Chapter 14 - Blood & Axes

Everything hurt.

There were hands on my elbows, harshly cutting into my flesh and imprinting their harsh memories on the skin underneath the skin. These hands hurt in the pretense of upholding me as they dragged me along the stone floor.

There was no point in resisting. I was surrounded.

There was still hope, but yet no hope at present. Their hands were on my skin, tasers on their belts, and my feet were trailing me, scraping against the rough-hewn stones. If an escape was to be made, it was not at this point. Yet, at the same time, I wondered if an escape route was made clear, if I would be able to manage. My bones were tired - so tired. Even dragged, they were too weary to move. I was as rubber; heavy and useless.

They brought me into the Experimentation Room, which I recognized even as I entered backwards. There were memories in this place; pleading screams of agony had left their mark and now there hung in the air a great dampness, as if the screams had stayed and shrouded in the room as a thick, damp, muffling veil.

Things were looking increasingly dim.

If I was to die, this would be as good a place as any to do it.

They slung me down onto the floor, the impact jolting through my body with all the pain of a thousand volts of lightning. My eyes burned dry from the pain. But I would not cry in front of these bastards. I would not cry.

I refused to.

One of the lab coat scientists walked up the stairs to meet the hulking gorillas that had brought me into his clutches and he smiled that creepy, slimy sort of smile that fit his wormy mouth.

"This is the one who's been freeing the prisoners," the deep voice of my own personal favorite pet gorilla sounded out.

I rolled over to look at him.

"Why, Freddie, I didn't know you cared," I cooed charmingly, smiling up at them like a loon.

The kick from his inforced-toe boot came swiftly and suddenly, hitting me in my midsection. I had expected it, anticipated the pain that came bubbling up from inside of me, predicted the warm liquid that slid up my throat. But all the same, I coughed on that pain, on that heated liquid.

Out spattered blood, the red staining the stone.

But yet the gorillas ignored me, attending to their master of evil, the lab coat with the wormy mouth.

"You have done very well. Now-"

"They did well?" I interrupted, scoffing from the floor, ignoring the thickness of my throat. "I liberated almost the entire lot of cells. Yeah, they did so well-"

The boot came again and I simply spat out the slippery red liquid, smiling all the more, letting the remaining blood coat my teeth and slip into the cracks of my crazed grin. Even if I did not have the use of my body, I had the use of my words and my wits. I wasn't going to show them weakness; I would go down taunting them, as I had when I had lived free and wild.

Blood is thicker than water and I still had blood flowing through my veins.

"Take her down."

"Ooh, so threatening," I hissed as the gorillas picked me up again, making sure to beat me up as much as they could on the way down. "You're all just a bunch of little girls quaking in their stilettos. You call yourselves paladins? Don't make me laugh."

Freddie's fist hit me somewhere that was hardly polite. I snapped. Somehow, from somewhere, the strength came for me to twist my body and use the momentum to spring up and bite at Freddie's ear, my teeth making connection and biting straight through the cartilage. Blood filled my mouth and I spat out the chuck of Freddie's ear that had miraculously come off, twisting my body to attack the next gorilla who was standing like an idiot, staring at me in shock, no doubt wondering where this strength had come from the limp, pitiful heap of rags.

I bared my teeth and pounced on him, grinning like a madwoman as the paladin guards across the room darted for me. There were five; too many for me to handle. Still, I fought like a cat, scratching, biting, kicking, and placing well-aimed punches like a tornado.

I felt a hand find its' way across my cheek, backhanding me. The sheer force behind the blow sent me to the floor and my eyes unconsciously widened as the gorilla picked up one of the implements of torture; a rusty ax.

Paladins had been known to chop off a few fingers or toes once the Jumper's back was already full of lashes. I had heard of this punishment but never experienced it. Except the gorilla was not aiming for my fingers or my toes. He was aiming for my neck.

Suddenly, all of my strength was gone. The exhileration of a fight had disappeared and, for the first time in years, I knew fear.

The ax descended -

But then a body appeared from nowhere, forcing the paladin down to the floor.

There stood an angel with a leather jacket and tousled hair, electric eyes blazing as he picked up the ax and decapitated the stunned paladin. But he didn't even so much as glance at me, turning instead to attend to the two paladins that were standing there, bemused as to where their new opponent had come from. Before they could even think again, he had already cracked one skull with the blunt side of the ax and begun to beat up the other.

Before he turned around, I was already gone.

If I had stayed, perhaps I would have seen the curses forming on his lips and his panic to get to my jumpscar before it faded. But I didn't say - and I didn't see.

I was already in the cells, forcing my hands to cooperate, willing them to keep from shaking as I hastily moved from one prisoner to the next, unlocking their handcuffs and setting them free, telling them all simultaneously who I was and where we were going, about the organization to fight and -

A body stood in the hallway between cells, staring with wide - and yet infuriated - eyes. I had no time for it. Even if he had just saved my life, I would not look at him, just as he would not look at me when he was in the midst of battle. This was a battle, as much as any other.

Sirens were sounding all around us and I could already hear the tramping of footsteps from the paladins. Quickly, I moved from one Jumper to the other, jumping and leaving them instantaneously to go back for another. One, two, three. Accounted for.

But Griffin had not followed me.

With an irritated growl, I jumped back to find him in the midst of paladins, stubbornly fighting, even though it was obvious that they would eventually overwhelm him, although he was holding his own. There were just simply too many.

I jumped into the fray, kicking and punching as rapidly as humanly possible, jumping and spotting into places that would make my attacks all the more lethal, making my way over to him.

"GO." He yelled at me and I caught a single, fleeting glimpse of his shocking electric blue eyes, that were just as dangerous as a thousand volts of electricity shooting towards his opponents.

So I went. But not before I grabbed his wrist to take him with me. We found ourselves in the cave dwelling. He whirled on me with snapping and crackling eyes, glaring me down, his beautiful mouth forming words that fell on deaf ears.

My strength had vanished once again. My bones were as butter. I felt the world tilting and going dark and that was all that I remembered before my body landed in arms and I was lost to the world.