Ch 13

Ch 13, House of Anubis, opowiadania, Paragon & Osirian, Surviving Ouroboros

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Chapter 13: A Pictures Worth a Thousand Words

The over powering scent of disinfectant bombarded her heightened senses, forcing her sleep blurred mind into a quasi-conscious state of awareness.

Why was Trudy cleaning at this hour anyway?

Opening her eyes with a disapproving groan, ready to tell Trudy to go back to sleep, she was surprised to find that she was not in the room she shared with Amber at Anubis House, but instead in a bare, sterile room, painted shades of grey by the shine of a waxing moon as it peeked through the blinds to her left along with the more forceful orange of the street lights.

Taking in her surroundings, she realized she was in a hospital room, something she was quite acquainted with after her grans long stay in a nearly identical room the year prior.

Worry surged through her as she surveyed the room, but calmed as she was quickly met with the sight of a familiar figure, a boy, slumped sideways in a green armchair in the corner of her room, snoring lightly as he rested his head on a what looked to be a wadded up leather jacket.

"Eddie," she attempted to wake him, but was rewarded with only a dry crack of a whisper. Her throat felt like she had swallowed hot sand.

With a deep breath, she flicked a finger at the makeshift pillow under her lover's head and made a pulling motion, her eyes flashing as the aforementioned jacket flopped to the floor.

A flash of startled blue lit up his face, as his eyes shot open in surprise, "What the? Nina!" he reclaimed happily as he realized she was awake. Her face was dimly lit by the light of the quietly beeping EKG to her right, "I thought I'd lost you!" Eddie exclaimed a little too loudly.

The door to the hospital room opened, as fluorescent light flooded the previously dim room.

"Ah, Ms. Martin, you're awake. You had us rather worried there for a while," the late shift nurse smiled as she approached the young woman's bed, "How are you feeling? Any pain? Are you light headed?"

Nina gesticulated to the pitcher of water on the small table next to her bed and then continued to pantomime her need for water.

Smiling in understanding, the nurse quickly poured her a glass and handed it to her.

Greedily, the teen on the bed guzzled the water, happy to rid herself of the cracked feeling in her throat, "Thank you," she acknowledged, her voice still raspy.

"You're quite welcome. Of course, your throat is going to be rather sore for a few days so don't over-do it. You were intubated when they brought you in," the nurse explained calmly as she picked up a clip board that was attached to the end of Nina's bed, "Alright, now can you answer a few quick questions for me?"

Nina nodded to the woman.

By the time the nurse had finished asking her questions and redressing a number of wound on her neck, collarbone and arms, the sun had turned the sky outside her window a dull grey.

Eddie, who she strongly suspected had liberally used a misdirection charm on himself, to allow him to stay long past visiting hours without the nurse questioning him on whether he was a family or not, was now curled up alongside her on the hospital bed as they watched a rather inane episode of SpongeBob.

"Heh, this episode kinda reminds me of you when you were hopped up on fear beetle juice," Eddie laughed as SpongeBob sat alone in a dark room, fearfully talking to a chip as if it were his best friend.

Nina glared at him, "I was NOT that bad! I even went to class the entire week," she pouted.

"You're right, you were worse. Spongebob never left a suicide note and tried to jump of a cliff," Eddie retorted. His tone sounded joking, but as she turned to look into his eyes she could see real pain.

Cuddling into his side, she wrapped an arm around his torso and held him tightly as she nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck.

"I'm sorry," she said simply.

She smiled slightly into his neck as he let out a deep sigh and wrapped his arms around her.

"I know you are. I don't blame you Nina, I mean, it's hardly your fault. At least you were strong enough to come out on top," he comforted as he ran a cool index finger lightly over the bandages on her arms.

Nina pulled her face back and grinned mischievously at him, "If I wasn't so sore, I'd show you how much I like to come out on top," she joked saucily.

"I am going to pretend I did not just hear that," a slightly reedy voice came from the door, causing the couple on the bed to turn at breakneck speeds.

Eddie practically jumped from the bed as if it had spontaneous transformed into burning magma.

"Mr. Sweet! Er-uh I-I was just j-joking," Nina choked in surprise and more than a little embarrassment.

"Yeah, joking. You know us Americans. Never a serious moment," Eddie added weakly.

"I'm sure," the headmaster agreed dryly, "Joking or not, it is time for school Edison. I thought I'd pick you up so you'd have time to shower and change before classes."

With that the salt-and-pepper haired man turned on his heel and left the room.

"Come along Eddy," he requested as he entered the hallway,

"I'll try to come back later," Eddie reassured her as he leaned over the bed and kissed her squarely on the lips, "When you're better you can show me more of your infatuation with being on top."

"NOW, Edison," Mr. Sweet called from hall, noticing that Eddie hadn't immediately followed, "If you don't hurry we'll be late.

Eddie ran out the door backward wiggling his eye brows suggestively as he obeyed his father, causing Nina to giggle.

"There is obviously something going on in this house," Ms. Bridgewater attested as she brandished a list of the children's different injuries at Victor, "And you can either cooperate and allow me to do my work, or I can get a court order and have the building searched."

Victor merely raised an eyebrow at the loud woman, before shutting the door in her face.

"Search warrant it is!" the social worker's reply was muffled by the wooden door between them.

The caretaker decided that he'd better get to work cleaning out the cellar and the attic of any possibly dangerous things before that annoying woman returned to legally stick her nose where it did not belong.

"So how is she?" Amber asked concerned as they sat around the breakfast table. Classes weren't to start for another twenty minutes, allowing Eddie to make a good go of the first meal of the day.

"Shisfawn. Compwitweebcktanerma," Eddie answered around the mouthful of waffles he'd just stuck in his mouth.

"EWW, GROSS! Don't talk with your mouth full," Amber scolded with a cringe.

Swallowing his food down with the help of a generous gulp of orange juice he turned to face her, "Then don't ask a growing boy questions while he's eating," he made a childish face at her, "Anyway, I said that she's fine, completely back to normal. Other than the physical injuries, she seems better than ever; even a little frisky, if I do say so myself; she couldn't keep her hands off me."

An apple smacked him upside the head, "Ow, hey!"

Fabian just smiled from further down the table, "Oh sorry, such a butterfingers," he apologized with a smile as he picked another apple from the bowl of fruit in the center of the table, "Please, continue talking about how frisky Nina is, I'm only trying to eat."

Silence fell over the table at the awkward moment expounded.

"Sorry," Eddie mumbled.

"I'm sure you are," Fabian growled lowly as he stood up, taking his half eaten breakfast to the trash to be thrown away.

Apparently he still wasn't over his best friend sleeping with his girlfriend.

"What's his problem?" Joy asked, causing everyone to turn and look at her as if she were stupid.

At nine O'clock on the dot, Michelle Bridgewater pressed the record button on the camera.

After seeing how quickly Edison Miller-Sweet had healed, she wanted to make sure she got the evidence she needed as soon as possible.

"Ms. Martin, in your own words, can you tell me how it is that you received these injuries. Please answer seriously," Ms. Bridgewater began, "Were you sexually assaulted?"

For a moment Michelle could have sworn the girls eyes flashed purple as she looked away nervously.

"You were weren't you? You don't have to be ashamed. Just tell me who did this to you and I'll make sure they spend a very long time behind bars," she attempted to comfort. It seemed this girl was going to be the break in the case.

Nina Martin snorted derisively.

"I was not raped if that is what you mean, so I am afraid I must inform you that there is no one for you to apprehend. Are we done here?" Nina asked icily. Her blue eyes were like stone chips, a look she'd seen in war hardened soldiers; soldiers who had seen and experienced thing no one should have to witness.

Her eyes looked old.

"I see," she said calmly. Perhaps if she knew there was a good chance that the police would catch the guy, perhaps then she would cooperate, "Before we continue, I'd like to tell you that we did find foreign tissue in the bite mark on your shoulder and under your finger nails. You fought the man off didn't you? Even if he didn't violate you, even trying anything without your consent is illegal. With the DNA and anaffidavit of what happened and any information you can give about him, we would stand a very good chance of catching whoever it was that did this to you."

The blonde teenager merely rolled her eyes in response, "Good luck with that, just don't be disappointed when nothing comes up."

Michelle Bridgewater was at a loss.

No matter what she did, or who she talked to, she hadn't found a single lead. In fact, it was almost as if the children didn't want to be helped; and not just out of some weird fear of their abuser. No, it was something else.

The children of Anubis House were hiding something, and it seemed that all of the students were in on keeping the secret.

With a sigh she decided that it was time to start organizing the evidence she had collected over the last few days.

Connecting the digital camera to the USB tether, she quickly downloaded the multitude of pictures and recorded interviews.

This normally uneventful task took a turn for the weird when she started consolidating the photos of Fabian Rutter.

Squinting at the thumbnail of the picture, she noticed a difference. Something that hadn't been their when she took the photo. Breathlessly, Michelle double clicked the photo until it enlarged.

It was the picture of Fabian's leg. A picture that when taken, had only five gouge marks; now contained a shadowy, almost tattoo like image of the Eye of Horus within the ring of wounds.

How?

What did it mean? How and why had it shown up in the photo? Was it a trick of the light or was there something very different going on?

Hurriedly, she reopened the folder of images and started shuffling through the photos, searching for any sign of the strange symbol.

Patricia Williamson.

It was a picture of Patricia's scarred palms, but where the odd burn marks had been, there were now shadowy tattoos of a lioness' head with an orb and a snake as a headdress.

More than a little confused, she decided to open a tab of Mozilla Firefox and search for answers.

Once the Google homepage popped up, she typed a description of the odd symbol. "lioness head with orb and snake".

Nothing; just pictures of snakes or lions.

A thought struck her as she remembered the other symbol; the so obviously Egyptian symbol.

"Egyptian lioness head with orb and snake", she amended.

The first picture that popped up was a statue; a statue with an exact likeness to the symbol on both of Patricia's hands. Another double click bought her to a site about 'goddesses of the ancient world'. Skimming through the article she finally stopped at the picture that had led her there, it was captioned 'Sekhmet, Lion Goddess of the Egyptians, daughter and Eye of Ra, wearing a Sun Disk above her head'.

Making note of the decidedly Egyptian motif, she returned to perusing the evidence file.

Edison Miller-Sweet

It was enormous. It was much more than just a small symbol like the others.

Emblazoned across the back of the blonde haired boy was the expected yet still inexplicable crocodile bite.

However, like the other photos, there was something different, something that had not been on the boys back when the picture was taken.

An Ankh; a shadowy black ankh, was tattooed across his golden skin from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine and stretched horizontally across his shoulder blades until the arms reached the beginning of his arms. The black of the mark seemed to absorb all light; almost as if it were an endless chasm in the skin of his back.

Shivering she moved to the next picture, hoping that it would calm her. It only caused her to shudder more.

It was a full body picture of Eddie Miller, but instead of a green-eyed teenager, who had been smiling in the original picture, there was an identical man with glowing blue eyes.

Deep puncture wounds dribbled blood down his toned abdomen. The lips of the still picture were turned down in a grimace of pain.

Closing her eyes she took a deep breath and then reopened them.

The picture was of a smiling blonde, green-eyed boy.

Clicking back to the prior picture, she was astonished to find absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

She went back even further. Nothing! All of the previously marked pictures were perfectly normal.

What on earth was going on?

Continuing her search of the evidence she pressed play on the video file that contained the interview with Nina Martin from earlier that day.

She nearly fell out of her chair when the girl's eyes flashes purple.

The words were normal. They were still what they had been earlier, but over the interview was a whisper.

"Run while you still can."

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