The Storm Inside

Chapter Thirty Four: The Fallout

A/N: This is not gonna be the last book, I lied.

"Damira? Damira?" a voice repeated, growing louder by the second.

"Am I dead?" I whispered. I couldn't see anything, I couldn't feel if my eyes were opened or closed.

"No." It was Dove, I recognized her voice.

"You saved me?" I asked, forcing my eyes open.

"Alexis did. But she was taken in by the authorities, so I got you."

"I didn't want to be saved," I said, blinking as my eyes adjusted. I was lying down, a soft mattress under me. I was in a bed, in a small room with a window. Everything felt heavy and I found I couldn't move any of my limbs, just my head.

"You almost weren't," she said with a sigh. "You were shot three times, you have a bad concussion, and you inhaled a lot of smoke. You lost blood, you had to get a transfusion. And defibrillators, your heart stopped for four minutes."

"Am I in a hospital?" I whispered. The room didn't look like one from a hospital, but I assumed I'd been in one at one point. I didn't know how long I'd been out, but it had to have been a few days. I was so tired I had to lose my eyes again. I felt so heavy, like I had sunk so far into the mattress that I could never come out.

Dove shook her head. "We couldn't take you to a hospital, or anything like that. It wasn't safe, nowhere is safe right now. Luckily, we had a team of doctors at hand, who pulled you back."

"Is everyone okay?"

She was quiet for a while. "Mary took Beatrix and Sophia, I don't know where they went. Garcia and his team are downstairs. Alexis was arrested, as were Montgomery's people that they were able to round up. But we don't yet know if the authorities that came were, for lack of better terms, good or bad. We don't know much of anything, and we can't contact anyone."

I had more questions, but I was too tired to ask them. I would find out later.

"Valerie..." she started.

"I know," I whispered. "Will there be a funeral? I want to go."

"You can't."

"Why not?" I asked. "She was my best friend, she was my sister, you can't stop me from going to her funeral! Why can't I go?"

Dove sighed. "Because you're dead."

A few days passed, and I tried to collect all of the information I could. I'd been out for over two days, my heart had stopped more than once. The city was on lockdown, no one was getting in or out, we were declared to be in a state of high emergency. All communications were heavily restricted, and police patrolled the streets looking for us. The ones who were still believed to be alive.

There was division, in everyone. The government was in shambles, trying to figure out who among them were Montgomery's. It seemed like everyone was killing each other. The city was lawless.

I hardly left my bed, other than to eat or go to the bathroom. I did not go downstairs. We were in a house, or a manor, to be precise. I wondered who that belonged to.

"It's Montgomery's," Dove told me, when I asked. "The safest place for us right now."

"Won't someone come here?" I asked. "His family? Who owns this place?"

"His only child is gone, so Thomas inherited it, and most of his assets, when Montgomery 'died'," she explained. "To keep it in the family, so to speak. That way, Montgomery could continue to stay here when he wasn't at the facility. Thomas' next of kin was Alexis, so the house is ours. There's a panic room, cameras all across the property, and more. We're quite safe here."