Tempest: The Scarab Beetle Series: #6 (The Academy)

by C. L. Stone

  I glared at him, but he could be right, as far as he knew. He guessed who I was, but did he really know?

  “Maybe that’s what they want,” I said. “Get us all confused. Start talking to each other. Start giving up information between each other.”

  He breathed deeply and nodded, inching closer to the wall and looking toward the door. “You’re right. You were right…we shouldn’t talk.”

  Good idea. Maybe he was innocent. Maybe he was one of them. I wasn’t going to snitch about anything.

  But they had us. They had me, Axel was probably somewhere, and then there was Raven here. They had all of us now.

  So what was next? Why were we waiting? Why were they guarding us together like this in the abandoned floor of the building?

  And something wasn’t right with Buble. I couldn’t pinpoint it at the moment, but I had nothing to do now but wait and see how this played out.

  ♠♠♠♠♠♠

  We spent a while in silence as Raven slept on the floor between us. It was hard to tell time, but I was tempted to sprawl out on the floor next to Raven and sleep for a while, too, if I could.

  Rest, like Axel had said. Even if I wasn’t sleeping, to conserve energy. No water, no food, how long did starving to death take? My mouth was dry but I wasn’t too bad yet. Hungry, but that’d only get worse the longer this went on.

  Buble often had his eyes closed but then kept looking at the camera, usually not at me or Raven.

  Waiting wasn’t working for me. My stomach was hurting from being hungry. No noises, no answers.

  I got up on my knees. “Hey,” I said to Buble.

  He picked his head up, looking over at me, and then quickly looking away. “What?”

  “Help me out?” I pushed myself against a wall until I was standing up. They’d tied our arms but my legs weren’t tied tightly. I could walk but an inch at a time. If they weren’t going to come talk to us, then I’d give them a reason to come in here to hopefully get more information.

  Buble seemed confused but knee crawled over to where I stopped, just underneath the camera.

  I motioned with an elbow. “Can you get me up to where I can kind of reach it?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Why give them time to figure out how to kill us?”

  “They’ll just knock you out. Like him.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but I’ll take the damn camera out first.”

  If someone was paying attention or listening, they’d be in here in a second. I moved my tied arms until they were down below my feet and shifted them in front of me. I helped him get into the same position with his hands in front of himself and motioned to Buble to get on his knees. I stepped on his back.

  It was enough for me to reach up. The camera was hanging on the wall close to the ceiling.

  I simply hung on to it with the plastic bonds around my wrist, placing it on the neck of the metal. “Get out of the way.”

  He rolled out front under me. Our door opened just as the weight of my body was too much for the camera. It broke and I dropped to the ground. The camera slapped against the wall, dangling by a couple of wires, snapped out of place by a break in the metal.

  At the door was the tired guy, looking frustrated. “Cut that out,” he said. He pushed me away from the wall until I was on my butt on the floor. He picked up the dangling camera, checking out the damage.

  He wore jeans and a simple black T-shirt. He wasn’t carrying anything, no weapons in his pockets. Cell phone in the butt pocket but that was about it. Beyond him the door was open, but it only revealed the rest of this apartment we were in, an empty wall. Whoever had spoken to him before didn’t show himself. “They left you alone here with us?”

  He didn’t seem too worried about me and focused on the camera, trying to reattach it to a wall but the metal had broken and there wasn’t a way to repair it. “Don’t think of running out. There’s guards posted in the hallway. Everyone else is in the other apartments, but they’ll hear if you try anything.”

  “What are we waiting on?” I asked. He didn’t seem too peeved about the camera, which said a lot. “We’re not staying?”

  He dropped the camera, letting it dangle against the wall, causing a couple of scratches in the paint. “Naw,” he said. “We’re not staying. Just waiting until dark.” He looked over at me, his tired eyes blinking. “Look, I’m under orders not to hurt you all, but if you keep breaking stuff, they’ll come in here and do to you what they did to him,” he pointed to Raven. “He was causing so much trouble. That wasn’t us beating him, that was self-defense. The tranq was the only way to keep him from killing us.”

  Trying to be nice guys when he’d hit me before for attempting to untie my bonds? “I just don’t know why I’m here,” I said. “What do they want? Why hold us?”

  He seemed confused. “They want your boss.”

  I lifted a brow. “Boss?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We get someone hired you all. A group doesn’t work without a leader. Someone is in charge. We just want to talk to that guy.” He moved to me, crouching about two feet away. “We’re really trying not to hurt anyone here, because dead bodies just make things worse, you know?”

  “You all tried to kill me before,” I said. “Poisoned us, remember?”

  He seemed confused by this. “Poison? What?” He rubbed a palm over his face and shook his head. “No, nope. I get it. Alice.”

  “She’s yours,” I said.

  “No.” He lifted a thick finger, blackened with grease around the nail. “Not us. We got her, too.” He stood up. “Listen, someone called in a favor. We came, we got everyone, but we need to find the boss. Okay? You’re only in here like this until we can move everyone safely to somewhere that we can keep everyone secure until this is sorted out.”

  “What if it doesn’t get sorted?” I asked.

  He smirked. “I don’t know. I’m just looking out for you right here, right now. What happens after that, it’s not my business.” He stood up again. “The camera is down, but I can still listen. Just don’t do anything funny or I have to move you, and I don’t want to have to carry you out, okay?” He backed up and left us, closing the door.

  Really relaxed security. One overtired guy and now a broken camera he wasn’t even worried about?

  Buble hadn’t even bothered to talk.

  I turned to Buble, but he was looking at the door. “Do you have a boss?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t everyone? But I’m not talking.”

  I didn’t know if that was accurate for someone in the Academy. I was trying to remember things that Axel and the others told me. I often asked them who paid them, but they always told me I just didn’t understand, it didn’t work like I thought it did. I’d not realized there could be someone at the head of it all…I thought maybe Dr. Roberts, but he didn’t seem to be the one, as he often said things were out of his hands, talking about committees and such.

  I flexed my hands, a little swollen after having the circulation cut off for so long.

  That’s when I realized the ring was still on my finger. They took my clothes off but didn’t think to remove it.

  It was stuck on my finger while it was swollen, but I hid it from Buble and worked on my circulation. “So now we know. They’ll wait until dark and then move us.”

  “Sure, if you believe that,” he said. “And if you believe everything else, they’ll just let us go whenever they get who they are looking for.” He shook his head, and his tongue moved over his dry lips.

  “I thought it was him,” I said, motioning to the still sleeping Raven. “I thought he was the last one. I don’t know anyone else they’d be looking for.” While I was talking and listening to him, I worked the ring off and held it in my fingers in my lap. I was trying to figure out how to use it to get through the plastic holding my wrists together.

  “Again, if you believe them, they clearly think we’re working for someone and there’s someone else in cha
rge. They don’t think it’s anyone they’ve caught.”

  “How would they know? No one knows me.”

  He shrugged. “They got some photo IDs from most of us, probably searched through some databases. Not that hard.”

  “I didn’t have an ID.”

  He lifted a brow. “Nothing?”

  “I don’t even have a cell phone. And the only one I was trying to get away from was Alice. She’s the one who was part of kidnapping me before this. If they really have her prisoner, if you believe them, then I don’t know who they are or who they’re working for.”

  He blinked rapidly. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Who were you with?” I asked him. “Your group. Who else besides Natalie?”

  “There was a boy, maybe fifteen. Your father…”

  “Jack.”

  He nodded. “Natalie’s husband. And then my partner. Another teen. She helped the teen boy get here. He didn’t want to come over.”

  “No one else?”

  “I think there’s others, but they weren’t in the room with us. I can guess they’ve got everyone in separate spaces like we are.”

  “So they put Alice in a group of people who didn’t know her and she had no connection to previously?” I wrinkled my nose, shaking my head. I backed up until I was next to Raven, nearly sitting on his body, like I could protect him that way. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe someone like you could get debriefed about Alice, be brought in to protect our people from her and not know that was who we were in hiding from originally.”

  “There’s a lot of women named Alice,” he said. “I know a few.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But the people I know, they aren’t stupid.” I motioned to the door. “I know they’d know Alice, they’d know to keep quiet and just find a way out and not talk. But you’re not smart like that. Just like your friend out there wasn’t too concerned I’d rush him after I broke the camera. He was too confident. He had you as backup.”

  The man raised an eyebrow and then scooted closer to me. “You think I’m not who I say I am?”

  That’s when I noticed the bruising around his face, the discoloration was off. I’d seen this before. “Not when you’re using makeup instead of actually manning up and getting really beaten to try to trick me.” I motioned to Raven behind me. “That’s what a bruise looks like. I know the difference.”

  He sighed slowly and nodded. “I guess we’re on to plan B.”

  It took a few quiet minutes of us staring at each other to realize he was waiting for the plan to happen wasn’t going to tell me about it.

  The door opened quickly. Another male body was carried in, this one lanky, bag over his head. And another followed, pale and bruised all over. Both seemed unconscious.

  Buble was grabbed by the elbows by our guard to haul him up. “I was sure she’d crack easy.”

  “Don’t underestimate any of them,” he said as the guard cut his bindings. He turned to me. “We don’t want to hurt any of you. Honestly. Torture is for amateurs and doesn’t really get anywhere. We don’t want to kill anyone because dead bodies are messy to dispose of. We don’t want you, compadre. Just talk to us about who is in charge. That’s it. Think about it.”

  The accent had changed. The compadre… Hispanic? Alice worked with a lot of Germans before, which doesn’t mean she couldn’t switch things up…But the way they talked about a boss and he’d talked about her, I was questioning everything.

  Still, I had no idea who he was talking about. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know anything about the Academy. If they had tried torture or something worse, I wasn’t sure how easy I’d break, not that I’d want to. Dr. Roberts…He was as high up as I knew, and it sounded like they didn’t know anyone else.

  I was left alone with the additional two bodies, both unmoving. I didn’t recognize either offhand.

  After that last bit, I didn’t want to be tricked again. Besides, I wasn’t going to get very much information out of unconscious people. For the moment, I left the bags over their heads.

  There was nothing to do but wait and see who woke up first. For now, I was alone.

  TRAITORS, ALL OF US

  It took probably a good hour of sawing away at my binds using the sharper edge of the ring before the ones at my wrists broke free. My unconscious companions didn’t move. One of them snored a little for a bit, but that stopped and it had been quiet since.

  While I was working on the binds of my feet, I tried to make some sort of plan. Going out the window was probably useless since we were so many stories up. Going out the door, I knew now there were at least four, that Buble guy and his tired guard and one more out there that had shushed tired guy before and the guy who helped carry in the two new unconscious people. If they were right about there being more guards, that was a lot of people to take on. And just because the two didn’t have weapons on them, that didn’t mean they had none to work with at all.

  After my legs were free as well, I put the ring back on and checked out the fallen camera without getting into its view. There was no telling if it still worked but at least it was pointed at the ground. It’d been attached to the wall with a bracket—now broken-- and the wires went through the wall to I guessed some power source.

  The bedroom’s single closet was locked from the inside, but looking underneath the door, it appeared empty. At least, the floor was bare. I’d need something to break into it, a flat card or a bobby pin… but unless there was an escape hatch in there, it was useless to bother with.

  Escaping by myself was one option, which could be tricky, if they were right and there were guards in the hall. Another option was trying to get word to people outside we were in here and needed to be rescued, again tricky. If this wasn’t Alice, it was likely her people could be out there, too…I was having a problem with trusting anyone right now. I wasn’t sure if this was Alice or not. It was hard to figure out from in here.

  They’d said not to trust anyone, both Axel and Blake. These new people already tried to trick me once for information I didn’t have anyway. But they believed I knew something, or else they wouldn’t bother. Joke was on them. If they wanted someone high up in the Academy, I was the wrong person. The only other person in the room I knew would know was Raven, and they kept him unconscious.

  If I left, would they let Raven basically starve to death while unconscious? I wasn’t sure I could leave him like this.

  As I was examining the window, trying to figure out the best way to remove the coverings and at least see outside, one of the bodies behind me started to move, the pale, severely bruised one.

  I went to him, waiting and watching.

  The outline of a face struggled a bit, the cloth going in and out of the mouth as he tried to breathe. He mumbled something like, “help”.

  I debated on this, but then hooked my fingers into the neck of his black hood and lifted up, just enough to get the bag over his face.

  He blinked rapidly at me, squinting up at my face. He coughed shortly. “I think I know you. Your picture…”

  His bruises were real, as was the bleeding from the edge of his lip, swollen. His face was as pale as the rest of him otherwise. Short, dark hair, strong nose. No one I remembered meeting before. “Who are you?” I asked.

  He gazed at me and hesitated like he was trying to decide to tell me. He had marks on his nose like he usually wore glasses but they’d been removed. Maybe he thought he knew me but couldn’t see that well now. “Cornelius.” He coughed and sucked down air like he was trying to prevent himself from puking.

  I blinked at him. “…Buble?”

  He seemed surprised by this. “You know me? Did they tell you?”

  I left the hood up on his face but backed away, again hovering over Raven, checking for any signs he’d wake up soon. “I’m done with this game,” I said to this Buble. “Is this round two?”

  He struggled to sit up on his own, but as he did, his hood fell back over his face. “What?
” he mumbled through the cloth. As he did, he coughed, the material making it worse as he was sucking the cloth into his mouth as he inhaled. He spit to get it out. “Get this off.” The demand was striking. A tone similar to what Axel would use when he barked orders.

  Might as well let him talk. At least it was something to do. I went over, hooked fingers at the neck and lifted until the bag was removed. “Are we trying again, Buble? How many of you are there?”

  He blinked rapidly at me, and then at the window, his binds, and then the other two unconscious on the floor. He focused on Raven. He started breathing rapidly, shaking. “Tell me he’s not dead…Eugene Ravenstahl?”

  I was stunned by his use of his real name that I didn’t answer him.

  When I didn’t respond, he got visibly angry and seethed. “Talk to me. Is he dead?”

  I shook my head, confused by this Buble. “No,” I said. “Not dead. Just unconscious.”

  He seemed to calm down. “The other one? Who is he?”

  “He’s not dead, but I don’t know who he is,” I said. I sat near Raven, using my knees pressed up to my chest to somewhat mask my nakedness for the moment. “Unconscious like you were.”

  “Why don’t you remove the mask and find out?” he asked.

  “Because they’ve already tried to trick me once,” I said. “I don’t think I know him. I certainly don’t know you.”

  He continued to blink and squint at me. “You should remove it. It’s difficult to get enough air through the cloth. He’ll have a hard time recovering if he can’t breathe freely.”

  “How do I trust you?” I asked. “If it’s another one of their people, I may as well leave the hood on.”

  He shook his head and looked around the space. “How did they trick you before?”

  “He said he was Buble… Are you saying that’s you?”

  “It’s my name,” he said. “I was with the others.”

  “Was Alice with you?”

  He turned to look at me, his eyebrows going together. “Alice? The one we were hiding from? No.” He licked at his dry lips. “They didn’t give us water?”