They didn’t take him back to the showers.
Jaylin was thrown back in his cell so hard, he felt a pop as he hit the ground, his shoulder wrenched from its socket. They didn’t feed him and Dr. Peterson didn’t come back. It was as if he was thrown in isolation, away from any outside communication. This was his punishment, to be shut off from the world.
It was hours until he heard another person’s voice. He was startled awake in the middle of the night by the sound of his cell door sliding open. But the time he’d wiped the sleep from his eyes, Gunner was at the side of his cot, Tupperware in hand.
Jaylin wasn’t even a fan of pork chops, but he shed them from the bone so quickly, the rough meat scraped his throat going down and Gunner had to offer a drink from his flask just to stop his coughing.
“So things didn’t go as planned,” he assessed, watching Jaylin work the last of the meat from its bone.
“I still have tomorrow.”
“Today, kid. It’s three AM.” He tossed back his flask and sucked down a deep draft, hissing gruffly on exhale. “And no, you don’t. They’re taking you to the lab first thing in the morning. After that, there’s nothing you can do.”
Again, Jaylin felt the hope in him crushed. He stared down into his lap, into the fraying cotton of his patternless sheets. That was it. That was his last shot. He’d never see them again. None of them.
“Jesus,” Gunner sighed, “don’t cry.”
“Don’t they usually cry?” Jaylin didn’t want to. He’d told himself he wouldn’t. He grit his jaw to try and stop it, but the tears were much stronger than he was. “All of the people she’s taken away, didn’t they cry too?”
“Tried to never get too personal with them,” Gunner admitted.
“I’m losing my family. You might not be losing yours, but I’m losing mine. Everyone I love. My mom, my best friends…I never got to tell Quentin about Anna. About how much she’s helped me.”
“Anastasia Sigvard is dead.” Gunner looked to him startlingly. “I did the autopsy myself.”
“She’s dead, but she’s… here. She helped me find the grates in the shower and she shut off the lights yesterday in the hall—”
“That wasn’t Anna, kid. That was a power surge and some minor hallucinations.”
“It was Anna,” Jaylin shuttered. “It was her. She was right in front of me. I know she’s dead, I know Quentin killed her, but she was here.”
“Whoa, wait.” Gunner gave a laugh, hoarse like he’d smoked too many cigarettes. “Quentin Bronx didn’t kill Anastasia Sigvard.”
Jaylin felt his world slow to a stop. He searched for Gunner’s eyes in the darkness, but he could only see the glare of his glasses and the deep-set circles beneath them. “What?”
“Quentin shot Anna in the chest, using a bullet laced with a chemical that reverses the turning process in werewolves. But when you turn into one of those godforsaken things, well—look.” He took Jaylin’s arm, black and callused and gave it a shake. Jaylin winced at his dislocated shoulder. “You feel that?” Gunner asked. “How hard it is? Like reinforced leather. Your skin—it’s a shell. That’s what makes it so damn hard to kill a lichund.”
“So what does that have to do with Anna?”
“Your skin can’t stop a bullet,” Gunner said. “But it can slow it down. Slow it down enough that it won’t hit any organs or major arteries. The bullet in Anna’s chest stopped in the cartilage of her ribcage. It wasn’t the bullet that killed her, it was the pregnancy.”
Jaylin felt his heart jump, a sickening wallup in his ribs. “What?”
“Bullet or no bullet, Anna was going to die when she transposed back to her natural form. The pregnancy—it kept her organs from shifting back into place. She was trapped in a limbo, somewhere between beast and human. And once her lungs and her other vitals started to change size and position, they couldn’t reform properly with the kid in her womb. It was a sad fate, but fate none the less that killed Anastasia Sigvard.”
Jaylin didn’t know what to say. His chest tightened and he stared into the darkness where he knew Gunner was. “And he doesn’t know this?”
“Thanks to Ziya, never got the chance to tell him.”
Gunner reached for his satchel and dug through the paperwork inside. Withdrawing a manilla envelope, he passed it to Jaylin. He could barely make out the label on the front, but he pieced it together one shape at a time—her name in bold, capital letters. ANASTASIA SIGVARD.
“It’s all in there,” he said. “I can’t give them back the body, but I can give them this.”
Then, like a banshee, a scream flooded his cell, rattled off of each glass wall and echoed into itself with bone-chilling urgency. Jaylin jolted at the sound of the alarm. One that rung throughout the entire building, purling just beyond his cell. Gunner was on his feet, pulled Jaylin up by his good arm.
“What is that?” Jaylin stumbled over his own feet, dragged at Gunner’s side to the back door of his cell.
“We’re on lockdown. Which means someone is either trying to get out, or someone’s trying to get in.” He was fumbling for his keys, feeling along the cut ridges for the right one in the darkness. “It also means all attention is focused outside.” He jammed a key into the lock and gave it a hard twist and the door opened slowly to the cold, ill-lighted storage room.
Reeling Jaylin inside, Gunner slammed it behind him and the thunder it made sounded so quiet now beneath the warble of sirens. He let go of Jaylin and left him to take in the room for the first time. The shelves were full of things like pillows, sheets, toilet paper and extra cots. Yet Jaylin couldn’t remember anyone coming in once to change the sheets or pillows. The thought made his skin crawl. Those sheets weren’t meant for him; they were meant for whoever came after.
He found Gunner at the entrance door, the silhouette of him cutting out the light of the hallway. Peering both ways through the glass, he gave it a shove and cautioned Jaylin to stay back as he walked out into openness. When he was sure the coast was clear, he pulled Jaylin forward by his gown.
“You gotta give them my message, kid. You gotta tell them I’m sorry. You have to get out. You have to deliver those papers to them. Taking her from them was something I’ve never forgiven myself for.”
Jaylin held the envelope in his hands and lost himself to the listless black words that made Anna’s name. His mind was so far away, but the moment Gunner whispered “go”, his feet moved forward. Just like before, he couldn’t feel the floor below his arches or the pads of his toes but he ran faster than he’d ever run before. He ran until he reached the vinyl strips, lights strobing, sirens wailing, he shoved through the shower door and pressed his back against the resistance of the slow-close hinges until it shut with a hiss. He could hear footsteps outside and he hung at the back of the door with his breath held until the footsteps cantered past, dumb and blind to his existence.
His shoulder still dislocated, Jaylin held the pain as he walked along the tile floor until he stood just beneath the steam vent—grates still hanging on by four loose screws. Reaching for the showerhead, a pain racked his shoulder that made him drop the limb limp to his side. It would be harder this time with only one arm.
But Jaylin held on tight and scaled the shower wall, his freakish fist clutching the showerhead so hard, the metal crunched under the influence of his briery claws. He held the envelope between his teeth and with his bad arm, he reached for the vents. It stung, he recoiled into himself. But the sirens were still screaming just outside. Footsteps still passed and voices still moaned in the distance. The world wasn’t going to stop for him; he had to hurry.
He reached out again, gritting at the pain. But it only took one swipe and the vent fell, hanging by a single stubborn screw. The tiny piece of metal seemed an ally, holding his weight as he hung onto the grate for balance and swung his body up, legs locking around the bent and punctured metal of the shower head. He inched his way closer like a sloth on a branch much too short. And when he found the strength, Jaylin pulled himself up to straddle the metal pipe.
He rose first onto his knees, balancing precariously on the slender piping. Then onto his feet, toes cold and numb and shaking as they curled around the metal. And reaching into the empty duct with nothing to catch him might he slip, Jaylin pushed up on his feet. His legs wobbled like he was crouched on a tightrope, and Jaylin felt around in the small, cramped space. His claws pierced the metal like it was weak aluminum, and he used their grapple to move forward.
He could hear the metal pipes bowing under his weight. It would give out sooner than later. Break from it’s mounts and fall to the ground, or bend like a broken tree branch. So Jaylin moved faster, one foot after another until he was standing on his toes, at the edge of the pipe. Then he jumped, clawing into the metal, thrashing his legs until he’d managed one knee and then the other.
The ducts were cramped—too tight to move. Much too tight to turn. So Jaylin reached beneath him instead and jerked the grate back up into place. From below, it wouldn’t be terribly obvious that he’d made his escape. Not until you looked closely and caught the loose screws. He didn’t stop to consider finding a way to twist them back in, there was no time. Instead, Jaylin tucked the envelope into the waistband of his shorts and crawled, as fast and as quietly as he could.
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