CHAPTER TWO: Cecilia: Searching

[Kadael]

It's not true... don't listen... you're a good person, you do what's rational. Right?

Right...?

Cecilia attempts to block out Jack's maddened shouting, but her barriers are crumbling. He knows - she doesn't know how, but everything he says sounds so... true.

And it's terrifying - being chased by a man who's convinced that he's dead; who believes that killing her will make something right. Because... she's worthless. Not enough.

If she'd been brave enough, she would have been looking for Ash instead of Jack. If she'd been a good mother, Katie wouldn't have been abducted; Katie wouldn't resent her. If she'd just shut up and put everything behind her...

Katie tugs on her hand. She follows blindly, still fixated on the knife carried by one of the nurses.

It could end now. But Katie deserves better.

[Seon]

"USELESS, USELESS, USELESS, IT'S ALL USELESS!" Jack screamed out. "YOU ARE NEVER... GETTING...OUT....OF...HERE...! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO EITHER!

SAVE YOUR DAUGHTER? FAT LOT OF GOOD YOU EVER DID! YOU GOT RESCUED BY YOUR OWN BLOODY DAUGHTER! YOU DON'T DESERVE TO BE A MOTHER. 8 YEARS OF NEGLECT, DENIAL, AND DISAPPOINTMENTS! DO YOU THINK A SINGLE HOUR WILL EVER FORGIVE THAT?

GIVE UP! WHY DO YOU PERSIST? CECILIA, WHY? WHY WHY WHY?!"

[Laraqua]

Jack broke out onto the landing. He heard which way they went. Down. Down toward the ground floor. Down towards the exit.

Cecilia rush around the corner, heading further into the hospital, away from the nurses and the escape too. In the flashing beams of the light, a gurney with some figure lying under a blood-stained sheet stands crossways across the hallway. Katie releases her hand, snapping away, and crawls under the gurney, before leaping up and continuing. The elevator doors gape open, the lights over the Call Button suggesting that it still somehow has power. "Come on!" cries Katie, gesturing fervently for her to follow.

[Seon]

Jack leaped down the stairs. There was still time... still time to catch her...

Still time to end it all.

[Kadael]

Cecilia ducks under the gurney and rushes over to Katie, grasping her hand like a vise. She's not letting her daughter out of her sight again. Not until they get back home, where it's safe.

Jack's screaming echoes off the walls. She's trembling with the desire to deny it all once more, to shut him up and make him stop telling the truth...

She dives into the open elevator.

[Laraqua]

Katie hits the button '3' over and over again. Jack roars around the corner, knocking the gurney aside, as the elevator doors slowly but surely closed before him. As though in open declaration of contempt, the elevator doors slide smoothly shut just as he skids to a stop before the steel elevator doors hiss firmly shut and the elevator begins its slow ascent to the 3rd floor.

[Seon]

Jack roared out in fury before he flashed a wicked grin and rushed down into the basement. All he had to do was find the generator and switch it off...

[Kadael]

Slowly, the sense of urgency dissolves, and she breathes again. They're alone, at least for now, without the threat of Jack or the nurses at their backs.

Cecilia throws her arms around her daughter, holding tight as if she might slip away again. Repeated apologies spill from her mouth, made near-incoherent by choked sobs. "Katie, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have left you alone... I'm so sorry, Katie, I love you... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

good mothers don't fall apart in front of their children

But she can't stop. It's been like this for so long - shutting herself away, throwing herself into her work because someone who was guilty went free, because Nathan left, because she'd just had a bad day. Call the babysitter again, work for hours and hours, come home in the middle of the night and collapse into bed.

And then wonder why Katie is so eager to go to Daddy and Keith's house at the end of the week.

[Laraqua]

Katie gives her mommy a rather perfunctory hug before patting her on the back in an attempt to tap out. "It's okay, mommy. I just went to the loo. You couldn't've guessed all this was gonna happen. Let's just go, okay? Let's just go, okay? Let's just get your car and go home?" She looks around and shudders. "I don't wanna be here anymore, mommy."

The elevator doors open onto the third floor.

"We're gonna have to be quiet, mommy, 'cause there's other nurses and you're bigger than me so you can't scamper about. You may have to fight 'em. Do you have a weapon?"

--------

Jack reaches the generator in time to try to turn the bloody thing off. It's a little more complex than a single button, however, being as this is the emergency back up generator for a hospital. It takes him a moment of looking over the big machine before he susses it out and hits the 'off' button.

--------

The lights over the numbers wink out, as do the overhead elevator lights, leaving them in darkness but for Cecilia's flashlight. Katie switches on her own that she wears around her wrist. "C'mon then," said Katie.

[Kadael]

"R-right..." Cecilia straightens, brushing her sleeve across her eyes. She keeps a tight hold on Katie's little hand, wondering how her little girl is growing up so fast. "Let's go home."

But the car's dead. How else will we get home...?

"No. I... I had a gun, but I left it with Jack." Cecilia sighs, looking at the tips of her shoes. "The crazy man."

It's true. My own daughter saved my life. That's not how these things go...

Cecilia hurries out of the elevator when the lights go dark. "Do you know a way out of this place? I have a map, but we're on the third floor..."

Why does she know so much about this place? How did she get here? She... still has her clothes and everything...

"I'm so glad you're safe."

[Laraqua]

"You gave him your gun?" she asked, gaping at her open-mouthed. "Are you insane? Never drop your gun! Never!" She shakes her head. "Never mind. We'll have to hide out until he gets bored and goes away and then we can go down the stairs. There's only the stairs and the elevator here that I know of."

She shakes her head again.

"Who was that guy anyhow?"

[Seon]

Jack slowly walks up the stairs, his pen and Rochelle's diary at hand. He had turned to the last, blank pages of the book, and was busy scribbling something in it...

"I can't take it anymore... My entire life's been turned upside down..." he muttered softly.

[Kadael]

"I- I didn't give it to him!" Cecilia meets her daughter's shocked look with one of her own. "I dropped it, and the hospital... it changed. He found it before I did."

Are they really going back to this so soon? Fights over every little thing? This is far from little, but...

"I... don't know who he is anymore. I met him when I was looking for a police station, and he was okay back then. He went off to look for somebody who could help find you." She touches her throat unconsciously, as though she can still feel the spaces where his fingers were. "When he came back, he was... different."

[Laraqua]

"You're not ... different, are you mommy?" she asked, slight fear in those big, wide eyes. "I won't need to run from you, will I?"

-----

Jack runs back along the corridor toward the stairs and sees two nurses come charging towards him. He can easily get off two shots before they reach him but things won't look so good if neither of them go down right away. The first nurse is 20 feet away by the time he gets to make his first shot, the other is about thirty five or so feet away. Or he could try to just dodge past them and head up those stairs and jot down those notes that claw at his mind.

[Seon]

"Get the fuck away from me," Jack muttered. He easily sidestepped the first nurse, but he did not have as good a luck the second time.

[Kadael]

"No. I'm still the same." Cecilia squeezes Katie's hand and tries to smile.

At least, I think so.

She puts her other hand into the pocket with the kitten, to check if it's all right. She'd forgotten it, with everything that happened...

[Laraqua]

He ducks past the first nurse as she shuffles around to face him and starts pushing his way onto the first floor landing of the stairwell. But with a yowl the second nurse is on him, too fast for him to react, and the first he realises that he's been hit is when he feels the warm blood running down his arm, warming up his frozen, numb body. The nurse yowls again, sounding more like a wildcat than anything human, and keeps following him up the steps. He could turn and fight it or hope he can dodge aside and get out of the way.

-----

The kitten growls and chews on her fingertips, hard enough to hurt.

"Okay, well, let's find someplace to hide," said Katie, gesturing down the hall just as something yowls in the distance. "You lead the way, mommy."

[Seon]

"No,no no... it hurts when you stab me, SO STOP STABBING ME!" Jack cried out as he continued to run up the stairs, barely being able to dodge the nurse's swipes.

[Kadael]

"Ouch!" Cecilia yanks her hand out of her pocket and looks at the kitten. "What's gotten into you?"

She inspects her finger to see if it's drawn blood, then checks the map. "Let's see the patient rooms first. They're the closest."

[Laraqua]

This time he manages to dart around the nurse shortly before the scalpel would hit and rushes upstairs, but to which floor? He'd run straight down to the generator so he hadn't managed to see which floor the elevator had stopped on. He heads up to the 3rd floor, reasoning that they'd just want to make him run further to get to them. It's just as dark up here as everywhere else but the water seems thicker somehow, pooling and puddling, everywhere. Only, the water seems somewhat rust-coloured, as though blood had somehow gotten into the water. The plaster is slashed in places, revealing the wooden struts and exposing the wiring within the guts of the building. Presumably they'd be close to the elevator, on the other side of the building, so he heads in that direction. Another nurse hobbles into view in front of him.

-----

The kitten hasn't managed to draw blood but it does seem to be quite antsy and upset. It's all she can do to keep the kitten in the pocket long enough to button it up and hope it doesn't squirm its way out regardless. It's hard to hold the flashlight steady long enough to check the map but soon she thinks she has a good bead on the place. Her sneakers splash through rust-colored puddles as she hurries into the first hospital room. There's two hospital beds in here but they're tangled up together and wrapped in wire that keeps them held down. Water drips down from a pipe that bulges through the ceiling, as though all the water damage is finally weakening the hospital enough that it's on the verge of collapse.