“A prison cell you mean,” Storm said. The other two men looked at him like they had forgotten he was present.
Sol spoke quietly. “It would be foolhardy to do anything else until we know more about the… patient. If you were in my position, responsible for the safety of everyone in Jefferson Unit, you’d do the same thing.”
Damn logic. Storm couldn’t argue with that. If he was in Sol’s position, that’s precisely what he would do.
Elora’s consciousness waxed and waned. During moments of fleeting awareness she registered blinding bright lights and masked people in blue milling around her body like it was an inanimate mound of flesh. She saw the remains of her clothing being cut away by one medic while another fastened a needle to her hand. When the locket was withdrawn from her watch pocket she tried to reach for it, but the protest came out as a moan so low it wasn’t heard.
There was a muted, rhythmic sound of a machine beeping, keeping time with the throbbing of blood being pumped through her ruined body. Every pulse was torment. Every breath was agony.
Images of the massacre of her family, most of the clan, slid across her mind like a slide show followed by the gut wrenching memory of Monq’s betrayal.
“Be happy!” was the last thing she heard as she was sucked into a giant vacuum hose. Mercifully, Monq had not seen that a layer of betrayal had been added to her stunned expression. In a matter of minutes, Elora Laiken’s life, which she would have previously described as boring beyond compare, had been turned upside down and inside out. Under other circumstances her mind might have begun trying to sort through these events and make sense of them, but pain trumped processing. And there was pain.
Perhaps she was screaming. She thought she might have been, but nothing could be heard above the roar. Over and over again she was beaten by the giant tumbler. Newly formed bruises, cuts, and abrasions became bigger bruises, cuts, and abrasions every thirty seconds until there was no part of her body that wasn’t bleeding, broken, or swelling. At times she thought she might have heard a thump every time the tumbler carried her up and dropped her again, but it was probably just the brain filling in blanks. Just as she had begun begging the gods to kill her and end it, she was blinded by a bright light, felt a blast of cold air, and was slammed onto a hard surface.
After a few seconds of stillness she realized she had stopped moving. That’s when the true punishment began. The pain was beyond describable, beyond mortal capacity to bear. But through the curtain of anguish, she thought she heard voices, muffled, maybe far away. The noise in the machine had left her hearing partially impaired. If she thought she would live and be whole again, she might have cared.
The only constant was pain. Relentless, excruciating pain.
She might have been in that swirling tunnel for minutes or hours or days. Trauma overrode all sense of time passage. She remembered a sudden burst of frigid air that instantly chilled her wet body and, as a parting insult, she was dropped on a cold, smooth, surface that was hard as rock.
What little wind was left in her lungs was knocked out of her on impact. At first she couldn’t inhale and thought – hoped - she would expire from that. But, just when her vision was going dark, her body involuntarily dragged in an agonizing, ragged breath.
There were muffled voices. She tried to look around, but even the tiniest movement was restricted by pain, breakage, and swelling. Breathing hurt. Moving eyeballs hurt. She thought she was curled into the fetal position, but couldn’t be sure. Through wet strands of hair she saw a blood-covered arm lying on the floor in front of her face. Beyond that, large boots moved into view; well worn brown leather with squared-off toes.
First, she tried raising herself on an elbow, but fell back when her wet forearm slipped out from under her. Once again her body slammed against the stone floor. She probably hadn’t moved an eighth of an inch, an action that would have been imperceptible to onlookers.
The voices were saying, “…fuck. What is that?”
Next she tried to roll over onto a shoulder blade to get an idea where she was and who was speaking. Her first thought was that it must be assassins who had singled her out and were keeping her alive for ransom or torture. She opened her mouth to scream from the shooting pain of rolling over, but all that came out was a groan that sounded like it had originated somewhere else.
From the new position she could see blurred shapes. Oddly, she didn’t get the sense that she was in danger or that they meant her harm, even though she thought she heard one voice say, “Kill it now”. Surely she could not be the “it” to which they referred?
She reached out to a large shape in dark colors, holding her hand toward the figure until her fingers slowly began to curl under involuntarily as if all muscle control wilted away with the last of her energy. Just before losing consciousness, she remembered thinking that was very likely the last thing she would ever do and she welcomed the peaceful escape of the silent blackness.
Suddenly she felt herself being pulled and lifted roughly, aggravating her injuries, jabbing the wounds, making the pain even worse than before. In her mind she was screaming. Just let me die. Please. Just let me be still for a minute. And die.
When her body came to rest it was against a surface softer and warmer than the stone floor. She was being jostled, pressed into the upper body of someone who now carried her. She smelled aftershave, a hint of cigar, and felt the timbre of a masculine voice murmuring assurances about being okay, calmly, but breathlessly.
The recovery room nurse looked at her face, noticed she was awake and said cheerfully, in a strange accent, “Hey there. How you doin'?”
Elora tried to say, “Hurts,” but through torn and swollen lips, it came out more like a hiss, “urrrrzzz”.
“I know, sweetheart. We’re taking care of you though. In just a minute you’re going to get some really good sleep.”
Now that she was lucid and responding to questions, they would grant the boon of deliverance drugs; drugs that temporarily allowed the sweet mercy of sleep. She tried to ask for the locket, but before she could make herself understood, she was claimed by a blissful wave of oblivion.
***
CHAPTER 2
BLACK SWAN FIELD TRAINING MANUAL Section I: Chapter 1, #1 The plural of vampire is vampire.
The Order of the Black Swan maintained fifteen operations facilities for paranormal investigations around the world. Jefferson Unit was located in the middle of Fort Dixon in New Jersey. There were a lot of advantages in housing an installation in a military no-fly zone with a doubly secure perimeter. Military personnel on base knew no more than that it was a Top Secret annex. It was forty-five minutes from New York by train and seven minutes by whister.
It was named after Thomas Jefferson and funded in perpetuity with proceeds from his estate. He had personally experienced a paranormal event that shaped his spiritual and political perspective, and believed that the future depended upon a greater understanding of mysteries that are denied by the collective while continuing to lurk on the edge of human consciousness.
For well over two hundred years the Foundation had worked with a series of secret government liaisons, each serving an appointment for life or until a violation of the mandatory vow of secrecy ended their... appointment.