Dunstan fell asleep long before Kelly, and now snored quietly on the couch in the living room, the screen-glow from his laptop casting a mellow blue towards the kitchen. Kelly’s wristwatch read 1.30am when she went to her own room, but she didn’t sleep.
She found herself sitting on the embedded window seal with the lights off. From the second floor window she had a decent view of the main street outside, lit by hyper-luminescent streetlamps and a few advertisements that spilled neon into her room. She had grown accustomed to the deep tangible silence of an empty house in the small hours of the night. She had cracked the window just enough to let the cool night air wash over her. She sipped quietly at a glass of whiskey.
By 2.00am the whiskey and cool air were taking effect and Kelly leaned back and let her eyelids grow heavy but still gazed out the window. A group of four men quickly approached the hotel, casually dressed but well-armed. Each man carried at least a single handgun as well as other equipment.
Kelly rushed to open her bedroom door and peer around the corner. No time to wake Dunstan. The door to their hotel room creaked open and two figures crept inside. Kelly listened to their footsteps. A moment later another four poured into the living room. Too many to fight. Kelly grabbed her Beretta and very slowly cocked a round into the chamber. She took a handheld mirror from her ensuite bathroom and used it to look around the corner. One of the invaders stood over Dunstan and then signalled for the other five to sweep the rooms. Whether he was their leader or not, Kelly couldn’t tell. The man bent down and retrieved a syringe from a special case, and then jabbed Dunstan in the neck with it. Dunstan instantly awoke and the invader clasped a hand over his mouth. Dunstan hummed frightfully, and his legs flailed and his body rocked side to side. Then he fell silent.
One of the invaders headed towards Kelly, who quietly moved to the bathroom and waited in the closet. The night remained deathly quiet. Floorboards creaked. Kelly waited, like a rattlesnake poised to strike.
Kelly struck the man in the side of the head with her pistol. He cried out loud enough to alert the others. Kelly wouldn’t have time to subdue this guy properly. She grappled the man, jammed her Beretta into his thigh and pulled the trigger. The shot decimated the silence. The inside of the man’s knee splattered across the floor. He uttered an ungodly cry. Kelly gripped his neck and forced him to his knees as she drove the muzzle of the Beretta into the side of his head.
At least four other attackers stormed into the room. Their torches blinded Kelly, she kept her eyes low. Four guns trained on her, ready to shoot her down with a single wrong move. Kelly huffed and struggled to hold her hostage still—his sweaty skin was slippery under her grasp.
They had taken Dunstan alive. Could she wager that they’d take her as a hostage? Who was she kidding, she’d be dead right now if they wanted it. Over the anguished whimpering of her bleeding captive the attackers yelled a series of commands like “Drop the weapon” and “There’s no way out of here”.
Killing them was a poor option — at least, Connors had advised her to avoid it — so it appeared she only had one choice.
Kelly glared at them for a long time, there was fury in her eyes, and then she lifted her finger off the trigger of her Beretta and set it down on the floor, then shoved the bleeding captive onto his face. An instant later a surge of electricity paralysed her body and she collapsed in a seizing mess. The last thing she remembered from that night was a shadowy figure sticking a syringe into her neck.
Kelly had never known a darkness as absolute as the one she awoke in. She expected to feel pain, a kind of residual aching from the taser charge or the drugs they’d given her, but her entirely body was numb. When she did regain the strength to wiggle her arms she discovered the bindings that chained her to a cold metal chair. This wasn’t a void. A muffled wind roared somewhere outside. There was a floor, she sat on it, but it was hardly tangible, in fact it shifted like a dark ocean.
“Lieutenant Kelly Jade,” said Anton’s voice.
At first his form was indistinct, pixilated like he’d just stepped out of an old computer screen. He wore a trim smoky-blue suit and his scruffy hair was now well-groomed.
“That’s right. I know who you are.” He spoke in a whisper, with a teasing intonation. “What you people don’t seem to understand is that I stand at a nexus of information — whatever data you think you have, all of it goes through me. Which means I know that you’re with the Special Forces. I know that Agent Connors sent you and the late Captain Miller here to steal from me but—”
Kelly jolted against her restraints at the mention of her captain’s name.
Anton tapped the neural implant behind his right ear. “There’s only one place where I know my data is protected, and last I checked the human mind remains unhackable.”
He knelt in front of her, his face so close to hers that she could see his computer eyes flickering like white noise. “Of course, that doesn’t mean the mind can’t be broken.” He stood up and raised his voice. “I’m very proud of my son, however I’ll admit — as I’m sure you’ll soon find out — that his talents can be unsavoury.” He waved. “Goodbye, lieutenant.”
Anton disappeared and the world began to deconstruct, folding in on itself in neat little square to unveil the nightmare reality beyond.
Before Kelly knew where she was her senses were assaulted by a chemical smell — like chloroform — and the meaty slap of fists striking flesh. Now a terrible ache really did run down the length of Kelly’s body. Her wrists were raw from the handcuffs that chained her to a pipe on the wall. They were in a damp dark room that looked like a basement. Kelly saw Dunstan, tied to a chair, being absolutely wailed on by Johnathan Harrell.
Johnathan’s chest rose and fell with exhaustion as he reached for a grubby towel and wiped his bloody hands. He looked at Kelly. “You’re awake. Good. Wouldn’t want you to miss the show.”
Dunstan’s dark hair had stuck to his brow with sweat and blood, and he looked at Johnathan with half-closed eyes that made Kelly wonder how long they had kept her in virtual reality.
“I heard you Special Forces types are tough cookies to crack,” Johnathan said as he collected a cleaver from a table and pointed it at Kelly. He untied Dunstan’s left hand.
“No… please…” Dunstan murmured.
Johnathan spun the cleaver around in his hands. “It makes sense to me that when you’re torturing someone for information you want to inflict as much agony as you can while simultaneous inflicting as little damage to the body. This is where techniques like waterboarding come in handy. By the way, do they really waterboard you in Special Forces training? You know, it’s something I’ve always been curious about. Torture in itself is nowadays an obsolete art, just ask my father.” Johnathan rolled his eyes. “But, it has it’s uses.”
Johnathan grasped Dunstan’s left hand and forced it onto the table. Dunstan eyed the cleaver and kept his hand in a tight fist for fear of losing his fingers.
“You know what really scares me about torture?” Johnathan went on. He scratched his eyebrow. “As awful as something like waterboarding sounds to me, what I find really terrifying is the permanent damage. Did you know that when a member of the Yakuza dishonours him or herself they are obliged to cut off their own finger? I mean, how fucked up is that.”
“Johnathan, stop this,” Kelly demanded, calmly but firmly.
Johnathan ignored her and tried to flatten out Dunstan’s hand over the table. Dunstan struggled. Johnathan yelled at him: “You can lose a finger or I can take it off at the wrist!”
“Fuck you.” Dunstan growled through gritted teeth.
“Alright.” Johnathan raised the cleaver.
“Wait!” Dunstan cried. “Fuck! Okay!”
Dunstan flattened his hand. Kelly didn’t look away. A single heavy chop, a scream, as the cleaver hacked off the last joint of Dunstan’s pinkie finger. Johnathan picked up the little fingernail stub and inspected it. Then a voice called him from somewhere upstairs.
“Johnathan, get up here! Your pa needs you.”
Johnathan quickly set down the cleaver and finger and returned Dunstan to his spot by the wall, then rushed upstairs.
“Motherfucker,” Dunstan groaned, his skin had turned a sickly blue and he had begun to shiver
“Dunstan, listen to me,” said Kelly. “Dunstan.”
Dunstan didn’t respond.
Kelly knew that she didn’t have much time before someone came back down those stairs to disinfect and bandage Dunstan’s amputated pinkie finger. She looked up at her cuffs. Single-lock, just loose enough, a little flimsy. She reached up and grabbed the rusty pole that suspended her. The cuffs gnawed into her wrists as she heaved herself up and pulled the barrette clip from her hair. She bent the clip and broke off the V shaped piece at the end to create a shim, which she then slipped between the ratchet and teeth of the left cuff, tightening it a little in order to feed it down under the pawl. She struggled to shimmy it loose with so little circulation running to her hands, but managed to undo the left cuff. Her arms dropped down, feeling heavy as the blood surged back to her hands and fingers.
She got to work on Dunstan. When he was up he went to the table and his good hand clambered over the handle of the cleaver. Kelly gave him a worried look.
“What is this place?” Dunstan growled.
Kelly spotted a speck of blood on his right forearm. “I don’t know. Let me see your arm.” It looked as though he’d been stabbed with a pin. She had the same prick on her own arm.
“Shit,” said Dunstan.
“Some kind of micro-chip?” Kelly asked.
“Bio-tracker.”
Kelly jammed her improvised shiv into Dunstan’s arm.
“What the hell, Lieutenant!” he cried.
“Keep your voice down. It has to come out.”
She dug the little tracker out of his flesh, then did the same with her own.
“What the fuck is going on, Lieutenant?” Dunstan’s voice trembled with pain and anger. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
Kelly took point on the stairs.
“Anton Harrell’s lost his mind, and so has his son,” she said, quietly. “Okay, first we need to get somewhere safe, then we’ll get word to Agent Connors for further orders.”
At the top of the stairs was a hallway, which intersected two large rooms of an exquisite townhouse, perhaps belonging to one of the Harrells. A piano melody played from somewhere far off. The house was so quiet that Kelly could hear Dunstan’s blood dripping onto the wooden floorboards, and the voices of a man and a woman in the other room.
“Who are they?” said the woman.
“Spies, is what I heard,” the man replied. “Maybe Anton will bring them in, they could be valuable.”
When Kelly glanced around the corner she saw them standing in front of a set of doors, both armed with submachineguns. Their stance was idle, guarding. Bleep. The woman checked her phone and said, “Johnathan wants to look at their things. Here, I got it.” She collected a box and strode off towards another room.
Kelly followed down the hallway. She peered around a corner towards the empty kitchen, waited, and then moved up, sweeping through the house and quickly and quietly as possible until they reached a study, with an array of computer screens and holograms, the whole area painted with that ghostly blue light. The study had two entrances. Johnathan Harrell stood in the middle of the room with his left hand in his pocket and his right hand holding a steaming cup of coffee. He was alone.
Though, not quite alone. He was in the middle of a conversation, speaking into an earpiece.
“No, father, I am taking this seriously. This is as important to me as it is to you… The girl?... That was an unfortunate mistake.”
The woman stepped into the office and placed the box with Kelly and Dunstan’s possessions down on Johnathan’s desk. He nodded at her and she quietly left the room again.
“They both have their uses,” Johnathan went on, “especially Lieutenant Jade… Of course, I won’t disappoint you again father.”
The called ended. Johnathan Harrell lowered his head for a moment and sighed, then downed the last of his coffee and made to leave the room.
Dunstan stepped towards him, his knuckles whitening over the handle of the cleaver, and Kelly had to stick an arm out to hold him back. Kelly mouthed a single word: No. But Dunstan glared at Johnathan until he and his coffee left the room.
Kelly and Dunstan were clear to move up
“Quickly,” Kelly whispered.
They snuck into the office and retrieved their items from the box. Kelly glanced around at the array of screens. Data. It could be valuable.
“Can we use this?” she asked Dunstan.
He looked at the hardware and then at the doorway. He shook his head.
Then, towards the window. Kelly silently clicked it open and they climbed out. Staying low, they moved onto the street.
The house was located on the other side of town but Kelly was fortunate enough to spot the pink neon ‘DINER’ that hovered a few blocks away. She gambled that the BMW would still be there, and urged Dunstan to pick up the pace. Not that they sprinted conspicuously down the street, as onlookers still walked by here and there, and every few seconds a set of headlights would light up the street. They ran when they were alone, blended in when they could, and took cover when they needed to.
They were across the road now from the diner and Kelly could see the same waiter pouring coffee for a young couple. No use sticking to the dark in the centre of town, the place was like a miniature Times Square with significantly less people. They crossed the street to the parking lot behind the diner.
“Oh thank God,” Dunstan exclaimed, laying eyes on his BMW. “Baby, you’re still here.”
“I’m driving,” said Kelly. Dunstan hesitated then tossed her the keys. Once they were on the road, getting the fuck out of town, Kelly looked over at Dunstan and said, “How you doing?”
He chuckled like he’d just heard a bad joke and held up a bloody tissue. “Still got it.” He opened the central compartment where the refrigerated bottom section contained two chilled beers. “I got ice.”
Kelly shook her head and dared to laugh.
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