Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Eighteen: Devotion

"Natalie?" A foreign voice lulled me from a comatose fainting episode, it was like being dragged out of a bog by my ankles. My body was slick with sweat, and all of my wounds had been miraculously glossed over; like someone had replenished my skin. No more ugly scar was marring my tummy. No bulbous bruise had frothed up on my cheek, bludgeoned my eye or bubbled up in my lip. But an ice cream headache stung my senses.

"Natalie Roman..?" He named me.

"Natalie Roman..." I echoed and the name tasted like a bitter pill.

"Natalie Roman, you will leave here and return to the dormitory..." He soothed, his old crooked fingers combing through my sweat tangled hair.

I looked down at my body, which felt unlike my own. I was completely disorientated. I flexed my fingers, regaining control of my quivering muscles. He clasped my hand in his and helped me recline out of the chair and slip onto my feet. As my soles kissed the floor, I wobbled and he caught me by the shoulders.

"Careful, now Natalie..." He unleashed me and I mindlessly swayed towards the door, in miscalculated zig-zags.

My mind felt like an empty bank vault, with someone pounding on the heavy duty door: and the door bulging under the battering.

I breached the doors in the laboratory and wandered aimlessly out the lab. My legs trembled as I walked, unable to sustain my weight. As I dragged my leaden legs into the corridor, I saw something move in my peripherals.

"Natalie?" The voice was triumphant, and the recognisable rustling in my ears unbolted the door sealed in my mind.

Lucid images swirled back into my head; in a jumbled order, incoherent words and events. The tidal wave that overcame my brain was enough to floor me. I cupped hands over my ears to try and silence the whispers swilling around and around like a whirlpool. I screwed my eyes shut to try and blind myself to the reel of events flicking through my mind's eye.

Then out of the mesh of tangled events came one thought of clarity. She had handed in the newspaper scrap that had incriminated me. I lurched forwards and snatched her ankle.

"You!" She shook her ankle, trying to flail my hand off her. "It's your fault. Your fault they..." I tapped my drumming forehead, thrumming with inconsistency. "I don't know what they've done..." My fingers furled tighter around her, my nails buried in her ankle.

With one jerk of the foot, she kicked me in the side of the head and my frolicking grip was thrown away. Her kick pounded some sense back into my delicate skull. I screwed my eyes shut and rolled my head around on the floor; more memories were flooding my head.

"It looks like Lukin doesn't love you anymore Tsarina..." She crouched down to my level then grabbed me by the hair.

"You psychopath..." I lunged at her, scrambling to my feet and pinning her to the wall by her snappable throat.

Loose ringlets of blonde hair were thrown across her face as her head clonked into the concrete wall and she grinned venomously, snarling like a rabid animal. "Who's the favourite black widow now?!" She choked around the garrotting grip.

It took me a moment to register what she'd said. My eyes flittered about her seething grimacing face and my lips parted in a gape of realisation.

"That's what this is about?! You... Y-you had me- you turned me in, just so you could prove yourself?!" The hand that pinned her to the wall slackened, giving her room to breathe and move.

Her hand shot to my neck, and she walked me into the other wall until I was immobilised in the same position. "I will destroy you piece by piece Natalie... Don't think I won't... Assure Aleksander falls out of love with you... Take that bionic armed creep away from you... And when the time is right, you'll end up like the other girls..." Every single word was laced with poison, and her eyes were wide and wild.