Captive: Hopeless

Chapter 50 - Long Shot

Akira placed Kay on a metal surgical table and plugged wires and tubes into her while ignoring the raging fire of her own pain as she connected the monitors, hooking her sister up to a breathing apparatus and a dialysis machine with the ease of someone who knew what they were doing.

Beside the surgical table, a large tank rested on a pedestal filled with a blue luminescent liquid.

Akira undressed, and the clothes stuck to her ruined body, making her flinch as she ripped the material away.

She hooked some cables into a console beside the tank and pushed needles and tubes into herself as if she were a machine and not a person.

A button made the liquid circulate, and she climbed the pedestal, lowering herself into the reservoir. Even as she disappeared beneath the surface, her mouth opened in a scream.

Light pulsed through the water, and she became still.

The monitors still picked up her heart rate, slow, but there and the blue liquid filtered through the tubes to the dialysis machine, along with blood from some unseen source and her own.

They were connected, and Akira's body did the work that Kay's could not.

***

"What is this?" Darius commanded of Thane, who pushed a button, and the glass turned clear.

The ancient stared at the two still forms in desolation.

"A long shot that could leave both my remaining daughters dead," Thane answered long after Marcus thought he would.

Eventually, as the machines quietly worked, everybody else left except Adrian and Claudia.

Azera's death left a mess, and with Akira out of action, the victors had their hands full, trying to keep interlopers from stepping into power.

Justice had to be served quickly, quietly, and without mercy. This revolution had to be ended decisively and with finality, and it had to send a clear message to the underworld that the Light would not be toyed with.

"Go, Marcus. There would be no point in saving her if her battle had been in vain," Claudia said, and their eyes met.

They would have to talk but now was not the time.

Reluctantly, he acknowledged that she was right and wordlessly left, but his heart remained.

***

The rest of the world quaked in fear of what the media spun as terrorist attacks by an unknown group of militia intent on taking over when not even the underworld could hide so much carnage.

As hours bled into days and days into a week, Akira's body gave up several times. The water would glow, a charge would rock through the tank, and her heart would restart.

Every time it happened, Claudia and Adrian feared she would not respond.

Her mother refused to leave the compound for longer than it would take to shower, eat and return.

Thane provided a bed for her to sleep in, and most of the time, two or more werewolves or vampires were sitting with her in that sterile, desolate corridor, just waiting.

Time passed, and they had to accept that Kay would not wake, and they feared that if Akira could not be rescued from the tank, her body would give out completely.

Miraculously, her skin had reformed flawlessly, or so it seemed from where Claudia stood. Her injuries and broken bones had healed too, and strangely, as far as she could see, Kay's wounds had sealed.

Akira still had the healthy tinge of life to her skin, even as she grew paler, but Kay looked pasty, stiff, and bloodless. Her hands and fingers tinged blue.

Thane tried to open the door on several occasions, but it was no use. Akira had rigged it in such a way that if someone forced the lock, the room would explode and destroy everything in it.

An understandable precaution with this being their central research unit—what it contained could never fall into enemy hands.

***

Adrian and Marcella were alone in the corridor when Akira's heart failed three times in a row, and it took a long time to restart after that third fail.

"Do you think it is over?" Claudia asked.

"Don't know, looks like it."

A red light came on and started blinking. It turned orange, then red again, and blinked twice, sending such a violent shock through Kay that she lifted off the table.

Akira's vitals fluctuated wildly.

Helplessly, they watched as it happened three more times, and on the third malfunction, Akira's heart stopped and would not restart.

Red lights turned the room into a hellscape of flashing red.

"It is over," Marcella said as they warily glanced at one another, getting ready to tell Adrian and Thane the news.

Akira had lost her life trying to make right a wrong that was not her fault. This was all on Azera's tab, and Claudia wished she could have told Akira that. Not that the succubus would have allowed herself to believe it, but it may have helped. Just a little.

She decided to tell her mother first; it would be better if Adrain relayed the news to the men. She couldn't face Marcus now, knowing what she knew.

***

Adrian entered the control room, and Thane, Darius, and Marcus stared at her. She did not have to say a word; Marcus had been expecting the inevitable for some time.

He spent so many hours in that hallway, barely sleeping as he helped control the damage to their world during the day and watched over her at night, but little by little, his hope had turned to ash.

"What use is this world without her in it?" Thane asked of no one in particular, and his heart asked the same question but of Kay. 

"Akira thought it worth fighting for," he said, with no conviction in his voice. The pain in his chest had long since turned to a cold desolation that allowed nothing to warm it. 

"It is the only reason I don't just walk out of here and simply disappear," Thane snapped, and Darius glanced wearily at him.

"Strange how we only realize the value of what we have when we lose it," Darius said morosely, and Thane scowled at him, sensing the censure, and Marcus agreed with his father-in-law. But he, too, felt the sting of guilt.

"I valued Akira. I live... lived only for her," Thane said, and Darius stared him down.

"No, Thane. Akira lived for you; you lived for your people and your kingdom. Yes, you loved her, but how much time did you spend with her, in all these eons, just to be with her? Not to plan, work, or discuss but because you enjoyed her company? Father-daughter time?" Darius asked, and anger briefly made those inhuman eyes glow, but then his face paled.

"I did when she was little, but after the revolt, there was a distance inside me I could not bridge. She understood that and excepted it..." The words tore from the depths of him, and it dawned on Marcus that they had underestimated the hurt he felt when his children tried to overthrow him and the damage that betrayal had done.

"I know I am out of line, but knowing what you know now, how much of what happened was Azera, and how much of it was really your children? Do you think Azera could have framed them?" Adrian asked gently, and Thane's looked horrified at the thought.

"Actually, Azera framed you all. Akira was around Azera a lot when she was little, and Azera dismissed the child as irrelevant."

Marcus pivoted toward the door in shock, unwilling to credit with his brain what their eyes were seeing.

"But before I continue, a chair would be nice," it took a moment for Marcus to react—the shock far too great.

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