“Hold on,” Linda hesitated and turned to the raging Zet.
“Where is the freaking doll?” he asked.
“In the hallway.”
“You will go to her now. I will follow you. You’ll give her the doll, tell her you’re busy, and send her on her way. Got it?”
“Yes,” answered Linda.
She got out of the room and walked toward the exit with Zet following.
The doll was lying in one of the big armchairs in the hallway. Linda picked it up and went outside, leaving the door open. Zet could not be seen in the darkness from the yard, yet he could see and hear everything that was happening there.
Angela walked to Linda with her hands behind her back. Golden, curly hair fell in her eyes.
Linda crouched and handed her the doll. “Here it is.”
Angela looked at the door. “May I come in?” she asked.
“Baby, we’re very busy now, sorry. You can come tomorrow.”
“Okay…” she pouted.
Zet was watching, but only saw Linda’s back. Though it was enough if he needed to use the Eraser.
“This was in the flowerbed.” Angela handed Linda her miniature dagger.
Linda took it and hid it in her stocking discreetly. Her heart was pounding as if she had run a few miles.
The girl took her other hand out from behind her back, holding a flower.
“It’s beautiful, like you…” she said.
“Thank you, baby. It is very beautiful.” Linda smiled and took the flower. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” the girl said cheerily, and ran away happy.
Linda waited for her to leave and went back inside.
Zet came out of the darkness. “Come back in!” he said.
Linda didn’t resist and crossed the dark hallway. Zet followed her. She stopped in the doorway, the sight of dead Stinger filling her eyes with tears again. She knelt beside him and put the flower on his chest.
Zet moved his eyes from Linda to Max, who was still sitting on the floor at gunpoint.
A car stopped outside. Zet stepped toward the window, looking at the bracelet on his wrist. Adrian’s black SUV was parking in the driveway.
“Well, here she is.” Zet looked back at Max. “Are you happy?”
Max tried to get up to get to the window, but Martin stopped him, pressing the gun to his temple even harder.
“Easy, easy. Wait there,” Zet sneered and looked outside again.
Two men in dark cloaks got out of the car and walked to its rear.
Zet fetched his phone and dialed a number.
The phone rang right when Adrian and his partner opened the trunk. They looked inside and stopped in their tracks.
The trunk was empty. They stared at it for a few seconds.
Adrian answered his phone at last. “Yes, Zet,” he whispered.
There was a short pause and Adrian’s face changed as if he had just eaten a lemon.
“She’s not here,” he mumbled, grabbing the sack, which had been on their prisoner when they put her in there.
The handcuffs fell out of it with a clank.
“She’s vanished,” Adrian went on in dismay. “I don’t know… she was in the trunk… with the handcuffs on. Now she’s gone.”
Adrian listened to the loud yelling from his phone. “Yes, I got it.”
He thought for a second, put the phone back and said, “Get in the car.”
CHAPTER 21
The Chase
She’d been brought around by a sudden jolt. The car made a sharp turn and Athena reflexively planted her feet against the interior of the trunk. A pulsing headache reverberated in her ears.
She opened her eyes in pitch darkness, and was filled with fear. The cramped space made her panic with desperation.
Then she remembered that she was still wearing the Switch, and turned it on. The screen dispelled the darkness a little. She activated it behind her back, thinking only of getting out of there as soon as possible.
The bracelet worked. Cold air filled her lungs, replacing the trunk’s odors and bringing relief. A jolt, then another one. Athena realized she was rolling downhill and tried to grab hold of grass, but only managed to grab air. Another attempt to stop resulted in an impact, the pain piercing her wrist. She ended up in cold water. It filled her nose, eyes, and mouth. Her wrist was going numb. She coughed and quickly got to her feet to find herself knee-deep in the water. She heard the sounds of the highway coming from somewhere above.
She looked around and saw that she’d materialized in a ditch. Sure enough, she’d forgotten about Osiris’s drills and advice, and at the moment of panic had just concentrated on just getting out. And voilà.
The ditch was littered with junk, boxes and plastic bags, and the water stank of slime.
Athena kept coughing as she climbed out of the ditch. Her clothes were wet and clung to her body. She started having chills. Her body looked like one big bruise, and she felt dizzy.
She looked at the bracelet. It was wet. But even worse, the screen was cracked. Now she could feel dull pain in her wrist. I must have hit it against a rock when I was rolling downhill. I hope it works. Horrified, she tried to touch the screen, but the panel didn’t light up. Again. Nothing. Some indicator kept blinking, but she didn’t know what it meant. Water must have gotten inside through the crack and put it out of order. Athena took it off and started to shake it intensely, hoping to get the water out, then put it back on and tried again. The same result: it wasn’t working.
She started limping up the slope toward the road.
It got dark and she kept stumbling, but after a few minutes she was standing on the side of the road.
Athena looked herself over. Torn clothes, wet and stained jeans. Her cheek was burning. She touched it and winced in pain. There was blood on her fingers. Her body and clothes stank.
Athena headed along the road toward the area where she could hopefully find a cab.
The chilly evening air was biting through her wet clothes. Athena walked along the road and tried to activate the bracelet again. Surprisingly, the screen turned on, and the familiar symbols appeared. However, a moment later, it blinked and went out again. Athena stopped and pushed the button over and over. The screen was going on and off. Apparently, the normal operation mode hadn’t recovered yet. She nervously knuckled the screen.
Suddenly something occurred to her, some blurred scraps of a dim memory. Athena froze. No, it wasn’t a memory. It was a vision, just like the ones she used to have during tournaments.
Her nervousness went away, and Athena listened to her feelings, closed her eyes and tried to gain control of the unclear images.
She saw the highway with its lights through the car window. She was sitting in the back seat. Some shadow to her left. No, not shadow, it was a large man in a long black cloak. He was sitting next to her. Another one in the driver’s seat. The car was shooting down the road at a crazy speed.
A long honk interrupted her vision. Athena started and felt her heart skip a few beats. It seemed she could literally hear her own pulse. A highway truck swooshed by, leaving turbulent air behind. Athena rushed to the safety again.
It wasn’t easy to concentrate again. But she felt some inexplicable urge to. She went along with it and closed her eyes again.
At first, she couldn’t see anything. Then Athena invoked the same image by memory: being inside the car, two men looking like infernal shadows, the car tearing along the highway. Suddenly, this image was replaced with another: this time Athena was in the driver’s seat, tearing along at a mad rate, with no one else in the car.
The vision was interrupted again, this time by the screeching of brakes behind her. The rustle of the tires on the wayside, the steady hum of the engine. And silence. She opened her eyes and turned around.
She saw that same dark SUV and two men in dark cloaks. Like infernal shadows. Athena shivered.
The men slowly walked toward her, and she could see that o
ne of them carried a gun.
Athena raised her hand and touched the bracelet. The Switch turned on and stayed on. She forced herself not to shout for joy and aimed the face of the Switch at the parked SUV, then touched the screen again to activate the invisible beam.
Then another memory occurred to her: she and Max in the lab, him persuading her to test the Switch and everything going well, except for her rematerializing totally naked. Athena smiled elusively.
She looked up in defiance at the two menacing men. Despite their cloaks, it was obvious that both were very sturdy. Both were considerably taller than Athena, and their savage, examining looks boded no good.
“I will tell you what time it is,” said one of them in a deep voice and chuckled. He must have thought that Athena was looking at her watch. “Five seconds to you coming with us, and around five minutes to you arriving where we are very much expected.”
Athena lifted her hand and glanced at the Switch again.
“Then my watch is right.” She headed for the SUV, followed by the confused looks of the guys.
She’d surprised them, but they followed her. Athena got seated in the back, one of the men beside her, the other one in the driver’s seat. The doors locked with a click, and the SUV steered onto the highway. Shortly, it skimmed the road again.
“She stinks,” said man number one, the one sitting beside Athena.
Man number two didn’t answer, as if he hadn’t heard.
“She stinks,” repeated man number one, this time louder.
“You suggest we stuff her in the trunk again?” said the driver, annoyed.
“By the way, how did you escape?” Man number one turned to Athena and stared at her with narrow eyes, which looked too small for his rather large face.
“Well, had you been smarter, you’d not have stuffed me into the trunk, and we’d have arrived already.”
“You didn’t answer,” he insisted, while looking at her with cold, empty eyes.
“Why should I?”
“Do you know who we are?”
“I do. You are two thugs with no brains, who managed to lose me from the trunk, shackled and with a sack on my head.”
The eyes piercing her got even narrower.
The phone rang. The driver picked up. “Yes, boss. We’re on our way. Yes, soon.”
He hid the phone back inside his cloak and put both hands on the wheel. The SUV accelerated. At full speed and no brakes, they easily passed the other cars.
“Looks like you got some spanking.” Athena sat back. “Step on that gas, or your boss will fry your ass again.”
She giggled, and the driver clenched his teeth and kept steering.
“Shall I shut her up?” said man number one.
“Yes, shut me up and stuff me in that trunk again,” Athena interfered.
“Listen to me, bitch,” the driver said, “you don’t know who we are, and you don’t want to find out. I don’t care how you managed to escape, but now you’re here, and I’ve got a whole arsenal of tools to make anyone very humble. I see you think you’re brave and a gun doesn’t scare you. But I’ve got a shot with a cocktail that will turn you into a vegetable for a few months. I’ve got a whole set of blades for different purposes. So you better shut up for real, unless you want to get familiar with those tools.”
Athena glanced at the speedometer. It showed almost 100 miles per hour, and the driver maintained it. Her heart sped up too. It was time…
“Your tools?” She leaned forward and whispered, “I’d rather introduce you to mine.”
Man number one turned around, and his narrow eyes became round.
“But unfortunately, you won’t have a chance to appreciate my tool, what with you being chunks of meat scattered on the road.” Athena leaned back. Her fingers slid across the screen of the Switch and she vanished, and so did the SUV, propelling the kidnappers forward by inertia. They flew a few feet and thudded onto the road, rolling head over heels.
The driver was luckier. By some miracle, he managed to tuck his head down and was thrown off the road. But his partner was crushed under the wheels of a highway truck. His body spun, his bones crushed, his skull smashed and his guts turned inside out. Then his body was dragged a few more feet and eventually stopped, a wet stain on the road. The neck crooked, a jelly-like substance where his face had been, one arm almost torn off, the shredded torso bleeding and soaking his dark cloak with blood.
The SUV materialized on the road out of nowhere.
Athena clutched the wheel. It was still warm from its previous driver’s hands. She pulled over. Athena sat back, and a smile appeared on her pale and tired face.
* * *
“So, it’s time to wrap things up.” Zet looked at Max, who was sitting on the floor at Martin’s gunpoint. “Say, I’m really curious. How did you manage to invent this thing? And was it actually you?” Zet brought his wrist with the bracelet to Max’s face. “And why do you need it? To peek on girls? To eavesdrop on someone’s secrets? Or maybe to blackmail someone? Tell me! Why do you need it?”
Max looked down and didn’t answer.
“Or maybe you’re just such a chivalrous superman, who saves the good and punishes the bad?” Zet scoffed. He fetched the Eraser from his cloak, crouched, and aimed it at Max. “I see you aren’t inclined to have a dialogue… Doesn’t matter. In fact, whether you’re a filthy blackmailer or noble superman, you see, the next second you’ll just vanish.” Zet got up, walked up to Eddie, and put a hand on his shoulder. “But your assistant and I will figure it out. We already know where you live, where you keep your records, studies, whatever you scientists have. What’s the point of refusing to help me? I will figure it out anyway.”
Something screeched downstairs, and Zet grew quiet and listened. He looked at Martin with a question in his eyes, then at Sam, then at Eddie and Linda. Seeing their confusion, he tensed up and stepped toward the window, motioning to Martin to cover the doorway.
“Eddie, are you here?” Max heard a voice; this time it came from above.
Max recognized the voice—it had become so dear to him lately. It was Osiris.
“Where is the device? What should I take?” The voice came from above again, from the second floor, but loud enough to hear.
Everyone got silent. Eddie’s eyes grew so round that they almost popped out. He cautiously looked at Zet, then at Max and Linda.
“Eddie, where are you? We’re here,” the voice insisted.
“What the hell? Who is that?” Zet grumbled and grabbed Eddie by the neck.
“I-I-I don’t know. I-I didn’t call anyone! I’ve never been here before!”
“Go check it out!” Zet ordered.
Martin nodded and left the room with his gun ready.
Osiris was on the staircase of the second floor. His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. He had just been in the basement where he’d turned off the power to the second floor.
Martin moved up the stairs cautiously. He tried to turn on the light and didn’t get why it wasn’t working, so he used his cell phone to light his way, still holding the gun in his right hand.
He felt a few sudden punches in the back and the neck. There was no pain though. He tried to look back, but his eyes dimmed and the stairs seemed to have run from under his feet.
He dropped his phone, and its light was the last thing that Martin saw before he snuffed out.
Osiris caught the limp body and dragged it into the corner. The martial arts techniques, learned millennia ago, had helped him then and didn’t fail him now.
The whole minute of silence got Zet really tense.
“Eddie, are you here or not?” the voice came from upstairs again.
“What is this damn circus?” Zet exploded.
“I don’t know! I really don’t!” squealed Eddie. Panic paralyzed him, and the shirt by which Zet lifted him started to strangle him. “Let me go! Please! I don’t know who this is! I really don’t!” Eddie sputtered.
“Tell the
m you’re busy, and they can come later,” Zet squeezed out and released Eddie’s shirt.
Eddie jumped back, holding his neck and coughing.
“Say it! Now!” Zet ordered.
“I’m busy! Come later!” yelled Eddie through the cough.
“I don’t get it!” The voice insisted. “What about the gadget? And the money?”
It ceased to make any sense.
“Take them, whoever it is! I’m sick of this damn clown show!” Zet ordered Sam, trying to keep calm. “And you.” He looked at the third guard. “You stay here!”
CHAPTER 22
Angels Have Two Faces
Despite being well trained and having a gun in his hand, Sam felt uneasy. And the fact that Martin had just vanished didn’t make things any better.
There were dead bodies all over the hall on the first floor. Sam had all his attention upstairs and tried to make out at least something in the dark. He tried to turn on the lights, but nothing happened.
Something was really wrong, and he decided to go to the basement and check the fuse box. He headed downstairs when he felt punches in his neck and back, turned around, and saw the outline of a man. Suddenly, his knees gave way, and the man reached out and pushed him lightly.
Fainting, Sam heard a sound. In the last moments of his life, he realized that this was the sound of his own bones breaking. An instant later it ended, and there was just silence.
Osiris raised his hand to activate the Switch when he felt someone’s presence behind him.
It took a fraction of a second. A popping sound, a burning pain in the back. Falling, Osiris turned around and saw the shooter. Zet stood in front of him with a gun. His face was contorted with indignation and dismay as he recognized his brother Osiris.
Osiris’s lips stretched in a snide smile. He also recognized Zet. He would, no matter the body. He would always know that look.
With a groan, he thudded to the floor. Zet stood above him, afraid to move. Shortly he recovered from the shock, crouched, and started frisking his brother, taking his Switch.
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