Only the one man spoke the whole time. He was the hostile one, the vocal one, the one in charge. Nina could judge that he was not about to go soft on her just because she was already injured from the fall earlier that day. As her sight sharpened, she noticed that every word the man spoke was like a breath of fire and smoke. To elevate his frightening presence, Nina observed his smoky breath just as the latest freight train growled along the screeching rails, giving him a most fearsome image.
“Kill her,” he told the others, and turned to leave.
“N-no, no, n-n,” Nina forced her mouth to make words. “I’m up. I’m up-p, awake.”
He turned, smiling. “That’s what I suspected, Dr. Gould.”
The other men stood still, as if nothing was going on around them. Nina was petrified at the violence of their leader. He stood over her in the shadow of the lamp where she could only determine his frame and the fact that he had wild, shoulder-length hair, much like Sam’s.
“Where are the bodies of our brothers?” he asked her. His voice was deep, yet it split her skull with its intensity as he spoke in her rattled ears. Nina’s head was spinning, sore and heavy on her neck, but she knew she dared not make him wait.
“Th-they,” she slurred, lifting but an index finger with much effort to point out the door, but her motor skills failed her. “There,” she pushed the word, if only to appear coherent. They all turned their heads, remaining absolutely still otherwise. Their uniform movements reminded her of soldiers in formation, though they wore contemporary street clothes, with hoodies to cover their heads and faces. As a matter of fact, Nina may otherwise have judged them as common London thugs, or gangsters.
“Take us to our family, Nina, or else you can pick your own little fridge there next to the other recent deliveries,” he said firmly, but void of his previous force. It was then that Nina realized that she knew his voice. Her eyes adjusted to the weak light and she stared at the commander of the unit around her. His dark, hateful eyes and the curly tresses convinced her of her suspicion. She had seen and heard him before.
“You!” she whistled as she tried to control her lips. “You are the man on Sam’s video clip!”
17
Magnet for Malice
Sam woke up from what he thought was certain death. Almost immediately he could feel the burning sting in his hand where he had last grasped the weapon he took from the thug that had tried to kill him in the restroom.
“Ow, geezuss,” he moaned inadvertently. From inside the thick of his lightheaded head, his voice sounded like it was not his own. Sam’s nose burned from the stark stench of medical cleaning agents and fresh ointment.
“Try not to move, Mr. Cleave,” he heard Dr. Lindemann say. Sam didn’t want to open his eyes, but he needed to make sure that he was in fact alive. “You have suffered a substantial concussion, and I could barely save your hand, but you should bounce back,” the doctor eased him, but as Sam tried to sit up, Dr. Lindemann raised his voice, “if you do not move!”
“Aye, I heard you the first time,” Sam winced in pain.
“Then maybe I should blame your direct disobedience on language obstacles?” the stern doctor patronized. He was holding up a hypodermic as Sam pried his eyelids apart. To his surprise, the journalist was in one of the King George examination rooms, away from any danger.
“At least you followed my cryptic warning, which is some sign of intelligence,” the doctor rubbed it in.
“At first,” Sam struggled to articulate under the influence of mild barbiturates, “I thought you were just being a right prick…”
“That is the general outlook of most idiots who stroll through here,” Dr. Lindemann replied as he prepared Sam’s arm for the injection.
“Aye, I’m sure,” Sam spoke freely, “but then I started catching on when I started seeing suspicious behavior.” He stopped abruptly as all the puzzle pieces returned to the table. “What happened to the man who attacked me?”
“Well, when I directed our security people to where I directed you, they were just in time to stop the party, so to speak. Your hand had exploded…”
Sam looked down at his heavily bandaged and bleeding hand.
“…don’t look down, Mr. Cleave…”
“Oh my God!” Sam panicked. “Do I still have my fingers?”
“Yes, we managed to treat your injuries on time. Anyway, the man escaped through the same door I advised you to go, but we apprehended his partner after she stabbed our staff manager after her boyfriend had fled without her,” Dr. Lindemann reported, hardly taking a breath in between sentences. “She committed suicide in police custody about an hour ago.”
“What?” Sam gulped at the same time that the doctor pushed the plunger to administer his next dose, slowly weaning his tolerance down to a prescription painkiller. “I’ve been out that long? I have to find out what happened to… uh… Patient #1408!”
Amused, the doctor gave Sam a glare. “You mean, Patient #1312?”
“Aye!” Sam yelled, misjudging the volume of his voice as the new wave of mother’s milk kicked in to ease his pain. “There are people looking for her, just like the characters who chased me down, doc. You have to tell me where she is, please. Before this stuff knocks me out again.”
“Mr. Cleave, she checked herself out mere hours after you left here, and incidentally, the people who tried to kill you also asked about her whereabouts,” the doctor filled Sam in, keeping his voice down.
“She is trouble,” Sam slurred.
“I know,” Dr. Lindemann agreed, “which is precisely why I am telling you as much as I can while I am still drawing breath, Mr. Cleave. Who knows, if they are willing to kill an innocent admin manager who had no idea that anything was amiss, imagine what they would do to someone who knows as much as I have gathered since you brought that woman in.”
Sam understood. Even in the ghostly fog possessing his brain to numb his central nervous system, he made sure that the doctor’s information was burned into his memory banks. The inebriated journalist nodded with a loosely lolling head as the doctor gently laid him down on the hard bed of the examination area.
“Now take some rest. We’ve stitched up the hand, but it needs to be checked one more time in an hour from now. I’ll be back then, alright, Mr. Cleave?” Dr. Lindemann explained. “I’m leaving you here in the locked ER 02, for your own safety, until I return.”
“Aye, daughter,” Sam tried to answer, but he had already gone to sleep minutes before.
Dr. Lindemann chuckled at the poor hero’s toils and how valiantly he had handled them, trying to feel amused enough to forget that he was terrified for his own life now that the sinister hunter with the strange gun had escaped. He closed and locked the door behind him before going to do his rounds just short of evening visiting hours. The long white corridor of Ward 3 looked especially shiny tonight, especially after the blood had been washed off the wall outside the admin office.
When he woke again, the hospital was in utter chaos. Someone was trying the door of the examination room he was in, furiously tugging at it.
“Wh-wha… what? You have the key, not me!” he shouted in a daze of delirium from the medication, thinking it was Dr. Lindemann trying to get in.
A nearby choir of screams from outside the door ripped Sam from his state, and although he was still very dizzy, he sobered up fast. What he heard was not the odd yelp of pain or fright from a patient, but a genuine situation of panic, something serious. Sam sat up to ascertain the nature of the situation, ignoring the thumping, blunt hammering in his skull.