The look on her face chilled my veins and made me want to hide in the corner.
“Marquinn, what is it?”
“They’re here.”
I was about to ask her what the hell she was talking about, but the sound of shattered glass and an uproar of chanting hatred ripped through the air like a pressure cooker. Marquinnscreamed and I ran out of the room I’d assigned for her, feeling her presence anxiously waiting behind me.
The protestors were in the lobby area of the Orb wing, that much I could hear. Glass was shattering and things were getting thrown around with nothing but the swiveling double doors separating them from us. I turned back to Marquinn.
“Run to the other side of the center.”
She shook her head. “We’re not allowed over there!”
“It’s a hell of a lot safer than here right now! You’ll be fine, just go!”
Thinking I might be right, Marquinn ran off out of view just as Babs and the sangamar man she’d been helping were coming out of one of the rooms behind me.
“What the hell is—”
Her question got swallowed by the clamorous sound of the protestors pushing through the double doors no more than twenty feet from me. The faces that I could read were twisted in vigorous anger, irate that we were there helping Orbs, chanting that damnedOrb-ominationas they did so. I was frozen in place, not knowing what they were going to do.
Once I saw one of them lighting a homemade Molotov cocktail, I knew we were in trouble. I craned my neck to Babs and the sangamar as they both screamed.
“Run!” I begged them as I made a run for them, hoping to get away.
But unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky.
“I don’t think so.”
The voice came from behind as the back of my collar was pulled hard enough to choke me, throwing me off balance as I fell to the floor. My head sank hard into the tiled floor as my entire awareness blurred and my ears started to ring really loud. I tasted blood in my mouth as I faintly heard what sounded like Babs yelling after me.
Feet started kicking me as I smelled the beginnings of thefire, from more than one Molotov cocktail if I had to guess. I saw through a forest of limbs as people started to deliberately trample me. Someone reared back their foot and it smacked right into the center of my face, causing me to knock my head back on the tile once more.
Black swirled at the edges of my vision like a vignette, and screams filled my muffled ears as the darkness claimed me.
Chapter 26
I’d only heardwhispers before I woke up. Bits and pieces of voices that belonged to people that I cared about, but I was unable to locate who each one belonged too. There was a slew of big words from my left, coming from the person I had to assume was my doctor. Wait, why was I in the hospital?
The blood center. Theriot. Uncomfortable memories filled my head to the brim, overflowing with an inability to sift through it all. I remembered the protestors breaking in, starting a fire with their makeshift Molotovs, but the rest was lost to me. Or it was too painful for my body to allow me to recollect.
A door closed as I struggled to flutter my eyes open. Eyelashes full of lead, I blinked away the weight of my slumber and tried to transition my vision to a more alert status.
The generic, blank, clean room splashed into my eyes. My senses started to come back to me all at once. Feeling the neutral comfort the hospital bed underneath me had to offer. Hearing the hum of the fluorescent lights that donned the ceiling as its home and the subtle whisper of the air conditioning running. Seeing double as two different versions of Thayer danced into view.
Wait.Two Thayers?
“Bas!”
My head lolled to the right, toward the Thayer that looked more normal as he rushed to my bedside, slamming himself down in the chair waiting for him as the odd Thayer stared at me with crossed arms and a demeanor that was instilling caution into my bloodstream.
“Oh my god, you’re awake!” Thayer turned to his mirror made flesh and gestured toward the door of my room. “Go get the doctor!”
Weird Thayer just nodded and traipsed toward the door. Finally my eyes adjusted enough to notice stable differences between my Thayer and this one. The Thayer I knew had longer, scruffy hair that he kept longer than mine. The Thayer leaving the room had buzzed his hair down, fuzzy black hair remnants creating a textured helmet protecting his scalp. I turned back to the real Thayer and wondered what the hell was going on.
“What the hell is going on?” Apparently my brain couldn’t dole out more sophisticated sentences and clearly something bad had happened to me at the blood center. My voice was a gravely version of what it’d been before.
“The doctor said there was no way to know if you’d wake up soon, or ever. They’ve been running so many tests.” Thayer looked worried, shaking his head as he sniffled.
