I sat up, and the scratchy white sheets covering my body fell away into a pile on the floor. Okay, so I was in a bed. It was the only thing in the room. The rest of the room, barring the light above was completely bare, mauve walls and white tile floor. There were no windows either, only a door that looked like it only opened from the outside. At least I was pretty sure that was how it worked because it didn’t have a knob.
I pressed my hand against the mattress as I got into a sitting position and felt it squish beneath my hand. I was still wearing my blood-soaked clothing, which was a little… gross. I pulled at it, and it stuck to my body as I moved.
“Well, at least no one saw me naked,” I said to no one in particular because I was half-sure I was a crazy person and that’s what crazy people did, right? They talked to themselves? “Because if someone stripped me down and put me back in my gross bloody clothes, I’m going to just cry.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand as my feet touched the cool white tile. “I might just cry anyway,” I said as I moved toward the doorway, ignoring the bloody sheets next to the bed. At least it wasn’t my blood…
I pressed my hand against the door and pushed but it didn’t open. “Well, who didn’t see that coming,” I said, leaning heavily against the wall and sliding down to the ground.
“So you’re awake,” buzzed a cool female robotic voice next to my ear. I screamed and nearly leapt out of my skin as I threw myself away from the door, heart racing like an out of control rollercoaster.
I spun, one hand clutching my chest, the other held up out in front of me to ward off whatever it was. Only… I didn’t see anything.
“Usually people respond when spoken to. What were you, raised in a barn? And what are you wearing… no this won’t do, no, not at all. No daughter of mine should be wearing that,” the robot voice continued.
My stomach leapt into my throat as I realized that the voice was coming from the wall next to the doorway. So there was no one in the room with me, which was— wait, hold up, did she just imply she was my mother?
“Um… sorry,” I murmured, swallowing my stomach back down into place. “Are you my mother? Did I hear that right?”
“Of course I’m your mother,” the inhuman voice snapped, and the modulated sound of it made me shiver. “Who else would save your from those horrible people?”
“The one who killed all those people at the store?” I whispered, the words slipping out of my mouth as I sank to my knees, shaking my head. I was so screwed.
“I rescued you from a government cell. Sure, we had to kill a few people, but omelets and all that. You know how it is,” the voice intoned, but I couldn’t quite concentrate on it because it felt like the world was spinning so fast that I couldn’t orient myself to it. If she had me… if my real mother had captured me then I was as good as dead. How could this have happened? How could Stephen and Chloe have allowed this to happen?
“Did you kill Chloe and Stephen?” I asked, almost afraid to hear her answer.
“No,” the voice replied and there was a trace of humor beneath it. “At least, not yet.”
A wash of relief swept over me. Okay, at least my protectors weren’t dead. I shook my head as I got to my feet and put on my best brave face. “So what’s the plan, now?” I asked, doing my best to stand brave. “Are you really going to gut me and steal my heart?”
There was a silence so long that I wondered if she had stopped talking to me. When she finally spoke, the edge in her voice nearly made me jump. “No… my plan is not to take your heart. Who told you that, the same government who kidnapped you from me for your entire life?”
“Well… yes, actually,” I said, my cheeks reddening because what if she was right? I mean, she hadn’t done anything to me, right? “But you could still be lying.”
“I could be, but why would I lie? I have you in my base,” the voice said and an electronic sigh filtered through the air. “I can do anything I want. The only reason you are still alive is because I will it to be so.”
“Okay… that’s a fair point,” I conceded, and tried my best to push away the notion that she was correct. I needed some time to think, some time to come up with a plan. Besides, for all I knew, she was telling the truth. Maybe she wasn’t evil? “But you left me in my bloody clothes. Who does that?” I asked, hoping she would do the reasonable thing and let me shower. That would give me some time to plan. For what, I wasn’t quite sure yet, but stalling seemed like the best solution.
“Oh honestly,” the voice said, and I heard scuffling come through the speaker. “See, I told you she’d want to be changed,” the voice said, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t directed at me. “Roberto insisted that a young lady like yourself would not want us to see you naked. I told him he was crazy, but he insisted that you would feel violated if we undressed you while you were unconscious.”
“Tell Roberto ‘thank you.’ I’m not quite sure I’d have liked to be undressed while I was knocked out,” I was about to say more, but there was the sound of a scuffle behind the speaker.
“Don’t tell me ‘you told me so’, that’s so high school,” the voice snapped.
“Um… if it wouldn’t be too much bother, I’d like to change now, if possible.” When there was no immediate response, I added, “and shower…”
If they let me take a shower, it would take time. Then maybe I could think of a way out of this, or… or maybe Stephen could do his job and come save me. I sighed. I was still thinking of Stephen as the good guy, for all I knew him and Donovan could be members of an evil clan of devil worshippers. Somehow though, I doubted it because they’d kept me alive, and in good health, for sixteen years. Generally evil people don’t do that, right?
“Okay,” the voice said. Before I could respond, the wall to my left slid up with a hiss. Behind it was a stainless steel room with one of those gigantic showerheads hanging from the center of the ceiling like an enormous sunflower. Water began to pour from the spigot, and even from here, I could feel the steam hit my skin.
As the water splattered against the steel floor and vanished into an immense circular grate, I glanced back at the speaker. I was about to ask about clean clothes, but just as I opened my mouth, I felt my cheeks flush.
“You’re watching me, aren’t you?” I asked as I tiptoed toward the shower and reached one hand out to touch the water. It was perfect.
“Of course,” the voice replied.
“Well,” I swallowed, my face burning so much that I turned away from the speaker so that I wasn’t looking at it. Which, I’ll be honest, was a little ridiculous because I wasn’t sure where the cameras were. “I don’t know how comfortable I am showering in front of a bunch of strangers.” Having her watch me bathe was creepy, but not as creepy as having a bunch of completely random strangers do it.
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” my mother growled. “Okay, fine you do know more about teenage girls than I do.” I was pretty sure it wasn’t directed at me. There was a long pause as static filled the air. “I’ll instruct them to shut off the monitors while you bathe. When you return to your room, clean clothes will be waiting, is this acceptable?”
“Yes,” I said, swallowing. “But what if I don’t believe you?”
“Then stay in your damn bloody clothes!” The panel buzzed and went silent. Not like ‘oh it wasn’t talking’ silent, but ‘switched off’ silent. I sighed and began to undress. This was my chance to stall, after all. Still, as I stripped to my bra and panties, my blush spread down my chest and shoulders.
“I’m never going to be a webcam girl,” I mumbled to myself as I discarded the last of my undergarments and stepped into the shower. The first thing I noticed was the smell. Cool spearmint hit my nose, and I smirked. So they added bath scents. That was cool.
As I sat there staring at the water, a thought I’d been keeping buried in the recesses of my mind finally surfaced. If the other guy from the diner had succeeded in taking me from Stephen and bringing me back to my real moth
er, would I be thinking of her as the bad guy? Or would I be thinking of Stephen as the bad guy? The answer was obvious, baring no other evidence. I would assume my mother was the good guy because, well, she was my mother and not part of an elaborate conspiracy to keep me locked up. So why wasn’t I giving her the benefit of the doubt now?
The shower spray hit me like a waterfall as I stepped under the metal sunflower. It cascaded down my body and washed the blood away with remarkable ease. I stuck my tongue out, and as the water hit it, I nearly gagged. The taste of motor oil and smog filled my mouth as I brushed frantically at my tongue with the back of my hand.
“Eww!” I squawked. “No wonder the blood came off so easily,” I sputtered to myself like a crazy person. “It isn’t even water!”
Without thinking, I darted out of the creepy water and back into the room. The cold hit me at once, and I shivered as parts of me stiffened. That’s pretty much when I felt my eyes get as big as saucers. Standing in the middle of the room was a man.
He stared at me slack-jawed, a look of horror plastered across his face. He was wearing white scrubs and had black hair that was buzzed close to his scalp. He was huge, more mountain than man, and it looked like he’d borrowed his arm muscles from a freaking elephant.
I screamed, covering myself with my hands as I tried to scuttle back into the shower. My back hit metal, and I turned. The shower wall was closed, leaving no trace that it’d ever been there.
“Look, Abby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” the man rumbled from behind me. His voice was so low that it could have made speakers explode.
“Get out!” I yelled, whirling back to face him.
He had his back to me, and he sort of half-shuffled toward the door, one hand over his eyes. “I brought you clothes,” he said when he neared the door. “They are on your bed.” With that, he put his hand against the door, and it slid into the ceiling like we were in one of those science fiction films.
I swallowed, still covering myself with my hands as my heart hammered in my chest. Then, very slowly, I looked away from the door and at ‘my’ bed. Sitting on the newly made bed, complete with fresh sheets, was a pair of white scrubs identical to the ones the man had been wearing. It looked like it was exactly my size.
A moment later, I was dressed in the shiftless white scrubs, and as I looked down at myself, I wondered what it was about moms and non-formfitting clothing.
“Okay, I’m dressed,” I said a moment later, hoping someone was listening.
The door slid open in front of me with a hiss, and the man from earlier poked his head through.
“You!” I snapped. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He wiped his face with one meaty paw and sighed. “Let’s start over, okay?” he asked.
“No,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and giving him my best ‘I don’t care if you live or die’ look. It was odd because I hadn’t had one previously so I kind of made it up on the spot.
“Look, you can come with me to see your mother or you can stay in this room by yourself, sans magazines and television.” He shrugged. “The choice is yours.”
“Fine, I’ll go,” I said, “but if you try to sneak any more peeks at me, I’m going to tell my mom.”
He swallowed, adam’s apple bobbing up and down so violently that I stared at him wide eyed.
“Please,” he whispered, visibly trembling as I stepped past him into the hallway. “Please don’t tell your mother I upset you…”
A few minutes later, I found myself standing in a gigantic command center. Computers and wires lined the walls, making it look more like the display station of a big box electronics store than a place people would actually, I don’t know, be?
There was a huge chair in the center of the room that reminded me of the command chair that Captain Kirk used in Star Trek. In front of the chair, several black screens the size of the movie theater back home filled the wall like a giant curved dome. It was the only area that was free of blinking lights and brightly colored knobs.
Then, very slowly, the chair started to swivel toward me. The ape of a man who led me here stiffened, his meaty paw tightening on my shoulder uncomfortably.
The chair shuddered into place with a sound that reminded me of snapping plastic and breaking gears. Engulfed in its black leather upholstery was a waif of a woman. She had short, greasy blonde hair and skin so pale it reminded me of a sickly porcelain doll. An enormous green visor covered the top part of her face, reducing her eyes to twin pinpricks of glowing neon light. They pulsed like embers as her thin, cracked lips twisted into a smile.
“Hello, my daughter,” she said in that same modulated, robot voice I’d heard earlier. “Pleased to meet you.”
I stared at her, open-mouthed, trying to think of something to say as her thin, boney fingers began to drum lightly on the arm pads. It made the tubes hooked to her arm shudder around her like a mass of tentacles. Okay… maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was the bad guy, after all. Surely, no good guy looks like a villain from a sci-fi movie.
“What’s wrong, Abigail? Do you not know how to speak?” my mother asked, one thin golden eyebrow arching up above the visor.
The man behind me nudged me minutely, and I stumbled forward, still in shock. He reached out, steadying me, bending down so that his huge head was near my ear. “Please,” he whispered, breath hot on my neck. “Be nice to her… and quickly.”
“S-sorry,” I stammered, straightening up and taking a step toward her, my hand outstretched.
The visor tilted to look at my hand, and she made a small wave of dismissal. “I’d give you a hug but,” she gestured at herself, her scrawny arms barely moving, “I can’t actually get out of this chair. If you like, I’ll let you kiss my cheek.” Her words made a shiver crawl down my back and I had to work really hard not to let my sudden revulsion show on my face.
“Um… pass,” I said. She scowled, and the sight of it made me want to turn into mist and hide beneath the floor. “I don’t want you to get sick from my germs,” I added a moment later.
My mother smiled at this. “So thoughtful, Abigail.” She glanced behind me at the man standing there. “Isn’t my daughter thoughtful, Roberto?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the gorilla behind me warbled. “The most thoughtful girl I have ever met.”
“Indeed,” my mother said as her chair began to swivel back toward the screens. “Now to business,” she said, and just before she was hidden from view, the telltale signs of a smirk passed across her lips.
The immense screens lit up in front of her, filling with pictures of various men and women in every color and style of dress.
“Hello!” my mother boomed. “I’d like you to all meet my daughter, Abigail de la Mancha.” Roberto shoved me forward until I was standing in front of my mother, facing the screens.
I’m not quite sure what it was about me, exactly, but the look of horror that flashed across nearly all the faces made me feel… inadequate. I mean, why were all these people so scared? What was I going to do, fail a math test at them?
“As you can see, your asset has failed,” my mother continued, and a panel in the silver floor slid away. The whirring of machinery and the hiss of expunged air filled my ears as a bound Chloe was propelled upward out of the floor.
So my mother hadn’t lied, after all. Well, at least about killing Chloe. Still, she was captured… if she was captured, then were was Stephen? Trapped in some deep dark dungeon, somewhere? If that was true, there was no way he could save me. Then again, did I really want him to save me? Maybe I was better off where I was?
I swallowed, staring at her, trying to think of how to do just that as she struggled, trying to get free of her chains. Blood poured down a cut from above her left eye and most of her clothes were blackened and charred. A thick clump of hair was gone, and the parts around it had that melted look to it that reminded me of a time at Thanksgiving when I’d leaned too close to one of the candles and caught my bangs
on fire.
“Anyway,” my mother said. Her chair clicked and shuddered for a second. It began to move forward, hovering over the floor like some kind of space age device. “As I was saying earlier, you have thirty seconds to deposit oh, I don’t know, let’s say a trillion dollars in my account or I nuke Jerusalem.”
As I watched a huge counter light up behind her, I knew she was evil. It was like a switch in my brain that suddenly switched from doubtful to full on certainty. Even if she wasn’t going to kill me, or whatever, she was going to nuke a couple cities. That made her pretty much the devil in my book.
Another screen glowed to life, showing a dollar sign and a zero as the first screens bright, crimson numbers began to count down from thirty. Next to it,
“You can’t do this, Gabriella. You wouldn’t do this,” said a short, balding man in the center of the screens. His picture enlarged so that he was huge and imposing on the monitor.
“I can do whatever I want, Jordan,” my mother replied, her modulated voice harsh. “I’m the one with the bombs.”
“No, there are rules,” Jordan stammered, his lips peeling back to reveal several overly large yellow teeth as he grimaced.
“New rule,” my mother said, “the one with the nukes gets to make the rules.”
“We need more time!” screamed a man with a navy blue yamaka pushing down his black, curly hair. Behind him, I could see people running around frantically yelling into phones.
I took a quick step forward, edging toward Chloe. My mother must have seen me, because her lips compressed into a thin line, and she moved her chair up so that it was between Chloe and me.
“If any of you talk again before paying me, I kill the agent. Deal?” she asked, and I knew in that moment I had just killed Chloe.
All the color drained from Chloe, and she stopped struggling. She looked up at the screen, and a single tear dripped down her cheek. “Please…” she whispered.
May Contain Spies: A Spy Thriller (Meet Abby Banks Book 1) Page 7
