There were no dreams for Sarah. The sedation brought a thick, black blanket over her consciousness, and in its place was a void. She was pleased. Not dreaming meant there were no more nightmares of abandonment, of Jackson dying, of being eaten alive, or of being alone forever.

As the curtain lifted, and a stream of thought began to ebb back into her being, Sarah was flooded with overwhelming anxiety.

Where am I? What happened?

She tried to sit up, but cords prevented her. Her heart raced. Her desperate attempts to figure out where she was were being stifled. She felt helpless. Her hands flailed about wildly.

Hospital? Am I in a hospital?

The putrid smell of sterile stations, the bright lights. Her arms. Needles in her arms. She began to pull at them, hyperventilating. Betrayed. Why would Maureen bring her here?

Maureen knew. She knew. She knew. And still Sarah was in a hospital.

Sarah couldn’t trust anyone, no one. Fervid eyed, her thrashing continued, trying to remove the bodily intrusions, until a hand grabbed her and she froze.

She expected it to be a gloved hand, cold, calculating, emotionless. But it wasn’t. Warmth emanated from the grip on her arm. She relaxed, just a little. But enough for the fuzziness in her vision to begin to creep back, to allow her to see.

Sarah’s hazel eyes, unclouded, searched the room. Then she looked at the hand on her arm and saw Seb. A flutter in her heart, and she relaxed more.

She was in Maureen's room. Not the hospital.

“You’re okay,” Seb soothed.

“I thought…” Did he know? Could she tell him? Her voice hitched “I thought I was in the hospital.”

A confused look flashed across his face. Was it because he didn’t know why she was so afraid of the hospital? Or because he couldn’t believe Sarah thought Maureen would do that to her?

His hand loosened on her arm, and he momentarily stepped away to retrieve a chair to sit by her.

“Maureen will be back soon.”

Sarah nodded. Her mouth was dry, the tacky feeling in her mouth fighting with the nausea to be the peak discomfort in her body at that moment.

“Water?” she asked.

Seb fetched a glass of water for Sarah, and helped her drink it, lifting it carefully to her lips as she raised herself to a half-crunch to consume the liquid.

“How are you feeling?”

How was she feeling? No different, really. Almost worse.

She shrugged.

“Sarah,” Seb began, “I’m really worried for you.” His big brown eyes were morose, his face droopy and tired bags under his eyes were testament to the concern he was currently describing to her.

“We’re doing everything we can to help, but you might need to…”

“No.” She knew what he was going to say. “I will not go to a hospital.”

Her distrust of hospitals ran deep. She couldn’t trust the institutions where welfare was meant to be paramount, but instead checking all the boxes for bureaucracy's sake was the preferred method. Nevermind what happened as a result.

“Why?” He didn’t understand, but from the earnest look he gave her, he wanted to.

She swallowed. She didn’t want to relive this. The trauma was something she constantly tried to bury deep. But maybe sharing it would help? Maybe talking with Seb now could be what she needed? Sharing the load.

Sarah’s gaze left Seb’s and she looked at the ceiling. Maybe no eye contact, a detachment from his caring face would make it easier. So, she began to tell him why.

“When Jackson and I were younger, before we came here, our mother… she… wasn’t really a mother beyond being an egg donor. She abused us. Her boyfriends of the moment abused us. They abused each other, and they abused drugs.

One day Jackson and I were joking around. I was maybe 14, 15, I don’t know my exact age. And Jackson was a little younger than me. We had left the print factory where we spent a lot of our time to go back to our mum. Sometimes she had food, and even more infrequently she would share with us… Anyway, we found her. She was foaming at the mouth, and whatever bloke she was with was in the process of taking off, as she lay there, on her back, overdosing. We didn’t know what to do - so we called for help. We didn’t have a LENS at that point, the state ones we had been given she had sold, or traded, so I had to run and find someone to help. Jackson was alone with her… I’m not sure if that was the best decision but…

Help came. And we all went to the hospital.”

Sarah took a deep breath in. Trying to calm the shaking tenor she felt etching into her words.

“While we were there, social workers came. They talked to us. They checked us over. Because of our ages… Jackson was taken. Immediately, he couldn’t even say goodbye to me properly or see her for the last time. He went to foster care, but then he tried to escape so many times they sent him to reform school. Because I was older, they ushered me out of the hospital. With nothing. I don’t know what happened to our mother - she might have died, she might have recovered. To be honest I didn’t care. All I knew is that Jackson was gone and I was alone. We needed each other, probably in a sad codependence sort of situation, but it’s all we knew. And the hospital had stripped me, me and Jackson, of everything and I…”

She trailed off. She couldn’t begin to describe the pain, torment and complete anguish she felt that day, everything she knew, all of her world crashed down around her and she was left, a 15 year old, alone in a world designed to help everyone succeed, but with none of the tools to let her try.

Maureen, who had come in while Sarah was talking to Seb, bent down and kissed Sarah’s head.

“You’re okay. You’re not alone now.”

Sarah kept looking at the ceiling, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone, lest the tears in her eyes form and roll down her cheeks. A torrent she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop if it started.

Seb had found her hand, and gave it a squeeze.

Silence flooded the room and trying to break the awkwardness, Sarah did a small throat-clearing-cough and said “Anyway…”

“Sarah,” Maureen. “We… “ This time, her voice was unsure as she was speaking, “We’ve done everything we can here. I know… we both know,” she indicated to Seb “that this isn’t what you want, but your levels are still too high. We really need you to go to a hospital.”

Had Maureen even taken anything in? That wasn’t the first time she had told her story and knew Maureen had heard it at least twice before. She didn’t even get the abridged version last time - the panic attacks, the helplessness, the complete despair and spiral that Sarah had fallen into. And she was suggesting this?

“No,” Sarah’s heart began to race. Adrenaline flooded her system.

Seb and Maureen exchanged a plethora of looks; concern, resolve, self-justification.

Sarah didn’t care. The fear she was feeling was being quickly replaced by anger. The betrayal feeling she felt when she first woke up was turning into rage. She grabbed her LENS from the side table, obviously they had taken it off her when she was out, and she put it on. She turned around and was ready to leave, dismissing all the LENS welcome prompts in the process.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Sarah’s knee-jerk reaction to ignore the prompt faltered as the words sank in. A solution?

How?

What does that mean?

Her scepticism returned at the LENS offering help and Sarah turned her attention back to the room.

“Can I please have a moment alone?”

Maureen hesitated, unsure what Sarah was going to do if she was left here. There was no way for her to escape, so that was something she could cross off the list of potential concerns, but the drugs around her could be used as weapons or - Shit. Maureen stopped. This was Sarah. She shouldn’t think like this. Sarah was good. Honest. She had her trauma and maybe she needed a moment to process this all without their presence.

Maureen directed Seb towards the door, who unwillingly left the room, and told Sarah to let them know when they could come back in.

Alone now. In the medical room. Sarah didn’t know what to do.

The hospital was not an option.

How?

How?

Who are you? Who is ‘we’?

Sarah thought about it. What did she have to lose, really? Maybe it would kill her - but it sounded like she was probably on her way to dying anyway, and if this sped up the process then she wouldn’t have to suffer through radiation poisoning.

What do I have to do?

At least it needed her consent. Sarah thought about it, wishing she had Jax here to bounce the idea off, even AJ would be helpful. But he thought this was a delusion she was having, so getting him involved now probably wouldn’t help.

Her head and stomach were still roiling, the drugs she had been given were wearing off and she wasn’t ready to feel all that pain again.

Yes.

As soon as she thought it, she felt her whole body shake, tingle and she felt a convulsion pass through her. She lay back on the bed, trying to steady herself and within a couple of minutes her nervous system became so overloaded that she passed out.

Before long, worried at how long Sarah had been in the room, Maureen cautiously knocked. No response. She knocked again. Still nothing. Fuck Sarah, don’t break my trust now.

Maureen pushed the door open carefully, bracing herself for an attack but nothing happened. Seb followed in after her, and they both hurried to the bed where Sarah was. Her pallid complexion was slowly returning to its normal colour and her breathing was beginning to regulate itself. Confused, Maureen asked Seb to run the blood levels again.

He did.

Then, once they got the results, she told him to run them again.

It was on the fourth re-run, with yet more fresh blood from Sarah, that she began to stir. Maureen couldn’t believe it. Each sample they had just taken was showing more and more improvement.

How?

This was incredible. And it didn’t make any sense.

Sarah was awake now, her big eyes round and full of life that Maureen hadn’t seen for a long time. A vigour was back in Sarah and she was shocked.

“Wow, Sarah!” Seb exclaimed. “You look… you look… fine. Good. Great. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I feel great.” Sarah leapt from the bed, no longer favouring her injured leg, no more bent over walk to protect her stomach, no more eye squint to reduce the impact of light on her headache. She looked like a new person.

Maureen stared.

“You alright Maureen?” Sarah asked, full of jolly friendship.

“What… what happened?”

“Oh, I guess whatever you gave me worked.”

“No… that’s… no…”

“I’m feeling fine now, Maureen, honest.”

Maureen’s brow furrowed. She wasn’t sure what happened, but she knew Sarah was telling the truth - she was feeling fine. Nothing about this young woman in front of her would lead you to believe she was suffering from worsening radiation sickness. She looked fit, healthy and like she could run for days.

Sarah gave Maureen a big hug, then did the same to Seb.

“I gotta go now,” Sarah said, handing the crutches back to Maureen. “I need to find Jackson.”

“Sarah, I really think you should -” Maureen started before Sarah cut her off.

“Maureen, I know you think I should rest. But I can’t while Jax is out there. I need to make sure he’s okay. I promise if I start to feel sick again, I’ll come back.”

“I still don’t understand what happened, how you’re suddenly… How did this happen?”

Sarah smiled and waved, ignoring the question, as she left the room.

Once Sarah had gone Maureen turned to Seb to confirm the past ten minutes hadn’t been a dream. That the confusing haze she felt wasn’t just hers. Seb agreed, something was off - but Sarah was definitely better - the tests said so, Sarah’s complexion and demeanour said so. But none of it made sense, and neither of them could pinpoint anything that would have worked this well.

Seb left soon after, fulfilling Maureen’s wish to keep an eye on Sarah to make sure she didn’t relapse. He was quick to agree, and sent her a message for her whereabouts.

Alone, cautiously optimistic, Maureen took a bottle of whisky from a drawer in her desk, and poured herself a tall glass. Sipping the beverage, she hoped that she wouldn’t see either of the Healy children in a medical capacity for a long time. They wore her down, her incessant care and motherly instinct for them doubling her energy expenditure over that of normal patients.

The crawl through the air vent was tedious. Moving quickly to begin with, eager to escape the intruders behind him, he soon slowed as his tied hands prevented quick movement. He braced his core for stability and moved from elbow to elbow in the small duct as he opened his bag and took out a knife, using a combination of fingertips and teeth to do so. Slowly and carefully he sawed the rope off his hands, barely acknowledging the countless nicks he gave himself in the process, the last gift of the painkilling Firestarter injection before it wore off.

With his knife returned to his bag, and the rope cast aside, Jax continued his movement, though now the Firestarter was gone from his system, he was much slower than he had been. His first instinct to message Sarah or AJ for help was nixed, as the naked reminder of no LENS left him without the means to communicate. So he kept moving. Each movement forward became more and more difficult as he felt dust particles seep into his cut wrists, cake his clothes and congeal along with the other filth already on him. He could do this though. He would push his bag out in front with a big shove, then use one arm in front, heave his body forward, then the other arm, heave. Small movements still got you places.

As he progressed he thought about the room he had just fled. The army fatigues were instantly recognisable as they swarmed the room, and he was glad to be able to use his last remaining strength to get as far away from them as he could. The timing was impeccable.

He wasn’t sure what would happen to the people left behind, but he suspected the case with the tracker inside was the shining beacon leading the army to the building, and he hoped that those still there would be blamed for the missing Strip-tech™. If he could avoid any more trouble that would be great. He would have to find a way to appease his customers, but he didn’t want to have anything else to do with this. He would wash his hands of his own mess.

In order to do this, he needed to lay low. First, though, he needed to get Sarah. Through everything, she was his rock, his reliable big sister, and he needed to make sure she was safe. Enough people probably knew that Jax had the Strip-tech™ to begin with, though he had his hopeful naivety, he figured they would come looking for him for retribution. And Sarah could be used as leverage.

After navigating his way through different forks in the vents and backtracking at dead-ends, Jax finally reached a portion of the shaft that had a breeze through it. This was an old building, with few safety features, so the vents weren’t well designed. Not that it mattered, as it was likely in the old part of the city that was largely abandoned. And those abandoned buildings were usually only used for things like what Jax had just experienced.

Once he reached the vent exit, Jax paused. He didn’t think the army would hang around once they had infiltrated and taken what, or who, they had come here for. Their presence around here would be an instigator for a turf war, one they would lose. There were enough gangs, vagrants and vested, powerful people who relied on the balanced ecosystem in the old city to survive, or even make money, that any government agency that tried to intervene would be knocked back. Just like how they constantly tried to reclaim New Haven and failed time and time again. There was silence - or rather, relative silence for the area - and so Jax began the task of trying to open the vent to get out.

Finally, he was able to roll himself out, and onto the ground where he slumped in a bloody, agonising heap. His brown hair was filthy with indistinguishable matter; grease and dust coated him and he felt like he could use all the soap in the world and still feel tarnished. But, he was outside. And the sun was rising, the warmth of which was beginning to have a mildly euphoric impact on Jax. Making him glad he was alive, that he had survived the Greenfield Gang, that he had survived her - that lady with the maroon eyes. With a kind voice, but a wicked interior.

The shudder that ran over him then was not from the cold night that was dissipating, it was a reminder of the Firestarter and how it had given him such an intense pleasure of freedom from pain, but likewise had taken it away in a second and replaced it with agony. That woman and her drug were bad news. He needed to find Sarah, make sure she wasn’t going to be entangled in this.

Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet and began the slow walk towards the hospital. New Haven peaked over the desolate horizon, so he angled towards it. The quickest path would take him through some more populated streets, where people would be going about their daily business. Or, he could go the long way, and stick to the old city which he knew would be less busy, but take its toll on his already depleted energy levels.

Tossing up the pros and cons, he knew his priority had to be to find Sarah. So, taking a risk, he started towards the streets that were polished, that had regularly maintained TrashBots that only patrolled at night to not disturb the imagery, and where signs declared CCTV was there to protect you, no matter the hour. Jax usually tried to avoid the area, he didn’t belong there. Especially now, with his appearance how it was. But desperate times…