Orphans Two [Mackinnley]

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

When the girl awakens, at first she doesn’t know who she is.

At first, there’s nothing but darkness and a pounding headache that clouds every other thought; as if an axe has been lodged between her eyes, causing molten lava to erupt and spill through all her limbs, ending at her frazzled nerve endings. The frail, small body shakes, and when the seaweed coloured eyes open, she shouts.

The light is a knife. An extra slice of agony on top of her already screaming body. Eyelids snap shut again, squeezed tight as the stars dance in the darkness of her inner world. A subconscious whimper gurgles in her throat; her throat, she now realises, which is tight and dry, burning like the beginning of an awful flu but ten times worse. And it’s not only her throat. It’s her teeth. Her gums. They ache. The kind of ache after the dentist has removed a few teeth – like that time she’d had her wisdom teeth taken out. Yes, okay, she remembers that. She’s not a nothing entity. Who am I?

Laura Gould. 2124 Wickham Avenue. Laura Janice Gould, because Janice is her Mother’s name. She hates her middle name. It’s so old fashioned. Not even old fashioned, just semi-old. It doesn’t have that traditional feel just yet; none of that antiquated preciousness. Janice. Ew. Laura. Laura. What have you been doing, Laura? Why do you hurt so much?

When she tries to move, to bring her hand to her head, as if the coolness of her own palm will soothe the splitting migraine, she shouts again. Every muscle spasms, and the sound of her rustling clothes, of her shifting feet upon the hard ground…it’s like there are creatures shouting in another language in her ears. Even her voice sounds too loud. As if it’s not her own. As if someone else is shouting at her through a loud speaker.

Laura, Laura. Someone had suggested… it was a date, wasn’t it? Was it? A… blind date? No. Was that last night? Tonight? Okay. Maybe. She remembers… getting ready. She remembers leaving her apartment. She remembers feeding Saachi. The fat cat, who never does anything but sleep. The cat that continued to climb through her window via the fire escape until one day she started buying all the food. She adopted that cat. Maybe someone had left it behind, and it had thrown itself on someone else’s mercy.

Yes. She remembers putting on the black dress with its stitched in sequins; she remembers putting on the heels, not too tall but not too conservative, either. She remembers being undecided between the white leather jacket or the black leather jacket; she had put her hair back in a neat pony-tail, had applied simple make-up, and no jewellery. She doesn’t like being flashy. She remembers that, too. Simple. But her hair is no longer in a pony-tail. It’s come out. She can feel it snagging on the cold hard ground.

She doesn’t know how long it takes to reach a seated position, but she manages, somehow. She’s panting, when she gets there, like a dog starved of water, her chest…

And then she feels it. Or she doesn’t. She feels a lack of it. The lack of a heartbeat – there’s no pounding in her ears. There ought to be adrenaline, shouldn’t there? A rush of blood to help her sort her way out of this mess. This mess she can’t remember getting herself into. Had someone drugged her? Had she ended up at a bar? But no… no, that doesn’t matter. None of that matters in lieu of what she has now discovered. The fact that she has no heartbeat. No ******* heartbeat.

She tries to scream but nothing comes out – only a scraped, struggling, wheezing sound. Tears spring to her eyes and it hurts. ****, it hurts. Everything hurts. But there’s someone else here. Someone else…

She’s pleading for help in her head. Screaming, but nothing’s coming from her lips.

Unbeknownst to her, the pleading is sent directly to the other person’s mind; a trick she doesn’t know she has. Because she doesn’t know that she’s been turned into a bloodsucking creature of the night. She doesn’t know anything, except that she’s in agony.

[Mackinnley (DELETED 5761)]

When he regains consciousness, his body stays stationary. Not by choice at first, but because his body needs to stay in its place or suffer the consequences of being torn apart. The force upon his body feels as if it has a ton of bricks on him. No, not just that either. His body feels as if it was first hit by a car then a ton of bricks were torn upon his back just for safe measures. As if whoever did this to him wanted to be sure he was going to be out for the count for a while. He figures he has been out for a while; he could feel the light pressing against the skin of his eye lids but he dares not to open them. It hurt to open them.

But when he hears the shout, how close it is, he has not choice but to open his eyes and receive the immediate punishment. It's bright...no, vibrant. Better yet, it is piercing his eyes with its rays. And almost immediately, a ripple of pain erupts in his head, imitating someone picking up a hammer and smacking it into his skull without holding bac their strength. He endures it though; boy, does he endures it just to see if he could find the source of the shout. He twists his head around, his brain feeling like it was sloshing into the walls of his skull. Mac tries to find the source but the light, it's too bright. How is that possible?

Turning his head slowly, he presses his forehead into the ground and closes his eyes once more. This, all of this, mimicked a hangover. A killer hangover. What the hell did he do last night? There is only one reason nowadays he would drink excessively: nervousness. That's right. Last night was the date, right? He had a date with this girl. What was her name? One of the guys he knows from high school set him up. He thought it would be good for Mac, who never gets out according to him. It is true, very true. Most of his days were filled with work and taking care of his little brother, as well as their father. It had been that way for years. Since....

But, Robbie knew this girl through his girlfriend. A girl, Mac remembers meeting once or twice when he's gone over to Robbie's place. Yes, it was that girl. But what was her name?

It doesn't matter at this point. Mac lays there on the floor. Why was he so sore? No, sore didn't begin to describe it. Car wreck. Ton of bricks. That's right. The world seems to be continuing to go on around him but he isn't a part of it. Someone is there with him but he's unsure if they even see him at all. If they did, how come they hadn't come to his aid? Maybe he really isn't there and that's when the panic begins to creep up in his body. What if the light is bright because he's dead? No, no, no. Please, he couldn't be dead. His family couldn't handle another dead. His father would fall apart for sure, and then who would be there for Liam? Who was going to take care of Liam?

He starts to pant immediately but then slowly stops when he discovers something isn't right about his breathing. It is taking more of an effort on his part to pant than his own body. Usually, when he begins to panic, it is him who is manually working to control his breathing. His body isn't trying at all. So he stops. His abdomen pulls back and he waits. He waits for it to rise without a conscious effort on his part. When it doesn't...the idea of him actually being dead slowly settles.

Like a roll of thunder, the scream shakes the inner walls of his mind with the addition of pleas. Help. Help. It is enough to get the redhead to jump up off the floor and grab the sides of his head, covering each ear with the palms of his hands. "Ahh..." he winces, bending slightly at the waist with the hope the slight shift would settle his aching mind. His ears aren't ringing but his head is pounding, pounding around the pleading voice. The redhead slowly regains his composure, or just enough of it so he can stand up and open his eyes. He shields his eyes and searches around, taking a step. In his right mind, he would have been able to catch himself, preventing the fall.

Instead, as if he has two left feet, he topples over whatever object his foots gets lodged in. His body crashes onto the floor, earning a grunt of pain, because he refuses to scream. It takes everything in him not to scream. He rolls off to the left and stares at what he tripped on.

It isn't a what, but a who. Her.

Alan Mackinnley Sullivan croaks out in disbelief, "....Laura?"

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

The other person stands up.

The other person is a male. Tall. Serious looking – red hair. Lots and lots of red hair. Laura immediately recognises him. From the depths of her memory she plucks the requisite strands of knowledge; that guy that Monica had introduced her to a while back. A friend of Robbie’s. They’d met before but they’d never really talked. Robbie and Monica thought they’d be good together. Maybe Monica and Robbie were just being selfish and wanted their friends to be distracted so that they could spend more time together. Maybe Monica and Robbie had this domesticated vision in mind of the four of them going out on double dates; of each pair getting married, and then their kids would all grow up together.

Little ginger kids who’d all have Laura’s hazel eyes.

Of course she’s not thinking about kids. No, Laura had scoffed at the one possible future that had opened up in front of her; she’d scoffed because there’s no way. The only future she could see for herself was her and Saatchi living out their days together, alone in that apartment. She’d save her money. She’d wait for the apartment to go on the market, and then she’ll buy it. She’ll do it up. She’ll fix that pipe in the kitchen that keeps leaking; she’ll replace the bathtub, because she feels like she’s going to fall right through one night because it keeps squeaking beneath her weight. Hell, she’ll refurbish the bathroom entirely.

The nerves had wrecked her. A joint effort between dread and anxiety; it wasn’t really a blind date because she had met the guy. Mac, they called him. Had they told him his full name? Mac was short for… Mackinnley, that’s right. No. Yes? Doesn’t ******* matter. She’d been set up with this guy and she can’t even remember if they’d got to where they’d planned to go. She can’t remember anything, and she recoils as he trips over her. She brings her knees up to her chest, her elbows tucked tight to her sides and her hands over her ears. Her lips are curled back, not in a snarl so much but almost like a bristling Chihuahua. Trying to look menacing and angry when all she is is timid and terrified.

Had he drugged her? Is he now going to proceed to rape her and strangle her and leave her for dead? Drown her amongst the fishes? They’d told her he worked at the docks. Maybe he’s got some secret stash of dead bodies somewhere…

… but then she realises that he shouted, too. That he grunted, when he tripped. His voice cracks when he utters her name and she realises that he’s not going to hurt her, because he looks about as bad as she feels. Whatever had happened to her, had happened to him as well.

So she unfurled, just a little. She doesn’t know this guy from boo but he’s there with her and she’s so ******* frightened that the she feels like there’s some void at her back threatening to suck her in and swallow her whole. Her skin burns and itches, like it needs an entire tub of moisturizer to calm it down. But she reaches out to him anyway, her fingers hooking around his arm just to make sure he’s real. He’s really there.

“…Kinney…” her voice is raspy and she has to clear her throat. Gods, her throat. It’s so tight. She’d meant to say Mackinnley but it had come out wrong. She can’t be bothered correcting herself.

“… what happened? Where are we?!”

[Mackinnley (DELETED 5761)]

His brows furrow as he takes in her reaction of seeing him. A part of him cowers because he didn't want to frighten her anymore. He couldn't remember most of last night, just bits and pieces. He isn't sure they're real anyway. Her body coils much like a snake ready to strike. It is said most, if not all, snakes attack others out of fear. Though her facial expression attempts to look menacing, in her eyes, he sees she's scared. His finger tips itch to reach out to her, touch her hand. He doesn't know why perhaps because he was frightened too and human touch always calmed him down. Yet, Mac doesn't move toward her. Hell, he doesn't even dare to shift his position on the floor; he just stares at Laura for a moment.

She was attractive to him because she seemed fragile. He remembers being enchanted by the way her hazel eyes twinkled. She was the type of girl who didn't realize just how naturally beautiful she was. He had a feeling they were having a good time before...whatever happened to them. He wishes he could remember the exact moment when things went array. He wishes he could remember, not just for his sake but her sake too. It takes her a little to realize they were in the same boat and he is lucky to be raised to be a patient man. When she reaches out and wraps her fingers around his arm, it is then that his hand covers her.

And she calls him Kinney.

She called him Kinney. His eyes close instantly at that name and a pang of sadness strikes his heart. Most people knew him as Mac. It was a nickname his father began to use when he was very young. A nickname stuck to him to this day. But to his mother, he recognized by a different name. He was Kinney. Her sweet sweet Kinney. No one else called him that but her. That is until now.

He shakes himself out of his daze and focuses on her questions, answering with the lousiest bunches of words possible.

"I don't know."

Lousy, yes? He isn't interested in where they were as much as he is interested in how they got there. Mac wasn't some two bit guy. He works at the docks almost every day, even weekends if he can get the shifts. A guy needed his strength to do that kind of work. And Laura...well, from the looks of it, she was average height herself. Whoever did this had to have skill of some kind. He'd have to be taller and larger than the redhead that's for sure. Slowly, he sits up then moves to stand, his fingers prying hers off his arm. First, he rubs his eyes and after, he peers around at their surroundings. Truth be told, there isn't much there. There isn't anything thereat all but the occasional scraps of trash laying about. The floors are covered in a mixture of dirt and dust. The walls themselves seem to have their own layers of dust caked on. Mac slowly spins around to take in the scenery once more. The only light entering is coming from the streetlight outside.

"I think we're in an abandoned building..." his voice falls quiet. When neither speaks, the space around them is filled with silence, dead silence. It is deafening even to his ears. Then, he realizes once he really listens, no one is breathing. He knows his chest isn't rising and falling. But he half expects to hear Laura's breathing or something. Yet, he hears nothing. His eyes hone in on her chest and stare intently, examining the movement of her chest, or the lack there of. He lifts his hand and points.

"Are you holding your breath, or..." Mac can't bring himself to finish the question; he's not even sure he is prepared for the possible answer he is going to receive. Strange situation.

All he could remember is being set up on a date with Laura. He remembers picking her up. ****, if they were here, where is his car? Bringing his hands to his face, he rubs it a few time as he attempts to gather his thoughts. First, he wakes up with a girl he hardly knows. He's not breathing. She doesn't seem to be breathing either. Neither one of them can remember where the last...How many hours had they been laying there? He doesn't know where his car is located. He wants to shout out loud but he doesn't want to startle Laura.

Instead, he shouts inwardly, which are followed with a slew of curses in variant combinations. He draws in the surrounding air and lets it out slowly.

"We need to get out of here."

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

Pry, yes. He has to pry her fingers from his arm because she doesn’t want to let go. What if she were alone here? Would it be better or worse? Worse, she thinks, because Kinney is the first one to stand. He is the one to take the initiative, where Laura had sat, silently screaming for help. No help will come if there’s no voice to summon it, and with a few blinked, blurred cursory glances she knows this is not a place that is often visited. It is dank and old, broken and disused. A skeleton of a building that might one day be repurposed, but for years has been empty, and might still be empty for years to come.

It’s the kind of place she had once come to with a bunch of neighbourhood kids when she was eleven years old. They were not to leave the cul de sac, their parents would tell them, but of course they wouldn’t listen. They were kids. They would slip out through the gap in the wire of Monica’s back fence, across the overgrown meadow behind her house, and into the industrial part of the city. Except the factories were abandoned, their wares no longer required or the employees gone bankrupt. The buildings unwanted. They were sad and spooky in their own ways, but they were playgrounds, too. There was fun to be had in them.

But Laura is no longer a child and there is no fun to be had here. There’s only the sadness and the spook – and she doesn’t like it. She wants to go back out in the light of the evening but even that… somehow, it scares her. It fills her with dread. Sometimes she’ll take the trash out in the middle of the night and there’ll be no one around, but she’ll get that instinctual urge to run. As if there’s something hiding in the shadows, something inherently dangerous, and she must retreat to the safety of her own home. Now, it’s not the shadows she wants to run from. Instead, she wants to run to them. It’s the light that terrifies her. It’s the light that hurts.

Again, she whimpers; Kinney’s voice is a booming presence and it rattles in her head.

She nods, and then shakes her head. Yet another thing that Monica had once forced her into – cross fit. Training. They’d pushed her body to its physical limits and for a while, she’d thought it was fun. To keep pushing, to find her own limits. Now, she finds herself pushing again. Past the pain, past the urge to curl up into a ball and die, because surely death would be better than this. She stands, and she sobs. Again, shaking her head.

“No… no it’s… I can’t feel my heart, Kinney. I can’t feel my heart…” her eyes are wide and pleading. There has to be some kind of explanation. But she knows, just by looking, that he doesn’t have an answer. Answers are not forthcoming for either of them. She feels bereft. Where is her bag? She’d left the house with a plain black bag with a leather shoulder strap. She can’t see it. It’s not on the floor anywhere. Her wallet is in that bag. Her phone. What time is it? She’s not wearing a watch.

But Kinney is right. They need to leave. Laura takes a step and immediately reaches for Kinney’s arm. She doesn’t feel stable. Both her hands curl around his upper arm, using him for support but also offering support in return.

“… maybe to the hospital. I don’t … I don’t feel right,” she says, her voice forced past her tight throat. She wants to keep sobbing. Tears still prickle her eyes but they don’t fall. She pushed Kinney gently toward the big wooden doors, one of them unhinged and falling inward. Light sweeps through the cracks as a car passes, its tires a wave of white noise against the asphalt. Laura cringes, but she ignores the urge to peel away from the light. They need help.

[Mackinnley (DELETED 5761)]

He rubs his hands against his jeans, not that his palms were perspiring; it was done more out of habit. He is nervous, quite unsure of what to do just when they leave the building. There isn't an anxious need welling up from within him to rush into the open night. There is still the issue of how they got there. There is also the issue of what could possibly be waiting for them outside the door. It was strange for him to be experiencing this. Usually, he was worried about going inside than going outside. Outside meant freedom. Whenever he went inside, he never knew in just what state his father would be. Hell, there were times he held his breath in half expectation of finding his old man dead. No one took his mother's death as hard as his father did. His father just stopped living afterward. They all stopped living for a while.

But now, here he is. He's standing inside a building where neither guests are living. Laura and he are about as dead as the abandoned building they woke up in. They had to be dead yet they were alive. It just didn't make any sense. He rubs the top of his head as he continues to think, getting immediately distracted by the slightest of movement behind him. Mac turns slowly to see Laura finally rising to her feet, but once she's there, she begins to sob. His eyes widen as he moves to her, reaching out to...

He isn't sure if he should touch her face. His hand stops midway and awkwardly stays there, her sobbing filling the void of noise. It is then she answers his question; it is through her tears he finds his confirmation. She can't feel her heart. He hadn't stopped long enough to focus on the fact his own heart wasn't beating either. His blue eyes soften as they watch those tears run down her cheeks. If he listens hard enough, he could probably hear them land on the floor, drying up instantly. Mac pulls the sleeve of his green sweater over his hand and begins to dot the tears away Laura's cheeks. He wants to tell her it'll be alright, and maybe it will be. But at the moment, he couldn't bring himself to say anything. He didn't know if this was reality or if it was a figment of their imagination. What if someone had drugged them both?

Laura takes a step toward him and he swears she looks like a calf getting the confidence to walk. He plants his feet firmly on the ground, not allowing her additional weight to throw him off. Mac places his left hand over her hands, lightly squeezing them. She suggests a hospital, but he isn't sure a hospital is where they should be heading. But it's a start. "Yeah," he murmurs as she nudges him toward the exit, "Maybe to the hospital.." His foot takes a step toward the doors, and he looks to her to be sure she was still there. Not that he really needs to, her grip on his bicep never loosens. So, he cautiously takes another step then another. One after the other until they reach the big wooden doors. It takes every fiber of his being not to jump at the sound of a car passing by travels through his ear canals. Wow, how close are they to the street?

Mac places his hands onto the doors and manually takes a deep breath, letting it out while pushing the door open. More of the street light floods the opening of the building. He stands there as it washes over his form. The cool crisp air sweeps over and tickles his face, rustling the loose strands of his fine red hair. Everything about the night is familiar to him. It is the reason he grabbed over his sweater and pulled it over his khaki buttoned up before leaving for the date. Either it is late into the evening or early into the morning. The redhead isn't quick to move. No, he stands there, still quite unsure. He throws a glance over his shoulder to make sure she was still there. Then, his foot lifts up and moves forward, taking the first step out of the building. Still having no clue where they were, he immediately guides them to the right with an accelerated pace.

If Mac knows one thing, he knows they don't need to be around in case their attacker came back for them. He wrenches his right arm out of Laura's grips before he snaps her left hand in his. This way they were going to get where they needed to go faster.

"We'll slow down soon. Right now, we just need to get as far away from that building as we can. Quickly," he assures her as he tugs her along the sidewalk. His eyes bounce around, catching the names of the streets in order to figure out their surroundings.

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

She doesn’t complain when Kinney wrenches her hands from his arm. For one, she’s not the clingy type. She’s never had the opportunity to know what it’s like to be clingy. She’s never had a boyfriend. She’s been kissed, once, but that’s as far as it went before she retreated into her shell and got accused of being frigid. Of course she had been furious; not frigid. Shy. There’s a difference. Her fury turned into tears, as it was so often wont to do. Laura Gould is so damned timid that she can’t even get angry. And when she is angry she always has to explain herself: I’m not crying. I’m pissed off. Though the excuse never worked. She’d still get those sympathetic looks, the pats on the shoulder. She hates it. Loathes it, this part of her personality. But it’s there and she can’t get rid of it.

So when Kinney removes her hands she hardly notices. Secondly? Because she’s distracted. Not only does she not need to breathe, not only is her heart not beating in her chest, but as soon as the light hits her pale and near-translucent skin, it crawls. As if it’s trying to shrivel up and hide from the revealing rays. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, but she doesn’t know it’s the light that’s doing it. How could she, when she still feels as if she’s got an axe stuck in her forehead causing her head to throb. Maybe she’s bleeding internally, and that migraine isn’t just some major dehydration but is instead her brain bleeding out and causing too much pressure in her skull.

She’d by hyperventilating but her lungs aren’t working like they should be. Her entire body is broken. And as weak as she feels, she now moves with graceful fluidity. There’s something contradictory about the way she feels. The way everything feels. The breeze brushes the hair from her face and she can feel every tiny strand of hair shift as it tugs at the follicles upon her scalp. When she opens her mouth and that breeze touches her tongue, she can taste dust and dirt and smog; but she can also taste salt, fish. Something masculine and musky. A smell she will always, now, instinctually associate with the man now walking so sturdily and briskly in front of her. This glorious man who has taken the lead so that Laura doesn’t have to think about it.

Without even thinking about it, she’s know he’s going to take care of her.

Her fingers close tighter around his palm, which is cold to the touch. Not clammy, but just cold. Hard. She swallows the lump in her throat as her narrowed and hurting eyes glance backward over her shoulder, to the place they have just left. It is best, she thinks, to remember where it is that they woke up. To remember what it looks like, what it’s across from. Which street. It hadn’t crossed her mind yet that whoever had done this to them might come back for them, not until Kinney reminds her that it’s best they get away as quickly as possible. Laura almost trips over her own feet as Kinney picks up the pace, but she does keep up with him. It is at this point that her heart should be pounding, that the blood should be racing through her veins to distribute the life-saving adrenaline. But she feels nothing. There’s the urge to wail and sob but she holds tight to her panic and instead tries to focus.

They had gone to a restaurant. She remembers now. Monica had made the booking, and it was nice. Not too nice, but not shabby. Expensive enough for a first date. She’d had the Lasagne. She always has the Lasagne. She remembers laughing a lot. She remembers the conversation being far easier than she’d thought it would be. Perhaps that was the two glasses of Merlot that she had consumed.

She remembers… she remembers they’d finished their meal and they hadn’t wanted to go home just yet so they were going to go elsewhere. Weren’t they? Her brow furrows as her now fast-moving feet catch up to her companion.

“Do you remember where we went?” she asks. She’s got a better handle on her voice, now, though it’s still slightly croaky. “Did someone drug us? Is there…is there a drug that stops people’s hearts?” she asks. She’d read about it in books. Seen it in movies. “Is that a real thing?”

[Mackinnley (DELETED 5761)]

Do you remember? He doesn't look at her when she asks the question. Mac was the kind of man where he needed to focus on one thing at a time. A tunnel thinker, his mother called him. Multitasking certainly was out of the question. His main goal is to find his car. Then he can think about why only bits and pieces of his evening stuck to his mind and not others. Then he could get his companion to the hospital. He is very much so still leery on taking her to the hospital, but he was going to take her because she wanted to go. It was simple. What he could remember from the night was mostly they hadn't wanted it to end. He knew he hadn't wanted it to end because of how easy it was to be around Laura. She was a simple...natural beauty. It was easy to sit at the restaurant for hours and talk to her casually. She made him laugh. He couldn't remember the last time a genuine laugh came out of him. She listened to him when he spoke. He didn't worry about her only being there for a free meal and a possible one night stand.

She was there for because Monica had set them up but she stayed for him and that meant the world to him. So yes, tunnel vision was necessary for this situation. His being became consumed with the idea of making sure she was safe.

Yet he didn't have an answer because he didn't remember what came after dinner. He decides not to answer her question just yet but focused on her last trio of questions. "It's possible that we were drugged," he confirmed, slowing down his pace so they could walk with ease. They were at least three or four blocks away from the building. "There are tons of drugs out there that people could get to stop someone's heart. I mean, potassium chloride is easy to come by and not too expensive if I remember right. And with search engines like Google, one can easily search how much is needed to stop someone's heart. It's quit- uh." He stops mid sentence and shakes his head. None of that information really mattered. If anything, it probably didn't make her feel better. And it probably didn't paint him in a good light to know all of that. But he was quite the thinker and he's always expanding his knowledge. Perhaps it is because he misses college and the idea of being at college. He enjoys learning and is always trying to fill his itching mind for information.

"Sorry, that probably didn't help..." He rubs the back of his neck, face distorted with a goofy yet embarrassed look.

His steps become slower and slower before they come to a complete stop. This was a good stopping place for them. They were near a street light; cars were passing by on the road. They were in public enough that if their captor came back, this time there would be witnesses. Mac glances over his shoulder to look at Laura. Despite how the evening turned out, he is glad to be here with her. If he had to experience this by himself, there would have been less crying yes...but she was a great motivation. He just had to make sure to keep her safe. Since their hands were clasped together, he use this bond to pull slightly closer with the excuse he wanted to make sure she wasn't going to be easily torn from him. It had nothing to do with the fact the redhead just wanted to her near.

Nothing to do with that at all.

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He could taste the air on his tongue; it reminded him of home. He loved living in the River Rock district of Harper Rock. Most of his memories as a child consisted of Sunday afternoon picnicking and fishing with his family after coming him from morning mass. He closes his eyes and allows the memory to wash over him, filling him with calmness. Oh, there was such peace that only came from living by the water. His brows furrow as his eyes open before his body unhurriedly turn to face in the direction of the abandoned building in the distance. He takes another deep breath and lets it out, tasting the air again for good measures. " I know...I know where we are," he informs her plainly before he laughs lightly.

"I know where we are." He spins his body back around to read the street signs before he pulls Laura closer to speak to her, pointing. "Look, look. Sea Haven Street. We're in the Coastside district. That building we were just in." He lets go of her hand and turns her around, pointing from his position behind her, "That's the abandoned dock. That's why there's a familiar smell to the air. It's not like River Rock, where I am from. It's a bit more subtle here since most of the work has moved from Coastside to...my part of town." Mac faces Laura and he grins. For the first time since their escape, confidence rips through his body. At least he knows where they are now.

This was Sea Haven Street, which meant the transit wasn't too far from them. And if he could remember anything, he remembers the hospital is right near the Bullwood transit stop. Once they get there, they could see a doctor. Then they could slowly piece together what all transpired after dinner.

The redhead reaches out to grasp the young woman's hand again as he walks backwards towards the crosswalk, "We're going to take the transit to the hospital." He remembers them desiring to go a walk because they ate a lot. That was the running excuse. They had eaten a lot and the best thing to do was to walk it off. But both knew deep down it was because neither desired the night to end. Now it was turning out to be the longest evening in their life, but hopefully everything would make sense once they make it to the hospital. Even Mac didn't know what type of drug could keep their hearts from beating as long as they had. He didn't know how they were still walking and talking without the need to breathe. He had to consciously breathe because if he didn't think about it, his body wouldn't do it on its own.

Oh, he hopes they could get answers at the emergency room. Please, please, please, he thinks as he looks both ways before he pulls Laura to keep up with him as he quickly jogs across the street, seeing the blinking transit light off in the distance.

[Laura Gould (DELETED 5747)]

Much to the contrary, Kinney’s rambling did help Laura. The undulations of his tone, the masculine roughness of his voice, it helped her to focus on it. It helped to drown out the dozens of other noises—things that were far too loud that shouldn’t have been. Things that had Laura twitching and wanting only to fold her arms tight around Kinney’s arm, to fold her small body against his larger one for protection. Protection against what, exactly? There was a scream, somewhere, that inspired terror in Laura; but the screen turned into a squeal of laughter, but where was it coming from? It was muffled, though it echoed, too. Somewhere indoors, but where? Everywhere she looked where lights blazed through glass windows, she had to squint and look away.

A dog barked and Laura nearly jumped out of her skin.

A gun fired, but far away.

A car’s horn honked. Tires screeched. There was no crash.

Two cats were fighting.

A baby was crying.

A TV was blaring. So was music. Music, music everywhere.

So Laura focused instead on Kinney’s voice. On the explanation that he apologised for, but he shouldn’t have. Her fingers tightened around his palm but she still remained trailing behind. She didn’t want to be a hindrance. She already assumed that somehow this was her fault and that she had become extra baggage that Kinney would not want. He’d probably leave her at the hospital and then go home. Maybe. And that would be okay. This would become the date that they would either never talk about, or they would laugh about. It could become a story. That one time, when I got kidnapped…

Laura shook her head.

“It helps,” she croaked. It didn’t cross her mind that Kinney would be some kind of serial killer because he knew how to google things. She couldn’t think that. She couldn’t think that he was the one who’d done this, because why would he? And why would he be helping her now? No, ever the optimist, ever trusting, that thought never crossed her mind. The information he had given her helped. Because it was better to think that someone had slipped them some near-fatal drug that had stopped their hearts than to think that they were actually some weird experiment gone wrong. That they were actually walking corpses. People could not live without beating hearts. They just couldn’t.

And then they stopped. A breeze fingered Laura’s hair; a violent shiver wracked her spine as the tendrils tickled the skin of her neck. It was tantalizing, like some entity with thin fingers had swiped its hand over her skin, tenderly, evocatively. She couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder. Nothing was there. It was just her hair.

A frown melted her lips as Kinney laughed. It was probably a good thing, that he knew where they were. It was a cause for relief, that much was true. But her head still felt like it was going to split in two; she still felt like there was something so very, very wrong. And she needed a doctor. She needed someone to tell her it was all going to be okay. Her hands clenched into fists as the comfort of Kinney’s hold was taken away. She resisted the urge to lean in to him, when he leaned close. She only nodded dumbly, comforted at least by his confidence, his laugh, his sudden lift in mood. As soon as he had hold of her hand again, her fingers closed around his palm in a vice grip.

They jogged across the road. Laura’s hair whipped behind her. She could hear a train pulling up. She took the transit often enough. She knew where they were, too. She knew this transit. She knew it from the inside looking out – she never got off here. But she had to catch the train to work every day, and this was one of the stops she passed. It was the train going in the direction that they needed, and so she continued to jog with Kinney. Subconsciously, she picked the carriage within which only half the lights were working. Subconsciously, her body knew that was what it would prefer. They slipped through the doors just as they were closing; Laura had released her hold on Kinney’s hand by this point. She almost ran from the light; the light glared at the front of the carriage, whereas it was dimmer at the back. She found a seat in the corner and sat; she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. Again, she shivered.

How late was it? How late, that they hardly saw anyone on the platform? That the only person in their carriage was a homeless man asleep, up there in the glaring light? Laura’s green eyes were wide, and more than a little fearful. None of it felt real. It all felt like dream – except for the very real reality of the constant pain, the constant ache.

[Mackinnley (DELETED 5761)]

His eyes blinked rapidly at the almost blinding light they immediately encounter upon boarding the transit. His hand lifted up to shield his pupils from most of the light that assaulted his eyes. His now free hand opened and closed, examining how truly empty it felt now that Laura had pulled hers from his grasps. His eyes, still shielded, followed her as she made her home in the corner. She was scared, and he understood. He was scared too. Yet, he couldn't find it in him to let such an intimate emotion emit from him. It wasn't that he was taught to show no fear..or no emotion at all as a child. On the contrary, his family encouraged openness because if you couldn't be safe with your own family, who could you be safe with? No, it was after the fact his mother died that Mackinnley made damn sure no emotion was going to be seen from him if he could prevent it. It was he who had to take up the mantle of being strong once his mother's untimely death occurred. His father had fallen apart and practically left his younger brother to raise himself. So the redhead dropped out of college and took up the responsibility. There was no time to cry or to show fear, people relied on him now.

Seeing Laura in such a state only encouraged this behavior more within himself. He couldn't be overtaken by fear because she was overtaken by fear. He had to be the strong one in this situation. Two people crumbling under the weight of fear and confusion did nothing for the situation at hand. It wouldn't do them any good in finding out what happened to them and why they were functioning without the need to breathe or for their hearts to beat.

Mac closed his eyes and rubbed them, taking a deep breath a few times. He really didn't care if the homeless man woke up and noticed the lack of breathing from the pair of them. Not at the moment. His head was pounding and his ears were filled with this....interesting beat

Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

It was almost infuriating yet intoxicating at the same time. He worked his jaw around in an attempt to relieve the dulling ache he felt radiating from his teeth. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he began to walk toward the corner where the blond now sat. So focused on making sure to be near her to comfort, he didn't notice the farther he got from the homeless man, the quieter the beat became to his ears. Plopping down, he extended his arm to wrap it around her shoulders, giving the one farthest from him a tender squeeze.

"It's going to be okay," he finally said for the first time since this little adventure began for the pair of them. How truthful those words would be, he was yet to find out. But at this moment, it felt like it was finally the right thing to say to her. Here she was, curled up in the seat, obviously afraid of their shared fates. He had to bring her comfort even if it came in the form of a white lie. "In a few stops, " he explained, "We'll be at the hospital, then both of us can get checked out. And if the doctors can make us well, then we can go home." He cleared his throat at the last part, making sure to quickly correct himself.

"I mean, we'll go back to the restaurant to grab my car and I can give you a ride back to your place, if you want me to. It's the least I can do after this crazy night."

Mac smiled lightly at the young woman, his eyes looking through the glass of the transit. The fact there was only three of them transit told him they had been knocked out in the abandoned dock for hours. It meant they were traveling in the twilight hours. It meant people were at home in their beds, fast asleep. And they...well, they were off to get some answers. He hoped they didn't take long to get. He prayed and prayed in his heart for the possibility of getting discharged quickly in time for him to make it to his shift. Most importantly, so he could make it home to check on his father. Deep in his heart, he worried even as he sat next to Laura of what he could be walking into when he finally made it home.

One nightmare after another seemed to be in the cards for him. At least there was a glimpse of heaven next to him. He could say that at least.

Three stops in all: Wickbridge, Gullsbourgh, and Bullwood, their final stop.

No one came onto the transit after the first two and no one came on once they finally arrived at their destination. He could almost see the light of the hospital blazing in the night school. Or it might have been the fact he was just so excited at the idea of their nightmare ending.

"Come on, this is us," He pulled at her arm to get her attention before he slid off the seat and reached out to help her out of her seat. The transit's doors closed as soon as their bodies slipped past the briefly opened barriers. Another brief chapter in this saga officially came to an end. The ending was so close to them, he could taste it on his tongue. He didn't know what lied ahead for them. Mac again focused on one task at a time. They were on and off the transit, task two complete. The third task was getting to the hospital to be seen. That's all that mattered in that moment. Much like his set pace when they were escaping from the abandoned dock, his feet pounded on the cement as he rushed the pair of them along toward the direction of the hospital. It's about to be over, he repeated over and over in his mind. Answers to what seemed to be impossible questions were about to be given. Mac refused to think about the other side of the coin; he had to choose to be optimistic about this.

The possibility of their condition being incurable...no no, he didn't want to think about that. He couldn't. If he did, it would be a real thing. And he wouldn't know what to do from there.

His feet slowed down as they rapidly approached the area of the hospital's emergency room opening. Even from a couple feet away, he could hear the automatic doors swishing open and close. It was truly remarkable the sounds his ears were picking up from a distance. He swore even to himself he could hear the hurried feet of nurses and trauma doctors from outside. The rapidly coughing. The groans of pains. The panicked shuffling of a love one. A mother rubbing her hand along her son's face as they wanted to be seen. His ears heard it all. But one sound was heard over all of that.

A collective sound of lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.

Louder and louder as they approached the automatic doors. Louder and louder as they entered inside their assumed sanctuary. Louder and louder, drowning out even the voice of the receptionist at the desk, who asked what their emergency. Mac closed his eyes as he swayed back and forth, once again feeling intoxicated by the lub-dub, that blessed beat. He didn't know why it was blessed; it just was.

"Sir...?"

His blue eyes drooped open and he stared at her, "We need to see a doctor. I think someone drugged us in an attempt to kidnap us."