Fractured (Unreel series Book 1)

by Sanna Wolf-Watz

”Thank you. You know you didn’t have to…”

  She shook off his gratitude with a shrug that made her short, blonde hair dance around her heart-shaped face.

  ”No big. You looked like you could do with some support after that… discussion,” she said with a smile and a wink that made Thomas blush from embarrassment.

  ”Oh. You heard.”

  She laughed. “I don’t think there was anyone here who didn’t. That includes Lucas, our light technician, and he is stone deaf.”

  Thomas blushed harder. This was why he never caused a scene, never argued in public. Except now he had. Several times. Sofia Hansson was turning him into a monster. “Er… we don’t get along that well…”

  ”You don’t say,” she said, her smile so wide he could see dimples in her cheeks. “Come on, you look like you could do with some coffee. I’m Lucy, by the way.”

  “Thomas.”

  She took his hand and led him towards the cafeteria that Mr. Stevens had pointed out to them during their tour. He tried to stammer that he was fine, that she had done enough for him, but she told him, as nicely as ever, to shut up and get moving.

  Sofia took off running as soon as she got out from the building and as a consequence of this she nearly broke her neck falling over a traffic cone.

  She kicked her shoes off, put them in her backpack and heaved a sigh of relief. The cold pavement under the soles of her feet was more comfortable than those shoes.

  Finally able to stretch her legs – as much as her tight jeans allowed her to – she proceeded to try putting as much distance as possible between herself and the JBC.

  Slowly she relaxed her jaw muscles and lowered her shoulders. A rain drop hit her on her nose. Typical. She’d blame the rain on Thomas. She should have known better than to try cooperating with that… that schmuck. Her eyes were tearing up. Angrily, she wiped at them.

  She stomped down the sidewalk as the rain picked up. She had been holding back all week. He’d been going out of his way to annoy her and she’d taken deep breaths and told herself that he was hurting, that he needed space. Well, clearly she’d been wrong. He wasn’t hurting. He was an idiot.

  With a murderous look at the people huddling together in one of the over crowded bus stops she decided to walk home. The adrenaline rush from the row had left her shaking and she needed a physical outlet. She skipped around a broken bottle and narrowly avoided having her feet sliced open.

  The next time she saw him she would… She paused as she tried to come up with a suitably nasty retaliation. It would have to involve public humiliation, obviously.

  “Just you wait Thomas Jefferson,” she mumbled to herself. “Just you wait.”

  She was so engrossed in her plans for revenge that she didn’t notice the two men in suits following a few meters behind her. One of them was speaking into his phone.

  ”She’s on her way home. On foot. Yes sir,” the man said and motioned for his colleague to pick up his pace as they continued to tail her. Not close enough for her to notice them, but not far enough to lose sight of her either.

  Thomas couldn’t understand why this beautiful woman, who must have loads of better things to do, was bothering to sit here and talk to him.

  Lucy had bought him coffee and joined him at one of the white plastic tables in the canteen. Other reporters and photographers came and went as she told him about when she first came to work at the JBC. She was doing such a good job of cheering him up he didn’t even mind the coffee.

  “Of course, no one had bothered to tell me so I tripped right over an electric cord, crashed into the brand new camera and broke the lens with my mic. Todd told me he’d never before seen anyone ruin thousands of dollars’ worth of camera and sound equipment all at once,” Lucy said. “I can’t believe they didn’t fire me on the spot.”

  Thomas laughed, spluttering coffee back into his cup in a totally unattractive way, but she grinned at him and asked him if he liked baseball. After she told him she watched every single game the T-bones played they spent the next thirty minutes discussing their current position in the league.

  She was in the middle of telling him how she thought their upcoming game would go when her phone rang. The sound of it made Thomas jump. She smiled at him reassuringly and took the call.

  “Hello? Yes,” she listened for a moment. “Okay. Yes. Goodbye,” she said and hung up.

  Thomas wondered who that had been. Her boyfriend? Or her boss wondering what the hell she was doing babysitting a seventeen year old in the cafeteria?

  “Listen, if you have somewhere you need to be…” Thomas said hesitantly. He didn’t want her to go.

  “No, it’s fine. Would you mind getting me another cup of coffee, though? Decaf,” she added, “I don’t want to go all hyperactive on you.”

  Thomas grinned and walked over to the machine to refill her cup. This day was turning out alright after all he decided, looking back at the woman by the table. She smiled when she saw him watching her and Thomas blushed and quickly turned back to the coffee machine. It had now stopped steaming and successfully produced a cup of coffee. He returned to the table with it.

  “Thanks,” she said and took a sip. “You’ve hardly touched yours,” she added, nodding to his nearly full cup.

  Thomas hurriedly took a sip. It was lukewarm and it tasted, if possible, more bitter now than when it had been hot. Best get rid of it quickly, he decided and gulped down half of it in one go.

  She smiled at him and he tried to smile back even though he felt more like retching.

  “I wouldn’t survive without coffee,” she confessed and took another sip of hers. “Wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning.”

  “I tune into our local radio station. It’s impossible to sleep with all that junk music,” Thomas said and the woman opposite him laughed.

  Thomas grinned back and suddenly noticed that the world was spinning. He shook his head to clear it. He must be suffering from some sort of caffeine shock.

  “So Thomas,” Lucy said with a smile and he lost his train of thought. “Let’s talk about you. How’s school?”

  Sofia finally managed to unlock her house and made her way inside. She closed the door behind her and slid to the floor. It had taken her a much longer time to get home than she’d thought it would. She hadn’t gotten lost. Well, not exactly. Her feet could usually find their way as long as her brain didn’t try to interfere and since her brain had been busy with inventing new methods for torturing Thomas, she had not taken a single wrong turn.

  The problem was that everyone around here had a car and there was hardly any space for her to walk on. With her being more focused on how to torture Thomas and less focused on where she was putting her feet, she’d caused an astounding number of near traffic accidents.

  At least she wasn’t angry anymore. She still wanted to strangle Thomas, but she had gotten it under control. She had even managed to stop flexing her fingers. Now she only needed to get past the sense of acute embarrassment.

  Fragments of the scene in the TV house that afternoon kept coming back to her, making her cringe. She recalled the large group of people that had gathered around them to watch and blushed. Great. At least she was getting adept at shouting in front of large groups of people. Perhaps she should become a politician? She sure knew how to make an impression. They would probably never let her into that building ever again.

  “Well good riddance,” she muttered to herself, got back on her feet and threw her shoes and backpack into a corner with an angry toss.

  She flicked the light switch, but the room remained dark. Of course it did. Nothing was going her way today.

  She tried to find her way to the bathroom in the darkness. She needed to wash her feet. She would need to bath them in anti-bacterial gel as well, considering the state of some of the roads she’d trodden on today.

  Just as she was about to open the door to the bathroom someone grabbed hold of her from behind. Sofia had never been afraid of the dark or of being
home alone, but as she was lifted off her feet she suddenly understood why some people insisted on having guns in their homes. Not that it would have helped her. Before she could so much as scream, her mouth was covered with a stinking piece of cloth and her arms were bent on to her back.

  No matter how much she squirmed, she couldn’t get loose. That didn’t mean that she didn’t try. She squirmed for dear life, but squirming is hard without oxygen and in the end she had to inhale. She tried to scream, but the sound of it stayed in her head, accompanied by the stench of chemicals as she fell into unconsciousness.

  Thomas tried to make himself shut up. For the past half hour he had been telling the woman opposite him absolutely everything about his life. She didn’t even have to ask.

  He had taken her through a detailed tour of his first few years in school. He had gone so far as to tell her about the time when he only received a B on a math test. About the shame, the scolding, and the slap. It was as if he couldn’t stop himself. The words welled up from within him and tumbled out his mouth like vomit, leaving a bitter aftertaste of something not quite like coffee.

  ”What happened the next time you got a B?”

  Thomas met her blue eyes and smiled. “It won’t happen again,” he told her. And I don’t want to talk about it, he added to himself, but to no use. He seemed incapable to keep his mouth shut.

  She was looking at him, her head tilted to the right as if she found him endlessly intriguing rather than extremely embarrassing. He wondered how old she was. Twenty five? She grinned at him and he hurried to move his gaze back to his own cup. He was sweating.

  ”Don’t you like it?” she asked motioning to his cup.

  ”No, I hate coffee. This is disgusting.”

  He blushed. Why had he told her that? He had meant to please her, not aggravate her. She obviously loved coffee. He hurried to take another sip and accidentally choked on it. This was the most bitter cup he’d ever had. She smiled at him again and he wondered why she kept doing that and why she hadn’t reacted more to his comment about the coffee.

  ”Er… I’m not taking up your time, am I? I mean, you must have better things to do than to drink coffee and listen to me,” he said even as he worried that she’d tell him to leave. “You’re beautiful.”

  He blushed deeper. What was wrong with him? He didn’t go around telling strange women they were beautiful.

  ”No worries,” she said, reaching out across the table and taking his hand.

  Thomas heart was beating the way it usually did after he had finished running a mile and he couldn’t decide if it was because she was holding her hand or because something was really wrong with him.

  ”Thomas, come with me,” she said, still smiling. She got to her feet and his legs followed suit by themselves. As if watching from a distance he saw himself get up from the chair and leave the room hand in hand with… What did she say her name was? The hall was deserted now. How long had they been talking for? Then he got distracted by the feel of her hand in his, her legs touching his.

  Suddenly he was sitting in the back seat of a car and she let go of his hand to get in beside him. Something about the situation was not making sense, but when he tried to figure out what it was, he couldn’t get through to his own thoughts.

  He shook his head. It felt like it was filled with fuzz. Fuzzy wuzzy was a bear… No. He had been thinking about… it had been important, but she… what was her name? He had to know her name!

  ”Er, what’s your name again?” he asked and his voice sounded as if it came from far away. She smiled and leaned closer to him.

  ”Lucy,” she whispered to him.

  ”Lucy,” he repeated just before his mind went blank.

  16

  Dislocated and Misplaced

  Sofia woke up to pains in her head, back and shoulder. She shifted and tried to make herself comfortable, but to no use. With a groan she pried her eyes open and looked around.

  The sparse light in the room was coming from a fluorescent about to break. It made an annoying humming noise. She glared at it, hoping it would give out and let her get back to sleep. The noise and the flicking light was not easing her headache.

  She tried to focus her gaze on her surroundings. Instead the nice, comfortable bed she had expected to see, she was lying on a small and hard metal slate. Well, that explained the pain in her back.

  She looked around the room. In no way did it resemble her own. Her walls were a light shade of pink and covered with framed paintings, pictures and posters. The walls presently surrounding her were in a sterile, grey color and the only furniture, apart from her uncomfortable slate, was an equally ugly and, by the look of it, uncomfortable toilet in steal with a sink to match.

  The toilet, she noticed, was positioned way too close to her face. There was no way this arrangement could be considered hygienic. On the plus side, proximity to the toilet would be helpful if she needed to throw up. She could just lean over.

  Fighting back the nausea that welled up every time she moved, she forced herself to look up and around. No windows, no nothing except for the large metal door in the opposite wall.

  She closed her eyes. She was obviously dreaming. This was what too much “Orange is the new black” could do to you. She was canceling her Netflix account, she decided and turned on her side. The metal was solid. She had to admit that this dream felt very real. Why couldn't she get dreams with this much detail and depth when she was having a nice dream?

  She tried to make her body relax which should be a lot easier to do in this dreamscape than in reality. She would switch dreams now and if she in the next dream didn’t find herself in a beautiful field, sword in hand and a world needing rescue she and her subconscious were going to have words.

  Thomas didn’t have an equally firm opinion about where he was supposed to be when he came to. A cell wasn’t what he had expected, though. Hadn’t there been a car? He looked around in the small room with its grey walls and massive metal door. It did not look like a car at all. Had he been hallucinating? Or was this the hallucination? He vastly preferred the other one.

  He smiled to himself as a face came floating back to him, framed by curly blonde hair. Lucy wasn’t it? They had been sitting in a car. She had put that pretty, smile close to him and… He had passed out. He hid his face in his hands. How was it even possible to pass out from coffee? Wasn’t caffeine supposed to have the opposite effect? Maybe he was allergic. That would also explain the hallucinations. And the pounding headache.

  He tried to find a comfortable position and go back to sleep, but he was already too awake and he was starting to find the ugly toilet nest to him oddly appealing. Hrrm. Imaginary or not, he found that it worked precisely the way a toilet should.

  He had barely finished washing his hands in the matching steel sink when the large door was thrown open. A man who looked like he was from a SWAT-team entered the cell and pointed at him with a machine gun. Thomas blinked incredulously. If this was how hallucinations worked he could not for the life of him understand why people used drugs.

  “Get down on the floor. Now!”

  Thomas didn’t consciously decide to move, but his body followed the basic instincts passed down through generations to obey whoever had a gun pointed your way.

  The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back. A black hood was pulled over his face, making it impossible for him to see a single thing as he was dragged to his feet and pushed out of the room.

  He heard the door slam behind him and the barrel of a gun dug into his back as the man urged him forward. Too shocked to resist, he let himself be pushed forward.

  They turned many times on the way to wherever they were going. Right, right, then left, right, left, left before they finally came to a halt.

  There was a short pause and the sound of a door unlocking before he was pushed forward again. They shoved him into a chair and cuffed his hands to the metal handrails. The hood was lifted from his face
and a glaring white light of a lamp stung his eyes.

  He couldn’t see a thing behind the lamp and since it hurt his eyes to look at the bright light, he kept them shut. He felt the first wave of panic rushing through him, but shock was still firmly in control.

  “So, Dan, how are you doing?” a voice said from the blurry darkness on the other side of the light bulb.

  It took Thomas a few moments to realize that the man was talking to him. “What?”

  “I asked you how you were doing, Dan.”

  “W-why? Who is D-d-dan?”

  “Are you st-st-stammering now as well? How sweet,” the voice said before laughing in a decidedly psychotic way. Thomas noticed with a shiver that inside him panic was starting to get the upper hand.

  “You’ve m-m-made a m-m-mistake, s-sir,” he said and struggled to hold his voice steady. “My name is T-thomas Jefferson.”

  The voice laughed again.

  “Oh, you didn’t think we’d buy into that, did you? Thomas Jefferson! Rule number one when it comes to choosing an alias: don’t be cute.”

  “Alias? I swear, I d-don’t know what you’re…”

  He stopped talking when someone slapped him in the face. His eyes teared. It didn’t usually hurt this much. His father must have been holding back.

  “Do. Not. Lie. To. Me,” the voice hissed.

  He could feel the other man’s breath on his face and it made his skin crawl.

  “I won’t,” he promised and tried to make his voice sound steady.

  “Good. Now, if we could move on? We know all about Op 92.”

  The op what? It was like he was in a particularly bad Bond movie. Was he being punk’d? His face still stung from the punch. Hadn’t they shut down that show?

  “Sir, I d-don’t know…”

  “I should warn you that lying will see you punished,” the man said threateningly.

  “Just like home,” he muttered. That reply earned him a punch in the stomach.