Eternal [HS]

Chapter One

THE BLUE DARKNESS OF MORNING looms over her head as she steps out of the hospital.

Being in the city at such an hour never fails to throw her off-kilter, and not even the caffeine she sips every other second will stave off the heavy-lidded sleepiness that pangs at her from the inside. There's a misty fog hanging in the air, parting or disappearing to allow a passing car through before it swallows the vehicle up as if it never existed.

Snow crunches beneath her feet, accompanying the sound of the sliding doors closing again, and she sighs at the winter chill that somehow slips beneath the fabric of her scrubs and raises goosebumps on her skin. Even with her coat wrapped around her frame, the cold is too intense to handle.

As a person who adores winter weather, she should be ecstatic about the blizzard coming down around her, yet she isn't. She finds herself yearning for an impossible shaft of sunlight to cut through dawn's preceding gloom. It's unlike her, and she has a creeping suspicion that it has to do with being trapped inside of a dark, sleeping hospital all night.

Last night was her first night shift at the hospital.

Her position there is fairly new, so she wanted to learn the ropes and gain a little confidence before taking on something as daunting as the night shift.

But, after a month of becoming comfortable with her new job, she decided at the last minute to come in after her manager sent a mass text about being understaffed. They were promising an extra couple dollars an hour to anyone willing to annihilate their healthy sleep schedule—which, let's be candid, never existed in the first place—to spend eight hours of their life drawing blood and giving bed baths. And, to make matters worse, it was a boring night.

Jo sat at the nurses' station, fresh out of tasks to complete, with a pen pointed at the inside of her arm. The ink dried on her soft skin the form of a miniature smiley face that stared back at her plainly as if in jest, to remind her of her own downturned features.

It isn't that she dislikes her job, she doesn't. What makes her hate being here is that she has to be. Too much of the same monotonous thing has never done her any favors.

Her stomach grumbled all night, and she couldn't wait for her four a.m. break to quell the hunger sparked by forgetting to eat dinner. She went downstairs for a quick bite as soon as the clock struck four, but the cafe she favors in her usual day shift wasn't open.

Her hunger, exhaustion, and night shift fueled moodiness is why she's distracted on her walk to the train station a few streets from her hospital. Usually, she's sure to be vigilant while walking alone in the pathways of the city she recently began working in. Today is different. She can only think about getting food in her belly and eight hours of sleep before she has to show up for her afternoon shift.

It's Christmas and a weekday, so she dreads returning. Holidays are busy, and while there is a type of busy that makes the day go by in a blink, this is the other type. This afternoon will be the, "Oh my God, if someone has one more ridiculous request, I'm gonna start ripping my fucking hair out," type of busy. At least she has time to nap and eat first. If she had to work two shifts back to back on a holiday, she'd leave and never return.

The first inkling of danger that she feels as she strides down the sidewalk, careful not to slip on patches of ice here and there, she ignores.

Something lingers in the pit of her stomach, crooning in her ear to turn around and not come back, but she forces it away. If she were to acknowledge it, perhaps she'd think about how odd a sensation it is.

There's hair standing up on the nape of her neck, goosebumps raised from the winter chill, and the ever-present feeling of someone watching her, but there's something else too. Right beside the fear and danger, a protective presence urges her to flee. She doesn't know why it's there, or if it's an imagined presence, but it's there all the same.

Snowflakes twirl and prance on their graceful plummet to the earth until they join the blanket of snow already covering the sidewalk. It's a little less heavy, though, as she reaches a stretch of sidewalk beneath the overpass on which the train tracks lie.

It feels extra damp, dreary, and dark beneath the cobblestone bridge, and she begins to get this sharp sensation in her heart as if her body itself is warning her to stop. Stupidly, this was the one day she forgot to bring her pepper spray, and she ignores every instinct inside of her that warns of something dangerous lurking in the shadows nearby.

Once she reaches the edge of the overpass, where the cobblestone wall opens to a small staircase down to the alleyway, it strikes.

She shrieks in horror at the feeling of multiple pairs of hands grasping her.

One of them covers her mouth and silences her, muffling her instantaneous cries for help, as they yank her from the open street and into the alley. If only she had her pepper spray, then she'd at least have a chance. Without a weapon, these people—men, she notices—are far stronger than she dreams of being. Everything she knows to escape situations like these evades her. She is left with is a blind, consuming panic that leaves her thrashing clumsily against her captors.

"Help!" she screams into the hand molded over her mouth. "Please! Hel—"

Her plead for mercy is cut short when one of them, the leader of this group, shoves her up against the wall hard enough to make her forehead bounce onto the stone with a horrifying sound. Once, twice, three times, four—a hand is wrapped up her hair as leverage to bash her against the cobblestone as harshly as possible.

Everything from here on is viewed through a different, distant lens. It's too fuzzy for her to pick up what they're saying, but she knows that they're speaking and touching her. She feels hands tugging at the scarf around her neck and her jacket in a frenzy.

It's at this moment that she accepts her fate.

She's going to die here. She's meant to die at the hands of a few sadistic strangers who see nothing more in her than a weak stranger to take advantage of, and that will be the legacy she leaves her family. Missing on Christmas Day, vanished without a trace—it's a perfect mystery. As one of the men wraps his hand in her hair and yanks her head aside to reveal her neck, she supposes she might feel the caress of a freezing blade soon.

Surprisingly, since her head won't stop ringing and she believes this to be the end, she can't find it in herself to rebel. All she can do is sob quietly and dig her fingers into the cobblestone enough to crack the tips of her nails.

And just when she feels the sharp tips of what feels like two needles grazing her neck, the man holding her in place is ripped away. Her body slumps against the wall and slides until she collapses on the wet, snow-covered pavement. She still faces the wall, so she only sees a formidable tower of stone in front of her, but it's what she hears that keeps her focused enough to remain conscious. There's yelling, hitting, and struggling all around her.

Vaguely, she is trying to move and gain her strength again, but she must have been hit too hard. She's capable of groaning in pain and wriggling on the ground, not much else.

Fading in and out of the line between consciousness, her ears pick up the eerie sound of bodies thumping to the ground, and she has never wished to stay awake more than she does now. She has only crawled a few feet away from where she initially dropped to the ground, hand reaching to brace itself on the first icy stair before a new pair of arms slips beneath her back and knees to hoist her up.

The stranger isn't warm or comforting but they hold her with less violence than her other captors. Her body hangs like a rag doll in his arms—another man, she notices by the build of him—and she views the world upside-down, dangling head bopping with every frantic step he takes. It isn't long before she finally falls unconscious.

All there is to prove she once existed is a knitted scarf abandoned on the ground and three drops of blood in the powdery, white snow.