Poisoned Waters | ✓

|𝟐𝟕| "𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭"

   𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐄𝐋𝐘 sweating, Noah awoke with a jolt, slightly scaring Zara awake from her slumber in the seat beside his bed. She sighed with relief, resting a hand on him to calm him down. He soaked in his surroundings. He was laying in one of the beds in the infirmary, he was shirtless and his turtleneck was in tatters beside his bloodied trench coat a bit of a distance away.

   He tried to sit up, but was met with an excruciating rush of pain in his lower abdomen. "Don't move so much, Monty just redressed your wound." Zara instructed. His aching body fell back onto the mattress. "I was afraid you weren't gonna wake up, you'd already lost so much blood when we found you."

   "Where's Angelo?" he spoke hoarsely. His lips were chapped and his mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, but he couldn't seem to get his mind off of the events from last night that he could recall.

   "He escaped, as well as most of the Ascots that got in, but a few of them were killed in crossfire." Zara answered. Noah's eyes panned the entire room, and she was the only one there.

   "Where's Monet?" he asked, as he weakly propped himself onto his elbows.

   "She volunteered to give some blood for you. I offered but we're different blood types and apparently that can be fatal." she shrugged uncomfortably. Noah exhaled with relief, glad that she was safe since he didn't remember ever seeing her last night. He looked across the room again and, this time, realised how many beds were full with residents of Everwinter.

   "How many...? How many people...?" he stuttered incredulously.

   "There were about eight injured... Thirty-one of ours dead, and twelve of them were from the north lookout points..." Zara answered, almost inaudible, worried about his reaction to it. She shakily continued, "They took most of the ammo crates from the weaponry at the east wall. They found three Ascots dead."

   "That motherfucker." Noah growled, moving out of his covers.

   Ignoring Zara's demands for him to stay in bed, he snatched the spare t-shirt off of the pile she had brought for him. He painfully pulled it on and put on his stained trench coat. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "Reid, stop! You basically just woke up from a coma. You're not fit to do anything right now."

   He brushed her off, "I won't lie, Zara, you are the last person I want to be hearing from right now." Her face fell, seeing nothing but the seriousness in his expression. He briskly walked to the door, throwing it open and striding in pursuit of the dungeon.

•

   By the time he'd reached the bottom of the stairs, he was severely out of breath. Shaking away the dizziness that he felt, he scanned for Mackenzie's cell. He'd instructed Carlton and Kenji to take him there while he dealt with Angelo, last night.

   His blue eyes were fixated up at the window that was bringing in the littlest bit of morning sunlight but still managed to keep the dungeon at a chilling temperature. Blood had dried down his cheek like tears. His hair was in greasy streaks of sweat and sat in disarray. To Noah, he, quite frankly, looked no different.

   Mackenzie's head fell once he heard nearing footsteps. His right eye was bloodshot and swollen shut. Without proper treatment, Noah knew it was soon to become infected. "Good morning." he smiled. "You look worse than me, mate. What happened last night, I heard gunshots?"

   "You know exactly what happened." Noah snarled.

"You're out of luck, 'cause I really don't. But I do know that it definitely went wrong since you're still alive. You did say you would've loved a stab wound, didn't you?" Mack chuckled, his face soon falling when his head began to ache.