After another half an hour or more of images and video clips that had me thinking more and more about Winston Smith, Leda took me back to the cavern that had reminded me of the Sydney Aquarium. She made coffee for me and she told me of how we were so interconnected with the sea and the creatures that lived there. Chara swam by as she had done the day before and waved at me, but just before my brain started to form a conclusion that it had a remarkable similarity to the wave she had given me the morning before, my head started to spin and Leda's face began melting. I wanted to stand up and run, but a pain shot up from my right ankle that dissuaded me from doing so. I only had enough of my mind left to realise that my coffee had been laced with drugs.
'We need to talk about Helen, Lang,' I heard a voice say. As Leda's face was dripping onto the table in front of me at that moment, I wasn't totally sure that it was her who was speaking.
'I don't know,' I stammered.
'You must have met some of the people she worked with? Surely.'
'Not many.'
'Who?'
'I can't remember.'
'What is her job? Her employer?'
I tried to answer, even though I didn't have one at the ready, but couldn't.
'Names. Try Lang.'
My head was still spinning.
'She's a Krypteia agent. You must know that she's been working for them all along.'
I heard myself say, 'I don't know anything.'
'She works for the EYP and those who want to annihilate us. Names Lang, names.'
My brain seized, but my mouth kept moving, but I wasn't sure what sound came out.
'You must have known you were being used to infiltrate us,' were the last words I understood before my head throbbed painfully and then my legs felt as if they had been amputated and tied firmly around my throat.
Surprises were starting to become far too habitual to be classified as such, so as my eyes blinked open and I tried to focus on the ceiling above me, I decided to immediately banish the word from my current vocabulary. My stomach felt like it was trying to digest three dozen off oysters and deciding on which way they should be sent for further processing. Up or down. It decided on up and sent me scrambling to the bathroom and depositing my stomach's contents into the toilet bowl. A painful episode of dry retching completed the task my stomach had set, yet again. When I could breathe, I turned on the shower and took off my clothes and let the hot water wash away the stench of vomit, and the fear that was now manifesting in every cell of my body. As I ran my hands over my face, I noticed my watch was missing from my wrist.
It wasn't much considering the circumstances, but it meant I had lost my only means of controlling my days, and possibly staying sane. I looked down at my ankle. The bracelet was a pale yellow colour. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad, yet I had a notion that its normal transparent shade was probably much better for me. After a very long shower I dried myself off, brushed my teeth and walked back naked to my bed. As I had so recently banished the word surprised from my active vocabulary, finding Chara lying naked in my bed waiting for me could now only be classed as fully anticipated.
'Did you bring wine?' I asked, as I lay down next to her.
'Red. Two bottles,' she said, pointing to them sitting on the fold up table in front of the sofa and then running her hand across my chest.
'Do we fuck before or after the wine?' I asked, realising instantly that by removing the words surprise, surprised, surprising and the plural surprises from my vocabulary, it presented more opportunities to express myself in a more matter of fact manner.
'Before, between and after if you like,' she replied, and I wondered if she had deleted the exact same words from her active vocabulary.
'Can I ask you something?'
'Sure,' she said, as she slowly ran a finger up and down my erection.
'What the fuck is it about my wife and mother that's got me into all this shit?'
'You've developed a sudden degree of directness I notice, Lang.'
'Someone stole my watch,' I said, as she mounted my hips and started guiding me inside her.
'And you're upset about that,' she said as she rocked on me.
'Pissed off.'
'Well, you can let your head have a little tantrum about your watch while I'll see if I can find parts of your body that are in a much better mood.'
'My neck isn't burning.'
'Other parts clearly are though,' she said, smiling as she rocked her hips up and down on me, with her long blonde hair swaying gently against her breasts.
'And I'm not craving for salt.'
'There are other cravings.'
'You have beautiful eyes.'
Chara only smiled and continued rhythmically with her assigned task. I assumed that the questioning would begin during the period of my perceived weakness, when the afterglow of sex accompanied by a full-bodied red, which would probably be laced with drugs, would make me more amenable to open up and divulge every single detail about whatever it was that I was supposed to know but didn't have a clue about. I thought back to the evening before and our romantic beach picnic. It was all very polite really. A little hand holding, a little cuddling and some kissing; clearly just the prelude to tonight. I looked up at Chara and decided to stop thinking about rationalising everything, and instead, enjoy these next few minutes of fucking a beautiful young woman for the first time in so many a long year. It had been so long, I couldn't even recall the last time I'd had sex with Helen. Although it was now clear that she'd had sex quite recently. I thrust my hips up into Chara, with a little venom.
I'm not sure in which order I processed the next few seconds. There was a muffled bang, the sound of my door bursting open, a shot, and then Chara's head suddenly flying backwards and her back arching. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her face grimaced in pain before she fell forward suddenly and her head landed heavily on my shoulder, and then bodies ran towards me. I felt Chara's limp body being dragged off me, and then my eyes capturing a head in a black balaclava. The word surprise was back in my vocabulary with a vengeance. Another balaclava pulled me up, and I was then being pushed into a pair of black overalls. The instant pain around my ankle made me tumble and squeal, tripping over Chara's lifeless body, and then I heard a voice.
'Get that fucking thing off him.'
I looked down wincing in pain, at my ankle and the back of a balaclava. Then I saw a tool in its hand, a flash, and my bracelet flying across the room. The bracelet glowing and flashing a vivid red as a few puffs of smoke drifted from it as it electrocuted itself on the floor.
'Now move!' I heard in a loud and hissing whisper, as my body passed through my door and out into the corridor. My understanding of what was happening was following some distance behind. Two more balaclavas appeared as we neared the doors of the elevator and then the sound of gunshots from behind me had them running towards me, passing me, and returning fire down the corridor. One of the balaclavas at my shoulder let me go as we arrived at the elevator doors as he set about forcing them open with a jemmy bar. When he pushed the doors fully open, I couldn't help but notice that there was no elevator. He grabbed at something and when he clasped a harness around my waist and groin, I knew I was in trouble. Again. More gunshots rang out as my body was pulled into the elevator shaft and I grabbed at the rope with both hands and clung on for dear life as I bumped from one side of the shaft to the other while I felt myself being hauled upwards. I looked down and saw the top of a balaclava following below me, and then another, with the sound of gunshots still ringing out below.
As I rose, I could only wonder if I would pop out on the western beach or the rocky outcrop near the runway. While I was busy with that, it stopped me wondering who the hell all these black balaclavas were, why they had killed Chara, and worse, what the fuck they wanted with me, or from me.
'Use your feet to push away from the walls!' I heard, bellowed from below. I gave it a try and it was quite good advice. I looked up and could only see darkness at th
e top the shaft that was dimly lit with service lights. When I looked down, I thought I counted four black balaclavas rising in a long line below me. I noticed the rope in my hands was actually five entwined, so I assumed we were all being hauled up together.
A volley of gunshots rang out, but this time they echoed violently up the elevator shaft and into my ears. Then another volley followed by a loud explosion. My eardrums felt like they had ruptured as a sudden pain skewered into my head. When I opened my eyes, after they had closed involuntarily due to the explosion, I looked up and thought I caught a glimpse of a bright light. After rising for another thirty seconds or so, it flashed across above me again.
I heard two voices below me. One said, 'Hold on.' The other said, 'I'm ok.'
As the second voice sounded like he was hissing through gritted teeth, I gathered he wasn't really that ok.
The light above me flashed passed again, but this time I also caught sight of a few stars. A short while later I could clearly see the night sky through the open elevator doors above me, and then as I approached the top of the shaft, I heard a humming chop, chop noise. I wasn't an expert on this type of thing, but I put my money on the noise being from a helicopter. The runway was the first thing I saw, lit from a light above, as my body lifted from the shaft through the doors and up into the night.
When I looked up, I saw my rope leading up to a hovering helicopter and it was about then that my stomach, liver and pancreas went into complete panic mode. My brain was working on thinking that I was being rescued, but my guts had other ideas. All I knew for sure was that I felt sick, had a screaming headache and that the noise from the helicopter as I neared it was going to perforate my eardrums for the second time tonight.
As I was hauled into the helicopter by two more black balaclavas, one quickly fitted a pair of large orange earphones over my head and the silence they brought to my ears was an instant relief. They then literally threw me into a seat and belted me up from over my shoulders and around my waist. I was secure, but wondered about being safe. The balaclavas below me on my rope began clambering into the helicopter one by one. When the last one arrived, with his lower left trouser leg soaked in blood, I knew he was that one who had said he was ok. Two balaclavas rushed to administer first aid as I felt the helicopter bank and move away. As they worked on his leg, two eyes through a balaclava sitting opposite, stared at me. I couldn't hear it, but I was sure he sniffed.
Below
As I had been plucked from an island by a helicopter, probably somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea if my assumptions had been correct, the expectation that I would be landing on some kind of military naval ship became a reasonably logical conclusion. While not expecting anything as grand as an aircraft carrier, I had a premonition that perhaps I would be spending the rest of my night on a battleship or cruiser.
When the helicopter stopped moving forward and began hovering, I assumed we were readying to land. As my earphones weren't connected, I couldn't hear a word so I was working on educated guess work. A tap on my shoulder and the unclipping of my seat belts and then the fitting of something similar, but a little more elaborate and secure than the waist and groin harness that had lifted me aboard, I realised all my logical guess work wasn't worth a crumpet. I was positioned at the open door of the helicopter and I looked down in disbelief. As I was gently pushed out into the night again and then felt myself being lowered, I looked down again to confirm my first disbelieving look. I had never seen one before, but there was no doubt. I was being lowered towards a submarine.
I knew it was an odd thought, but given my last few days I believed I had the right to one or two of them as I fell towards something what could only be associated with the adjectives black and evil. I was thinking, rather stupidly of course but I thought I was entitled to moments of irrationality now, that my chances of finding another beautiful young woman to fuck aboard this nasty looking black thing below me were highly remote. The second was that I was becoming totally fed up with being taken prisoner. The third came from left field. It seemed I was quite a popular capture. It was just the reason that remained an absolute fucking mystery to me.
Perhaps I was becoming blasé, but when I felt my feet hit the deck of the submarine and a couple of seriously dedicated submariners made sure I was ok, as they unclipped me, and helped me down a hatch and onto a ladder that would lead to yet another room that would be a prison, I could only think about Chara and how she really didn't deserve to be killed. Really, the bastard who did it could have waited a few minutes longer and let me fully enjoy her interrogation.
'This way,' a serious looking man in a uniform said as I arrived at the bottom of the ladder. He looked, smelt and probably wanked military. At least he didn't sniff. I didn't answer, just followed him and waited for a message from my guts. Nothing arrived so I assumed they were either asleep or getting thoroughly bored with sending me warnings of impending doom over and over again. I had to turn sideways occasionally to fit through the narrow gangways as I was led down into the bowels of this ugly black beast before finally arriving at my designated gaol for the night, or days to follow.
'Make yourself comfortable sir,' was a missive platitude I had heard far too many times in a too shorter period of time. I grunted in reply and looked around at my cramped quarters, as I heard the hatch lock behind me. There was however a similarity to my last prison cell, there were no windows. I flopped down on the metal bunk that as hard as it tried, failed to convince me that it had any association with a bed and then looked across at a metal washbasin, and a rudimentary toilet device that would surely need Olympic standard gymnastics to be able to crap into. There were however some motoring magazines stuffed into a rack beside my head.
The way out of date motoring magazines did help a little, in offsetting the feeling of loss I suddenly had at knowing my Samsonite suitcase, which had been so carefully packed by the large man in the scary ill-fitting black suit, had not made it along with me on this stage of my multiple captures. I supposed I was by myself from here on in with no watch and no suitcase. Someone was surely going to ask me some more questions about something I didn't have a clue about and maybe add to the cocktail of drugs that had been pumped into my system in the last few days; usually courtesy of a very kindly offered beverage. No mystery there. The only mystery I started to think about was who and how someone else would try to capture me from the bowels of a submarine that was now more than likely, heading down to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Well, that was for them to figure out for as of right now, I felt like having a sleep and forgetting about whatever it was that they wanted me to remember – that I didn't know.
A man in a uniform woke me after entering my small cabin and depositing a tray of breakfast on the end of my bunk near my feet. He didn't speak, smile or flinch as he turned and walked out, closing the hatch loudly behind him. I gathered it was time to wake up. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and then realised that submarines hum. It was an annoying sort of throbbing hum that vibrated, and was upsetting my liver, testicles and especially my full bladder. I got up and pissed, then looked at my breakfast. Edible perhaps, but hardly as appetising as my last lodgings. When I'd swallowed a few mouthfuls of dehydrated and rehydrated powdered scrambled eggs and leathery cold toast, I looked around for a toothbrush. Clearly I was not being treated to five star service, so I made do with washing my face and rinsing my mouth with water that tasted of chlorine.
All I had to do now was wait for my next interrogation. Some things were becoming way too predictable. With little appetite for the grey muesli that sat brooding on the tray at the end of my bunk, I passed the time by reading a critical review of a new model Ford that had been released at least five years ago. Apparently the writer wasn't impressed with its performance and value for money when compared to four other similar cars in its class. I skipped a few pages and settled on an article about white utility vehicles for the discerning plumber.
In some respects I was quite looking forw
ard to being interrogated, as I was closing in rapidly on the necessity to read the classified ads at the back of the magazine. Then when I heard my hatch clunk open, my guts didn't react at all. It was as if they'd decided to forestall any further activity until something extraordinarily nasty threatened. My mind immediately calculated that it would necessitate something being seriously awful after my range of experiences during the past few days.
'Would you please come with me Mr Garret?' the uniformed man asked politely. I moved from my prone position and didn't show one skerrick of surprise when he sniffed while he waited for me to get to my feet. I looked up at his young acne riddled face and ultra-short crew cut as I managed to rise slowly and sat on the side of my bunk.
'Someone wants to have a chat with me I presume.'
'This way sir.'
'Yes. I know. As always,' I said, but young Submariner Crater Face didn't latch onto my cynicism, only waited for me to follow him obediently. 'And what if I don't feel like coming this way with you? You know, you're not the first person who's asked me to come this way with them in the last few days. Usually though, as I've discovered by experience, it always leads to very bad news for me.'
'I'm sorry sir, you will have to come with me.'
'You know, I've had a couple of really fucking shitty days. Even had a woman I was fucking get killed, while I was right in the middle of fucking her in fact. So do you get what I mean about being really fucking pissed off with cunts like you telling me to come this fucking way with me sir?'
'I'm very sorry sir, but you must come with me or I will need to call for assistance.'
You make it sound like you'll have to call roadside service. Got a flat battery, have you?'
The Sons Of Cleito (The Abductions of Langley Garret Book 1) Page 6