Chapter 13

Chapter 13

      They were a couple hours away now. They had only stopped a few times, to hunt, to sleep, and to go to the bathroom. They got gas once too. They stopped at a clothing store when they were closer. She didn’t know what to get, they didn’t want to go in there with masks on their faces. Hats might be too obvious so that didn’t leave them with many options. Aaron picked out a pair of jeans and a short sleeve T-shirt. Claire picked out a pair of plain black leggings and a long T-shirt. They had their main outfits picked out and they just needed something to hide their faces from the cameras. Claire ended up finding some hoodies that she thought might work. They were black and they had a picture of tiny squirrel in the upper right corner of the hoodie. Claire looked at the sweaters and looked at Aaron and they both started to laugh out loud and immediately picked out their sizes in the sweaters. Claire still wanted to disguise their faces more. Even though they colored their hair and they were both going to have baggie hoodies on she didn’t want them to be identified on the tapes. There was a strong possibility that things would go south on this mission and she didn’t want the cops to be chasing them after this was done. So she decided to grab some eyeliner and mascara. She was going to darken up their eyes a bit to make them less noticeable. She also grabbed some dark eyeshadow to help darken up her eyes. After they changed in the car Claire roughly applied some eyeliner to her eyes and then to Aarons. She put some of the dark eyeshadow on and finished her makeup off with the mascara. It was sloppy but it would work.

      They were almost there and they had their plan in place. They would go in, and tell the secretary that they were called to come and ID a body. The cell they were placed in was near the morgue. If all went as planned they would just have to take the elevator down to the morgue. In the event that they were asked to give names and such they would have to alter their plan a bit. They knew what they would need to do but they didn’t want to think about it unless it came to that. The next thing would be to barricade themselves in the room where they were held. They were hoping that the tapes were kept there. If they weren’t the security room wasn’t far from where they were held. They would quickly search the tapes until they found the one they wanted. By the time they were done they were assuming that Dr. Crane would be close so they would just stay barricaded in either the security room, or the room they were held in, until he came to them. It was a risky plan, but it was the best they could do on short notice. Claire was going to park her car a block away from Mayo Clinic since they knew what it looked like. But she didn’t want to be too far in the event that they needed to make a rushed exit, so she parked it about a mile away from the back exit of the Mayo Clinic. They were almost there and the nerves were setting in. Claire was shaking with nerves and endorphins and Aaron was in the same shape as her, if not worse. She took his face in her hands looked him deep into his dark green eyes, kissed him hard on the lips, and said, “Let’s finish this.”

      They got out of the car and walked to the Mayo Clinic. All of Claire’s senses were heightened, any movement made her whip her head to look at it. Aaron took her hand and squeezed it to try and help her relax; they needed to seem normal when they went up to the secretary. If they even seemed slightly off they would have to go from their simple plan to the riskier one. They were almost there when Claire took a deep breath in and breathed out before walking into the doors of the Mayo Clinic. There were a lot of people there which worried Claire even more. They were walking up to the secretary’s desk and Claire was trying to compose herself. When they got to the desk Aaron ended up doing the talking. “Hello…we…we were told to come to…to ID a body” He was on the verge of tears, Claire was keeping her head down, she shaking must have worked for her because the secretary felt bad for them.

“Oh okay, I’m sorry for your loss. I’ll just need to see a driver’s license or some other form of ID, and then you two can be on your way.”

That was the last thing either of them wanted to hear. They looked at each other and both took a deep breath. They smiled at the secretary and Claire reached out and pulled her throat to her mouth. She bit hard enough to make her bleed, but she didn’t want to kill her. When Claire turned around she saw all eyes were on her and Aaron. Without another thought they both bolted towards the stairs. This was the part of their plan that they weren’t too happy about. It would leave a trail to them even after it was done, but they needed to do it. They were almost there when Claire was kicked in the back, the force of the kick combined with her speed made her slam against the wall. She looked up and saw that it was the secretary. She knew she should just keep going but look on the secretary’s face was drawing her towards her. She had blood running down her neck from the chunk of flesh Claire had ripped out. Her eyes looked wide and unblinking, like she was dosed with something. Claire was going to turn around when she looked again and saw that she was shaking, and it wasn’t from blood loss. Claire could feel a bruise forming on her back. She turned to tell Aaron but he was on the floor. One of the guards must have kicked him after Claire had been knocked to the ground. She ran over to the guard that was trying to crush Aaron’s windpipe. She picked him up with one hand and threw him has hard as she could. She must have broken his back because he wasn’t moving after that. She turned her attention to the secretary now. She slowly walked over to her. The secretary wasn’t moving now; the only thing in her eyes now was terror. Claire was standing right in front her now; Claire picked her up and threw her up, towards the ceiling. The secretary was screaming bloody murder on the way down and when she landed on the ground blood started to pool underneath her.

      Claire looked to check on Aaron now and saw that he was staring at her. “What? Let’s go we are running out of time!”

“What happened? What…what is wrong?”

“I…I think that she was dosed. I feel weird, I feel strong, stronger than I’ve ever felt.”

“Steroids?” Aaron asked.

“Maybe, probably, look we can’t waste time talking about this we have to go.”

      She helped him up and they were about to head down the stairs towards their cell, when Claire took a second glance at the front entrance of the Mayo Clinic. There was blood dripping from the secretary’s desk and people were crying, and screaming. She looked at the security guard she chucked across the room, he was having a seizure now, and there was a pool of blood forming underneath him. Lastly she looked at the secretary, she was lying in a large puddle of her blood, she wasn’t moving, and her eyes were unmoving and filled with fear. She was dead. Claire had killed her, and probably the security guard. She turned away and started down the stairs. Aaron was waiting for her but they had to get moving. Their time frame was drastically altered so they had to adjust. Instead of immediately barricading themselves in the holding room they started to search the security room. They broke down the door and saw that another security guard was looking at them. He was still sitting in his chair with his mouth gaping wide. Aaron didn’t hesitate. He lunged towards him and ripped out the man’s throat with his bare hands. He chucked the throat to the ground and started searching. Claire composed herself and started to look too. They didn’t find what they were looking for so they turned to go across the way to the holding room when they heard a scream.

      Claire’s heart dropped. She looked at Aaron and his face was as pale as a ghost. He looked at her and his eyes were filled with terror. He started to back away when Claire grabbed his hand, looked him in the eyes and whispered,

“We have to save them; this isn’t just about us anymore. We have to protect whoever is in there.”

He nodded his head and took a deep breath and started walking forward. They heard another scream, this one was even worse than the first. It was a girl screaming, her scream was filled with pain. Aaron was heading for the door but Claire stopped him and pulled him to the door next to it. Claire had a feeling that there was a room that had a double sided mirror in it, looking into the room where they were both tortured. They tried to open it but it was locked. They didn’t want to make too much noise because The Doctor was in the room next to them. Claire waited, and waited until the next blood curdling scream and she kicked the door down. She looked in and saw that there were two people in there giving them the same look as the security guard before. They quickly, but quietly, took out the two people in there. Claire snapped the women’s neck and Aaron crushed the windpipe of the man’s throat. They closed the door behind them, as quietly as they could and looked into the room.

      They knew he couldn’t see them but that wasn’t what made Claire sick to her stomach. It was the women on the table. She was cut open from her throat to the base of her stomach. Dr. Crane was pulling out her organs one at a time. She was wide awake. He must have given her a stimulant to keep her from passing out from the pain. She was crying, begging him to stop, but he just kept taking organ after organ out of her. He was taking notes and talking to the people he thought were watching him. Claire looked away, she was afraid if she didn’t she would throw up. It was worse than any anatomy class she had taken. She looked at Aaron and he was stifling a gag and turned away too. They made eye contact than and started to search for the tapes. Aaron found a drawer that had tapes in it, each were dated. One stuck out to the rest. It was dated with the word “success” was written on it in all caps. They locked the door, and braced it with one of the chairs and put the tape in and braced themselves for what they were about to watch.

 

It started out slow; Dr. Crane was talking to the camera. “This is test subject number 12 who was diagnosed with Carnivisouritis haemoglobis about three years ago. Test subject number 12 is 17 years old today and has been having tests done for about 3 months. I have tried several different methods to determine how one with Carnivisouritis haemoglobis would be killed. I have cut every limb off one by one, no results. I have removed the organs from the test subject while they were awake with no results. The regenerative properties of individuals with this disease are impressive to say the least. Today is going to be the last attempt before I release this test subject. Without further ado I will begin the testing for today’s final session.”

Throughout Dr. Crane’s entire speech the child tied down was trying to force his way out. He was so young and frightened. He was crying and trying to beg Dr. Crane to help him out. Dr. Crane ignored him the whole time and continued his introduction for his documentation. He picked up a bottle that contained a blue liquid. He began to pour it on the child’s left foot. “I am testing the efficiency of the acid to see if this will stop the process of regeneration. I will re-record in an hour to see if test subject number 12’s left foot grows back.”

      Dr. Crane was yelling by the end of the video because the acid was eating away at the flesh on the child’s foot. He was crying, and screaming, and struggling in the restraints to try and make the pain stop. The tape cut out for a second, and it started again. The camera was focused on the newly grown left foot of the child. Acid was out. “I am going to try to burn the subject now. I will pour gasoline onto the left leg and set it on fire. This is a controlled environment so there is no risk to me, or to anyone else in this building.” He took the jug filled with gasoline and dumped it onto the child’s left leg. He was shaking with fear, and crying, staring at The Doctor with disbelief. Begging him not to, telling him he would do anything if he let him go. The Doctor said nothing. He wouldn’t even look at him. He lit the match and threw it onto the child’s leg. Claire wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but it looked like Dr. Crane was smiling as the child shrieked in pain while the fire burned away his flesh. It seemed to on forever when finally the video cut out again. When it came back it was zoomed in on the left leg of the subject, completely healed.

“All other attempts have failed. I will try one more method. I am going to remove the subjects head.”

When he said this the child had started to struggle so much that he must have broken something because he started to cry out in pain. “I am using a butcher’s knife to try to make a clean cut.”

      Slowly Dr. Crane picked up the butcher’s knife, and stared at it; like it was the only thing he needed in the world, and turned around to face the crying child. The child was trying to escape, the restraints on his ankles were starting to give but before he could struggle anymore The Doctor brought the butcher’s knife all the up above his own head, and with all the force he had he brought it down. Unfortunately for the child, it was not as clean of a cut as Dr. Crane had hoped for. The child was choking on his own blood while The Doctor hacked at the child’s throat until there was a thump and the head was off. The Doctor looked at the camera now. He was drenched in blood and when he said, “I will be back in another hour to check on test subject number 12.” The tape cut out again. When it started again it was zoomed in on Dr. Crane’s face. He was smiling. He looked into the camera and said, “Success.” The tape cut out for the last time after that.

      Claire could not believe what she had just watched. She didn’t even remember that Dr. Crane was in the room right next to them, performing the same tests on the poor girl strapped to the table. The same thing kept running through Claire’s head, he was only 17, he just turned 17. He was only seventeen years old! He was child! He was begging and pleading with Dr. Crane to spare him and all Dr. Crane did was ignore him. He couldn’t even give him a painless death. That whole last day of his life, his seventeenth birthday, and he was in pain the entire time. The more Claire thought about it the worse she felt, and the angrier she got. She hadn’t even glanced at Aaron until that moment and when she did all she saw was rage and despair in his eyes. He had been crying while watching the tape. He looked at her with nothing but pain and anger all over his face and looked back at Dr. Crane. Claire didn’t even realize that she had been crying too, not until she felt a tear streaming down her face. When she went to wipe it away she saw black, her mascara was running. But the only thing she cared about was the monster that was in the room next to them.

      Dr. Crane was still performing his tests on the girl in the other room. They looked in the room and saw the same butcher’s knife that had killed the young boy sitting on the surgical tray. Both of them removed the barricade from the door and opened the door leading into the room they had both suffered the same pain as the girl who was in there now. Claire had felt fortunate that all she had to endure was getting her foot removed. After everything she saw, and hearing what had happened to Aaron, she felt lucky. But she knew the others weren’t as lucky as she was. Aaron and Claire slowly walked into the room. Claire picked up the butcher’s knife from the surgical tray. The girl on the table looked at them and must have seen that they were covered in blood, and feared that they were there to finish her off. Dr. Crane reacted to her looking at them and turned around. His eyes fell on the both of them and his eyes had a twinge in them from the sick smile that was stretching across his face.

“So good to see you Aaron, and you as well Claire. You two seemed to have gotten along very well. I guess you have me to thank for that, don’t you?” His smile stretched further across his face.

“We aren’t here to thank you, Dr. Crane.” Replied Aaron, his voice was laced with ice.

“Oh, I know why you’re here. Are you feeling okay Claire? I had given our secretary an extremely high dose of steroids this morning. I had a feeling you two would find your way back here, so I made some precautions.”

“Don’t you dare pretend like you care about my well-being you sick b*****d. You killed that kid, he was so young, and from the looks of the tape, he trusted you too. Did you groom him like you groomed me? Like you groomed Aaron?” Claire couldn’t hide the acid in her voice; she was filled with nothing but disgust, her hands tightened around the butcher’s knife in her hand. She was hiding it behind her back, even if he saw it she didn’t want him to see it coming.

“I do care Claire. Of course I care. You are like me, you and Aaron. This girl here,” he said gesturing to the girl who was still open on the table. “All of you are like me so of course I care. I am only having a little bit of fun. I know all of your limits and I wouldn’t go so far as to kill you.”

“It’s fun for you? To cut us up to pieces? To permanently damage us?” Aaron was getting angrier by the second; his voice rose after each syllable.

“I didn’t permanently damage any of you, you all can heal, or did you forget?” Dr. Crane was still smirking; he still thought he had won.

“You damaged our minds you sick, selfish, son of a b***h!” Aaron was yelling now. Claire was waiting for the right time when an idea came to her.

“Oh yes, Post traumatic stress disorder I take it? Well that was to be expected, the physical trauma I put all of you through would be damaging to the mind I suppose. I tried to make it painless.”

He continued to rant and Aaron was getting angrier by the second. Dr. Crane had turned to face the girl on the table when Claire gave Aaron’s arm a gentle nudge and handed him the butcher’s knife. He took a quick look at her and Claire gave him a sheepish grin. He smiled back and turned his full attention on Dr. Crane.

“Are either of you listening to me? I thought we were going to have an adult conversation about this, but I see now that neither of you will have that.” He turned to his surgical tray and froze, turned around to see the butcher knife coming right towards his throat. He tried to block it but Aaron saw it coming and smacked his hand out of the way. He kneed The Doctor in the stomach which made Dr. Crane fall to his knees. Claire walked over while The Doctor tried to get up from the ground. She used the last bit of strength that the steroids had given her to force Dr. Crane down to the ground with her right foot. Aaron leaned in a bit closer to Dr. Crane and said, “You may have brought Claire and I together by tearing us apart. But now it’s our turn to tear you apart. Together.”

      Aaron let it sink in for a moment and he let the butcher’s knife fall onto Dr. Alexander Crane’s neck. He purposely did it with little force to make him choke on his blood, as he did with the child on the tape. He waited a few more seconds before delivering the second and third blow. When it came to the finishing one, he handed the butcher’s knife to Claire. Blood was dripping down his face but he smiled when he handed it to her. Claire smiled back and took the butchers knife. She took a deep breath and threw the butcher’s knife down to cut off the last bit of Dr. Crane’s head. She had gotten some of his blood on her lips and she licked them clean. They looked at each other after that realizing that it was done. Cut up the rest of him and threw him into a medical waste bag. They left him in a corner of the room that was once their cell. They helped the girl out of the restraints and carried her out the back entrance. The alarms began to go off but they didn’t care. Claire had parked the car near the back entrance of the hospital. They carried the girl into their car and drove away, finally free.

 

      Claire and Aaron had driven an hour west heading towards Oregon, when the girl finally woke up in the back seat. She had been asleep since they left; she was sleeping when they carried her out. She was still in shock about what she had just witnessed. She didn’t say anything when she woke up, Aaron looked back to check on her and saw that she was awake. He nudged me and said, “Hey, are you feeling okay? Looks like you healed up finally.”

The girl hesitated for a moment before she responded, “Yeah, I think I’m okay. Can you…can you drop me off somewhere? I…I want to go home.”

She was scared of them, of course she was, she didn’t know what had provoked them to chop off Dr. Crane’s head. If she saw the carnage that was on the main floor she would have preferred to be found strapped onto the table in her cell.

“What is your name?” Claire asked, trying to sound friendly, but it sounded harsher than she would have liked.

“It’s Violet.  Can you please drop me off somewhere?”

“Look, I know you’re probably terrified of us right now. You probably think we’re some crazy murdering couple who just go around chopping off people’s heads. But Dr. Crane was a sadistic monster who�"“

“I know who he was,” Violet interrupted, “I know that he deserved it, I just…I need to find my family. My parents had filed a missing persons report. They were looking for me while Dr. Crane was performing those…experiments on me. He told me before he started on the fifth day I was there. He was just toying with me the whole time. I need to go back, they are worried sick and I can’t let them think I died.”

Aaron had looked at Claire and she read his face. Claire pulled the car over and before she let the girl out she said, “Violet, you are free now, you don’t have to worry about running. But you can’t tell anyone that you saw us. We…we didn’t handle things very well when we left and they might be looking for us. Please, you can’t say anything about us.” Claire knew she had to say something, even if Aaron didn’t want her to. They had killed people at the Mayo Clinic, destroyed some, and left Dr. Crane cut up to pieces in a bag. Hopefully their disguises kept them hidden while they cut off his head. If not then maybe they would find the tapes that Dr. Crane had left there but even that wouldn’t have given them cause for what they did.

“I won’t, I promise. You two saved my life. He was going to cut off my head after he was done removing my organs. He had told me a few minutes before the two of you came in. Trust me, I am not telling anyone about either of you.” Violet smiled at them and got out of Claire’s dad’s car.

When she was gone Aaron looked at Claire and smiled. Claire smiled back. She couldn’t believe how far they had come. They expected to die, they were almost positive that they were going to fail. That Dr. Crane hid his tapes and they would have never figured out to kill him. Now he was dead and they were free. Free. Anytime she thought of the word it brought her back to when she first figured out what she was. She was in the basement of her parent’s house and she was eating her first meal. Even though she felt disgusted with herself, in that moment, she had felt free. She hadn’t felt that free until right now; as her and Aaron drove to Oregon to start their new life together. The whole thing felt surreal. She couldn’t believe it was done. It almost seemed too easy but, than Claire remembered those that were unfortunately caught between them and Dr. Crane.

“Are we bad people?” Claire blurted.

“What do you mean? We just saved that girl,” replied Aaron.

“I know, but we also killed 5 people. We probably traumatized all of the people that were at the front entrance of the Mayo Clinic. The look on their faces before we went down to find The Doctor, they were filled with pure terror.” Claire was attempting to fight back tears, and failing.

“Claire, we did what needed to be done. You know that right?”

“I…I know…I just don’t know what came over me back there. I could have let that secretary go but…something just…I don’t know how to explain it. Everything just went red; I tossed that security guard across the room and went to her. I…I should have stopped! I could’ve stopped…why…I should have…” Claire’s attempt to fight back the tears was no longer a fight. She had to pull over because her tears were blurring her vision. She cut herself off because she couldn’t breathe, she was inconsolable.

“Claire, calm down. Breathe. He drugged you. Don’t you remember? He had dosed that secretary. He was expecting us so he was probably dosing her with steroids regularly. He knew one of us would attack her if she didn’t let us through and it happened to be you. You were drugged. You would have walked away if you weren’t. I know you enough to know that you would have protected me and we would have gone down to handle Dr. Crane. He drugged you Claire.”

She was still having trouble breathing but then she thought about it. She forgot that, how did she forget that? She tried to calm her breathing enough to speak but the tears just kept streaming down her face. After a while she finally was able to breathe easy.

Claire took a deep breath and said, “I know he drugged me, and I know I probably wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t drugged, but I just didn’t think I had that kind of anger in me. Even if he dosed me with steroids I still did it, that anger was still in me somewhere. The steroids just amplified it.”

“Claire, I killed some of those people too. I killed the second security guard and the man in the room connected to where Dr. Crane was. I took off most of his head. Claire, we both did things we aren’t proud of. I feel like s**t about it too, but I don’t want to dwell on this. We are free finally free from all of this. We can start our life together. We can go anywhere we want and we can do whatever we want. We don’t have anyone chasing us anymore! Don’t you see Claire? It’s over, it’s really over!” He was smiling now, a smile that stretched across his entire face and made his green eyes sparkle. He was right, they were free; it was done. She looked at him, her eyes were still puffy from crying, and she smiled right back at him. They shared a deep kiss and drove away; heading towards Oregon�"where they first met�"to start their new lives together. Finally free.