New Birds

Promises To Keep Part 10

Kelly was here. The thought surfaced with the onslaught of pain. Dropping Anna Karina to the ground, spine up and pages spread against the floor, Samantha raced passed the library's crammed shelves to the tiny washroom in the back, where old newspapers were stacked as high as her waist. She fell hard to her knees and vomited into the toilet. Mostly into the toilet. The blue cast rattled against the porcelain as she tried willing the pain away, but it kept coming.

She groaned, resting her forehead on her cast. She and Kelly were never to cross paths. Someone had always locked her in her room hours prior to Kelly's arrival, and it was always in her room, beneath or on her bed, where she wrapped her head in her pillow, to wait for this first onset of pain. It had never happened like this. She was not sure if she could stand, let alone make it all the way back to her room. Even in this library, in this unused corner of the facility, Samantha felt terribly exposed. Why wasn't she told?

The pain continued to spread like a sick joke through her skull and she fought back another wave of nausea. It was difficult to breathe now. Like she was quickly forgetting how. Maybe her brain was shutting down on her this time. She scrambled backwards, pressing her shoulders against the white lavatory wall. A spasm so tight passed through her temple that she stopped breathing for several frightening seconds. When she finally sucked back a lung full of air, it was as if she won a tiny victory against her brain. Herself. She needed to remain calm. To focus. She breathed in. She breathed out. Her breathing, if nothing else, she would remain in control of. Her head hurt. It hurt like hell, but it hadn't killed her yet and it would eventually go away. Had it hurt this badly the last time? That was the thing about pain. It was difficult to compare fresh with old. She got slowly to her feet, still trembling, and approached the sink, turning on the tap. The pipes banged and the faucet sputtered, but finally a thin stream of water ran over her hands. She splashed her face, her neck, tried to rub away the vomit that had landed on her shirt and cast, only making spots into streaks. The tiny beeper she had momentarily forgotten she carried went off, and its shrillness had her searching the skin around her neck for the chain it hung from. She pulled the beeper up and out of her shirt, pressing it before it beeped again.

"Yes," she said into it.

"Where the hell are you?"

"Gym," she lied.

"Try again. I'm standing in the fucking gym."

She went silent. Not wanting to give up her library.

"You need to get to your room. Kelly has arrived at the main house."

Samantha held the side of the sink. No shit, Sherlock. I'm drowning in her. This retort, however, she kept to herself.

"Get to the north corridor and meet me at the north entrance. Refrain from using the main corridor. Can you do that?"

"Yes," she said, but she would have to cross the main corridor from here. Perhaps it was possible to loop around somehow?

On the plus side, if there was such a thing, she, once again, survived the snap's initial shock. It was always the worse part of this whole ordeal and the moment she dreaded most. Now, if Kelly didn't get too close, Samantha would adjust, and the pain would subside after a few days. She got through it the last time and the time before that, and she would get through it this time. She groaned again. Who was she kidding? The next forty-eight hours would be long and excruciating, and possibly the next forty-eight hours, too.

The old library was in an unused section of the facility, where the corridors now served as one endless utility room. There were trollies, gurneys, service carts and dismantled lab equipment from incubators to waist high centrifuge blocking her path. None of which ever gave her trouble prior, but now each felt like an obstacle which had to be dealt with. When she finally reached the staff residence, Randall, with his security guard issued pants a tad too tight as usual, was there waiting for her. He looked up and down the empty corridor before pulling her by the arm inside. "Get yourself to your room. Quickly."