by Loki Renard
Staking his courage, he pushed the corrugated iron door open and hung back for a second before cautiously looking inside. He half expected a ball of flame or a hail of poison tipped arrows to greet him, but there was nothing. Somehow that made it worse. Against his better judgment he stepped into the warehouse, committing to a meeting with the occupant.
In the far corner of the room was a slim figure cleaning a pistol with an intensity that seemed to consume it. Slim fingers bunched a rag, working it furiously over the hard steel. The woman appeared not to have noticed the door opening, or at the very least, seemed not to care. Her blonde hair hung in her face as the muscles in her skinny arm flexed and relaxed over and over with the cleaning motion.
“Anja.” He said her name softly. There was no trace of the rage he had felt when he had been informed that Zora had taken a bullet. He was all cold calculation and cool caution. Emotion had no place at a time like this, a time where survival hung by a hair. It would have been simple to have drawn his weapon and shot her, but he had never had the intention of killing Anja. She had been on his team for years. He had trained her intensely, taught her everything she knew and he would not repay the loyalty she had shown him over and over and over again by putting a bullet in her like a coward.
She didn't look up from the weapon, but her hand slowed to a halt. When she spoke, her voice was rough and raspy, as if she'd been gargling with razor blades. “Brett.”
He took a few slow steps into the room, each one echoing around metal walls. “It's been a while.” Keep it light. Keep it congenial. Ignore the crazy.
“Too long.” She looked up, wispy strands of super blonde hair floating in her face. A small glimmer of what might have been a smile teased around the edges of her mouth. She looked thinner than when he had last seen her, her eyes, always large, looked bauble big and wide in her head.
He closed the distance between them with soft steps. When he was close enough, he reached out and took the pistol from her hands. She let him do so with almost no resistance. With the gun safely in his spare holster, he asked another friendly question. “What have you been up to, Anja?”
She turned her face up to him and the look in her eyes was hauntingly hollow. “You know what I've been doing.”
He put the words to the thing. “Hunting Zora Matthews.”
“Yes.” She smiled, cracked lips making an almost unfamiliar motion.
“Why?”
“It's my job to eliminate problems. She's a problem.”
He scanned Anja's face worriedly. There was something wrong with her. There was almost always something wrong with her of course, she had always been given to temper and intensity, but there was usually more life behind the baby blues. They usually flashed with soul and with passion. Now he saw nothing in her gaze. Her eyes looked empty. If there was a soul still there at all it was shriveled and dry and rattling around in what passed for her heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Zora's eyes were at serious risk of going square. She'd been analyzing footage for five hours straight, so long the sun had started its ascent through the sky. After nailing Tex in the nether regions, she figured the safest place was her workstation. They'd never think to look for her there. The work was tedious and grinding but it had two significant positives in addition to keeping her hidden. It kept her mind off Savage and it kept her mind off Tex. The conflict between the two men was no longer an external one she could avoid by staying away from them, it was an internal battle being fought both in the scarred ground of her heart and the lower lands where her passions had their root.
The stack of discs beside her had dwindled significantly, but there were still a handful left, representing a few more hours respite from base human concerns. She was peering at a satellite image that was starting to whirl in front of her tired eyes when the lab door opened. She didn't look up. Looking up might draw attention. Better to be one silent head than be a pair of eyes to meet. She kept her ears pricked though, listening to the footsteps as they drew closer.
“Zora.”
It was him. Of course it was him, that low sonorous voice with a hint of rumble passing through her like a wave. She kept her eyes on her computer screen, feigning indifference. “Uh huh?”
Strong arms slid around her, just barely touching her waist and Tex rested his palms either side of the keyboard. She could feel the warmth of his body behind her, his voice soft and deliberate in her ear. “I thought you should know that was strike two.” His voice, silky smooth, dropped a note. “You don't want to get to strike three.”
She snorted to hide the squeak that threatened to escape her throat. “Neither do you, I bet.”
The hands retreated, she was pulled back from her desk and her swirly chair was swung around by strong, capable hands. Tex didn't look quite as angry as he probably should have, but he was not pleased either. His brows were creased down in angular displays of sharp censure. “I mean it. You lay a hand on me again...”
“Ironic isn't it,” she interrupted. “You saying that to me.”
He shook his head, dismissing her argument out of hand. “It's not the same thing and well you know it.”
“Why? Because I lack a penis? Because I'm not as big as you?”
His eyes met hers. “Because you're my subordinate, and presumably you don't want to be disciplined.”
She squirmed uncomfortably, wishing she wasn't effectively trapped in her chair. “Stop hitting on me then.”
As if granting her wish, Tex leaned back against the workstation opposite and crossed his arms over his chest. “You're waiting for Savage.” He spoke in a flat, observational tone but she knew there was judgment there. There was always judgment there.
“I am.”
“You could be waiting a long time.”
She met his gaze steadily. “I could be.”
“Then you probably don't want to give me cause to have your panties down again, do you?” Tex's cold smirk sent chills through her. “Who knows what might happen?”
“You're going to force yourself on me?” Her tone was scathing. “You're a lot of things, but I didn't take you for a sexual predator.”
His smirk widened into something more lascivious. “There won't be any force at all. I won't do anything you don't beg me to do.” He was so arrogant, so very sure of himself. She hated it. It made her feel as if he somehow saw inside her, as if he knew the tug of war going on between her faithful heart and her treacherous loins.
“I have work to do,” she said, turning back to her workstation. “My boss is coming down on me pretty hard these days, so if you'll excuse me, I'll get back to it.” She felt uncomfortable the moment she turned around, having her back to Tex made her feel like a gazelle with its meaty rear pointed towards a hungry lion. She held her breath in order to hear what he was doing, but she needn't have bothered. His mirthless chuckle floated to her quite easily as he walked away.
* * *
How does one negotiate with a madwoman? Savage had an answer to that dilemma – carefully. He had spent the night trying to gain Anja's trust, trying to dissuade her from hunting the woman he loved. Anja had not been precisely receptive to the idea, though she had listened to him as she polished her weapons until she passed out mid-sentence. Savage let her sleep whilst he kept watch. He took the opportunity to dismantle a few of the more dangerous traps whilst she was sleeping. The place was still booby trapped to high heaven, but at least passing people and animals weren't at imminent risk of death simply by wandering past the place.
It was mid-afternoon before Anja roused herself. When she sat up and pushed her hair back there was a print of a spanner pressed into the skin on her face. It would almost have been cute if the rabid look weren't still in her eyes. “Brett.” She said the word with a flat kind of surprise and for a moment Savage was afraid she might have forgotten everything he'd been saying the night before. “You're still here,” she observed, reassuring him she wasn't so mad she didn't know what was going on.
“You should have killed me in my sleep.” It was a dramatic statement but it was made with that queer flat certainty that gave him chills.
“I would never do that.”
“Never kill me? Or not kill me in my sleep?” Her smile was like ice. They both already knew the answer to that question.
Changing the topic, Savage tried to reach Anja with logic. “Why is Zora a problem? She hasn't done anything to you.”
Anja's face screwed into a mask of bitter rage at the mere mention of Zora's name. “It's her fault. Everything was great before she came. We were a team. One of the best. Then she came and she took you and she tore our unit apart and I lost my job. My life. Because of her.” She spoke with her teeth clenched as her hands curled into fists. “She will die.”
Savage placed a hand on Anja's bony shoulder. She leaned into it almost dreamily. “I need you to stop this Anja.”
She looked up with a mercenary sparkle in her gaze. “What do I get for stopping it?”
“What do you want?”
He knew the answer almost before it slipped between her lips in a breathy whisper. “I want you. I want us.”
“There is no us, Anja.” His voice stayed soft, but the words were hard. “If you persist in hunting her, I will take you down.”
“Good.” Anja shrugged his hand off her shoulder. “You tore my heart out once. It would be fitting if you put a bullet in it too. Take me out of the game, Savage.”
He looked into her eyes and saw that she was crazed. No hint of sanity was left in her fractured gaze. An uncomfortable feeling of sick guilt accompanied the realization that he could very well be part of the reason for her state. Maybe he had pushed her too hard. Maybe he had encouraged a little of the obsession in the hopes it would make her a better soldier. He had been her commanding officer for years. If she was broken, he had a role to play in it.
“Anja,” he said softly. “I can help you. I can find you a new place to work. Your life doesn't have to be like this anymore. There's a new one waiting for you. You can be the best again.”
His honeyed words did nothing. She shook her head abruptly. “I don't want a new life. You wanted a new life. You turned tail and became a traitor to everything you told me mattered.” Her anger was beginning to turn against Savage, making the situation more dangerous than ever.
“You can't kill her, Anja.” He tried to force the idea into her head with an authoritative look, the sort of look that once would have had her trembling in her boots. She didn't tremble anymore. She was beyond her fear of him. Or rather, she was beyond caring that he did not approve of her. Everything she'd done for the past ten years she'd done for his approval. He'd always known how desperately she craved his acknowledgment. Now she wanted a lot more than that. A lot more than he could give.
“I will kill her.” Certainty beyond certainty.
“You won't,” again he tried reason. “She's protected.”
“By that band of mercenaries? By you?” Anja snorted in disdain. “I could walk into that place any time I wanted. What passes for security there is pathetic.”
Savage was inclined to agree on that score. “So why haven't you,” he asked. “Why not just walk in there and put that bullet where it counts?”
Again Anja's expression shifted. “I knew you'd come. I knew you'd... hunt me down.” There was an undeniable charge of sexual excitement in her voice.
“Anja...”
“You knew how I felt about you. You always knew and you used it to get me to do what you needed me to do.” She stood up, pressing her lithe body up against his muscular frame. “And now you're here in the dark, alone with me.”
Savage placed his hands on her shoulders and gently pressed her back. “We're not going to do that Anja.”
His rejection was ignored. “Why not? Why not use me up completely before you take me out?” She pressed forward and undulated her body against him, grinding her hips in a shamefully sexual display. “Fuck me, then kill me. Let me die happy.”
* * *
Like a rat in a cage, Zora paced the length of the room she and Savage had briefly shared. Her torment was growing by the day. Her external conditions could not be faulted, but the internal struggle brewing as a result of the seeds Tex had planted was tearing her apart.
She tried to hold Savage in her mind, to picture his face, to remember what it felt like when he held her, but even as she tried to remember the man she loved, Tex's visage and body intruded. He had never been inappropriate, but he had been intimate. She knew what his hands felt like on her body, how his fingers could drift gently against her sensitive skin. She was horny, dammit. She needed release. Tossing herself on the bed she smelled the very faint scent of Savage on the sheets as she slid her hand down the front of her pants and pressed her fingertips against her soft slit. The pressure alone was something of a relief and a small moan escaped her lips as she massaged herself with a light touch.
“Oh shit. Sorry.”
Zora's eyes flew open to see Johnny standing in the doorway looking shocked and somewhat amused. She yanked her hand out of her pants and scowled furiously at him. “Don't they teach you how to knock around here?”
“Don't they teach you how to lock a door when you're playing with yourself?” Johnny countered.
“What do you want?” She changed the subject as quickly as possible. There was no way she was going to argue away that embarrassment.
“Urgent footage came in.” Johnny stepped into the room and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “You do know about the cameras, right?”
“What cameras?”
He made a glancing upwards motion with his eyes. “There are several in each of these rooms. Everything you do is monitored.”
Zora's jaw dropped. “What the... You mean...”
Johnny nodded slowly, his eyes bright with sparks of meaning. “They see everything.”
Everything. It didn't take long for the significance of that statement to sink in. “That's...” She was sure she'd started actually boiling on the inside, so great was the frustration and anger that welled up inside her. Nothing was sacred, nothing was private. She was but a pawn, watched over and manipulated for the amusement of... Tex. It all came back to him, everything came back to him. He was a despot with money and manpower at his disposal, a man who could have almost anything he wanted in the whole world but seemed to want nothing more than to mess with other people's minds. “... I fucking hate that guy.”
Johnny snapped back into business mode. “Well, hate him whilst you're working. We need this done yesterday.”
Zora allowed herself to be cajoled out of her room and down to the lab, but she was seething on the inside even as Johnny loaded the disc for her. The video auto-started and was playing long before she was paying any kind of proper attention. When she did get around to looking at it she couldn't help but notice that the footage in question was blurry, confusing and appeared to be a home video of someone's calculator. She screwed her face up. “What is this?”
“That's a detonator. There are five of them hooked to five packages of explosives.” He looked at her as if that was supposed to mean something to her. It didn't.
“Okay?”
“To deactivate the bomb, you don't need to put in a code. You need to put in several formulas.”
She still wasn't seeing where she came into the equation. “Okay?”
“You need to work out what they are,” Johnny explained, his voice slowing ever so slightly as if he were explaining the task to a particularly slow sort of person.
She gave him a dirty look. “You can barely see this footage.”
“So convert it to stills and work that way.”
Frowning, Zora looked back at the blurry, shaky footage that looked as if it had been filmed from somewhere up a passing pigeon's ass. “That's going to take forever.”
“You've got twenty four hours.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Good luck.”
He left and she reluctantly got to work. Viewing the footage frame by frame didn't so much help as elevate her frustration to whole new levels. The task before her was grueling and seemed almost impossible. In fact, it seemed so impossible she came to the conclusion that it wasn't really a task at all. It was probably just another way to keep her busy. Another way to keep her blind to the slow decay of her independence and resistance. There was no way she was going to go quietly into another night of mindless, pointless grind just to satisfy the despotic machinations of the man who held her prisoner. She was going to do something about it. She was going to tell Tex exactly what she thought about him and his cameras and his pretend bombs.
Burning with rebellion, she marched herself through the halls and into Tex's office. He did not look up when she entered, so she slapped the disk down on his desk and declared. “I'm done with this!”
“Are you also done with living?”
Tex's reaction wasn't what she expected. He was usually patient. He was usually somewhat indulgent, darkly amused even, but she seemed to have caught him on a bad night. He looked up from his work, his eyes dark as they lasered in on her. She knew the moment they made eye contact that she'd made a terrible mistake in approaching him but it was too late.
“I... just... don't see the point of this...” she stammered, twisting her hands together in front of her body. When he looked at her that way he was terrifying. She tried to think of something else to say, but nothing came out besides a very small strangled whimper.
“The point is that you are being trained.” His low gravelly voice was full of danger. “You are being trained in something useful that keeps you out of the field. Away from the places people like you die. Instead of appreciating the opportunities you're being given you spend all your time in wasteful rebellion.” A sneer curled his upper lip as he looked her over with an expression of pure distaste. “You're like a spoiled little schoolgirl incapable of seeing the value of the experience beyond the rules, which you resent merely for existing. You think that you are above the rules. You do not see why you should have to do anything to earn your way in the world. You exist in a realm of shortcuts and tantrums. Fortunately for you, you have one unique skill – but that alone is not enough, not here. You have to be more than a human calculator.”