Silvern | Stiles Stilinski (Book 2)

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Amplification

I rushed into the Animal Clinic, "Sorry I'm late, what's happening?"

Deaton looked at Stiles, Scott and I solemnly, "What I'm about to show you isn't supposed to exist"

He began to place horrific pictures on the table of people who each had a hole drilled into their head. I gripped onto Stiles' arm, feeling sick as I looked at them. "This is the only surviving evidence of Dr Valack's time as Chief Medical Officer of Eichen House. To call it human experimentation would be charitable"

I frowned, picking up a photo of a woman. Her skin was greyish and her hands were clamped firmly over her ears as her mouth hung open in a silent scream. "A banshee," he explained.

"So, he drilled holes into their heads? All of them?" Stiles asked.

"That was the experimentation part. He did it to werewolves, banshees, wendigos, any creature he could get his hands on. And Valack found that trepanation would initially heighten their powers, but to levels that couldn't be contained"

Scott sighed, "So he wants to make Lydia more powerful"

I watched as Stiles went pale. "Yeah, except she's going to end up like them" he pointed to the images.

"Worse, actually. Lydia's abilities were already pretty exceptional to begin with. Putting a hole in her head will be like causing a leak in a nuclear reactor. She'll hear everything. Every death, every dying scream all at once" Deaton spoke gravely.

"That's gonna kill her" Scott gasped.

Deaton shook his head, "Not only that... her own dying scream could be so powerful that it might kill everyone around her as well"

——————

Stiles' dad sighed as soon as he shut the office door behind him, turning to face Stiles and I. "I'm doing everything I can, but her mom is her legal guardian. She's the only person who can check her out of Eichen House"

"Can't we get a court order or something?" I huffed.

"Technically, trepanation is still considered a medical procedure. A judge would have to declare Natalie unfit, which isn't likely. It could all take months"

Stiles frowned, "So you're saying there's nothing we can do?"

There was a pause as the Sheriff thought things over, "I'm saying there's nothing we can do... legally"

——————

"There's four steps," Stiles explained as we gathered around the table in Scott's house, "We get into Eichen, we get into the Closed Unit, we get Lydia, get out"

"And we have to do all of this while getting past orderlies, guards, electric door locks and a Mountain Ash barrier" Scott added.

Malia raised her eyebrows, "You have a plan for all that?"

Stiles nodded and held up a key card, "I stole this last night off an orderly but it's useless 'cause they reset the codes each night"

"So why'd you take it?" Kira frowned.

"I'm getting to that"

I sighed, "The only way to get Lydia out of Eichen is to make that key card work again"

Liam nodded, "How are we gonna do that?"

"We're getting to that, okay, just listen," Stiles turned his laptop to face us, "I pulled all the history off the key card. Two weeks ago, there was a brownout and the security system rebooted. During a reboot, all of the kay cards revert back to a default code. So, if we trigger a reboot..."