by Neal Goldy
Applying make-up brought back glimpses of the hundred times that Nicole made me do it. Her name gave me a mental punch. How could I be so insensitive and naïve? How could I forget about her, about Prof. Collins? How could I enjoy myself this much with people who are practically ready to hand me over for few checks? How could I be excited about going out when I should be trying harder to escape from this fatality? How could I?
I stood there, in front of the mirror, but not seeing myself. This was not me; the girl in the mirror was just a mirage, a virtual image. Or maybe it was me. Maybe, that’s who I am. Two days with Neil did not give me any pain, just adventure. I never enjoyed life as much as I had enjoyed it in the last two days. Neil had kidnapped me, but never tried consciously to inflict harm. With Carl, I enjoyed being myself. The two of them taunted me, scolded me, blindfolded me; but never took any advantage of me. Maybe to them, I was just an assignment, a burden, but as for me…
No, I have to stop my train of thought here. I need to filter my thoughts through a priority encoder. Nicole needs me, Prof. Collins needs me, and my parents need to know about my whereabouts. I can’t be selfish.
I clutched my pendant and made a promise to myself. I won’t be selfish. No matter how much being with Neil feels good, no matter how excited I might be seeing new aspects of life apart from science, no matter how adventurous it might be touring different places, in the end I was just a pawn in the big picture.
Neil and Carl might not be as bad as I thought as criminals. They might be good with me, and ultimately, they will let me go. They will walk away and I will be trapped, Prof. Collins will be trapped.
Yesterday, I told Neil that I take care of my own responsibilities, and I would. I was in this alone, but I would come out of it no matter what. I was not weak. I was Janet, my father’s daughter, who never gives up on anything.
I glanced again in the mirror, and this time it was me, not some virtual image. And this time, there was not just one image; there were two.
Neil was standing behind me, staring at me with those ocean blue eyes that bore into mine steadily through the mirror. I felt a rush of emotion through me that I couldn’t understand. His eyes had the power to hold me immobilized--no need of Etorphine Hydrochloride here. Unable to hold that power gaze, I blinked my eyelids downward.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, just stood there looking at me. I felt like I’d melt under his gaze.
At that precise moment, Carl entered to my reprieve. “Ready to go?”
I composed myself. “Actually, I’m not feeling well. You guys carry on. I’ll just stay here and take a nap.” I blurted out to my relief without faltering.
Neil came over to me and touched my cheek. Warmth spread through me. “What happened? Are you cold?”
I was incapable of speech just then. “Angel?” Asked Neil, concern clearly in his voice.
“I…No, I mean, yes, I feel a little nauseous, maybe the side-effects of Etorphine.” I managed to speak.
He retrieved his hand hesitatingly. “I’ll stay with you.”
“No!!” I replied immediately. “I mean, Carl’s dying to see the show.”
Carl looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere but here. “I knew I should have brought a date.” Neil glanced at Carl apologetically. “Go on, stay here, I’ll find a date. But you owe me one, my friend.” With that, he stormed out of the suite.
“There was no need to sadden him. You should go with him.”
“If you don’t leave, how will I formulate my escape plan number God knows what part 2? Leave, Neil, I don’t want to harm you.”
But of course, he was not a fool. He must have observed something fishy in my voice and behavior. And he himself had said that he will curb my every chance. Then I had no choice except this. I’ve got to do this. I took a deep breath.
“He’ll be fine. I hate those shows anyway.” He took my hand, sat me on the couch, and made himself comfortable beside me. I shifted uncomfortably.
I scanned the room and found what I’d been looking for, fifteen feet from me, ten feet north and five feet diagonally.
“So, you’re gonna hand me over tomorrow. Right?” I asked.
“Angel…..” Neil started, staring at me intently.
“Don’t, don’t call me that. Don’t you dare? And please don’t pretend like you care.” Un huh, that rhymed. I shot up. “I’m just an assignment for you, not a person. I get it ok. Just stop that.” I cried.
He straightened, “Stop what?”
Unable to say more, I hurried away from him. “Stop that thing you do with your eyes.” He was suddenly behind me. “What do I do with my eyes, Angel?” His breath tickled my ear. My own breath became ragged. “Your eyes speak, Neil. I don’t know if I hear the right note or not, but it creates an illusion that drives me away. But I don’t want to drift away, Neil, because there’s nothing but a dead end there.”
He slowly turned me to face him, his hands touching my bare arms, creating sensations that were all alien to me. “How could you do this? You’re not a monster, Neil. Then why? Why are you doing this to me? I don’t wanna die, Neil. Please, I don’t wanna die. Don’t do this. I want to live.” A lone tear escaped my eye and my voice cracked.
He hesitatingly wiped away my tears, his palm lingering more than necessary on my cheek. “You won’t die, Angel. I promise that. You have to trust me. I’ll do whatever……. Huh…”
He staggered backwards. “What??”
“I’m sorry, Neil, but you have to understand why I have to do this.” I dumped the Etorphine syringe that I had pilfered from Carl’s jacket and ran for my life.
The dress made it difficult to sprint, so I chose the lift over the stairs. Also, it would save some quality time. The lift was one floor down. That meant twelve seconds. I fidgeted with nervousness. What if it were something else? What if it were some sort of poison? What if I’d hurt Neil beyond any recovery measure?
The lift door opened and to my huge relief, it was empty. It took exactly one minute and sixteen seconds to reach the ground floor. I hurried past the tourists and was about to thank God when He crushed the thanks in a million pieces.
Carl stood there, a knowing smirk spreading over his lips like he had anticipated everything. I turned back towards the lift and almost fainted. Neil was there, leaning against the lift wall. I desperately searched for another exit, but there were too many people. I ran randomly, hoping they would lose my trail in the crowd.
I ran past a bunch of German tourists, oh yeah. I know German too, and almost collided with a toddler. His mother gave me a threatening look and resumed scrolling on her phone. I zigzagged past another herd of teenagers and smacked straight into Carl. “Well, Neil was damn right. Aren’t you an intelligent little thing?”
“You can say that. Of course, I love my life and will do anything to savor it,” I exclaimed, looking past him for any loophole. He came closer, the lethal syringe in his hand. I let him come close enough, and just in time I ducked, gripped his wrist and twisted it away. The syringe flew away from his reach. I quickly kicked him in the guts and elbowed him down.
I turned 90 degrees and aimed for the now open elevator. I caught it just in time and so did someone else. And to add to my hard luck, there was no one except me and Neil in the elevator. He slammed me towards the back wall and pressed the stop button.
“You got the wrong jacket, Angel.”
I punched his shoulder, but he now knew me way too well. He recovered fast and again pushed me towards the wall, this time restraining me with his entire body pressing against mine.
“Why, Angel…. Why?” The color of his eyes matched the color of my pendant in the dim light. Breathing became difficult and it was not entirely due to my claustrophobic senses. Each and every body part was hypersensitive to the proximity between us. I tried prying my wrists away, but his grip was stone. I fidgeted in vain.
“Why? You’re asking me why? I told you, I want to live. Leave me, Ne
il. Let go of me.”
“And I told you, I won’t let you die. Which part of our conversation didn’t register in your mind?” He literally whispered in my ear, his lips almost touching my earlobe. “There’s a way to do things properly, Angel. You’ll have to trust me.”
I was losing it like a parabolic curve. “Trust you? How? Why? You abducted me, Neil. Maybe I can trust that you won’t harm me, but your employer will. I’m a fighter, Neil, I don’t give up.”
He looked me in the eye. “Sometimes, you have to understand when to give up, damn it. They just want something you have, Janet; they won’t need you afterwards. If you keep running from them, they’ll keep coming after you. You can escape me, Angel, but I bet you won’t be able to escape her. The best way to escape evil is to face it, Angel. Believe me.”
Every nerve in my homo sapiens system was screeching to believe him. His sincere tone was appealing to me to give in, but Nicole, Prof. Collins, and my parents kept swirling in my sub-conscious mind.
“I don’t believe you.” I said, barely controlling the overflow of emotion.
He scooped me closer as if we were not already inches apart. I couldn’t look into his eyes and think straight. I pulled away from him, only to be pulled back even closer, and this time not by Neil, my pendant being the culprit. It got stuck in his shirt’s collar, shining as brightly as his eyes.
“Then you leave me no choice, Angel.” And he executed my own technique on me and traces of unconsciousness rushed through my blood. The last thing I felt was detachment from my pendant, the one thing that was mine; and I had lost it, too.
There should be a new continuity theorem made on me for waking up from unconsciousness a third day consecutively. But today the parameters were slightly edgy; I mean I woke up in the backseat of a car rather than on the couch.
I had on the same crimson dress and a jacket to cover the exposed part. That, too, was Neil’s jacket. Lady Gaga was shouting her throat out on the stereo, a disaster to my pounding head. “Shut that off.” I shouted.
Two pairs of eyes glared at me lividly. “Oh! Welcome back to the world of consciousness, sugar”, grinned Carl shamelessly. I grimaced angrily and opened my mouth to retort back.
“Save it. You’ll need all of your leftover energy. We’re almost there.” The last sentence was addressed to Neil, who was driving.
I took a peek at Neil: he looked capricious. I recalled yesterday’s events and reached for my pendant, nothing. I had failed. I had failed in my attempts to save myself and Prof. Collins. After my daring endeavor last night, even these two wouldn’t commiserate. I fought the battle and lost. Tears started brimming and I was seconds away from whimpering when the car stopped.
Neil got out and yanked me from the back. Carl faced us, “This is as far as I go.”
Neil grimaced, “Why? You don’t wanna meet your ally?”
Carl shrugged, “Two parallel lines can never intersect, my friend. Similarly, me and Storm… Huh.”
He took the car and pulled over. That left the two of us with a magnificent ranch house looming ahead. The property was spread over several acres, the house itself was huge. Three gardens with different kinds of flowers were arranged in a triangular sort of pattern. In the far west beyond the woods were several hills and the sound of running water chimed along with the cooing of birds. I was awestruck by the natural scenery here. For a moment, I just got lost in the beauty and forgot all about the fateful situation closing in.
Several men in black were marching towards us and they stripped Neil of all his arms. There was nothing on me that could be stripped, well except for my clothes, which with their mercy I could keep. Four men led us towards the entrance and four fell back in step behind us. We dawdled past the entrance and several rooms to reach an apartment-size hall.
The hall was filled with several armed men. Someone was sitting at the bar. As the butler moved from my line of sight, I felt the shock of my life, like the universal gravitational constant had suddenly become zero. My legs felt weak and it took all of my willpower not to crumple down right on the spot.
The man sitting in front of us was the man of my most absolute terror. Every day, I pray to God never to cross paths again with him. It’d been years, but the passing years could not mess with my memory of his six foot tall physique, black eyes, muscular body, and devil face. He shot up from his seat with a ruthless smile plastered on his face and stepped towards us; his every step, making me nauseous, crushing the air out of my lungs.
Neil must have sensed the change in my posture, because he put his hand on my shoulder, maybe to reassure me. But I had no strength left even to look towards him. I was losing it, my knees buckled, and Neil caught me by the shoulders to keep me from tottering.
I felt a revulsion so strong that every nerve in my body urged me to flee from the agony of this person’s presence. He sauntered towards us like a cobra waiting for its ultimate attack. He stopped a few paces away from us and looked straight into my eyes.
“Hello, sister dear! Missed me??”
Chapter 11
“Your work here is done Neil. You may leave.”
Neil stiffened beside me. His hands were still on my shoulders, supporting me. It might seem hypocritical, but it was Neil’s presence only that gave me assurance that I could do this, that I could even face my so-called brother.
“You are not the one who assigned this to me. So, you won’t be the one who gets the girl”, replied Neil in a completely professional way, like I was some valuable package to deliver. Well, I was! I almost forgot that. No, not to him; god can’t be this cruel.
“Neil Neil!! You are as stubborn as you are known to be in the underworld. But let me introduce myself first.” He grinned and extended his hand. “I am Storm. You must have heard of me. Your godparents are a little fond of me.”
Neil ignored the extended hand and snorted, “I don’t care about your reputation in the underworld, Storm, but you must be acquainted with mine, that I don’t deliver to pawns. The deal will be sealed either in the presence of Majestic or this girl will be marked as my property.”
I didn’t like the sound of being someone’s property, but if being Neil’s property could save me from this horrible person, I would gladly give myself to him. He might be my kidnapper, but some tiny part of me was not as afraid of him as I should be. I felt safe with him. I felt drawn to him. Neil’s presence was keeping me sane. If it were not for him, I’d have sunk in my own sweat.
Now, I can openly call myself a hypocrite. Go figure. His blatant innuendo clearly made Storm flinch. He must be an important figure to take this in stride. Storm took out something from his breast pocket, a sort of a visiting card, and threw it in Neil’s face. I flinched. Neil now looked outraged. He let go of me, shortening my reprieve, and picked up the card vindictively.
“See! Majestic’s seal. If you are as prudent as you are known to be, you must know what it means. Right? So… I’ll say this again. Your work here is done. Leave the girl in my custody and vanish before I treat myself with your head for defying our collusion; and, I daresay, I’ll enjoy it very much.”
For a moment, I thought Neil was going to punch him, or definitely wanted to, but then he clenched his fist and let out a ragged breath. Anger radiated through him, malice clear in his eyes, but he said nothing.
Slowly and reluctantly, he pried my fingers away from the hem of his jacket, which I just realized I was gripping, and stepped back. I watched his retreat with the utmost horror.
“Neil….. What?? …. Please……. Don’t…” I could not shape a sentence. I was terrified beyond measure. I wanted to tell him not to leave me here. I wanted to go to him, wanted him to keep me safe in his embrace, wanted to hold his hand for assurance. I silently begged him, channeling all the fear and sorrow in my eyes not to abandon me to the mercy of the person who’d made once my life hell.
Tears threatened to come out. “Neil, please don’t leave me here. Please…. I’ll do anything you say. Ju
st take me away from here. I won’t ask for freedom, I promise. I won’t irritate you by talking about science and my passion; I’ll never ask for the right sized clothes, I’ll even forsake my habit of caffeine. Please, I’ll be your slave.” My voice choked, dread kept my legs fixed in place.
Something flickered in Neil’s eyes, maybe compassion, maybe something else. I started towards him; before I could even walk two paces, I was jerked backwards, Storm’s hand tightening on my arms.
Neil raised his foot to come forward, but stopped himself. All around us, guards pointed their big guns in Neil’s direction. Even both Neil and I together couldn’t take all of them on and I was in no condition to fight. My emotional barrier caused my brain to cease working and as well as the skills I had learned to use in such situations.
“Now, this is really touching and all. You two definitely qualify for an opera, but I don’t have time for this. You better leave, Neil, or I’ll have to call in some of my friends, which I guess won’t do any good to your eminent reputation.”
Neil did not budge. He was still looking at me intensely, his eyes speaking volumes.
“Get your arse out of my house right NOW or do you want to make an irrevocable enemy in the name of Majestic”, threatened Storm.
Neil waggled his legs slowly for a few moments, looked around and counting the number of guards. He then stormed out of the room without even a glance towards me. I struggled hopelessly, and Storm subdued me easily.
“Give it a rest, sister dear, you can’t possibly think to escape me forever, can you?” His mouth was now dangerously close to my ears. Aggregating all the strength I had left, I wrenched out of his grasp and scooted as far away from him as I could.
“Did I say something to offend you, sweetheart? Oh, please, we have met after so many years, I deserve a proper reunion, don’t I?” He chuckled at his joke.
“You have surpassed every stage of being disgusting, Sam.” I spat furiously.
My words didn’t even earn as much as a frown from him. “Whatever you say, sis. I bet your intelligent boyfriend did not make much of a pleasant date, did he? I assure you, I have much in store.”
