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“Do you know who we are?” I found myself asking, my voice trembling from suppressed fear and anger.
Stephen smiled. “I know you’re his daughter,” he said. “That makes your friend here incidental.”
Victor's eyes narrowed at Stephen's words, his fingers flexing on the mug. There was a tenseness in his posture, one that readied him for anything – fight, flight, anything. I could almost hear his thoughts racing, calculating our odds against this man who had us cornered in the middle of nowhere.
Stephen seemed to enjoy the tension, sitting back and taking a leisurely sip of his coffee. His gaze darted between Victor and me, an amused smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. The very sight of it made me want to wipe that smirk off his face with a punch.
Focus, Sofia. I snapped myself out of my anger-filled daydreams, my mind racing to find a way out of this predicament.
"If you know who we are," I started, my voice steady despite the fear gnawing at the pit of my stomach, "then you should also know we're not going down without a fight."
Stephen’s smirk turned into a grin. “Oh, good,” he said. “It’s so boring down here. I could use some adrenaline.”
Chapter Three: Teo
Ihad no idea how long it took us to get Sam to the hospital. The adrenaline pumping through my veins muddled my sense of time, making every second feel like an eternity. I drove with reckless abandon, ignoring traffic rules and narrowly avoiding collisions as I raced against time. Grayson, in the passenger seat, remained uncharacteristically quiet, looking at Sam every few minutes.
We stumbled into the ER, drawing a flurry of medical personnel around us as we screamed for help. The sterile lights of the hospital bore down on us as we waited, our hearts pounding in sync with the ticking clock on the wall.
“Come with me,” a woman in scrubs said as she looked me up and down. “We can probably skip triage.”
“I’m waiting for my friend.”
“You want to stay alive while you wait, right?”
I tilted my head in confusion, then looked down at myself. My shirt was soaked in blood, a jagged wound split open on my side. Pain suddenly flared up at the realization, sharp as a knife's edge and twice as cold. I hissed, clutching at my side in a futile attempt to ward away the pain. Everything around me seemed to blur for a moment, the world spinning on some unseen axis.
The woman shot me a pointed look, her professional demeanor unwavering despite the chaos. "I'm not asking, kid. Your friends also look like shit. You’re all coming with me."
Her voice was firm, brooking no argument as she led me away to a smaller room filled with medical supplies.
I didn't get a chance to resist. My knees buckled and the floor rushed up to meet me. A pair of warm, firm hands steadied me before I fell flat on my face. The same nurse—at some point, I had managed to ascertain she was a nurse—was helping me onto a stretcher.
"We need to move quickly," she said, her voice echoing in the room as they wheeled me out. "Try not to pass out on us."
The irony was not lost on me.
I tried to stay awake as the team of doctors moved in a flurry around me. Faces blurred into faces and voices mingled with voices. The pain was growing numb now, replaced by a disorienting dizziness that made keeping my eyes open a feat of strength. The sight and scent of blood, which would’ve normally made me gag, was now just a dull sensation. A gauzy haze settled over my eyes, the edges of my vision dimming while the sounds grew distant.
"Just hold on a little longer," someone murmured, their voice a soothing lullaby against the rhythm of my panicked heartbeat. But my body was growing heavy and unresponsive, like I was sinking into an abyss of nothingness. My eyelids fluttered close and I knew I was losing the battle to stay conscious.
I fought against the darkness creeping in at the edges of my vision, focusing on their voices. I could hear them clearly now - each individual tone, each distinct accent. It was almost as though they gained clarity as my sight dimmed.
"His blood pressure is dropping, get me another unit!"
"We need to intubate now, he's not breathing well on his own."
If I could’ve smiled, I would have. It all sounded so…dramatic. Like a TV show I was half-watching.
"Get me 10 mg of morphine, stat!"
Now that was something I could get on board with. Morphine. A warm, soft blanket of nothingness to wrap up in and block out the pain, the fear, the uncertainty.
"Just a pinch," someone said, and then there was a sharp prick in my arm. Moments later, warmth spread through me like wildfire and I felt myself starting to float away from the bed, up towards the ceiling. The beeping of my heart monitor grew louder, piercing through the fog but I barely had any strength to even twitch a finger. I had to fight this. For Sofia, for Sam, for the Blades.
But the world was pulling away from me, growing cold and distant as darkness continued its encroachment. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear someone calling my name, their voice swallowed by the chaos of overlapping conversations and ringing alarms.
But it was getting hard to focus, hard to remember why I had to fight the inky blackness that promised an end to the pain. In the back of my mind, something was screaming at me to push, to stay awake. But the voice was fading, drowned by the siren call of oblivion.
