Chapter Text
This won’t work.
This was not the first nor would it be the last time that this thought crossed Daniel’s mind. Even he knew that his chances of getting out of the hospital on his own were slim at best, although his odds of succeeding aside, his goal was a pretty straightforward one: he just needed to get to Camp Campbell before any other cult members did. Considering how much closer each new mass killing came, the camp could have been hit any day now. Technically, it could have been attacked long ago, and maybe Daniel should have been concerned before the killings had gotten the chance to pick up speed, although he hadn’t actually been given any evidence to suggest it was a target up until that point. Granted, there hadn’t been any reason to care about the place before now either, and he still hadn’t been particularly worried once he started—a fact that he mostly attributed to David’s frequent visits. That the counselor was able to regularly visit the hospital a couple of times a week meant that not only was the camp not under attack, but things were probably even quieter than usual if it was so easy for him to show up on a regular basis. However, now that the hospital had revoked all of Daniel’s visitor privileges—which included making phone calls—he had no way of knowing what was going on at the camp. So long as he was banned from communicating with anyone, he couldn’t so much as send a warning David’s way. He had already—begrudgingly—considered calling the number given to him by the two agents. The hospital probably would have let him call them too—considering that they were probably the ones behind the suddenly heightened security. As far as Daniel was concerned, calling them now would be too risky. He had no reason to trust the agents to keep their word, and even if they were willing to check in on the camp, there was no guarantee that he would be able to convince them to do it before the cult struck. Between asking for help he might not get or attempting to escape alone, he decided he was better off taking this matter into his own hands.
Daniel had begun forming a tentative plan to escape over the course of several days, and quickly pinpointed that there were a multitude of variables to account for. His health was actually the least of his concerns in that respect. Although he experienced frequent stomach cramps and fatigue from being poisoned, most of his other symptoms were actually the result of his various medications. If he wanted any chance of success, then he would have to start skipping his medications a day before he attempted his escape. With any luck, the worst of the side effects of skipping would be over by the next morning. He only needed to be strong enough to leave on his own, and then he could deal with his other symptoms as they came. The most pressing issue would be getting out of his room undetected. There were only a few areas of the entire hospital that he was allowed to move to and from: his own room, of course, as well as the physical therapy, gastroenterology, otolaryngology, and toxicology departments. Daniel’s room was located on the fourth floor, the gastroenterology department was on the sixth, toxicology was on the second, and physical therapy and otolaryngology were both on the first floor, since they were often saw the most patients. He was always escorted out of his room by at least one nurse at any time, although in recent weeks, a security guard would sometimes accompany them wherever they were going. Depending on how his health was faring that day, Daniel would either walk to wherever he was going, or, more often than not, he would be escorted there in a wheelchair. Ideally he would be taking the latter option on the day of his escape, since staff members tended to be less cautious around him when he was particularly ill.
He determined that his best chance of escaping would be in the morning before his usual checkup with the gastroenterologist. Although waiting until he had an appointment on the first or second floor would mean a shorter distance between him and his freedom, it was for that exact reason that security tended to be tighter around him when he was on the lower floors. They key to his success would be to stay under everybody’s radar, and that meant learning their patterns and figuring out how to maneuver around them, fast. In the days leading up to his planned escape, Daniel watched every staff member he came across with especially careful consideration. He all but ignored the security personnel, trying to attract as little attention from them as possible. The less familiar he was with them now, the less he would stick out to them later. With the nurses, on the other hand, he tried to chat them up as much as physically possible. Daniel was almost like his old self when he spoke with them. He was charming and sympathetic, and all too eager to hear about their hectic schedules. Even when he wasn’t speaking to them directly, he listened to them speak to each other, and he scraped what few details he could about their routines from their conversations. The real jackpot came with a comment from Rina, his day nurse, when he overheard her telling a doctor that she would be swapping shifts with a coworker during the afternoon the following day. Daniel didn’t recognize her coworker by name, and chances were good that said coworker wouldn’t be familiar with him either. That would be his best chance to leave.
When the big day finally arrived, Daniel was quick to start setting his plan into motion. At 8 o'clock he received his morning meds, which he made himself throw up as soon as Rina turned her back to him, just as he had the previous day. She would only be taking him as far as the sixth floor before she changed shifts at 11 o'clock, and luckily for him, she had taken one look at him in all his unsteady, hacking glory and decided that he was in no shape to get there on his own. When the time finally came to wheel him up there, she told him that somebody else would be taking him back to his room after the appointment, and it took some effort on his part not to smile at the confirmation that his plan was on track. As was customary now, they were flanked by a security guard while they made their way toward the elevator, and after she and the guard had safely deposited Daniel into the sixth floor waiting room, Rina left. The guard stayed behind to check in with a coworker who was posted down the hall, leaving Daniel almost completely alone in the room for a minute. His appointment papers had already been filled out, so unfortunately, the starting point of his route would already be obvious once he left. However, the security guard was out of view, and of the handful of people scattered around the room, not one of then was paying him the slightest bit of attention. There were security cameras posted around the room to act as a deterrent, but they didn’t matter. He just needed to get out of the hospital before he anybody could stop him.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Daniel wheeled himself out of the room, drawing no more than a glance or two on his way out, and toward the restrooms. There were a couple of other people in there, so he steered himself into the large handicapped stall, then waited until the sounds of running faucets and swinging doors had come and gone before kneeling down to peer beneath the stall. Nobody in sight. With a bit of a struggle, he got to how feet and walked out of the stall, leaving the wheelchair behind as he made his way to the sinks. He couldn’t change his appearance very drastically, but he could at least wash his face to wake himself up a little. There was no going back now, and his short window of escape time had already begun to close.
The next order of business would be more difficult. He was still wearing his patient’s smock, so he couldn’t pass as a visitor or a staff member yet. Luckily, every even-numbered floor of the hospital had a staff locker room. Daniel hadn’t caught much more than glimpses of the inside before while people were coming and going, but he had seen just enough to get a view of a scrubs dispenser inside the one on the sixth floor. He only opened the restroom door a crack so that he could check the perimeter, and as soon as the coast was clear, he crossed the hallway and opened the locker room door, staying low to the ground as he did so that he could immediately make a dive behind the partitioned wall. He could hear footsteps somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t get much of a visual from his current vantage point. Carefully, Daniel crept across the tile until he could see across the far side of the room. As far as he could tell, the only occupants appeared to be two other men, who were talking back and forth as they opened the dispenser. Careful to stay pressed up against to the wall, Daniel tiptoed closer so that he could get a better view of which buttons they pressed on the screen. When the pair suddenly stopped to look in his direction, he jumped back against the partition only to stifle a sigh of relief when he realized they were actually looking toward the clock near the ceiling. They hadn’t noticed him behind the wall. In a matter of minutes, the two men had redressed themselves and left, seemingly unaware that Daniel was even there. Daniel ran up to the machine as soon as the door had shut and quickly punched in the numbers he had seen the pair use. Thankfully, the code worked and the doors to the machine opened with ease. He dressed himself quickly in a pair of blue scrubs and discarded his smock into the trash. Good, he thought.
Daniel left the locker room through the back door, the same as the other two staffers had. Instead of heading downstairs, however, he instead followed a small group of people into a nearby elevator and up to the eighth floor. Once the doors opened, he headed down the hall, trailing just behind a new cluster of people who were walking toward the large ramp in the center of the building. This would be his main camouflage, being blended into the crowd of people who were heading downstairs. Security was probably expecting him to take the nearest route to the first floor so that he could make a break for it, and they were probably going to swarm the elevators and stairwells as soon as they realized he was missing, if they hadn’t already. Taking the ramp may have been the slowest way to move between floors in this hospital, but it was almost always full, and he would draw less attention to himself sheltered among the throngs of other people. Along the way, there were also dispensers for things like hand sanitizer and surgical masks, which meant that people would often stop short and bump into each other when using the dispensers. While preoccupied and with movement occurring all around them, most people wouldn’t notice a bit of extra jostling, nor did they think to check their pockets while they were walking. By the time Daniel made it to the first floor of the building, he’d managed to cover his face, and he had a few spare dollars in his pockets.
Of course, because nothing is ever truly easy, there were already clusters of security personnel stationed near the front doors. Breaking from the crowd now would be risky, though, Daniel thought. He persisted on, but he was beginning to grow uneasy as the crowd started to thin out around him. His anxiety was only growing now that he was close to the end—enough so that he had to swallow back a yelp when he suddenly felt a hand touch his back.
“Evan! Hey, didn’t you hear me calling you?”
Daniel turned around to see an unfamiliar man in green scrubs smiling at him.
“Oh, hey,” Daniel said softly as his gaze flitted quickly back and forth between the stranger and the group of security guards. “Sorry, it’s hard to hear up there.” He gestured to the ramp behind him.
“Yeah, I know. I’m just messing with ya. I thought today was your day off, man. What'cha doing here?” The man’s curly black hair bounced a little as he laughed. He didn’t seem to suspect anything was off.
“Covering a shift for someone. You know, just getting some extra hours in,” Daniel said with what he hoped was a casual tone. “Uh, where are you headed?”
“Swinging by the pharmacy real quick. Why? You want to come with?” the man asked. He looked more curious than suspicious, which was a good sign.
Daniel nodded, and was then led away from the front doors and toward the small pharmacy that was tucked in the back of the lobby area. This might have been a stroke of luck after all, he thought. This stranger’s mistake meant that he had camouflage again. Even as he passed by a lone guard on the way into the pharmacy, she only barely glanced his way before returning her attention to the distant crowd in the lobby. Laughing alongside the orderly as he told a joke and with his face partially covered, Daniel was once again able to slip beneath the radar. As soon as they had passed through the door unscathed, the unfamiliar man made his way toward the front counter, and Daniel took the opportunity to slip away. There were no public doors out of the building this way, but there was an emergency exit against the back wall. It would be noisy, but at least he could find a place to hide once he was safely outside. In one swift movement, Daniel shoved open the door and ran into the lot that stretched beyond it, away from the blare of emergency alarms that eventually trailed off into the white noise of rustling wind and passing cars.
He wasted no time in winding his way along the side of the building and through the cluster of trees that bordered the parking lot. The less than a minute’s worth of sprinting he did was enough to make him dizzy, and he had to steady himself to keep from falling over once he made it to the parkway. Daniel couldn’t tell if he was beginning to crash from fatigue, relief, or both. Either way, his exhaustion forced him down from a run to a brisk walk as he made his way down the sidewalk, passing by a only a handful of pedestrians and squat buildings along the way. He wasn’t completely out of danger yet, but the worst of it was over, which he kept having to repeat to himself even after he finally reached a bus depot where he could collapse in relative peace.
“I made it,” he said to no one in particular, and kept repeating it under his breath, garnering a few strange looks from other people waiting to be picked up. When one man’s stare caught his eye, Daniel only glared until he looked away, and tightened the drawstrings on his hood. On the way there he ducked into a thrift store where he’d been able to switch out his scrubs for some regular clothes. He never thought he would miss wearing actual fabric so much. Daniel should have been relieved. He’d gotten out of the hospital. He was free—at least for the time being. Going without his medications for so long was starting to take its toll, but he could handle a bit of exhaustion and a bit of pain. He’d already been through far worse in the past couple of weeks. Still, he felt more uneasy than triumphant, even as he finally boarded the bus to Sleepy Peak.
Now that he was on his way to the camp, Daniel also had time to think about just what exactly he was doing. He may have been a sitting duck in the hospital, but he would be even easier for the cult to find out here. It wasn’t like he expected to avoid them for the rest of his life, however long he had left of it to live. He wasn’t concerned about them, though, so much as he was concerned about the camp. He couldn’t help but question himself, and why he was putting himself at risk for that place anyway. He’d tried to kill those kids, and as much as he hated to admit it, David was right about such an act carrying an inherent sense of wrongness. Even if Daniel was doing it for their sakes—so they could ascend, purified, perfect, and unafraid as they finally shed their mortal bodies for something better—there was always a moral reflex of sorts that opposed his resolve. A little voice that whispered to him, you know this is wrong—but he’d always ignored it. He was supposed to, he’d been told, because reaching a higher level of being meant ignoring the survival instincts that clouded his head with fear. He was helping people—and he had always believed that to be the case. Now though, Daniel wasn’t so sure.
He should have hated David—and Camp Campbell by extension—for doing that to him. For finding a weak point in his faith and putting pressure on it. But he didn’t hate either of them. Instead, Daniel was anxious. He hadn’t been anxious in a very long time, but this time, he didn’t have his family or his sauna to make it go away. This time, he was completely on his own. Goodness, why was he going to all this trouble for that stupid camp, and putting his own health and safety at risk in the process? What did he care at this point what happened to them? He had failed his mission, and those kids were alive to hate him and live with the all negativity that he hadn’t been able to chase away. He asked himself about this over and over as walls of dark pine flew past the window at his side, but he already knew the answer, as much as he didn’t want to admit it: he was doing this because of David. He was doing this because that idiot had pushed and shoved his way into his life, forced Daniel to accept his help, and now he had a target on his back because of it. As pushy and annoying as David’s attempts at mending fences could be, the man didn’t deserve to be punished on Daniel’s behalf. He owed the counselor that much at least.
It’ll be okay , Daniel told himself as he watched the surrounding forest roll past. It was all he could do now until he got to his destination. Everything will be okay.