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Chapter 5 - Chapter 4

Oscar blinked at the fluorescent lights illuminating the hospital room. Wait... Hospital room? His chest tightened as he squinted at the loose-fitting gown covering his copper-toned skin. An IV drip dangled from his arm—just below his elbow—and connected to a collection of screens and bags of fluids.

His stomach turned.

Groaning, he turned his head. Dios mio… His skull felt like it was made of bricks. But the rest of his body? His limbs felt like wet noodles. So, he sat there in that deceptively comfortable bed, waiting. For what, exactly, he wasn't sure. Maybe for the feeling to return to his arms and legs? Or maybe for some more big, scary terrorists to burst through the door.

Memories from before he blacked out rushed him like a forest fire.

He just had to be nosy, didn't he? When he heard that explosion in the woods, he'd been smoking a cigarette with a few of his classmates. They rushed straight over to the cliff overlooking the old quarry, laughing and theorizing about what it could be. A gas leak? Aliens attacking? The possibilities were endless.

Nothing could've prepared him for what actually happened.

Most of it was a blur. If his head hadn't been pounding so much, he could've remembered more. But he did remember the red-eyed ninja teleporting before the soldiers took them into the quarry. He remembered the old man with the scars—Klaus—spouting nonsense about evolution and powers and world domination. If his abuelita heard the man speak, she would've thrown holy water on him.

His breath caught in his throat as another memory slammed into him.

He remembered the crash.

He remembered the fire swallowing him whole.

"What the—" He ripped the blankets off his body as adrenaline and horror flooded him. His skin… Oh God, his skin…

Wasn't burned?

Huh?

Bandages had been recently applied to his forearms and legs for the cuts he'd suffered, but the skin wasn't damaged the way he'd anticipated. But that didn't make sense. When the van he, Andre, and Emily were forced into was hit, the engine immediately caught fire once they tumbled off the road. Andre and Emily were able to make it out of the back of the van, but a glass shard piercing his calf made it harder to move.

He nearly made it out of the vehicle before the van exploded.

That was all he remembered.

While his mind went into a fiery spiral, a nurse and a doctor entered the room. Stitched into the doctor's lab coat was the same blue A he saw on the hood of the armored truck that sent him and his friends crashing into the trees.

What were they called again?

Oscar eyed the strangers as they slowly approached him. They didn't look like evil terrorists, but he couldn't be too sure. He didn't even know where he was.

So that's what he asked them.

"Hello, Oscar." The doctor gave him a warm smile. "You've been asleep for a few days. We understand you might be feeling a little scared and disoriented right now, so please give your body time to—"

"Who are you?" He cut his brown eyes to the nurse. She didn't look evil either. Her attention was on the glass tablet in her hands, her fingers tapping different buttons glowing against the clear surface. "What…what happened to me?" Tears welled in his eyes as his fear turned to dread.

Before he and the others were sent away, Klaus said something that made his skin crawl.

"You don't want to know what I do to my enemies."

Had NEMESIS succeeded in kidnapping them? Was this even a hospital? Were they preparing to experiment on him? His breathing quickened. Sweat beaded against his temple as he grabbed a fistful of the sheets beneath him.

I need to get out of here.

He attempted to get off the hospital bed. He immediately fell to his knees. The nurse rushed to help him up, but he swatted her hand away before scooting into the nearest corner of the room. The IV connected to his arm tried holding him back, so he ripped it out of his arm with a painful, wet pop.

"Oscar, we need you to calm down—"

"Prepare a sedative," the doctor mumbled into a device on their wrist.

Shakily rising to his feet, he scowled at them. No one was sedating him. Not without him clawing out their eyes. His father taught him how to punch before he died. He wasn't a boxer, but he'd get a few licks in before they stuck him with a tranquilizer.

The door swung open. A young woman in a navy-blue jumpsuit entered. The same blue A had been printed onto the tight fabric. Had he not been scared out of his mind, he would've made a joke about her outfit.

She's lucky she's hot.

The woman gestured for the nurse and doctor to step aside, her cold gaze fixated upon Oscar from the moment she arrived. "Look, you need to calm down. We're trying to help you." The sternness of her voice suggested he didn't have a choice.

He nodded slowly, his breath slowing.

"Just…" He squeezed his eyes shut. "Just tell me what's going on."

"You were in a crash," she explained. "We recovered you—along with your friends—and brought you to our secure facility here in upstate Washington."

"D.C.?" That wasn't too far from River Hill.

"No, Washington state."

A surge of nausea hit him. That was on the other side of the country—far away from his family. He sat back down on the hospital bed.

"Wait, recovered me…" He shook his head. "You kidnapped us."

"No, NEMESIS kidnapped you." The young woman rolled her eyes. "We saved you. Had it not been for us, you and your friends would've probably been killed—or worse."

There weren't many things worse than death. Oscar knew that firsthand.

He tilted his head at her. "And who exactly is us?" He squinted. "Who are you?"

 "My name is Victoria Shaw. I'm an agent here at Atlas. We've been chasing down Klaus and NEMESIS for years now. When we caught wind of their operation in the quarry, we decided to make our move."

That's what they were called. Atlas.

Oscar paused. "So…you're the good guys?"

"There are no good guys in this world."

"Well, that makes me feel a lot better."

"But it's our job to help keep it safe from people like Klaus."

He wasn't sure what to believe. He'd never heard of Atlas before. Then again, he'd never heard of NEMESIS, Primes, and Primonium until he'd been kidnapped by those psychos in the woods. A million questions roamed about his head as if it were a maze—but the most important one jumped to the front of the line.

"My family," he began. "Do they…do they know I'm here? My sister, my uncle… I gotta tell them I'm—"

Victoria lifted her hand. "We've made your uncle and sister aware of the situation. We haven't told them where you are exactly, but they know you're alive and that you're safe. You'll be able to see them eventually."

Oscar exhaled and collapsed onto the bed. After everything his family had been through over the past few years, he would've never forgiven himself if he let his sister and uncle think he'd died. With what happened to his parents, he couldn't put his sister through that kind of trauma again.

He promised he'd keep her safe.

"Any more questions?" Victoria asked.

Smiling sheepishly, he lifted his head. "How much time do you got?"

"You get one more before I make the doctor sedate you."

Pursing his lips, he racked his brain for the perfect question. Eventually, he settled on the one that'd been burning at him since he woke up.

"How am I alive?"

The woman's brow furrowed slightly. A look of discomfort crossed her face like a shadow. "We…aren't completely sure yet. What happened to you and your friends is nothing short of a miracle. Most people wouldn't have survived a crash like that, much less a fire. But, clearly, the six of you aren't most people."

Klaus said they were Primes—gods amongst men. He said they had gifts.

Was this his?

"You were the last one to wake from your coma. Our scientists are still trying to understand the extent of your new…mutations."

"Mutations? I don't have a tail or anything, do I?"

She refused to laugh at his attempt at a joke.

"Hold on a minute…" Oscar focused on one of the first things she said. "Coma? How long was I out for?" Yawning, he rubbed his eyes.

"Two weeks," the nurse with the tablet answered.

Oscar let his head drop. His mouth slightly agape, all he could do was stare at the ceiling. Two weeks. Fourteen days. He couldn't even sleep in on the weekends because of his constant nightmares. How had he managed to be unconscious for that long?

"Your friends woke up relatively fast," Victoria added. "They suffered minor injuries, thankfully. Our scientists have been waiting for you to wake up so we can run more extensive tests—"

He sat up, ignoring the ache in his midsection. "I'm not letting you experiment on me like some lab rat."

"Relax," she snapped. "We need to figure out what happened to you. And I'm willing to bet you want to know too."

He didn't argue. Because she was right; he did want to know what happened that night. During the crash, all the cases of Primonium exploded, coating the inside of the van—and everyone inside—with the red substance.

If what Klaus told them about Primes was true, then that means…

He stared at his hands.

Turning to the nurse and doctor, Victoria whispered something that resulted in them leaving the room. Moments later, the nurse returned with a stack of clothes. She set them down at the foot of the bed before disappearing again.

Oscar grabbed one of the garments—a white T-shirt bearing the Atlas logo. He wrinkled his nose. "You're gonna make me wear your merch?"

Sighing, Victoria pinched the bridge of her nose. "Just…put it on, yeah? Meet me outside when you're done." She didn't say anything else. Turning on her heel, she exited the room and pulled the door closed. The lock clicking sounded like a cannon shot in the emptiness of the spacious hospital room.

Oscar stared at the door. He glanced at the clothes. Something silver folded into one of the garments caught the light from the ceiling. He carefully pulled it out, the cold silver sending shocks through his fingertips.

His eyes widened.

It was his lighter—a gift from his father. It was the last thing he had left from the man. Memories of that fateful day tried to crawl out of the depths of his psyche, but he forced them down. Now wasn't the time.

Grumbling, he pulled himself out of bed. "They better not probe me." He began to change into the clothes given to him. Once he was finished, he slipped into the shoes left for him at the door and stepped outside.

###

Oscar found Victoria waiting for him in the hallway. She was leaning against the wall with her sharp nose buried in the screen of her phone. She didn't even acknowledge his existence after he arrived in front of her.

He cleared his throat.

"Took you long enough. You get dressed slower than I do."

"You're not very welcoming, you know that? What happened to hospitality? I just woke up from a freaking coma."

"I figured saving your life was more than enough hospitality. We could've let NEMESIS take you."

Before he could argue, she moved down the hall. He frowned but followed behind her.

It turned out he wasn't in a hospital; it was more of an infirmary. The wing of recovery rooms ended with two glass doors containing a sleek elevator. As they approached, the doors slid open, and three individuals stepped out. A man in an expensive-looking black suit flanked by two scientists in lab coats entered the hall.

Victoria folded her arms at the man in the suit. "Aren't you supposed to be in Oslo, old man?"

"We finished early," he answered, pushing the thin frames of his glasses further up his pointed nose. Oscar shifted his gaze between them. Now that he was paying attention, they looked eerily similar. They had the same ocean-colored irises.

Wait a minute…

"Besides," the man continued, now smiling warmly at Oscar, "I had to get back in time for our last guest to wake up." He extended his hand toward him. A watch that must've cost more than Oscar's life sat on his wrist. "I'm Pearce Shaw, owner of Atlas Incorporated. You can call me Director Shaw."

He shook the man's hand cautiously.

Compared to Klaus and Apex, this guy looked like a saint. An aura of trustworthiness and authority surrounded him.

"I'm sure there's a lot on your mind. And we'll answer all the questions you have, if possible," Director Shaw told him. He gestured toward the elevator. "Mind taking a trip with me?"

The group moved into the lift. Oscar whistled at the sheer number of floors in the building. They were headed to the zero floor. He didn't even know buildings had zero floors. He'd also never been in a place this big before. How had he never heard of Atlas before? Well, whoever they were, they had money. And lots of it.

"Ever since you and your friends arrived here at the Acropolis, we've been trying our best to understand what happened to you. We've been aware of the existence of Primes and Primonium for years, but we've never had the opportunity to analyze them up close. Not like this." The elevator eased to a stop. "Until now." A pleasant ding sounded before the doors slid open, revealing a huge, cavernous room.

The group stepped out onto the white tiles. Oscar lingered at the back, his eyes wide. A magnificent laboratory stretched before him like something out of a science fiction movie. Machines of every shape and size hummed in precise rhythm; researchers were bent over sleek consoles and glittering instruments. The air itself seemed alive with invention.

 Oscar felt obsolete just existing amongst everything else.

"This is what one billion dollars' worth of lab equipment gets you these days." Grinning, Director Shaw gestured at the spectacle of it all. "Welcome to The Forge."

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