LIAM’S POINT OF VIEW
I woke up in a cell, surrounded by bolted metal walls just like the place I was taken the first time that Payton and I got captured. Payton. My heart jumped into my throat as I realised she wasn’t here, what the hell had they done with her?
“PAYTON?” I yelled out, heaving myself up from the ground, wondering if she was in the next cell.
I pounded my fists on each wall hoping she would hear the clanging echo wherever she was. I kept beating the walls until my knuckles got numb and bruised and I’d made a dent in the metal, I called out her name but I knew she wasn’t going to answer. They had her somewhere, and if they hurt her then I was going to find something worse to do to them than killing them. I heard the sound of a key and I turned to see a small window latch open on the door.
“WHERE IS PAYTON?” I growled, lunging towards the door and pressing myself against it.
“We don’t have her, she got away,” it was the guy I shot.
“You expect me to believe that? You tell me where she is right now,” I was so angry that I was spitting as I shouted and my fists were clenched tightly.
“Believe it or not, son, but only half of our team returned. Apparently there was a hostile attack and every man that we had on the ground was killed. Savagely. If your girlfriend was there, I doubt she’s alive now.”
“You’re lying to me!” I started kicking the door to see if I could break it down, using all of my rage fuelled as strength.
“Mr. Payne, if you keep damaging your cell then we will have to restrain you and The Doc was specific about us not hurting you.”
“Get me this ‘Doc’ guy – I want to speak to him. I want to know why he took Payton’s blood and I want some freakin’ answers RIGHT NOW.”
“You’ll see him soon.”
***
PAYTON’S POINT OF VIEW
Two days on the road with Nails and it was starting to feel like Liam could be anywhere right now. I was trying to remember the way to the labs we had been taken the last time in case it was the same place, but I had no clue where we were. Nails had lost the scent, but he swore that he knew a couple of places that would be worth driving to. I had no other chance of finding Liam – riding upfront in a van with a potentially dangerous hostile was my only hope of ever seeing him again.
Nails talked A LOT. He was weird for a little while after the incident with the cut on my arm two days ago but he seemed to come round and started off on his story telling again. He’d seen a lot during his time as a hostile. He told me about his life in Ireland before the storm, but he didn’t give much away about his family and he never once asked me to tell him what my story was.
He seemed to be human for longer periods of time now and talking to him when he was like that was much easier than talking to the hostile. I felt nervous around him when he was hostile because he was unpredictable and I kept thinking about what he did to those guys who took Liam. Then again, he’d only done it so that he could save me, and that comforted me a little.
“It’s cool that you and Liam have managed to find each other through all this though, that has to be a positive thing, right? You seem pretty happy together,” said Nails as we drove through a tunnel of trees, their spindly branches had made a canopy over the road.
Tears started to fill up my eyelids and the last thing I wanted to do was cry again. Nails looked at me all panicky with his huge blue eyes when I didn’t reply.
