Rogue Sloth

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

I already have a plan for how that will go down too, haha. I'm thinking Jacob will catch on pretty quickly and confront him about it. Cas will end up begging him not to say anything to Atlas, which will put him in the position to decide who he's going to give his loyalty to.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

As soon as Iris was on her feet, the group booked it for their getaway car. Cas gritted his teeth as the rapid pace made his left leg and lungs ache, but he didn’t allow his injuries to slow him down. The Aspirian law enforcement responded to calls within minutes after they were made. If his guess had been right and that nurse had realized that he and his friends weren’t actually doctors, they didn’t have much time to flee from the hospital. By his estimate, the police would probably arrive in about two minutes.

“Hurry!” Jay barked, swinging open the driver’s side door and practically leaping inside while Miles opened the back and helped Iris in. Unable to do anything to assist them, Cas took the front passenger seat and threw on his seatbelt. Winded from the short run, he ripped the surgical mask from his face and panted, pressing a hand to his chest where his fractured ribs had started to burn with each deep inhale. Luckily, the Accuparacin treatments seemed to be working there too, because the pain was already beginning to dissipate as the seconds passed. It was the gunshot wound in his leg that was going to hurt for a while.

Jay turned the ignition just as Miles closed the backseat door, having climbed inside after Iris, and quickly backed out of the parking spot. In the distance, they could already hear sirens, and he threw the car into drive, pressing the pedal to the floor and peeling out of the lot. “I’m gonna make a few detours,” he said, glancing at Caspian. “Just in case they catch us on any of the cameras. We don’t want them to know where we’re going.”

The prince nodded absently, craning his neck to peer out the back window as flashing blue and red lights appeared in the distance. For a few seconds he watched with bated breath, praying that the police didn’t notice them and take chase. However, it seemed like they had gotten far enough away not to be seen, because in the next moment, the cop cars disappeared from view as they turned into the hospital parking lot. They had gotten away.

“Oh my god, this is fucking insane,” Miles laughed nervously, pressing a hand to his forehead as he sank down in his seat. “I can’t believe we just broke into a hospital.”

“I can’t believe we got away with it,” Jay grinned, looking at the two in the backseat through his rearview mirror. Noticing that Cas was still quiet, he glanced at him again. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” the prince answered breathily. “Just recovering. I’m fine.” Like his friends, he was also shocked by what they had just accomplished. Even if the police tried to pursue them, they were too far away to catch up without calling for a helicopter to locate them. Because Iris had been a ward of the penitentiary, he doubted they could get approval for something like that before they called the warden to inform him that the prisoner was gone. Knowing the rocky relationship between the military and the police force in the capital, he predicted that the two groups would end up squabbling over the logistics and lock each other down rather than agree on a course of action. They were in the clear until the soldiers launched an investigation into the escape. At that point, he could only hope that they had done a good enough job covering their trail that they wouldn’t be found out.

Hopefully they assume she was taken by other members of the rebellion rather than anyone inside the capital, he thought, letting out a slow exhale as he caught his breath. Relaxing a little more now that he felt more certain that they were safe, he turned in his seat to check on Iris in the back. “How are you holding up?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over her concernedly. He’d been too caught up in the escape to realize that she was dressed in nothing but hospital linens until now. Running on asphalt with bare feet had probably been painful. “Are your feet okay?”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Yep! That won't happen for a while though. Our closing date isn't until next month.

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

“I didn’t think every detail through, I guess,” Cas shrugged when Iris teased him about having to get back into the bed. “Just the major stuff.” With only twenty-four hours to prepare, he and his friends hadn’t had time to work out every little piece of their escape plan. If they’d had longer to do their research and learn all the ins and outs of the hospital, they would have been smoother. Honestly, he was just happy they were doing as well as they were with just a master key and a scaled floor plan from the internet. If their luck continued to hold out, they would do just as well as they would have if they’d had an entire week to come up with a more thorough strategy.

He waited for her to climb under the sheets with help from Miles as necessary and then waved Jay over to join their other friend at the other side of the bed. While he had one stabbed arm and one broken wrist, he didn’t have the strength to help wheel the bed very far, so it was easier if they did it instead. “Keep your eyes closed like you’re asleep,” he told Iris, taking Jay’s place by the door to check the hallway one more time before they left. Fortunately, it seemed like the nurses didn’t spend much time around the patients in this wing, because there was still no one else around. He guessed they probably hung around the intensive care patients much more often than those who were stable on their own.

“Let’s go,” he signaled to the others and opened the door, taking the lead as he directed them toward the elevator near the center of the wing. Behind him, he could hear wheels turning as Jay and Miles pushed Iris’s bed into the hallway. For a while, they all fell silent, not daring to open their mouths while they were in the middle of the riskiest part of their rescue mission. If anyone caught them now, it would be apparent that they were smuggling a rebel.

Cas swallowed nervously, glancing down each adjacent corridor that they passed on their way to the lift. Twice, he saw a few nurses in other parts of the wing, but none of them seemed to notice him or his friends or even the whole bed they were pushing along between them. Apparently the practitioners all kept their guards very low when they worked in an environment in which patients weren’t regularly swiped out from under their noses.

When they got to the elevator, the prince pushed the button and stepped back to wait, shifting his weigh back and forth between his feet with restless energy. As soon as the doors opened, he allowed Jay and Miles to cart the bed into it first and then climbed in after them, pressing the button for the ground floor.

“So far, so good,” Miles exhaled once they were in the privacy of the lift.

“Don’t jinx it,” Jay chided him under his breath, shooting him a glare.

“Sorry,” Miles scratched the back of his neck uncomfortably. “This is the most illegal thing I’ve ever done. I’m both excited and terrified at the same time.”

The elevator dinged as they hit the ground floor, and Cas peered over his shoulder to hush them. Heading the group again, he stepped out first and turned toward the hallway that would take them back to the parking lot, only to freeze after he’d taken just two steps. “Shit,” he hissed, heart racing as his eyes landed on a corridor bustling with doctors and nurses. In the few minutes between when they had gone upstairs and come back down, the crowds of people in scrubs had doubled.

“What do we do?” Miles glanced at him worriedly.

“Don’t just stand here,” Jay whispered sternly. “We have to get to that door, and this hallway is the fastest route. Act like we belong here. If we’re confident enough, they’ll buy it.”

Cas nodded. His friend was right. He’d learned the same thing about politics. Even if someone was completely clueless about something, he could come off as an expert if he carried himself with swagger. Dressed like surgeons, they could do the same thing at this hospital. The time for keeping under the radar was over. “Follow my lead,” he told them, taking a deep breath and breaking into a jog. As they approached the crowds of nurses, he called out, “Coming through!”

The other people looked up and immediately parted like the Red Sea, making way for what looked like three doctors with a critical patient. Nobody attempted to stop them to question what they were doing either. Silently, Cas was relieved that the idea had worked. As they passed by the nurses and rounded the last few corners, the door that led into the back parking lot came into view. They were almost out.

All three of them slowed to a stop just before they reach it. The bed was too wide to fit through. Miles stepped up to the side and offered a hand to Iris again, “Come on, we’re going the rest of the way on foot.”

“We might have to run,” Jay said suddenly, taking a step backwards as he stared at something at the other end of the long hall.

Cas followed his gaze and blanched as he saw two nurses looking in their direction and talking amongst themselves. In the next moment, one of them turned and ran in the opposite direction. She’s going to call the police, his eyes widened, and he inhaled sharply, pulling the door open quickly. “They know. We have to get out of here now.”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

No worries! I've been taking phone calls and emails all morning for the house again lol

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

“Nice to meet you too,” Miles said sarcastically, to which Caspian elbowed him in the side. They didn’t have time for formal greetings when they were racing against the clock. As soon as Harry got to the mansion and discovered Jacob had never left nor given him a call to leave the hospital, the whole building was going to be swarming with soldiers. They had to get out before that happened and put enough distance between them that the city guards wouldn’t be able to catch up. None of them were safe until they were long gone.

“We’ll be fine as long as we move fast,” he assured Iris when she voiced her concerns. Everything she said was valid. If they were caught, his friends would be charged with treason, she would probably be executed, and even he most likely wouldn’t be immune from the consequences just because he was royalty. His father might even be livid enough to have him sent to the penitentiary for a while as punishment for trying to rescue a member of the rebellion. However, he couldn’t think about any of that right now. He had to believe that they were going to get away and that their efforts weren’t all for nothing.

“I’d better be sure, because it’s too late to back out now,” he smiled at her lopsidedly. “We’re already here, and we’re not leaving without you.” At his side, his two friends nodded their agreement. Even though they didn’t know her as well as he did, they had committed to the plan the night before. They were all in it together, no matter if they sank or swam.

As Iris climbed down from her bed, Jay stepped back over to the door to keep watch, and Miles placed himself by her side in case she needed someone to lean on while she was still shaky on her feet. Cas would have done so, himself, if he wasn’t already unstable too. All the running around they were doing was making his injured leg sore, so he simply stayed close by instead. “Then it’s a good thing we’re not real doctors,” he joked in response to her comment, pulling his mask back up over his mouth and nose.

“Someone should go get that gurney,” Jay reminded them as he peered through a thin crack in the door. “There’s no one in the hall right now. Want me to do it, Cas?”

The prince glanced toward him and opened his mouth to respond, then paused as something else caught his attention. Dropping his gaze to the floor, he noticed belatedly that the bed Iris had been laying on had wheels. He lifted his hand thoughtfully to his chin, supposing he should have realized hospital beds were mobile. Nurses needed to move patients around all the time. “Actually, I don’t think we need one,” he mused, looking up at his friend again and then turning to Iris. “Lay back down and get under the sheet. We’ll wheel you out to the back door.”

“I can help if you need me to,” Miles offered to her, the corners of his eyes turning upward slightly as he flashed a friendly smile behind his mask.

“Just move fast,” Jay advised them from the door. “I don’t know how much longer this hallway will be clear, and we don’t want anyone to see us take her from this room.”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Hopefully my computer doesn't double post. The first time I tried to upload it, the tab crashed, so I had to do it again.
That'll also be my last one for the night, haha. I'm super tired

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Once Caspian and his friends got inside the hospital, their first order of business was to find better disguises than what they were currently wearing. Luckily, since they had entered from the employee’s side of the building, they found themselves close to the nurses’ break room. Cas and Jay hung back while Miles scoped it out to make sure it was clear, only entering after he waved his hand in a silent signal that meant the coast was clear. Relaxing slightly, the prince stepped inside and looked around, locating the lockers and closets off to the right.

“Over here,” he indicated his finding to the others and walked over to open up one of the doors. Inside, he found sets of hospital scrubs and bins full of other equipment that the staff needed access to for their jobs.

“Jackpot,” Miles said, pulling down one of the garments from its hanger. Cas and Jay did the same, layering the nurses’ outfits over their black clothes. The scrubs were a start, but they were going to need something more to disguise themselves than just baggy shirts and pants. The prince would especially, since they couldn’t risk letting anyone in the building recognize him while they were moving Iris. If someone realized who he was, it would compromise their entire operation, since his stolen clothes would give away the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be there.

After a little more digging around, they found an unopened box of surgical masks and mesh hairnets. “This should be more than enough, huh?” Cas mused as he pulled the elastic loops of a mask behind his ears and looked up at the others. With a covering over his mouth and nose and a blue net concealing the color of his hair, the only parts of his face that were visible were his brown eyes. That wouldn’t be enough for anyone to recognize him unless they knew him well.

“You look like a doctor to me,” Jay confirmed.

Once all three of them were masked up and ready to go, they headed back out of the break room and down the hall that they remembered would take them to the stairs. There were a few other people around, but fortunately, it seemed like their disguises made them practically invisible to anyone else. No one paid them more than a passing glance as they rushed around the building, performing various tasks for their patients. It was a relief that the hospital was so busy all the time, and the nurses didn’t seem to have the seconds to spare to question who they were. When they made it to the stairwell, they only had to stop once to drag Miles away from a pretty blonde nurse that had caught his eye.

“So how should we get her out of the room without anyone noticing we’re stealing a patient?” Jay asked as they climbed the steps up to the third level of the building. “We blend right in, but it would look weird for a girl in a hospital gown to be taking a walk with three doctors.”

“Gurney,” Cas glanced at him as he replied. “I bet we can find one upstairs in a supply closet. That was why I wanted you two to come with me too. I can’t maneuver one of those things around with this on my wrist.” He held up his right hand, which was still held in place with the silicon cast. “We’ll make it look like we’re escorting a patient who just got out of surgery.”

“I like it,” Miles nodded approvingly. “It’s a good thing we found surgical masks too. Now we can really sell it.”

When they reached the right floor, they exited the stairwell and examined the room numbers along the corridor in search of 311. Caspian held his breath anxiously. They were so close to getting Iris out of the hospital, but they weren’t in the clear yet. He wouldn’t relax until they were all safely inside Miles’ car and driving out of the parking lot. At least there aren’t many workers on this floor, he thought optimistically. As long as they continued to only see one or two practitioners around, it wouldn’t be too difficult to slip Iris out of her room unnoticed and put her on a gurney to bring down the elevator.

“Found it.”

He was drawn from his thoughts by Miles’ voice. Turning his head, he saw that his friend was pointing at a plaque labeled “311.” It was Iris’s room.

The prince nodded and took a steeling breath as he stepped forward to open the door. However, when he tried to turn the handle he found that it was locked. Of course they wouldn’t leave her alone without trapping her inside, he rolled his eyes, reaching into his pocket to get the master key. Fortunately, the device worked on every door in the hospital, so all he had to do was wave it over the keypad on the wall and wait for the ‘click’ that granted them access.

As soon as he heard it, he tried the handle again and pushed the door open, letting himself and his friends inside. In the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Iris, and his heart fluttered involuntarily. It took everything in him not to give away their relationship to the others by rushing toward the bed to wrap her up in his arms. Forcing himself to maintain a cool exterior, he closed the door behind him and approached the bed with subtle urgency. “Iris, it’s me,” he said in a hushed voice, tugging the mask down under his chin, so she could see his face. He gestured to his friends next, “This is Jay and Miles. We’re getting you out of here before the soldiers take you back to the penitentiary.”

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Sorry that one took a while! I got distracted for like an hour xD

Amnesia [Suki & Summer]

Stepping into the club with Jay and Miles, Caspian was immediately overwhelmed with a barrage of sensations. The music that played was deafeningly loud, and the bass resonated in his chest so heavily that it felt like a physical weight. The room was awash with pulsating lights in shades of red, blue and purple that swept across the dance floor, lighting up the bodies of all the high borns that were out that night, drinking and partying until they forgot everything else. It was a high-energy scene, and it was one that he’d missed over the past two weeks when he had been unable to come back.

He took a moment to take it all in: the sounds, the sights, and even the smells of alcohol and occasionally whiffs of various drugs that some of the others indulged in. He looked forward to being able to come back for a real night out sometime, but for now, he couldn’t let himself get distracted from the reason why he was here. Waving a hand to beckon his friends to follow him, he made his way around the edge of the club toward the bar counter. He was only going to have one drink to enhance his cover, but he planned to linger in the hopes that he would be recognized by some of the other club-goers who stopped by to get refills from the bartender.

It didn’t take long before the plan went into action. No more than five minutes after he and Miles had ordered their drinks—Jay abstained, since he was going to be driving them to the hospital in half an hour—the prince was swarmed with people who wanted to know where he’d been, how he had survived the rebels, and if he would dance with them. Most of the requests for the latter were made by women. He forced polite smiles and made small talk to the best of his ability over the blaring music, even tolerating all the camera phones that were pulled out of pockets to capture proof that he had been out at the club that night.

Their goal to make sure he was noticed was successful, but all the attention made it more difficult than expected for them to escape from the club unnoticed when the time came for them to leave. Jay and Miles easily slipped out the back door, but it took a bit longer for Cas to follow suit. Eventually, he managed to get away from the crowds with the excuse that he needed to use the bathroom. He quickly took cover in the closest men’s room he could find and waited for about ten minutes before he poked his head out to see if the other high borns were still waiting for him. Fortunately, the alcohol they had all been drinking seemed to have worked its magic, and they had scattered, losing interest in waiting for him after he’d taken a while to come back.

From there, he made a dash for the door and joined his friends in Miles’ car. Once he’d made it safely into the back seat and closed the door, he sank down on the leather and let out his breath in a sigh of relief. “That was way too much work,” he complained, taking the duffle bag of clothes from Jay as it was handed to him.

“You’re too popular for your own good,” Jay teased, having watched him run from the club and found it amusing.

“Shut up,” Cas snorted, unbuttoning the top of his polo and pulling it over his head. The others had already changed into different shirts, both black, and put on their hats. While the prince did the same, Jay pulled the car out of the alley and headed for the hospital. The drive was fortunately much less eventful than the club had been, and they parked at the back of the building with the employees’ vehicles. After making sure the coast was clear, they climbed out of the car and jogged toward the back door that they had chosen in advance to use as their way in and out. They all kept their heads angled down slightly, so the cameras that watched the exits and the parking lot wouldn’t catch their faces.

As they neared the door, Cas’s heart began to hammer in his chest with adrenaline. Part of him couldn’t believe he was actually about to break someone out of a hospital. It was completely insane. His leg was starting to hurt from all the running around too, but he pushed through it, reaching into his pocket to retrieve the master key that would let them inside. When they got to the side of the building, he waved the electronic device over the keypad, and it glowed green, granting them access. “We’re in,” he said to the others with a nod. “Iris is on the third floor on this side of the building. Room 311.”

“What about her guard?” Miles asked. “Is he still there?”

“Yeah, but I’ll take care of that right now,” Cas assured him, putting the key back into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone. He had the number of every security guard his family had hired. Dialing Harry’s—and making sure to make his own number anonymous—he put the device to his ear and waited for the other man to pick up.

After a few rings, he was rewarded with a curious: Hello?

“Calhoun, it’s Curry,” the prince said, lowering his voice slightly to imitate the head of security. “I’m on my way to the hospital right now to take over your watch of the prisoner. Come back to the palace right away; Diego has a job for you to do.”

Are you sure? Matthew was just here, sir. I can wait to leave until you get here to make sure he doesn’t try to take her again while there’s no one keeping an eye on her.

Matthew? Cas wondered. There was no time to question the statement though. “I’m sure. I’m only a few minutes out on the highway, so I’ll be there before he has the chance to try. The job is time sensitive, so I need you to go now.”

Understood, sir. I’ll leave right away.

The call was ended, and Cas turned back to Jay and Miles with a pleased smile. “He’s leaving. We probably have about fifteen to twenty minutes tops before someone realizes Jacob wasn’t the one who made that call.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Miles grinned. “Let’s get her out of here.”

Cas nodded, and they all fell quiet as they headed into the hospital.