by John Ringo
Matching red lava lamps—original, not reproduction—illuminated the room and provided a necessary hint of color. Track lighting emphasized the Dali and Escher originals on the walls. The scent of pine air fresheners mingled with but did not quite mask a faint odor of stale sweat, sex, rust, and leather.
She stopped still for a moment and looked around the room, blinking rapidly. She favored him with another of those blindingly perfect smiles of hers and quickly buried her face in his neck, shuddering softly against him. God, she must be really hot to trot. . . .
"You want a drink? I'm having a martini." He smirked. "Shaken, not stirred, of course." He walked over to the wet bar and began pulling down various bottles off the glass shelves at the back.
"Why not?" She laughed, dropping her purse on the couch.
He poured her drink and handed it to her. "Cheers."
She took a sip and set the glass down on the chrome and glass end table, slinking up to him and sliding her hands up his chest. He wrapped his arms around her again and trailed his lips up her jaw to nibble lightly on her ear. He felt her knees buckle slightly and shifted his weight to support her as her hips seemingly involuntarily thrust against his. He felt the heat tighten in his groin as he buried his face in her hair and inhaled the clean, fresh scent of it mingled with her own soft musk.
His fingers trembled slightly as he unbuttoned the silk blouse, carefully, tenderly, savoring the opening strains of this overture that would end in so much sound and fury. Gently, now, building the trust that led them willingly into the trap—the purest and most exquisite test of his art. His hands slid inside and teased along the line of her spine and the soft, perfect skin of her back. He rubbed her jaw with his own, glad that he'd had an afternoon shave, and took her mouth, delving deep into the moist and the heat. God, he could drown in this woman.
Her slender fingers with those exquisitely feminine nails were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck and he felt himself breathing faster, impatient with the need to restrain himself and tease her into the next move. He drew one finger very lightly right up her spine before cupping his hands under her butt and pulling her, hard, against him as she shivered.
"So where's your room?" She nuzzled up to his neck and bit his shoulder softly.
He slid one hand up from her ass and tangled it in her hair, pulling her head back gently, nibbling the tip of her nose and shaking his head.
"Nah-ah. Bedroom is plain vanilla. C'mere." He took her hand and led her over to the velvet-draped wall, pressing a switch at the side and grinning as the drapes parted to reveal a wall set with four steel rings and a three-inch seat of obviously adjustable height.
"Once you try this, you'll never want to do it in a bed again. It's incredible." You won't be around to want anything, but that's not my problem, he thought.
"You're not gonna hurt me, are you?" She looked at him nervously.
"Never. Cross my heart." He cupped her face gently, his eyes holding hers. "That would just be no fun for me. My pleasure comes from pleasing you."
She melted against him as her knees gave way, and allowed him to maneuver her back onto the seat.
"Oops. This'll work better with the jeans off." He pulled some black silk scarves out of a pouch at the base of the wall and looked up at her, going down on one knee to help her off with her jeans and panties as he trailed a line of kisses down her hip bone and inner thigh.
After she kicked them free, he stroked the silken length of one of her legs as he tied her to the rings. Nice legs. Nice everything. Be a real shame to waste it. He unfastened his own jeans and put a hand on either side of her head.
"You know you're helpless now, don't you?" he purred.
She nodded and moaned softly as he took her. It didn't take long. She blinked bewilderedly as he backed away and fastened his jeans.
"Are . . . are we done?" She twisted a wrist against the tightly tied scarf and winced. "Can you untie me now? These things are starting to chafe a bit."
"Oh, we're not done, sweetness, that was just act one. Who sent you?" He walked over to the bar and took another swallow of his martini.
"What? Nobody . . . Is this a role-playing game? Because I'm not too good at those. . . ."
"Yeah, right." He grinned nastily. "So what's your name, sweetness?" He paced back over to the wall and yelled in her ear, "Who. Sent. You!"
"Ow!" She tugged harder at her wrists. "I'm not having fun, I want to go home now. Untie me, dammit!"
"Sorry, sweetness," he stepped to the side wall and slapped a switch, "act two's a command performance. Now, you tell me who sent you and your real name, or act two's gonna be real fun for me and no fun at all for you . . . unless you're into that sort of thing." His voice sounded oddly hollow. "Who sent you?"
"I'm . . . I'm Sarah Eileen Johnson," she stammered, eyes about twice their normal size, "and I'm a legal secretary for Sinclair and Burke's. Nobody sent me, I swear to God. Uh . . . please let me go. If you let me go now I promise I won't tell anybody ever, everything will be all right, please . . . please let me go!" She blinked rapidly, probably at the changed sound of her own voice.
"Can't do that, sweetness." He walked back for more of his drink. "Not safe for me. I'm real big on self-preservation. Obviously you aren't. Oh, you may notice we sound funny? Little side effect of the electronic damping. Gags and interrogations don't work together. So you go ahead and scream as loud as you want. Then again, I guess you've probably heard a similar system before. Who did you say sent you?"
"Nobody! God, I'm sorry, mister, I don't know who you think I am but I'm just a secretary, I don't know what you want! Please, please just don't hurt me. . . ."
"Okay sweetness, looks like we do this the hard way. Groovy." He walked over to the end table and picked up the phone. "Sam? Can you come up here? I think I may need a professional. . . . Yeah, you have a slightly more . . . dispassionate touch. Okay. Well, I might as well get started . . . yeah, I'll leave some for you."
"Oh my God please don't hurt me, please don't!"
"Let's see . . ." He walked over and opened the cabinets under the bar, "bull whip, cat o' nine, baseball bat, cattle prod, sharps. . . ." He looked up at her, quirking an eyebrow, "Got a preference?" He grimaced, "Oh, can't forget one thing."
"Last time you wouldn't believe what I had to go through to get it all out of my carpets." He went to the coat closet and took out a plastic rain mat, unrolling it beneath her feet. "You know meat tenderizer takes out blood stains? Okay, well, you're a girl, you probably do."
"Oh God, oh God, oh God. Save me and I'll never do anything like this again. Oh God . . . please, mister, I'm not whoever you want, please don't hurt me."
"Mmmm. I love leather." He walked over and pulled out the bullwhip, asking again, "Who sent you, sweetness?"
"I'm a secretary!"
The distant sound of the dampened screams rolled over Worth like ambrosia. No matter how jaded you got, you didn't ever lose your taste for this. He eventually noticed the red light blinking and fastened his jeans again before answering the door.
A squat man with a receding hairline and a pizza box ducked through the door and bolted it behind him. Setting the box down on the bar and opening it, he glanced over at the woman hanging limply from the rings.
"Geez, Worth, you didn't leave me much to work with. At least she's still got teeth. Man, I've been standing out there punching the bell for ten minutes!"
"She's got most of them. You know I can't hear when the system's on."
Sam went into the kitchen and brought back three beers. "You want one?"
"Nah. I just keep 'em for you, man."
The shorter man shrugged and took a bite of his pizza, carrying a beer over to the working wall where a set of clean sharps were already laid out for him.
"At least you were smart enough to leave the sharps to me. You must be more suspicious than usual of this one."
"Maybe I'm gettin' cautious in my old age." Worth shrugged, mixing himself a
fresh martini.
"You're not too bad off." The interrogator snickered and poured a good half of the beer over the blonde's head, nodding to himself as she spluttered. "Of course, that's bad news for you. Lady, I'm sorry to say that my amateur friend's part in this is over. Now, Worth's a talented amateur, and he's a real pro at his job, but he's not me. You really need to save yourself a lot of pain and answer my questions now, instead of later." He picked up a small scalpel and looked at it coldly, "What's your name. Your full name."
"Sarah Eileen Johnson," she breathed weakly.
He looked up at Worth, who shook his head and handed him a small purse. He pulled out the already ruffled contents and looked through them.
"Driver's license, two credit cards, a business card for Sinclair and Burke—attorneys-at-law, a few receipts, miscellaneous business cards, a little cash, a checkbook, some makeup, change . . . none of it new. Good documents. Very professional." He sighed and put the scalpel down, walking over to the cabinet under the bar and pulling out a small bag. He took out a needle and a small bottle. "I always like to do sodium pentathol, first, but then I'm a bit old-fashioned."
He injected her expertly and set the needle next to the sharps, looking at his watch. "Okay, what's your name?"
"I'm . . . I'm Sarah Eileen Johnson. Why are you doing this to me?"
"Hmm . . . interesting." He pulled a small flashlight out of a pocket and checked her eyes. "You want to explain to me why you're immune to sodium pentathol?"
"I . . . I told you," she stammered. "I'm a legal secretary. I handle confidential files. You . . . you have to get treatments and a doctor's note or they won't hire you."
"Yeah?" He pulled out another bottle and a fresh needle. "Let's try the next one."
Five bottles later he smirked at her. "Pretty thorough protections for a secretary."
"They're . . . the insurance companies . . . they're paranoid. I . . . I . . . please, please don't hurt me anymore. I'm just a secretary!" She wailed in despair, "I don't know anything!"
"I think the back teeth, next. Who are you?"
"Who do you want me to be?" She screamed, and pleaded, "I'll be anybody you want me to be! Please, please. . . ."
"So, who are you?" he asked, after waiting for her to wind down.
"I'm a secretary! Just a secretary . . ." she trailed off, sobbing.
A couple of hours later, he stripped off the rubber gloves he'd had to add at one point, looking up at Worth.
"There's really no more point. Her story's changing randomly and none of it's very inventive." He wandered into the kitchen and came back out with a paper plate. "It's getting harder to revive her." He shrugged. "We could pull an all-nighter, but I really don't see the point." He put a piece of the cold pizza on the plate and took it back to the microwave and came back to where Worth was scowling at the limp and half-dead mass of blood and matted blond hair. "In my professional opinion, my friend, that," he gestured with his pizza, "is a secretary."
"Damn. She would have been good for the whole weekend. Cut her down I guess, while we decide where to get rid of her."
"It's Friday." Worth took out a bottle of solvent and started the laborious process of cleaning the blood out of his whips. "The guy who runs the incinerator on Oak Street can sell all the GalTech drugs he can get his hands on. For a couple hundred hits of Provigil-C he'll walk around the block." He tossed a damp and bloody paper towel into a trash bag and grabbed another, watching out of the corner of his eye as Sam cut her down and she collapsed on the mat.
He had an instant to register that the squat the body landed in was oddly coordinated before she erupted upwards into a leaping roundhouse that caught the torturer behind the jawline at an angle. The man collapsed as though his strings had been cut and the red blur flipped off of his dead friend's waistband and landed facing him. She paused just long enough to pivot around one hip and hit him with a side kick to the solar plexus. It connected with enough force to throw him back against the coat closet door, his head cracking against it solidly, and leave him on the ground, gasping up through sickly doubled vision, "Who . . . who are you?"
The last thing Charles Worth saw was the muzzle flash from his late colleague's pistol, in his victim's leveled hands.
* * *
"I'm somebody that doesn't chit-chat while they're killing people." She walked over to the body and tilted her head appraisingly a moment, before carefully and deliberately spitting on it. "The name's Cally O'Neal, and that's for trying to kill me when I was eight."
The door burst open to admit three heavily armed men in black body armor.
"You're late, Granpa," she snapped coldly.
"The traffic was miserable." The team point pulled off his mask and ran a hand through blazingly red hair, absently tucking a plug of Red Man in between cheek and jaw. He was a medium height man with a broad, low-slung body and long arms that gave him something of the impression of a gorilla. He looked to be about twenty but something about the way he moved, the look in his eyes, gave an impression of age and experience.
"Three hours?" Cally asked, incredulously, twisting her still naked body slightly as if stretching out a sore muscle and examining her pulled fingernails. "It had better have been a full scale pile-up. I was supposed to be bait not the trigger puller, dammit!"
"Hi, Cally," Tommy Sunday said, pulling off his balaclava and grimacing. "Tough day at the office, huh?" The number two was a huge man, broad across the shoulders and heavily muscled, with bright green eyes in a face that was almost movie star handsome.
"Yeah, those files were miserable," she replied. "Give."
"Jammer," Tommy said, shrugging. "Spoofer, whatever. Gave us the runaround; we've been over half of Chicago looking for you. Figured out a filter. Sorry it took so long. Glad you made it."
"How's Wendy?" She walked over to the other side of the bar and picked up her jeans.
"Pregnant again."
"Don't you guys do anything else?" She donned the jeans mechanically, shaking her head.
"I only see her every few months, so the answer is 'no.' "
The fourth member of the team surveyed the room for threats in a textbook maneuver before walking over to the nearest body and nudging it with a foot.
"Is that really him?" he asked.
"I dunno." Cally shrugged. "Toss me a sampler." She caught the probe deftly and knelt beside the body, pressing the needle into his temple on the more-or-less intact side. She looked at the readout and nodded. "Brain DNA never lies. It's him."
"Cleanup on aisle one," Tommy quipped, moving aside as several silent figures in white moved past him and began meticulously sanitizing the scene. He pulled off the black jacket and the white undershirt underneath, offering it to her. His eyes flickered to where she stood, lingering on the blood dripping into the white shag carpet. "You okay?"
"Pain is weakness exiting the body." She took the shirt and pulled it over her head. "Nothing a trip to the slab won't cure.
"Can you get the squealer from his car? Passenger seat, by the door," she asked Tommy, waiting while the cleaning crew moved the first body out the door and following them out. "Thanks. See you in the van."
"Post op review on this one's going to be . . . interesting." He pulled his jacket back on and followed her out.
* * *
O'Neal noticed the team member standing, almost frozen, looking at the splattered brain matter and fluids where Worth's body had been.
"You got a problem, Jay?" He considerately spat onto the second body instead of the floor so as not to make more work for the cleaners.
"She literally blew his brains out." He shook his head. "I don't know how she did the other guy, after letting them do God knows what to her, and she shows less reaction than most people would over a hangnail."
The older man held up his hand to stop the cleaners from picking up the other body. He examined it briefly, noting the discoloration at the jaw line, and popped a brain sample in a storage cube.
"Loo
ks like a fairly clean impact to one of the sweet spots. Can't tell if it was a kick or a strike." Mike O'Neal, Sr. waved the cleaners back over and walked across the room to pick up the discarded high-heeled shoes and purse. "Cally is creative," he said. "Creatively violent."
"Too bad we couldn't have been in place beforehand." The younger agent shook his head, still looking at the mess, "but when you've got a guy who's weaseled out of three hits already just by burning the surveillance . . . It . . . couldn't be helped."
"Okay, let's see what we've got," O'Neal frowned, searching the room briefly for electronics, and handed a reader and a few cubes to the Cyberpunk. "Your domain, Jay. Probably nothing useful, but you never know." He walked back out to the hallway and headed for the stairs, leaving the other man to follow. Doesn't matter how long it's been, climbing stairs without creaking never seems to lose its thrill.
"She's gonna be pissed," Tommy said, following him down the stairs.
"It's okay," Papa O'Neal replied. "I know her weaknesses."
* * *
Cally walked into the blessedly cool dry air of her apartment and stopped, shaking her head; every square inch of the place was covered in either flowers or boxes of chocolate. There were irises and roses and mums and daisies and . . . stuff she couldn't put a name to. She kicked off her heels and walked over to one of the chocolate assortments, grunting at the label. Make that "very expensive" chocolates.
"I cannot be bribed, I cannot be broken," she muttered, pulling one of the chocolates out and crunching on it. "Usually." Her eyes narrowed and she rolled the chocolate around in her mouth, frowning at the flowers. Then she took another bite and frowned again. "Mostly."
She walked across the room, munching chocolate and wriggling her feet in the carpet for a moment, relishing the feeling of unbroken toes, then padded into the kitchen and poured herself a margarita from the dispenser in the fridge. On her way back to the bedroom she popped another chocolate in her mouth, grimacing at the taste of raspberry, stopped at the vidscreen, selected a cube, and dialed it to Tori Amos on audio.