Gods and Monsters

II

Scotland Yard, London – Two minutes later

"Rachel? Oh my God, what happened?" The doctor could hear someone say as she began to come round. Her cheek ached as if it had been trampled on by a herd of elephants and her vision was blurry, as the soft features of her friend, Peggy, began to come into focus.

Stepping up from the cold floor, her head spinning from Atlin's parting gift, Rachel managed to turn around and face Jack Canterbury, the left arm of his white shirt now bright red as blood continued to pour out of the wound.

Suddenly, everything came back into focus for Rachel. She had a job to do and she would be damned if Jack was going to die on her now.

"Someone get those cuffs off him. Now!"

Without hesitation, Mike charged out of the interview room, promptly returning with the keys to the handcuffs which were restraining Jack currently. The Quantum Tech CEO had passed out by this point, his face ghostly pale as all his blood rushed to the opening in his arm.

With Mike's help, Rachel lowered Jack onto the floor, removing her own jacket and laying it on the floor as she cut the sleeve off of Jack's shirt with a pair of scissors she kept on her at all times. As the sleeve fell to the floor, the true extent of Jack's wounds became clear.

"It's deep and I think she's hit a vein. If Jack doesn't get to a hospital soon he's going to bleed out," Rachel said, her voice level and calm. She thought back to a saying her father used to say to her as a child; "Keep your head while those around you are losing theirs." Rachel's father had apparently gotten it from an old poem, but it had served her well through the years.

"An ambulance has been called. They'll be here in a few minutes," Peggy said. She was more frustrated than sympathetic with Jack. Not only had he clearly been hiding something from her, but for Atlin of all people, someone Peggy and the others thought they could trust, to betray them like that left more than just a sour taste in her mouth.

Rachel held Jack's arm up in the air while Mike pressed her jacket firmly onto the wound in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Mike's knuckles grew whiter and whiter as he kept the jacket firmly in place. Although he wouldn't admit it to the others, the amount of blood spewing out of Jack's arm couldn't help but remind him of the ritualistic suicide all those years ago with those students; the one case Mike would rather forget.

A few minutes passed until the paramedics rushed into the interview room, quickly transferring Jack from the cold floor to the stretcher. "Is he going to make it?" Peggy asked, still desperate for answers from the last few months.

"It's difficult to say at this stage, detective," the young paramedic began, "Mr Canterbury has lost a lot of blood, but thanks to you and your friends here he's still got a fighting chance." With that, Jack was wheeled out of the station, a frenzy of journalists and reporters likely already waiting outside, desperate to get a picture for tomorrow's paper.

Slowly sauntering through the station, blissfully unaware of what had happened with Jack and Atlin came Charlie, the sound of him slurping his tea perforating the walls. As he walked into the interview room and observed his friends, sweaty and covered in blood, he could only smirk, "Looks like I missed all the fun." 

Continued in Part 3...

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