by Hadena James
"Well you were beet red, now you are almost green, what's up buttercup? The ham tainted?" I asked. He shook his head and picked up the needle. He put it in the trash with the pan and the burnt food. "You okay? Is it the drugs?" I asked spying an empty vial that had rolled onto the floor. Next to it was a bottle that had a rolled-up blister package inside. I opened the bottle and saw the words Percocet. I had so many questions, but my stomach and brain were arguing about which would get fed first and Gabriel didn't look like he was up for conversation at the moment. We were underground, of that much I was sure. Past that, I was pretty confused about our situation, just really glad he was alive.
"How's your leg?" He asked.
"Incredibly sore." I answered. I wasn't sure why my leg hurt, but it didn't surprise me. It seemed I had dreamed that maybe my leg hurt and maybe I still was dreaming. That would explain Gabriel being alive and mostly well.
"Did you call me buttercup?" Gabriel asked as I took a bite of my sandwich and he turned to look out the only door I could see.
"I figure since I'm dreaming, and I haven't been rescued yet, I might as well," I answered.
"When you finish eating, you should definitely take one of these and then we'll talk about your leg and the fact that you are very much awake, and this isn't Hell, but it's close." He tapped the bottle that contained Percocet.
"There's no name or real label on this bottle." I said.
"That's because my brother Raphael ordered them online. I'm hoping they aren't laced with Fentanyl."
"Me too," I answered chewing noisily as I ate a Dorito. It had been a long time since I had eaten a Dorito. Mainly because, like ham sandwiches and bacon, they weren't migraine approved. However, since the episode at the Fortress I had been considering re-evaluating my dietary restrictions. After all, I was going to die one way or another. Might as well be because of migraines. It beat being skinned alive or put into a box full of bugs after being disemboweled or cut to pieces by someone with a sword. Life was about perspective and I had gained some serious perspective in recent months. The incident at the Fortress, my family in hiding, Patterson escaping our custody, becoming allies with Apex, two SCTU teams, seeing the liaison for the FBI that had worked with my father being promoted to director of the FBI and firing Caleb and Malachi, him showing no remorse for firing Malachi, someone he had known for a long time, living in a safe house owned by Daniels' Security with all my SCTU team members, including Malachi and Caleb, Alex's call telling me that Raphael couldn't have attacked his sister and her family, but someone had sure tried to make it look like Raphael, Gabriel going missing, Nathan's death, yeah, life was all about perspective, and I had suddenly realized that I had been looking at it from the wrong perspective for a long time. I was built to do this, chase serial killers. The fact that they occasionally came to me instead of me having to go find them wasn't a curse, it was a bonus, that was one more serial killer we didn't have to worry about. Or maybe I had spent too much time around Nadine's fatalistic pessimism and realized I wasn't much different than her, not even in the dysfunctional family way of life.
I didn't know for sure why I had shifted perspectives, but I had. The world was still a horrible place with too many killers in it, but I could fix that.
"So, did Raphael just drop me off and leave?" I asked Gabriel.
"Not exactly," Gabriel frowned. "Eat your sandwich and then take a pill. We'll wait for some of the pain to subside and then we'll discuss what we are going to do next."
"Well, we're underground and this place appears to be all metal and bolts. We're in a bunker of some sort and it has food. I didn't know your brother was a prepper.
"Me either and I thought I was on a ship on land, so that gets us one step closer to getting out of here." Gabriel told me.
"We can't get out, can we?"
"I'm not sure," Gabriel said. "I've tried the hatch and I can't get it to open from the inside, but Raphael has a couple of times now, so I don't know if I'm just not strong enough or tall enough even with standing on the ladder, which is going to be tricky with your leg when we try it together." Gabriel said.
"I dreamed my leg hurt. I dreamed someone was drawing patterns on it with a flaming razorblade."
"Well, not exactly." Gabriel took my sandwich away from me.
"Wasn't done," I told him.
"You will be in a moment."
"That's just ominous, spit it out already," I told him.
"Raphael cut off the burn scar on your leg, took some of the muscle with it, severing most of the tendons, which is why you are going to be slow moving without the pain medication and why I keep telling you to take one after you've eaten."
"Thought your brother was a wendigo."
"Then he came back here, put you on the table, and started frying that part of skin. I filled a syringe with morphine and jabbed it in his butt and, just like you and Malachi, he went down really fast, just a matter of minutes before he crumpled like a felled tree. Then I dragged his ass into one of these rooms and shut the door and locked him in it."
"It was my leg burning in the skillet?" I asked.
"Yes, he said he had to eat it to consume your essence."
"I know you don't normally do the killing, but your brother was frying my leg skin, you couldn't have killed him?" I asked.
"I'm not Cain."
"Cain who?" I asked starting to get offended.
"From the Bible, the first murderer."
"Oh, Cain and Able." I said. "In your defense, in that story, Cain killed Able because Cain coveting Able's wife, not to keep him from eating his friend."
"Would you be capable of killing Eric?" Gabriel asked.
"It would be a struggle, but if the choice were me killing him or someone else doing it, then yes."
"Who else is going to kill Raphael?"
"I don't know, maybe me for him attempting to eat my leg, maybe Eric for him attempting to eat my leg, maybe Malachi because he's probably out of his mind with rage at the moment."
"I would prefer us to not kill Raphael."
"Okay," I said calmly. I looked at my sandwich. Despite knowing the burning smell was me, I was still hungry. Maybe I had dealt with too many cannibals. Maybe I was just happy to know that even though I had some fat, I was mostly lean meat. Or maybe it had been a while since I had eaten, and I desperately needed food to counteract the drugs I had been given. I could do some narcotics as long as they weren't full synthetics like Fentanyl and I had food on my stomach. Otherwise they made me feel like I had motion sickness.
"That means the vial was morphine?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Oh good, I was worried I was losing my mind for a moment."
"I don't think you are. Although I must admit I kinda expected you to go kill Raphael the moment I told you about your leg and me locking him in a room.
"He can live for now, I have some serious questions for him once we get some backup. I'm betting he took your phone and it wouldn't work in here anyway.
"Actually, he held his phone up and it did work."
"Great, where's his phone?" I asked.
"In his jeans pocket," Gabriel answered. "I forgot about it with all the heaving and hefting and shoving and rolling and trying to get him locked up before he woke up. I'm not Xavier, I had no idea how much I should give him. He stayed mostly unconscious while I moved him though, so that was good. Otherwise we'd both be dead." Gabriel said.
"Point taken. We need his phone."
"I know. You stand guard at the door and close it on him if he wakes up before I can get it."
"And lock you inside with someone that wants to kill you?" I asked. "I really don't want to train a new team leader, and I don't want your job, it sucks. So, what do we have for weapons?"
"Not much as far as I can tell. I've been in here a while. There's a shower, a kitchen, but no knives, not even a butter knife, a few forks," Gabriel stopped. I smiled at him. I could be pretty dangerous with a spoon, even a plastic one, forks were wa
y better. He walked over and got a few out of the drawer. They weren't plastic. "There's also a spatula, another frying pan, and some food items."
"I'm betting not the kind of food items we can improvise an explosive from?"
"Not really," Gabriel told me.
"A girl can hope." I shrugged at him. "New plan, by the way, since yours was awful. How did you become the leader of an elite special unit chasing serial killers?" I smirked again at him.
"I was available and had dealt with psychopaths before."
"Life is all about timing," I snarked.
"What's the plan?" Gabriel asked.
"We both go in. While you get the phone, I cover you with the forks and the frying pan. If he wakes up, I can stab him in the face with a fork and try to hit him in the head with the pan."
"So, both our plans suck."
"Well, it was the best I could come up with that increased your odds of survival. I think it decreases mine, so don't complain."
"You are a bit gimpy at the moment."
"Well if your brother was a little less convinced that he was possessed by a cannibalistic demon, I wouldn't be," I snipped. "My brother might be a killer, but at least he isn't weird about it."
"And your grandfather." Gabriel added.
"Patterson isn't weird about it."
"Maybe not, but he is also a killer."
"Some people inherit Marfan's syndrome and my family passes along serial killer genes. Speaking of Marfan's Syndrome, we need to have Xavier examine a few more super psychopaths. Alive or dead, it doesn't matter. I'm thinking that since so many super psychopaths are tall, like Malachi, that it may somehow be related to Marfan's Syndrome."
"Malachi doesn't have Marfan's Syndrome."
"Actually, he does, but it doesn't seem to be expressing itself like normal, for instance, he doesn't seem to have any defects of the heart, unless you consider he doesn't have one to be a defect." I told him. "Anyway, I was thinking about it while waiting for your brother to appear to kidnap me that maybe psychopathology is somehow connected to these super genes that create these terrible diseases but because psychopathology itself creates physiological changes in the psychopath, the other super human genes don't express themselves like they normally would.
"How'd you know my brother was going to kidnap you?"
"I called and told him to, not in those words exactly, but I called and told him I had figured out why he killed Nathan Green, and that I was going to be telling Peter West if he didn't stop me."
"Do you know why he killed Nathan Green?" Gabriel asked.
"I believe I do, which is why I'm here and it's why I called Peter and told him to get out of town for a few days with the help of Daniels' Security, better safe than sorry." I looked at the door Gabriel had led me too. "I don't want them to try and kill Peter West because they think I might have told him something."
"You think Nathan was killed because of something you told him?" Gabriel asked.
"Mostly, I asked Nathan to look into something for me. I think that's what got him killed. I think that's also why my father was murdered and why Lucas's brother drowned and why Lucas's parents disappeared without a trace, but not Xavier's parents, although I think they have probably been under surveillance for a long time. I imagine they will go after Eric next, but thankfully, with him in Witness Protection with the Marshals' Service, even as a killer, they won't find him and if they do, Patterson is supposed to be keeping an eye on him."
"I feel like I'm out of the loop." Gabriel told me.
"I've been keeping you out of it for a reason. I didn't expect Raphael to show up and start killing people, although I believe he took the job, so he could kill you."
"Took what job?" Gabriel asked.
"Killing Nathan, killing me, killing you," I answered. "See, I think I know who is at the top of the serial killer food chain, and if I'm right, your brother has the tattoo we've been looking for."
"My brother doesn't have any tattoos."
"That you know of," I said.
"Do you want me to prove to you that he doesn't?" Gabriel asked.
"No, because if I'm correct and you take his shirt off, you are going to feel worse than you already do."
"Well, now I have to check." Gabriel said. He spun a wheel on the door a couple of full rotations. There was a hiss sound. Everything in this bunker seemed to be hermetically sealed. Preppers afraid of end times viruses, probably, I didn't know if demons were kept out by keeping everything air tight. I doubted it, but I could be wrong. I didn't know much about demons, mostly because I had never had a chance to talk to one. I was unwilling to go on secondhand eyewitness accounts for something as important as information on the demonic.
Gabriel swung the door out into the hallway. Raphael was a big pile of unmoving flesh about three feet into the doorway. I took out the blister pack from the crappy hospital uniform I was in and popped six or seven of the tablets out and ground them up in my hands with a fork as best I could. I also coated the fork in the powder and then closed my fist around what was left as tightly as I could. It was my emergency back-up plan in case my plan went wrong. Gabriel began to rummage in his brother's jeans and pulled the phone out. He put it into a pocket on his own hospital outfit. Then he took hold of Raphael's shirt and yanked it up, exposing Raphael's chest. Over Raphael's heart was the tattoo. My theory had been confirmed. If we survived this, I'd tell Gabriel why Nathan was murdered. If we didn't survive this, I guessed it wouldn't matter if Gabriel knew or not. Some part of me wanted to tell him simply because I didn't believe in keeping a lot of secrets. Secrets were dangerous things. They also made you vulnerable. One could argue that Gabriel and I were both already vulnerable, and they would be right. We didn't know if Raphael was working alone or not, but I guessed he wasn't. I just wasn't sure if he had a boots on the ground partner or not. That could make a difference. Gabriel grabbed one more item and exited the room, which I noticed for the first time was covered in bloody hand prints. The walls had been transformed into a hellish canvas. There was blood spray, blood splatter, hand prints, some of them I was positive belonged to Raphael and others to a woman. Considering women were the preferred targets for serial killers, I could see most of the blood being hers.
Raphael remained motionless as Gabriel exited the room and closed the door, turning the handle to seal it. He then hit a button and locked it. The latch couldn't be turned from inside if it was sealed, pretty ingenious really. Nothing like being trapped in a prison, oh wait, that was Raphael's next step if he and we survived this. In not, he'd go mad or kill himself or starve to death. I was good with any of those, probably because I was cranky about him trying to eat part of me. It didn't matter that he had been nice enough to cut it off first while I was drugged into oblivion. It was just wrong on so many levels to eat other people without their permission or attempt to eat other people without their permission.
Chapter Three
OF COURSE, THE PHONE required a pass code. I stuck my finger on the spot where it would read my finger if it was set to do that and nothing happened. I didn't get a message telling me to try again. The phone didn't vibrate or make any noise and the screen remained the same. Nothing. Well dang. At least if the finger print scanner had been enabled, we could have chopped Raphael's fingers off and tried each of them individually in our spare time.
Gabriel handed me the second item he had taken off Raphael. It was my hunting knife. I didn't use it for hunting, not really, but it was great as a last resort weapon. There was blood on the blade. He'd used my own knife to cut off my skin for dinner. That was just annoying as hell. Now I wanted to go chop his fingers off just because I had a weapon that would do it. I let the powdered Percocet fall to the ground.
"Why exactly did you powder those up?"
"Makes it work faster and it becomes absorbable through the vessels in the mouth specifically the tongue and cheek. I figured if worst came to worst, I could stab him with the fork and then pour it in his mouth. Probably w
ould have caused him to overdose considering I powdered it and he had morphine in his system."
"I admit, I'm glad it didn't come to that." Gabriel told me.
"Me too, I probably would have hurt my hands because I would have had to repeatedly stab him with the forks to get much damage done." I nodded. "Where's the escape place?"
"Down there," Gabriel pointed past the kitchen where we had come out of to get to Raphael. I held the button down on the phone until a voice come on asking me what she could do to assist me.
"Dial 9-1-1" I said.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand." The phone answered me back. I sighed at it and hit the button to make it go away.
"He's Canadian," Gabriel told me.
"Emergency services can still be reached by dialing 9-1-1 in Canada." I told him.
"I didn't know that. We were told to use 1-1-2." Gabriel told me. I held down the button again. The female voice came back on.
"Dial 1-1-2." I told her.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you want me to do." She told me.
"Dial Gabriel," I told the phone.
"Sorry, I don't understand what you want me to do," she answered.
"Call," Gabriel told me.
I held the button down again and waited for her electronic voice to come back.
"Call Gabriel," I told the phone.
"Calling Gabriel." She answered back. It rang, and rang, and rang, and rang. No one answered. Eventually voicemail came on and I hung up without leaving a message.
"Why didn't you leave a message?" Gabriel asked.
"Do you intend to check your messages before we leave?" I asked.
"Maybe someone else will." Gabriel shrugged. I understood, he was getting desperate. We were locked underground with a homicidal madman, after all, because someone believed it was possible that I had told Gabriel all about who I thought was in charge of the serial killers, when I hadn't. Maybe we'd take a few minutes once we got out of here to have a chat. Although, if he was going to die for something someone already thought he knew, maybe I should have the chat before we got out of this place. I stared at the phone. We were underground, surrounded by metal, how did Raphael's cell phone work? It shouldn't. There were days if I stood in the wrong spot in my basement, I couldn't get reception and that was if I wasn't in the panic room. Nobody got reception in a panic room, theoretically, but here we were in what amounted to a very large panic room and Raphael had reception. That meant there was a booster for cell reception somewhere in this bunker. Maybe whoever built it had intended to live in it until the end of days? That seemed pretty unlikely. People didn't live in bunkers, especially ones without living rooms. Unless there was a common area behind one of these closed doors.
