Black Beauty- Steve HarringtonxOC

Chapter 13

Terry is in pain, running and holding her bloated middle. Blood soaks her dress.

When Jane looks up, she sees her Aunt Becky. "Breathe. Just breathe, alright. They're on their way."

The scene morphs into a different one, two nurses wheeling Terry's bed down a hospital hallway. "Stay with us, darling. Stay with us." It changes again and she's looking up at the spotlight in the middle of a surgery room. One of the looming physicians removes their mask, bearing Brenner's intense features. It all fades away, replaced with a large vase of striking yellow sunflowers.

"Hey there." Becky stares at Terry from the chair at her bedside.

"Jane?" Terry wonders, her eyes scanning the room. "Where's Jane?"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I saw her."

"No, she wasn't breathing."

"Yes she was! She was crying!" She has to think back but she's sure of it now. "He was there. He took her."

Becky doesn't believe her, she can tell without words. Terry knew she was getting too upset, she had just gone through childbirth. Staff swarmed her, uninvited hands touching all over her body like she's an animal. They held her down but the only thing that calms her down is syringe they plunge into her belly.

She blinks and she's somewhere else. Terry kneels on the ratty, mottled beige carpet. "Three to the right. Four to the left." The safe's door unlocks, relinquishing its contents to the cracker. Terry conceals the snub nose revolver handily in her clutch. She didn't expect to use it at the very first checkpoint. She had only just walked past the security guard in the lobby when he asks her for identification.

"Stay back. Stay back!" She warns them, pointing her loaded revolver at his center mass. When the guard's hand goes to his holster, she takes the shot. She had to.

Alarm blaring, she checks every door in the building, calling out for her beloved daughter.

"Jane?" She kept going until one caught her eye. A rainbow has been painted on the door jamb, just outside the room itself. Three little girls looked up at her blankly. One girl had brown skin and dark hair braided into twin tails. She played sweetly with the others. Another had hair black as pitch and eyes more blue than the sky on a cloudless day. She squats in the corner, keeping distance between them. The third one is her Jane, light brown locks whispering atop her head and rolling down to her shoulders.

"Jane!" Terry coos and reaches down for her. She's pulled away. "No! She's my child!"

Darkness, then light again and Terry is held down to a rolling examination table. The straps protest audibly as they're wound around her. She cries and screams, even as the faceless people in lab coats stuff a rubber mouth guard between her teeth. Brenner is above her again, sneering down his long nose as though she were an ant on his path.

"Four-fifty."

Cold metal presses to Terry's temples, and a whirring noise reaches her ears. The attendant turns a few dials, flips a switch, and her life was never the same.

"I'm looking for my sisters." Eleven's small voice seems to carry through the spacious interior. She had come a long way from Mama's house, but there's not a hint of sympathy in the thin man's response.

"Aw... Shirley Temple lost her sisters. So sad."

"I saw one of them. Here." She can sense that she's not getting through to the quartet, so she makes to remove the photo of Eight from her messenger bag.

"Uh-uh," warns another, a heavyset man, pointing at her hand. "Hand out of pocket. Slow."

The first man snatches it from El. "Give me that shit." After staring silently at the page for a while, he allows a short, curly-haired woman to relieve him of it.

"Is that Kali?" she almost stutters the words.

The name catches El's notice. "Kali?" she repeats.

"How'd you find us?" The tall blonde shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Who else knows you're here?"

"No one."

"So, what then? Poof! You just show up like magic with that picture?"

The shorter woman tries to mediate. "Stay calm, she's just a kid."

"A kid who could get us all killed." He fishes a pocket knife out of his pants, flicking it open with a sharp 'thwip'. "If I have to ask again, Shirley, you're gonna start losing things, starting with those pretty little locks of yours, yeah?"

"Come on, Axe. Put down the knife."

"How did you find us?" Each word is punctuated by a twitch of the blade.

"I saw her."

"That's not an answer," he says harshly and grabs El by the arm. His knife is getting dangerously close to her face, but the man stops and stares at his hand as if transfixed. "Jesus. Jesus Christ!" He throws it, letting it clatter across the cement floor. All of a sudden, he can't seem to keep still. With a grimace on his face, he rubs his forearms vigorously. He even ruffles his mohawk but it manages to stay stubbornly upright.

"You're a terrible dancer, Axel." Every pair of eyes dart to the source of the voice. A young woman leans against the railing halfway up the stairs.

"I told you, stay out of my head!"

"So we're threatening little girls, now are we?" The young woman takes each step casually, not in any hurry despite the tension filling the air.

"She knows about you."

"She had this," says a woman with ratty hair in multiple dyed colors, handing over the newspaper clipping. The younger accepts the photo from her, eyeing it dubiously.

"Where did you get this?"

"Mama," is all Eleven says. She slips the clipping away from the young woman, tucking it into her satchel neatly.

"Your mother gave you this?" As she stalks closer, it becomes apparent that she's intrigued by El, not put off. When she's close enough, she gently pulls up Eleven's sleeve, baring the mark that was forced on her. She bears her own wrist for comparison, confirming what El already knew.

"Sister," Kali cautiously intones.

She nods. "Sister."

She should never have come shouldn't have ever left home.

They didn't know any more than she did. In fact, she felt better instantly without Kali around, whispering in her ear as though a little devil on El's shoulder. Even all the power in the world doesn't make you a good person. Eleven might want to be strong, but she didn't want to forsake her friends to that end. Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will and Filly are the most important people in the world to her. The realization that she never should have left leads her to only one conclusion.

It's time to go back home.

Sorry this one is so short!