Dissension

by Adrienne Monson

  Swearing under her breath, she hurried to pull it out. She cursed again as it tore through muscle and skin on its way out. The rod had a dozen small spikes sticking out of the head that must have popped out once in contact with its target.

  Leisha was already starting to feel the effects of whatever drug had been in the bullet. Instead of the burning, her body now felt numb. She had to get away before whoever was out there came to get her.

  She forced herself to roll over and get onto her hands and knees. As soon as her head was up, her vision swam. She took a deep breath and continued to force herself up on her feet. Once she was finally standing, someone grabbed her arm.

  She jerked away and heard a baritone voice in her ear. “Oh, honey, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Her brain was slowing to a crawl and she couldn’t figure out what was going on. Who was the man holding her arm? Was she pretending to date him to drink his blood? No, that wasn’t right.

  She was only vaguely aware of herself moving, propelled by the man behind her. She blinked and squinted through her blurred, murky vision. How did she get into a car? Who was driving and why was she in the backseat? What was that man in the backseat with her doing? Why couldn’t she move her arms? Suddenly, the fuzziness and the confusion were gone and a vast darkness loomed before her to swallow her whole . . .

  Samantha’s heart was pounding so hard, she thought she might go into convulsions.

  She was in her father’s trunk for over an hour while he drove around. She had been monitoring his daily routine for the past few days, and decided that tonight was the night for action. The image of that tortured woman had been haunting her to the point where she could no longer sleep.

  Mason had followed his usual routine of coming home to have dinner with his daughter before driving back to work for a few more hours. Since the air between them was still intensely awkward, it was easy for Samantha to quickly retreat into her bedroom after dinner. Once there, she’d rapidly changed into darker clothing and snuck her way into her father’s trunk in the garage before he left for work again. She couldn’t figure out what direction the car was heading, but somehow, she felt deep within herself that she’d reached the right destination.

  Her father got out of the car and was walking away. It didn’t sound like he had parked in a garage—she heard no echoes. That meant she would be more in the open than she’d hoped.

  She wished her vision had at least shown her the layout of this place, but she would just have to follow her instincts. She pushed the trunk release button from the inside; it opened with a pop. She cringed at the sound.

  She eased open the lid just barely enough for her to peek out. The sun was at the horizon in its setting, leaving long shadows to cover a regular looking parking lot. There was a lot of gravel on the pavement; she would have to be careful when she climbed out. It would be such a waste to go through all this trouble just to slip and announce her unauthorized presence to everyone.

  The parking lot was lined with cars. Trees grew sporadically on islands separating the parking spaces. Samantha strained her ears for suspicious sound, but heard nothing. She took a deep, calming breath that did nothing for her racing heart, and opened the lid all the way so she could jump out quickly. She landed lightly on her feet and squatted as she eased the trunk shut.

  Crawling to the side of the car for better cover, Samantha planned her next move. She could see the building now. It looked like a regular, plain warehouse, a rectangular building with double steel doors at the front entrance. On the side was a large set of vertical sliding doors—the loading dock. She didn’t want to imagine the kinds of things trucks brought to this place.

  There weren’t any surveillance cameras that she could see. She wasn’t sure if she was going to come out of this alive, but she figured it would still be best to remain inconspicuous. While her actions tonight might save some woman’s life, it would kill any chances of a relationship between her and her father.

  Samantha pushed the thought away. It wasn’t like she was going to have much of a relationship with her father anyway, knowing that he was torturing people as part of his work. She looked around again before running in a crouch to the next row of cars, bringing her a little closer to the building. As she studied the building, she noticed a keypad next to the double steel doors in the front. She would have to sneak through their security system. Although she was far from qualified to accomplish the task, Samantha wouldn’t allow herself to feel discouraged.

  Approaching the large sliding doors on the side, she studied them for several minutes, trying to see if there was any way to break the code. With the doors shut and padlocked on the bottom, Samantha couldn’t think of a way to get in at all.

  She shouldn’t have come. She didn’t know what she was doing anyway; she wasn’t some 007 agent or anything. Who was she kidding? Samantha turned to go, her grief for the woman in her vision overwhelming. She ached with regret.

  As she was turning, she noticed a group of people approaching. There were five men and three women, all dressed in business suits, talking. From what Samantha could hear of their conversation, they were returning from dinner, and had a long night ahead of them. They didn’t pay attention to their surroundings much, and a few of them even appeared a little tipsy.

  Samantha was wearing black slacks and a dark blue shirt. Her shirt—scoop neck and cap sleeves—wasn’t exactly professional. Her shoes were black sneakers and definitely didn’t look anything near the business attire the other women were wearing. Still, she had already thought of what she would tell them. If it didn’t work, she could try and play it off as some juvenile prank.

  They were getting closer and would be passing her in a matter of seconds. She didn’t have time to think anymore. Samantha drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and stood up to her full height of five-foot-nine, trying to give the impression that she knew exactly where she was going. She approached the man who was leading the group.

  He was quite handsome, with a thick head of brown hair and a lovely tan that complemented his blue eyes. “So then, she said she was just dating me for my money!” He paused from punching in the code to laugh heartily. The rest of the group laughed with him.

  The woman next to him clutched her stomach from laughing too hard, then straightened and pulled her auburn hair from her eyes. “I guess she found out that a government salary is not what it looks like.”

  The man telling the story grunted in agreement as he placed his face in a small alcove where his retinas were scanned. “It was my car that made her think I was rich. When I told her I bought it with my parents’ inheritance, she asked if there was anything left from that.”

  Everyone chuckled and Samantha finally reached them.

  “Oh, thank God!” She managed to make her voice a bit older by deepening it. The brunette man looked over at Samantha and squinted at her as if his vision was blurry. “I went to dinner and left all my stuff inside.” The group was already starting to appear skeptical, but no one looked intimidating. “Mr. Campbell told me I had to finish this mundane project by midnight and I still have so much to work on before it’s anywhere close to completion.” She shook her head and gave a tentative smile. “Not good for my second day on the job, is it?”

  A woman with black curls gave her a sympathetic smile. “No harm done.” She checked her watch. “You can get in now and have a few hours to work on that project.” She met Samantha’s eyes. “Mason Campbell was my first boss when I started and I had daily fantasies of tearing his arrogant head off to keep me sane.”

  Samantha smiled gratefully to the woman and again the brunette who held the door open for her.

  The first thing she noticed was the strong stench of ammonia. The second was the bland and empty hallway gaping before her. A moment of paralyzing foreboding crept up her throat, but she swallowed it down and walked forward.

  She barely contained a scream when one of the men, wearing a bright pink tie, grabbed her arm to sto
p her. “I thought you were on Campbell’s team.” His tone was irritated.

  “I am,” she said hoarsely.

  “Then why are you headed there?” He pointed down a corridor to their left. “His work station is down there.”

  “Right,” she quickly agreed. “I just needed to ask, uh, Karen a question first.”

  “Oh.” He seemed to accept that and let go of her arm before walking straight ahead with the rest of the group, leaving her alone in the echoing hall.

  Samantha exhaled slowly. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath that whole time, and was feeling lightheaded. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she felt better. Having a better idea of the general direction she needed to go, she went to the left.

  The place was lit by cheap fluorescents, the floor a generic tile, the taupe walls completely bare. The air conditioner was on full blast, and her arms were covered in goose bumps. She could see security cameras on the ceiling and averted her face every time she passed one, but knew she probably wasn’t going to get far in this labyrinth.

  Leisha woke feeling groggy. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. Moaning, she tried to put her hand to her head, but her hand wouldn’t move. She opened her eyes to see that she was lying in a chair with her arms and legs clamped to it. They weren’t just any clamps; these were steel clamps about four-inches thick. Even so, if she applied enough pressure at the right angle, she could get free.

  She looked around to see what her full situation was but couldn’t see anything. There was a lamp just above her head that was blindingly bright, making it impossible to see anything outside of the light. She tried to break through the clamps, pulling with all of her strength. But they wouldn’t budge.

  “You won’t get them off,” said an ominous voice to her right. “They’re being held by an electromagnetic charge that will hold even the strongest of your kind.” The voice was smug. Probably from having captured her so easily.

  Leisha laid her head back and closed her eyes, trying not to give away any feelings of panic or anger. She had to think. There had to be some way to manipulate her way out of this, but first she needed to know who these people were and what exactly it was that they wanted from her. He had said “you people,” assuming that he meant vampires. So, he knew about her physical abilities, but maybe if she concentrated hard enough, she could read his mind.

  It was hard to read the minds of people with strong wills, but maybe there was someone in the room with them who wasn’t strong-willed. It would be difficult to probe the minds of people she couldn’t see, although not completely impossible. Leisha concentrated on her breathing, taking deep and even breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. Once she was in a calm and relaxed state of mind, she began reaching out mentally to scan her vicinity.

  There were a total of eight men around her. No women. She could tell these men had had some military training by the way their minds held. They were strong and determined, their minds somewhat blank. Military people knew how to keep their thoughts impassive; they were trained to do so.

  That wasn’t good, of course, because Leisha had no way of knowing what was going on if they weren’t thinking about it. Knowing that they were some kind of military did nothing to help her feel better. These men were trained for all kinds of situations and would be ready to spring at any sign of struggle. Plus, they simply would not listen to anything she told them, killing any chances of her trying to talk her way out of this—whatever “this” was.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the same man who had spoken before. “Now that you are fully conscious, we can finally begin.” His voice sounded somewhat eager.

  “Begin what, exactly?” Leisha asked, consciously maintaining a cool composure.

  The man chuckled. “We want to know more about your kind,” he said conversationally. “We have already established how strong you are and what most of your capabilities are. Now we want to see exactly how much of a pain threshold you have.”

  With no other warning, a hand holding a Taser device came into view and pressed it to her neck. Leisha felt an electric jolt throughout her entire body. It filled her from her fingertips to her head to her toes. The first time was too much of a shock for her to react in any way. When the Taser was pulled away, she was left gasping. Then it came again, even stronger, and this time it went for so long that she couldn’t hold back the blood-curdling scream.

  Her vision was starting to go, the bright light looking dimmer. “Interesting,” she heard the man say through a haze of dizziness and nausea. “Let’s try it at a higher voltage and see if she can take some more.”

  Leisha’s scream now penetrated every room and hallway in the building.

  Samantha saw a women’s restroom and ducked inside so she could hide away to think for a minute. It was a small bathroom, with just one sink and three stalls. She turned on the tap and splashed cold water on her face.

  As she patted her skin dry with a paper towel, she noticed another door marked “Lounge” on the other end of the room. Uncertain of what to expect, she cracked it open and peeked through. There was a rocking chair and a couch with a long counter on the other side. She immediately recognized it as a mother’s lounge, where women could go pump milk while they were at work. The only reason she knew that was because she used to take naps in the mother’s lounge at her mom’s office.

  She wasn’t sure if that should be a comfort to her—to know that mothers work at this creepy facility. Of course, her father was a father. Before today, she simply couldn’t imagine him running a place like this.

  There was a coat rack in the mother’s lounge as well, and Samantha couldn’t believe her good fortune when she saw a white lab coat visible from under a windbreaker. This would help her to be less conspicuous.

  After donning the somewhat large lab jacket, she felt more confident and forced herself to leave the false safety of the bathroom to look for the woman. She was certain that the rooms around her were a lot smaller than what she had seen, so she decided to keep walking.

  At one point, she thought she heard the high whine of an electric saw of some kind from behind the door to her right. She froze when the man’s screaming reached her ears. It was a scream of painful agony. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry. What is this place? She felt like she was in some kind of haunted horror house. Even though the fluorescent lights kept the place well illuminated—and there were no frightful images on the walls—there was a sense of evil lurking throughout the building. Everything seemed completely surreal.

  She must be naïve to think she could storm in here and save some poor woman from being tortured. The same people who were holding her captive would find Samantha and do the same to her. She needed to get out of there as fast as possible.

  Samantha was just starting to turn around and run when the door on the right a few feet ahead of her opened. She froze momentarily, a deer caught in the headlights. There was a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties wearing a business skirt to her knees, a button-up white blouse that was mostly covered by a white lab coat. She was holding a clipboard, looking very distinguished.

  The woman did not see Samantha when she opened the door; she was busy giving instructions to someone inside. Samantha would not be able to get around the corner before the doctor woman saw her, so she acted by instinct. She stood as tall as she could, trying to embody the essence of confidence, and ready to walk right past the door as if she had every right to be there.

  Just as Samantha took that first step forward, she heard a growl coming from the room. The woman in the doorway had gone pale, but was trying to control the situation.

  “Just stay calm, Beth. He won’t hurt you. Isn’t that right, Thomas? You remember Beth, don’t you?”

  There was another ferocious growl, and then an ear-shattering scream that made Samantha want to shriek in fear herself. The woman in the doorway gasped in horror and moved to close the door. She almost had it latched when so
mething began to pull it back open.

  Samantha ran to the door and held its handle next to the woman’s desperate grip. Together, they used all their strength to pull the door closed. When the latch snapped shut, the woman pressed her badge into a scanner on the wall, and Samantha heard more than one dead bolt screech into place. The woman slid to the floor. She was pale and shaking while something pounded the door with tremendous force from the other side.

  Samantha wasn’t sure what to do. She certainly didn’t want this woman to be asking her any questions about why she was there, but on the other hand, she felt for her. The woman looked like she might be in shock.

  “Are . . . you all right?” Samantha asked.

  The woman looked at Samantha with slightly dilated pupils and cleared her throat three times before she was able to respond. “I’m fine.” Her voice was a little shaky, but she managed to sound composed. She struggled to stand, and when she did, she looked as though she had gotten herself completely under control.

  “We all go into this job with the knowledge that we make many personal sacrifices, don’t we?” She gave Samantha a rueful smile, which Samantha hesitantly returned.

  The woman squared her shoulders, but was too embarrassed of her momentary breakdown to look directly at Samantha. “Thank you for your help, but if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to report this incident.” She walked away without waiting for Samantha’s response.

  Samantha wondered exactly what had happened in that room and was sick with the thought that there might be a girl named Beth dying just a few feet away from her. What was foremost on her mind, however, was the comment the woman had made about personal sacrifices. Is that what her father had done for the sake of his career? Sacrificed his wife and daughter? She wondered if that was why he had never been good about keeping in contact with her. Maybe he didn’t want anyone getting too close to him because of the “strange duties” the government required of him.