SOMA:
I don’t know if I am fighting the feeling or the feeling is fighting against me. But the discomfort from it is not something my mind could withstand.
Perhaps I am imagining things because suddenly I start to see the opposite of my mate right in this dark alley that I am in. Didn’t I subdue him earlier? What is going on here?
As he starts to approach me, I try to move back but a force is preventing me from doing anything. I cannot move my legs and neither can I move my arms.
The lightning speed he uses in catching up to me was beyond comprehension. And just like that, he has his hand tightened against my neck as he begins to snuff life out of me. That was the last feeling I got until I forcefully open my eyes to see that it was not real.
My eyes try to get in line with the happenings around me as I gasp for breath. I was in a dark room just similar to the dark alley that I thought I was in. It is a little difficult to adjust to the darkness due to how weak my senses had been, but I can tell that I am not alone here at the moment. It remains to find out which would have to wait.
Inhaling a lot of bane has caused a little damage to me. Just with a little, it had started messing up with my mind until I find myself fainting from taking in excess of it. The last thing I remember is trying to open the goddamn door that couldn’t let me escape from the building I was locked in.
I feel a throb in my head and so it prompts me to take my hand up to my face to try to at least massage the part of my head that was having so much pain. But just a little pull and I realize I cannot move my hand. I try the other one too and it is the same result. It is the rattling sound that comes with trying to move them that makes me realize I have been chained to the ground.
Normally I would have forced my hands out of the chain which would have resulted in the damage but the burning sensation that came from trying to do that was preventing any form of superhuman strength from getting the chains broken. But I am one for not giving up so I continue to try until a voice interrupts my continuous attempt to set myself free.
“Don’t bother... it’s silver.”
Of course, I know that. But who said that?
I do a quick survey and that is when I realize that behind me are a few men that I know of. Especially the one who I think might have spoken just now. Damn my senses that refuse to coordinate with my environment.
“Leonard?” I ask, calling out to the man that I can see clearly.
He nods and says, “Yeah, it’s me,”
My legs were bound together but not bound in a way that would not ensure movement around so I manage to sit sideways instead of facing the front. This gives me the opportunity to get a better view of my back.
“How did you get in here?” I quiz, trying to understand what made this mission fail because this is apparent now that we have no chance of setting the men free.
“We were bane-smoked, the three of us,” was his response, and immediately I try to understand what he means by three of them. Well, it does not take me much to understand what he means by that because I can see that only two men among the five that we brought in here were with him.
“You lost the others?”
“Unfortunately,”
Among the two still alive was the one I handpicked out of the twenty. What was his name again? Crane, I guess. I’m not surprised that he managed to stay alive. He’s capable of holding his ground in a fight so this could have been a bonus.
“Why did you run off during the fight? It put us at a disadvantage immediately,” Leonard questions me as I brood over how much we have lost in a few days.
I look up at him again, soberness certainly reflecting on my expression. “I didn’t run off. I just had to go after someone I saw and I think I regret doing it. But at least it made me prevent a much bigger threat to us,”
“Who did you go after? And what bigger threat was that?”
I cannot help but sigh because the first impression about who the person is would be wrong in every aspect. Still, I have to tell Leonard because he has to know what is going on. I do not want it to seem like I have no reason for doing what I did then.
“It was Mark, my beta.” I eventually announce, a little tongue-tied.
“Isn’t he supposed to be your best friend?” Leonard asks and I nod in response. “So he betrayed you, is that it?”
“No, he didn’t. Although I will still say he betrayed my trust but no, he didn’t betray me by masterminding this whole thing here. He has no hand in it,”
“Hmph. I’ll trust your judgment on this one. But what bigger threat did you prevent?”
And suddenly a door opens. I think the door is the entrance into and out of this dark room as light suddenly reflects into the room when the door is opened.
Immediately I catch sight of what is going on. Two masked men are dragging in an unmoving man into the room and it looks like a struggle for them because apparently, the man they are dragging into the room has a bigger frame than them.
I look back at Leonard and tell him, “That... That was the bigger threat,”
My eyes shift back to the activity going on at the moment although I would not necessarily call it an activity. What I know is that Luis is the unmoving man being handled that way and it brings back memories of when he had it in him to kill me.
After he is set on the ground, they bind him with chains on both his hands and legs before they leave the room with him still unmoving.
“What did he do to make him a bigger threat?” Leonard asks me so I look back at him in a bid to respond to his inquiry.
“He was possessed, if that was what I would call it. More like mind-controlled into attacking me. And I could not even fight him off because he was at least five times stronger. Took the help of Mark and my spirit wolf to eventually put him down,”
“Mind-controlled is the right word for this because in no way was he possessed.”
“But how can such happen?”
“It’s easy. Just inject him with a lot of bane. It would mess up his mind first and then put him in a cloud of hallucination. From there you could task him to do whatever you want and he would do it. As for him being stronger, it’s the bane’s doing as well. As a lot has been injected into him, it builds up his body mass. Sort of like an adrenaline that would wear off after a long time. So when you put him down, it was just the adrenaline rush going to a zero, making him weak in the process. In that situation, he has no choice but to collapse because he has used a lot of energy while fighting,”
That was a lot of explanation from Leonard about the situation that happened to Luis. It beats me that he has this much knowledge about things like this while I have none. I think it’s time I start to study about how things work in the werewolf territory. That is if I make it out of here alive.
A groan from the front catches my attention and instantly I look at where I supposedly heard it from. That was Luis groaning and I think he is about to wake up.
But before I could react to what is happening, I feel something land on my face. When I look at it after taking it off my face, I realize it is a piece of clothing. A jacket to be precise.
“You still need to cover yourself up,” Leonard says in the most awkward way and I have to remember that I am naked. I’ve got no clothes on after everything on me was ripped off from transforming.
I take the jacket and manage to put it over my chest because there is no way that I can get it over my shoulders. Not with hands chained this way.
“Luis, are you okay?” I ask, sighting him standing up from the floor while still groaning. I can see that he is holding on to his neck, which means hitting him there repeatedly has caused him a lot of pain.
He eventually sits up and then turns around. When his eyes land on me, he doesn’t seem too happy and it makes me worried. Doesn’t he recognize me still?
“Soma, what are you doing here?” he asks. Okay, I guess I was just overthinking. He recognizes me.
“I came to get you out of here,” I tell him instantly, but my mind tells me how ironic that sounds. I wanted to save him yet I am bound in chains at the moment. So much for getting him out of here.
“You shouldn’t have,”
Although he mutters the statement, I can hear him loud and clear. It immediately breaks my heart to hear that because I was expecting a little appreciation.
“Why would you say that?” my voice is somewhat croaked when I open my mouth to ask him that.
“Because all these happening was to get you here. I am not the main target. It is you. I was only used as a bait to get you into their trap and you fell for it,” But he is not done. “When I told you about not wanting to be with you due to not feeling safe, you regarded me as a coward. Now, look at what has happened.”