Dark Side of the World // S.S. [Book Two]

Chapter 27

I head to the hospital to meet up with the boys and am instantly met with the sound of growling above. I hear Scott say fourth floor.

I follow them to the fourth floor. We round the corner and see a flaming man fly past us and smack into a wall. His flames disappear and Sheriff asks, "Parrish? You okay? Parrish!"

At the Animal Clinic Deaton says, "What I'm about to show you isn't supposed to exist." He pulls out a set of pictures. "This is the only surviving evidence of Dr. Valack's time as Chief Medical Officer of Eichen House." He starts laying out the pictures. "To call it human experimentation would be charitable."

Scott picks up a picture of a girl holding her ears, screaming. "A Banshee." Deaton says. "She died screaming."

Stiles frowns. "So, he drilled holes into their heads? All of them?"

Deaton turns to my boyfriend and nods. "That was the experimentation part. He did it to werewolves, Banshees, wendigos, any creature he could get his hands on. And Valack found that trepanation would initially heighten their powers, but to levels that couldn't be contained."

"So he wants to make Lydia more powerful." Scott says.

I stare at the pictures. "Yeah. Except she's going to end up like them."

"Worse, actually." Deaton says, looking to me and then at all of us. "Lydia's abilities were already pretty exceptional to begin with. Putting a hole in her head will be like causing a leak in a nuclear reactor. She'll hear everything. Every death, every dying scream, all at once."

I grip Stiles' hand as Scott says, "That's going to kill her."

Deaton continues, "Not only that...Her own dying scream could be so powerful that it might kill everyone around her as well."

Scott follows a trail of blood and I decide to stay with the sheriff and Stiles. Sheriff turns to us. "I'm doing everything I can, but her mom is her legal guardian. She's the only person who can check her out of Eichen House."

I frown. "Can't we get a court order or something?"

Sheriff Stilinski sighs. "Technically, trepanation is still considered a medical procedure. A judge would have to declare Natalie unfit, which isn't likely. It could take months."

Stiles notices my disappointed expression and says, "So you're saying there's nothing we can do..."

"I'm saying there's nothing we can do. Legally." Sheriff interrupts.

We drive to Scott's and meet up with Kira, Malia, and Liam. We start making our plan to get Lydia out of Eichen House. "There's four steps." Stiles begins. "We get into Eichen, we get into the Closed Unit, we get Lydia, get out."

"And we have to do it all while getting past orderlies, guards, electric door locks, and a Mountain Ash barrier." Scott adds.

"You have a plan for all of that?" Malia asks.

Stiles holds up a key card. "I stole this last night off an orderly. But it's useless cause they reset the codes each night."

"So why did you take it?" Kira inquires.

Stiles shoots her a look. "I'm getting to that. The only way to get Lydia out of Eichen is to make that key card work again."

Liam frowns. "How are you going to do that?"

I turn to him. "Let him explain, Li."

Stiles nods. "I pulled all the history off the key card." He turns the laptop so we can see. "Two weeks ago, there was a brownout and the security system rebooted. During a reboot, all of the key cards revert back to a default code. So if we trigger a reboot..."