No Good Deed (Destiny Saga #5) - Chapter 10

“Get the others. I’ll call Jawarski and have her come pick us up. Meet me out front.”

Zoe nodded and disappeared into the crowd to find the rest of our group, while I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and headed for the front door.

“What happened, now?” was the first thing she said when she picked up the phone. “I knew I should’ve been there with you.”

“Nothing happened, come pick us up. Something’s gone wrong with Celia.”

“I told you helping her was a bad idea,” she said as she hung up, saving me from getting caught in an argument.

Of course, she wasn’t wrong. Both Jawarski and Jonathan had warned me about getting involved with a junkie, and especially that one from a rich and hands-on family was a bad idea. I was certain I’d be hearing more about this once things got sorted out.

First, we had to get this sorted out, though. Jawarski came zooming up in front of the house right as the girls all rushed out the front door. There were enough of us that we were a little cramped in Jawarski’s SUV, with Tami being forced to sit on Zoe’s lap in the back seat.

“So what happened?” Jawarski asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

“I don’t know. Head toward the apartment while I figure that out.”

I dialed the phone number we’d put into the apartment, and put my phone on speaker. Megan must have been sitting literally by the phone, as it was picked up before the first ring had finished.

“Cas?” she said in a panicked voice.

“What happened?”

“Cas, I’m so sorry. I swear we didn’t...”

“Megan, it’s okay. What happened?”

“Celia’s gone. We got back late this afternoon from Alex’s lab, and Celia headed straight for her room. I sat up in the front room talking to Mrs. Hollabrand for a few hours, and then she went to the kitchen to get dinner ready. I went to Celia’s room to tell her dinner would be ready soon, and she wasn’t there. I swear, we were in the front room the whole time. There is no way she got past us.”

“But she wasn’t in the room?”

“No. The window was open, but we’re on the third floor. There’s no way she could’ve gotten out the window.”

“Never doubt what junkies will do when they’re jonesing for a fix,” Jawarski said. “So she’s been gone for a few hours?”

“Yeah.”

Jawarski looked to make sure she was clear, and then threw the car into a U-turn, and headed in the other direction.

“Where’re you going? The apartment’s that way,” I said, pointing over my shoulder.

“We won’t learn anything else at the apartment. By now she’s found a fix and somewhere to shoot up.”

“She’s never been here. How would she have already found a place to buy drugs?”

“It’s what Junkie’s do. Trust me.”

“So where are we headed?”

“There’s a place junkie’s go to shoot up. It’s an old department store that shut down about five years ago. So far, no one’s bought the property. We ... I mean, the police, roust it every few weeks. But within days the place is infested again. Especially when it starts turning cooler.”

“We have enough addicts living here for that?”

“Yeah. Alice isn’t a big town, but it’s big enough. Maybe not ten years ago when cocaine was the thing, but with crack taking over and now meth-amphetamines, which they make out of cough medicine, we’re seeing more and more people getting hooked. So, yeah, with both the addicts and the homeless, and there’s some crossover there, we have enough for that.”

“And you think she would know how to find something like that?”

“Yeah. She’s been scoring long enough she’s probably able to figure it out. It’s a place to start.”

We turned into an older section of the city. It would at one time have been a major commercial street, but had several boarded up shops, now. There were still places that looked occupied. Antique and boutique style shops, but they looked to be holdouts from before the big box stores opened across town, and started putting these smaller places out of business.

The building where Jawarski pulled up was smaller than I’d been expecting. If it’d been a department store, then it was one of the mom and pop variety. The windows were boarded up with a ‘for sale’ sign plastered on one of them. 

“How do we get in?”

“Front door. The lock’s been broken so many times, the property owners gave up trying to fix it, since the junkies get in anyway.”

I headed to the front door, only to have Jawarski grab the back of my shirt and pull me back.

“Me first.”

It was really dark inside, the boarded-up windows keeping all but the smallest slivers of light from the streetlights outside from getting in. As promised, there were almost a half a dozen people scattered across the big open room, and there were probably more in some of the closed off rooms in the back of the store.

Occasionally, a little light flared here or there from a small flashlight or a burning cigarette. The place smelled like a cesspool. We split apart, although Jawarski remained on my heels, walking past people who didn’t seem to realize we were even there. The few people that even looked in our direction seemed to look past us, instead of at us.

“Over here,” Vicki called out from across the room

Celia was pushed up into a small corner, her eyes closed and her head lolled to one side. Jawarski reached down and felt at her neck.

“She has a pulse. It’s not strong, but it’s there,” she said. Gripping Celia by the shoulders, Jawarski started to shake her side to side, “Celia. Celia. Hey.”

She didn’t even stir.

“She’s totally out of it,” Tami said.

“Is it normal to be that out of it?” I asked.

“Depends on what she took,” Jawarski said, pulling out a small flashlight from her pocket.

Kneeling down in front of Celia, she pried the girl's eyelid open with one hand, and shined the light with the other. Putting the flashlight down, she lifted Celia’s arm up and released it, the arm flopping back down uncontrolled.

“It’s not normally like this, though. There’s usually some sign of consciousness, even if she was just passed out. The pupils aren’t responding. I’m not an expert, but she’s more out of it than most junkies I’ve encountered.”

“But she’s alive? She didn’t OD or anything?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s alive.”

Jawarski leaned in close, putting her ear to Celia’s chest.

“I can’t tell, but her breathing seems weird. She’s alive, now, but I think we need to call an ambulance.”

“No. Let’s pick her up,” I said.

“What?” Jawarski said. “Cas, we need to get her to a hospital.”

“I know, but we already have a better fix for her. The change will clear any of the shit she took, out of her system, for good. It'll repair any damage it did, to boot. Once she’s in a hospital, we won’t be able to put her through the change without someone noticing. Zoe, call Alex. She should know by now if Celia is negative. If she is, we’ll take her to the hospital. If not, tell Alex to meet us at her lab. We need to put her through the change, now.”

“Cas, I think we should listen to Jawarski,” Zoe said.

“I know, but I’m right about this. If she is having a reaction to whatever she took, the damage to her system might be irreparable by conventional means. Just listen to me, please.”

I reached down and picked Celia up, cradling her in my arms. She was surprisingly light.

By the time we got through the front door and to the car, Zoe was hanging up her phone.

“Alex said Celia is not a negative. I described what we saw, and she said it could be a drug-induced coma. She agreed with you that, if Celia was breathing and had a pulse, we should bring her there.”

“Okay. Emily, you and Tami squeeze into the passenger seat together. Zoe, you and Vicki get in the back seat, and I’ll put her on top of you, and then get in and hold the rest of her. We need to keep her steady, so she doesn’t hurt her neck or anything.”

Once we were all jammed into Jawarski’s SUV, she took off. In ten minutes, we were pulling up in front of Alex and Mom’s lab, where Alex was waiting outside.

“Cas, bring her in and lay her down on the examination table,” Alex said, holding open the front door for me.

I followed her instructions and had her in the lab's one examination room, laid out. As soon as she was down, Alex pushed me out of the way and started checking on Celia, listing to her chest, lifting her eyelid, and repeating the flashlight thing Jawarski had done.

“She appears to be in a coma. Her pulse is weak, her breathing is uneven and labored, and she has a limited autonomic response. Do any of you know what she took?”

“No, we found her like this,” I said.

“There was a syringe lying near her, but we didn’t bring it with us,” Emily said.

“Shouldn’t the change flush her system, regardless of the drug?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’m more worried that she's going to have some kind of seizure or cardiac episode while we wait for the change to take place. Still, it’s our best shot. I’m going to administer your blood to her now, and then we have to wait. I’ll stay and keep watch on her, but I’d like someone else here with me, so there’s always someone with her if I need to check on something else.”

Alex went to one of the wood cabinets along one wall, pulled open a drawer, and picked up a packaged syringe. Pulling off the paper covering identifying it as clean and unused, she removed the syringe and carried it over to a large metal cabinet sitting on one corner top.

The cabinet had a keypad on the front, into which Alex tapped several numbers, before pulling the door open. Inside were rows of small vials, some clear and some blood red. She extracted one of the red ones, pulled off the small plastic covering on the tip of the syringe, and inserted it, quickly pulling blood into the syringe.

“I’ll stay,” Zoe said, as we watched Alex replace the vial in the metal cabinet and walk over to Celia with the now filled syringe.

“Do you want the rest of us to stay?”

“No, we’ll be okay, Cas,” Zoe said. “It’s getting late, and we don’t all need to be up all night. You guys go get some rest.”

“Call Megan. I guarantee she and Mrs. Hollabrand are going to still be upset about Celia getting out. They are going to want to be here, too.”

“Okay,” Zoe said, looking back at Celia, who didn’t flinch when the syringe plugged into her arm vein.

I stepped up to Zoe and pulled her into my arms.

“I know I made the decision to bring her here,” I said. “Thanks for staying with her.”

“Hey, once the change takes place, she’ll be clean forever. I can lose a night of sleep to save someone's life.”

“And that’s why I love you,” I said, leaning in and kissing her.

“Please call me if anything at all happens.”

“I will,” Zoe said.

“We’ll be fine, Caspian,” Alex said. “The blood’s been introduced, and we know she’s not a negative. All we can do now is wait while it takes over and pushes that crap out of her system. Then it'll start fixing whatever damage this girl’s done to herself. There won’t be much to see here for a while.”

“Okay, you’re the doctor.”

As we headed out to Jawarski’s car, I noticed one of Carter’s men sitting in the previously empty front waiting room.

“What’s he doing here,” I asked as we headed into the parking lot.

“Better safe than sorry. We’ve had enough surprises for one night. If she wakes up and decides to fly the coop again, I want a professional here to stop her. Should have insisted on having someone stationed at the apartment in the first place, then we wouldn’t have had to chase her down at all.”

“'Cause they would have predicted a twenty-year-old girl would somehow find a way to climb out and down from a third story window?”

“Maybe,” Jawarski said as we all got in her car.

Her tone said she didn’t really believe that, but there was no way she’d willingly concede the point to me, so I let it drop. It was late when we got home, so we all just piled into bed and called it a night.

We had one more day until school started back up, and I’d hoped to spend half of it lounging around the house before going and checking on Celia. An early morning knock on the door killed that plan, and I found myself sitting at the dining room table drinking coffee with Ted, Charles, Marcus, and Jonathan.

“So what’s up, guys?”

“Well, I know your Christmas break is almost up, and I thought it would be a good time for us to catch up on stuff now before school started back. Let you focus on getting your semester started without having to also burn the midnight oil in the office.”

“Thanks, Ted. That’s really thoughtful. You know I don’t mind coming into the office though. I managed to maintain that schedule last semester.”

“Sure you can, but why do it when we can swing by today, so you don’t have to? You push yourself too hard, sometimes, Cas.”

“He’s right. That’s like what I was saying the other day,” Jonathan added. “There’s no reason to push yourself to the edge, when you don’t have to. Save it for times when you have no choice.”

“I know, you’re right. Okay, I can hear mom in the kitchen, and if I know her, she’ll be putting breakfast in front of each of you soon, so let’s get started before we have to take a waffle break. I spoke to Douglas late last week. He said the battery and solar panels are coming along well and he’d have something for us as soon as next month.”

“Cas,” Marcus said, “I know you’ve looked at the specs he’s getting and some of his plans, and you no doubt understand everything he’s sent over, I’m not sure you realize how revolutionary some of the stuff he’s producing is. Let me tell you, what I’ve seen in his lab so far has blown me away. I know batteries and solar panels aren’t sexy like drones, but he is really pushing some boundaries on what I thought was possible. The man’s exceptional.”

“Of that, I have no doubt. Hopefully, you’re there when he presents his prototype. Douglas can get a little over excited when he gets ramped up about something, and it gets hard to keep him from getting into the nitty-gritty techno-speak.”

“Ohh, trust me, I’ll be there.”

“How’s Ronald doing?” I asked.

“Great. They took a few days off for Christmas but got back at it hard this last week. The plant is, for all intents and purposes, finished. There’s some minor finishing work to do and safety checks to perform, but we’ll be up and running in less than two weeks. He’s already got the people he’s bringing into the states to manage the individual shifts and some on-site engineers out there, and he’s starting hiring and training locals.”

“So how far in the red are we?”

“Pretty far,” Charles said. “Even with the down payment from the local government, the costs have run on the high side of our projections. Ted told Ronald, and I eventually agreed, to keep or beat the timetable, even if it meant spending more and Ronald listened.”

“How bad is it?”

“Eight hundred and twenty-five thousand over our initial projections.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Yes, and no. Yes, it’s a lot of money, but every construction project’s going to have overruns, so this wasn’t a complete surprise. Once we start operations, we’ll start making that back. Ted’s already negotiated some contracts to use our plant for ships that refill on the island's potable water, which will be revenue on top of what the government is paying to rent the facility.”

“If they’re renting it, how are we making money off that?”

“We negotiated the deal, with some help from MilTech. Thanks to their Navy contacts, they have connections with a lot of foreign navies, shipping lines and other groups who operate significant fleets in the Pacific. We have to split the fee of course, but we’ll still make some decent money off it, and what the locals get will help offset their expenses in renting the facility from us in the first place. So it’s a win-win. They were happy when we brought it to them.”

“Well, great, I guess. I’d like to get down there and visit the plant.”

“Let's let it get up and running. Plus, you can’t fly in and out over a weekend, at least not and be at your best. I’ll talk to Ronald, and we’ll see about maybe scheduling it for your spring break.”

“Good point. Thanks, Ted. I know it’s a pain to work around my schedule.”

“Hey, it gets me in magazines being interviewed about working with the company run by that wunderkind CEO.”

“Ha. Well, make sure they spell my name right. So what else?”

“Some little stuff I’ll send over, but those are the two biggies. The deal with MilTech is going well, and they’ve got the first Navy ship retrofitted with our system. If trials go well, we’ll be installing a whole bunch more, which will be a nice windfall.”

“Great. Well, I guess that wasn’t so long of a meeting.”

“I did have one other thing,” Ted said.

“Shoot.”

“We’ve already started moving some staff to the new facilities, and Jonathan had brought me up to speed on the land your family was buying to build the new house, and he mentioned you guys were far enough out of Houston that there were still some large tracts of land available.”

“Mom didn’t mention it,” I said, turning to Jonathan. “How far out are we?”

“Northeast of the facility, there’s some not so great pasture land and farms that are up for sale. A guy looking to build a cookie cutter suburb was looking at it too, and it did drive up the price a bit, but it’s a good location for you, based on where the new facilities are.”

“And he mentioned,” Ted continued, “that since you already bought up a chunk, it shrunk the available land more than the competition wanted, making it small for them to build on. Which is true for them, but I was thinking might not be true for us. I’d thought it might be worthwhile for us to build up housing for our people. A lot of them are going to have to relocate, and decent housing in Houston or Beaumont are both a bit far away. Plus, if we’re building it specifically for our people, we can offer to help with mortgages or even do some kind of cost-sharing plan as a form of compensation. We'll keep some units for us to rent out to less permanent staff.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

I actually had some kind of idea like that when we first started looking at moving to the new facility further out, but my knowledge of this area was limited, so I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Keep in mind it’s just an idea right now, we have a lot of details to work out. I don’t like the idea of the company sitting on a bunch of mortgage notes,” Charles said.

“It’s not as bad as that. Keep in mind we’ll have a lien on the houses, and as long as the company is going strong, we’ll have need of housing out there. So any houses that do foreclose, we’ll have a ready market to resell into,” Jonathan said.

“I’m not crazy about that line of thinking,” I said. “The last thing I’d want to do is foreclose on our own people.”

“Of course. I’m not saying we’re going to do that. We’ll figure out a plan that protects us, but is more than fair to our people. I was just talking worst case scenario.”

“Okay. I think its fine to explore, and it’s a pretty good idea. But I don’t want to become a predatory landlord or anything.”

“We’ll do the right thing with it, Cas.”

“Okay. Well, I guess that about does it. Start working on plans for us to visit Ronald’s plant over spring break, and let me know what you come up with on this housing thing.”

About that point, Mom and Tami brought in plates of food for everyone, and the conversations switched to more personal matters as I caught up with my friends and coworkers.

After the impromptu brunch, I saw the group off and headed back to Alex’s lab, Jawarski in tow. Since it was Sunday, the front office was empty; but I had a key, and let myself in. I walked past Mom’s office and saw Zoe stretched out on the couch. Since she was asleep, I decided to leave her alone and headed back to the one exam room I’d left Celia in the day before. Just before the room was the office bathroom and I could hear someone retching their guts out from the other side of the closed door.

Two more steps brought me to the examination room. It was totally empty, which suggested the person heaving in the restroom was Celia. I leaned against the wall across from the examination room and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long, as Alex, with Megan on her heels, came out of one of the labs.

“I thought I heard the front door,” Alex said.

“I’m guessing Celia’s in there?” I said, pointing at the bathroom.

“Yes. She came to about an hour or so ago, and the change has already started taking hold. Her respiratory rate has returned to normal, more or less. I’d have to do a biopsy to be sure the damage she’d done to her kidneys was being repaired, but I’m betting she’ll be as good as new, well, better really, by tomorrow.”

“So this is just part of the change, right?”

“Mostly. She is sicker than anyone else I’ve observed going through the change. She's running a higher fever and with a greater degree of nausea. From the samples I’ve taken in between her trips to the bathroom, it seems that whatever the drugs were cut with, had already caused significant damage to her system, forcing the change to kick into overdrive to compensate.”

“What’d you tell her?”

“Well, she’s gone through detox a couple of times before. While this is worse, it’s not that much worse, so she wasn’t surprised when she started getting sick. This is probably worse than what she experienced before, but I explained it’s a side effect of the new medication interacting with the narcotics she took and flushing her system.”

“So we’re still looking at tomorrow until she’s finished the change?”

“Yes. While the effects of the change are greater, the timetable seems to be holding.”

“Okay. I’m going to take Zoe home, since you don’t need me much for this part. Where’s Mrs. Hollabrand?”

“I sent her home last night. Megan refused to leave, and Zoe refused to leave Megan, but Nora didn’t need to sleep on a couch, and there wasn’t much for her to do. Before you go, I’d like you to talk to Celia, just ask her to stay here until you get back. It won’t have an effect now, but interacting will help cement the loyalty portion of the change, and she’ll most likely follow your command when it does kick in.”

“I can do that. Megan, I’d like you to go back with Zoe and me. You look like you didn’t sleep at all.”

“I’m fine. I want to stay here as long as Celia does. I can take the couch Zoe’s using and catch some sleep while Celia takes a nap.”

“Megan, you don’t have to stay. I told you I don’t blame you for what happened. Celia’s fine. You don’t have to make up for anything.”

“I still want to stay,” she said.

It was pretty clear she was still blaming herself, but any further argument from me was put on hold when the bathroom door opened.

“Ohh,” Celia said, pulling up short, “you.”

She looked like hell. There were dark circles under her eyes, her hair was a mess, and she looked very pale.

“How are you feeling?”

“Terrible. I think this drug of yours is going to kill me.”

“It wouldn’t have been as bad if you hadn’t shot up last night.”

“I’ve detoxed, before; this is worse.”

“Well, as much as it sucks now, just think; once you’re past this, you won’t ever get hooked again.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Do me a favor. Don’t run off again, okay? Your grandmother wouldn’t be happy with me if I lost you again.”

“Nothing makes that old bag happy,” she said, walking slowly towards Alex’s office, her arm on the wall steadying herself.

“Maybe. But you had a pretty close call last night. I don’t want anything to happen to you, either. So please, stay here until you feel better, and we can talk again, okay?”

“Just leave me alone,” she said.

I saw that Alex’s office also had a couch, and there were a pillow and blanket on it. Celia walked slowly to the couch, pulled the blanket over herself and turned her back on us, doubling down on her wanting to be left alone.

I headed towards the front of the lab, the others in tow. 

“Hopefully, that’s enough,” I said in a low voice. “I’ll be back tomorrow after school to check on her.”

“It should be. Once the full change takes place, she won’t really understand why, but she’ll find herself wanting to stay here since you asked. Then comes the hard part.”

“Yeah, figuring out what to do with her once she’s clean,” I said with a sigh.

Alex gave me a pat on the shoulder, and headed back towards the lab, Megan was close at her heels. I collected Zoe and headed back home to try and relax a little before school started.