn’t see. Chleo wasn’t sure how she felt.

“Mom.”

~*~*~

Jack stared at the compound, his heart beating against his chest. They were there. He knew it. His girls.

“They’re here,” Merk said, proving Jack’s assumption. He tapped his wristlet, taking care to keep it inside of the compound’s boundary. The moon’s blocker killed it if he tried anywhere else. “I scanned Chleo when we were in the village and Melody’s markers are still in the archive.” He showed them two blinking dots with coordinates listed to the side. “They’re here.”

“Defenses?” Eelock asked, resting a hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack wasn’t sure if it was to reassure him or keep him from charging the compound. It did both.

“Other than a bunch of mad scientists running around?” Merk asked. Jack caught Dai rolling her eyes before she threw him a smirk. “Nothing much above ground. A security system worthy of Melody in the bunker.” He motioned toward the smaller building in the crater.

“Makes sense. He probably had her build it,” Dai said. Merk and Eelock looked at her as if the idea surprised them. “What, you thought he took her to twiddle her thumbs in an unmarked cell?”

Merk huffed and looked away. “So we’re up against Johnson and Melody? Great.”

“She would have built in a backdoor,” Jack said, ignoring Merk’s grumbling. “We find it or her and we’ll have our way out.”

“Is that a plan? Because that sounds an awful lot like a plan, lover boy, and I thought we agreed—”

“Merk, that’s enough,” Eelock cut in. “Entry points?”

Merk snapped to attention. “Two. An elevator down or through the vents. My readings show a majority of the security system is concentrated on the vents.”

Eelock and Dai exchanged a look.

“Front door rescue?” she asked. Eelock’s lips thinned.

“We’ll need a distraction.” He looked over the three of them. “We’ve never tried with less than ten breachers.”

“Until now,” Dai challenged. Eelock studied her, before turning a predatory gaze over the compound.

“Until now,” he agreed.

“The worst,” Merk groused shaking his head at Dai, “you and Jack have the worst plans.”

Dai smirked.

Jack cleared his throat getting their attention. “About that distraction.” They all turned, Eelock raising a brow. Jack motioned over to the main road. “Think that’ll work?”

Dust surrounded a contingent of horses stampeding toward the compound. Light danced through the riders. Some producing their own, others reflecting it. Jack and the others watched as they charged the main gate.

“Are those bows?” Merk asked, eyes glued to the procession. They watched as a few of the riders’ lights flickered.

“And arrows,” Dai confirmed, looking as surprised as Merk.

“Well, they’re helping with the front door. Think they’ll help with the rescue?” Jack asked.

“No time to ask,” Eelock said. “We move in when they do. Avoid engagement. We slip in, grab our people, slip out.”

There wasn’t time for a response. The horses and their riders reached the front gate. One of them shot an arrow. It stuck seconds before it blew open a space big enough to run through. The riders poured in.

Arrows flew. Scientists fell. More explosions rocked the compound.

Eelock took off, not bothering to give the order, staying low until he hit the bottom of the crater. Jack followed seconds behind Merk and Dai. He was getting rusty. They sprinted across open ground until they slammed against the nearest building.

Jack strained, trying to hear if someone spotted them. Scientists screamed, only interrupted by tiny explosions or the thwack of arrows. Nothing pointed the crowd to their position.

He chanced a glance around the corner. The path to the bunker was clear. He exchanged a look with Eelock. They needed to get inside before the commotion stopped. At Eelock’s nod, they took off.

Guards flooded to the gate, nothing distinguishing them from the scientists but the blasters in their hands. Jack snuck a glance as he sprinted. Their eyes were trained forward, none of them thinking to watch their backs. Amateurs, Jack scoffed. He slid into the bunker after Merk, and jerked to a stop.

It seemed they weren’t the only ones with a plan. He stared at the arrow pointed at his head. Of all they ways he thought he would go, a bow and arrow never made the list.

“Let’s all take a breath,” Eelock said his voice filling the small chamber. A guard slumped in a chair against the wall, an arrow poking out of his right eye. Jack flicked a glance toward the elevator doors. No fewer than ten figures stood between them and the way down. Light flowed from some of them and reflected off others, strange scales dotting their skin. A few flickered, harnesses rattling against their shoulders as they twitched and sniffed the air.

“They some of yours, Tilly?” One of the… not-men, not-Neons… asked.

“No,” a Neon stepped forward looking them over. She ignored the grumbling behind her when she blocked a few of the scale covered men’s shots. “Just escaped?” she asked.

Jack forced his face neutral wondering how Eelock would play it. He watched him exchange a look with Dai.

“We have family down there,” Dai said, meeting Tilly’s eye. “We’re getting them out with or without your help.”

Tilly studied her, eyes drifting to inspect each of them in turn. A smile broke across her face, yellow dancing off her cheeks.

“You heard them, Jones,” she said. “Call the elevator.”

Jones raised a scaly brow before shrugging and stowing his bow. They waited for him to override the elevators commands and piled on with room to spare. The doors clanged shut.

Jack forced himself to breathe. They were there, Merk saw them on his scan. Jack would find them. He would see his family again.

The elevator jerked into motion. Into the bowels of Umbra, they went.

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