I shook my head loosely and realised just how light my body was. “You can’t make me,” I stuttered. “You won’t.” The fact that I had to say it scared the hell out of me. I knew very well that he probably could, and he most certainly would. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. The thought was empty.
Lace tilted his head. “Can’t I?” he said. “Oh, I will, not because I want to, but simply because I must.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel any better?” I spat horrifically.
Lace turned his head towards the other doors that entered into the room, and he raised his voice. “Take her!” he demanded to thin air, at least, until three men barged in – two of them marching up behind me and taking me by the arms.
I tugged and pulled at them, but their grips were as solid as their expressionless faces.
“I tried being nice to you, Mrs Abigail, and might I remind you that it is not too late to turn back – don’t make me do something that I don’t want to do.”
“Stop saying it like you don’t have a choice!” I tried again to force myself free of their clutches, however I was quickly realising how futile my efforts were.
“Oh, how I wish I could,” Lace told me, “but I’m afraid ATLAS has become my only resolve, just as brutality has become my only option at making you talk. My patience with you has run thin – it’s up to Mr Brakewater now.”
Mr Brakewater – as convenient as his name was – must have been the tall man with the heavy build who was now standing quietly by Lace’s side. It may have just been my fear talking, but at the time I could say with most certainty that he was an evil man.
“Do whatever it takes,” Lace told him, “but whatever you do – don’t kill her. It is absolutely vital that we obtain this code, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir, as you command.”
Lace straightened up his white suit jacket and then started for the door. He had placed his hand on the doorknob when he turned back towards Brakewater. “Oh, and do try to hurry,” he said sternly. “We are very pressed for time.”
The president left me alone in a strange house with two guards and an interrogator. The very fact that I could address Mr Brakewater as my interrogator was odd and terrifying at the same time. Above all things though, I was glad that I had stood by my decision to not give him the code, because good intentions or not, what Lace was planning to do was evil, and no amount of soft words or euphemisms could change that.
As I glared into Mr Brakewater’s dull eyes, I realised that although I didn’t regret my decision, I was not in the slightest way prepared to face the outcome of what I had done. It seemed that I had landed upon the next stage of my tragic journey, and I could only imagine what this man was about to do to me. No matter what he had in mind, I had to stay strong, for the sake of the people.
Here I was, laughing at my own thoughts like a person who was slowly being enclosed by the hands of madness. As those words – for the sake of the people – appeared in the forefront of my mind, it occurred to me that my beliefs had changed. Was a country really no more than a space of land upon which we dwell? Or was a country truly its people, as my father would have it? Under which moral obligation was I restricted to, that forced me to spare the lives of all those people? Perhaps in the end nothing had changed at all – I still didn’t care at all about this country, and I didn’t care for the resistance or the capital either. Neither of them would get what they wanted, not as long as I had the code.
I thought about that golden retriever that I had found just last night, and I remembered the desire I had to help it. Why? I couldn’t say, but right now I was in exactly the same situation. Tartarus City was full of homeless golden retrievers in need of my help, and I intended to help them this time – there was no justifying this, it was merely a matter of conscience.
Conscious, as I was dragged against my will into the interrogation room, would be the source of my suffering. When I forced myself away from my captors, biting one of them upon the arm and tasting blood, and then feeling the sting as he struck me across the face, I was bearing the pain inflicted upon me by the people. I kicked the other in the shin and ran, wanting nothing more than to escape my sacrifice, however it seemed that my decision had been final.
I felt a cold prick within the side of my neck – a syringe delivered to me by Brakewater. I pulled it away and stumbled. “You… bastard…” I cursed in a slurred mumble. The chemicals attacked my brain – clouding my eyes and disrupting my vision. I realised how unsteady my legs were and how heavy my body seemed to be. I couldn’t hold myself for very long, and as I hit the ground – completely paralysed – I knew that there was no escape.
My eyes snapped open and I took a heavy grasping breath – at first believing that every single part of my body had been completely paralysed. As I tried to lift my arms I felt the tension wrapped around my wrists, my ankles and my abdomen, and I soon realised that I wasn’t paralysed, I was shackled!
I was stuck in a chair and bound with the inside of my elbows facing the ceiling – I had no choice in the matter. The room I was in belonged to what I thought must have been president Lace’s house, however now I had been convinced otherwise. There were cabinets that probably contained documents, and there were tables and mirrors as well – and in the centre of it all was me, accompanied by an intimidating IV drip. Well hey, at least there’s no scary looking knife collection for me to be afraid of, that I know.
Despite this, the fear took me almost instantly, and I could feel my heart in my chest as it pounded against my ribs. My breathing increased dramatically, my hands trembled, and my face had probably gone as pale as a snowman… I was afraid…
“Hey!” I shouted, it was a long shot but I had to try. “Somebody! Please help me! Hey!”
“Expecting someone?” Breakwater asked as he floated into the room. “Your friend Aizel, perhaps?”
I instantly wanted to hit him with a blunt object, or perhaps a chair. I had never before felt this kind of hatred towards a single person. “You!” I scowled. I didn’t need to say anything else – the tone of my voice appeared to have said it all for me.
Breakwater smiled in this ungodly way that made my blood boil. “Don’t take this personally, Mrs Abigail. I’m simply doing my job.”
“I took this personally when you jammed that thing in my neck!”
“Regardless,” he continued, “you can save your breath. No one is coming to save you.”
He must have seen something in my eyes that told him I was sceptical, and why wouldn’t I be? I certainly wasn’t escaping this place on my own. I guess for the first time ever I had to admit that I had my faith placed in the resistance. Not that they valued me as a person, I knew for a fact that they didn’t, but because I was ATLAS’s code, and they needed that code.
“Your friend Aizel is dead.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And as we speak the resistance is most likely scouring the north and the capital in order to find you.”
That one actually hurt a little. They took me to the outskirts so that the resistance wouldn’t know where to look. “I take it they won’t find me there,” I said.
Brakewater collected a small chair from the corner of the room and sat down in front of me – I guess he wanted to chat.
“Allow me to tell you about my job, Mrs Abigail…”
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