Meet Abby Banks VOLUMES: 1-3

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Okay,” she repeated, sitting down next to me on the bed and pulling the platter onto her knees. “I bet you’re hungry anyway.”

  A few minutes later, I slid the platter away even though it was still covered in all sorts of half-eaten fried delicacies. “I’m stuffed,” I said.

  “It’s about time,” my mother said with a smirk. “I thought I was watching some sort of ravenous sea-creature with a bottomless stomach.”

  Before I could respond, she stood, lifting the platter up and delicately balancing it over her head with one hand. “Ready to hit the pool?” she asked. “Or are you too tired?”

  “Sure,” I replied, stretching out before bounding to my feet. “But aren’t you supposed to wait twenty minutes or something?”

  “That is an old wives’ tale,” my mother said, grabbing the door and pulling it open.

  Two staccato cracks exploded through the room in quick succession, and my mother tumbled backward in a spray of crimson, the silver platter slipping from her hands and hitting the ground with a clang that spilled food everywhere.

  Everything in me went numb as I watched her hit the ground in slow motion. My ears were still ringing as she turned, throwing herself on her stomach and crawled toward me, teeth biting down on her lips. She reached one hand toward the table, lips moving, but I couldn’t hear her. My head swiveled woodenly, staring at the table uncomprehending. The gun was there, huge and ominous. Was that what my mom was reaching for?

  I reached out, grabbing the weapon and as I turned back to hand it to her, Donovan stepped into the room. He had a huge black eye and his blond hair was done in a ponytail so it fell behind his shoulders like a chord of over-sized rope. He pointed his gun at me, lips twisting into a grin.

  “Drop it,” he said, moving past my mother’s fallen form, with careful steps around the ever-expanding pool of crimson that was spreading out around her.

  “Mommy?” I said, taking a step toward her. Everything suddenly felt cold and empty, like a huge black hole had opened up in the place where my heart should have been. It sort of sucked everything away, leaving me emotionless and dazed.

  I took another step and Donovan’s hand lashed out. I turned toward him unable to comprehend what was going on a moment before the butt of his gun hit me in the side of the head. I fell, the world going all topsy-turvy as I struck the ground. My mother’s face stared at me as the world went black, lips opening and closing like she was trying to talk as the light faded from her eyes.

  14

  I woke up in the same mauve room as before which was a little odd because that room was owned by my bio-mom, and Donovan had been the last person I remembered seeing when…

  “Mom!” I screamed, swinging my head around to look for her. “Are you alright?”

  My eyes fell upon the face of Roberto as he sat in a forest green, metal folding chair. He looked up from the book he was reading and stared at me with huge brown eyes. Very slowly he stood, pulling a crimson bookmark from the end of the book and sticking it in his spot before closing the cover and placing it on the chair.

  “Where’s my mom!” I screamed, trying to throw off my blankets and leap from the bed. Only… only I couldn’t move. Not even a single inch. I glared at Roberto, who stared at me, face locked into an emotionless, slack-jawed mask that made it impossible to read his thoughts as he stepped up to me.

  He placed one hand on the hem of my blanket, and without saying a word, pulled it back very slowly. I glanced down and saw, much to my horror, that I was bound to the bed by thick brown leather straps that reminded me of the belts you see in movies about crazy people. I shut my eyes and concentrated on not screaming.

  Maybe I’d just had a nervous breakdown and imagined the whole thing. I was just in a mental hospital because I was cracked, right? I’d forgotten to take my medication or something and hallucinated the whole thing. Any second, my mom was going to come in with a whole host of doctors and declare I was fine and should be set free.

  “I’m not crazy,” I said, opening my eyes and staring at Roberto who was watching me carefully. “You can let me go home now. I don’t need any more treatment.” I began nodding. Still he stared at me, and as he did so, the pit in my stomach grew two sizes as dread ballooned inside it.

  I swallowed, and would have waved my hands at him if I could have. “Can you hear me?” I asked, raising my voice more than I’d wanted to. “I said I’m fine and you can let me out of here.”

  “Abby,” he said after a pause so long that it wrapped around the globe. “Where do you think you are?” He quirked an eyebrow at me as he rested one hand on the strap around my right wrist. I’d forgotten how huge he was because his hand was the size of a dinner plate. It made my stick-thin arm look like a twig that he could snap by sneezing.

  I tore my eyes away from his hand and looked up at him, smiling my friendliest smile. “I’m in a mental hospital because I had a break down. I had a bad dream and freaked out or something, that’s why you guys bound me up. Now if you could call my mom for me…”

  “Abby, when you ask for your mom do you mean Esmeralda Banks?” he asked, eyes squishing up into brown slits.

  “Uh… yeah? Who else would I mean?” I asked, and despite my best efforts, my heart began to pound as cold sweat ran down the back of my neck.

  A look of sadness crossed his face, and I turned away from him so my heart wouldn’t shatter as he spoke. “Abby... Esmeralda is dead. You are not in a mental hospital. You are in the base of your real mother, Gabriella de la Mancha. You are her daughter.”

  “Stop,” I whispered, and the words barely scraped out of my closed off throat and through my teeth as tears filled my eyes. “Stop,” I repeated even softer as the world went blurry.

  “Abby,” he said, placing one meaty paw on my shoulder in what I can only assume was an attempt to comfort me. “I need to take you to see your mother. You need to pull yourself together. Gabriella cannot see you like this.”

  “My mother is dead!” I snarled, swinging my head back toward him, my limbs snapping against the restraints.

  He leaned in close to me so that his face was inches from mine. His breath was warm on my face as he spoke, and the smell of tuna fish made my stomach twist into knots. “I’m serious, Abby. If you want to live, you need to pretend that Esmeralda was a horrible kidnapper and you’re thrilled to be home.” His eyes were deadly serious as he stared at me. “Thrilled,” he repeated, and my stomach sank.

  I tried to say something, anything. I tried to tell him to go to hell but a tremor I couldn’t control rippled through my body, making my teeth slam shut. My mother would tell me to agree, to do whatever it took to escape, and as I stared up at Roberto’s solemn face, I got the distinct impression he was rooting for me. Why? I have no idea.

  “Okay,” I said, choking the word out. He didn’t move, and I nodded my head at him very slowly. “I’ll behave,” I added.

  He watched me for a long time before standing, his huge hands moving to the restraints and unfastening them so deftly that I was amazed he could manage it. He stood back a moment later, offering me just enough room to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed, but not enough to let me try to run away if I was so inclined.

  I wasn’t. I was very much inclined to let him lead me to Gabriella de la Mancha. Why? Because I was going to kill her, and as I thought that thought, I felt my heart settle down and a strange ease settled over me. Who would have known that matricide would be so calming?

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, glancing up at Roberto before looking past him toward the door. “Take me to your leader,” I intoned in my best alien voice.

  He stared at me before taking an enormous step away from me and moving toward the door. He stopped in front of it and swung his head back to glance at me over one massive shoulder. “Do you want me to hold your hand?” he asked, and the question struck me a little odd.

  “Um… no,” I said, a smirk crossing my lips as I sauntered
toward him, hands on my white-scrub clad hips. “You’re way too old for me. I don’t swing that way.”

  His eyes pulsed, widening just the barest fraction before he turned back toward the door and cleared his throat. “I was just trying to be nice,” he muttered under his breath as he pressed his hand to the lock mechanism. “Why do I always try to be nice…?”

  The door whooshed open in a whir of gears and an exhalation of air before he stepped through. I followed behind him, and the first thing I noticed were the two armed guards standing on either side of my door. They were dressed in white, like Roberto and I were, but they had bulky armor that reminded me of storm troopers from a galaxy far, far away.

  The big, angry black guns in their hands didn’t move, but they still made my stomach clench a little as I passed their unmoving forms. Roberto nodded to them as we passed, and as soon as they were out of earshot, I said. “New guards? For little old me?”

  Roberto glanced at me as if trying to decide what he wanted to say. Evidently, he thought better of speaking because he looked back ahead without a word. I huffed and moved up beside him, which was no easy task in the tiny hallway. I was reasonably sure two or three people could probably walk abreast in the corridor, but Roberto took up so much space that it was hard for me to fit next to him. That, and he didn’t exactly make room for me either.

  “I’m starting to feel like you’re mad at me,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to make you mad. I mean aside from trying to watch me shower, you’ve been really nice to me.”

  He glanced down at me, but said nothing as I reached out and gripped one of his huge hands. “I’d love to hold your hand,” I added, dropping my eyes to the floor in front of me as heat spread across my cheeks.

  “I’m not mad at you,” he whispered, voice so soft that I could barely hear it. I looked up at him as he squeezed my hand, engulfing it. His eyes were brighter than they had been earlier, and it made me feel a little silly for trying to use my mostly defunct charms on him. Still, this guy, nice or not, worked for my real mother, Gabriella de la Mancha. She had nuked two cities. Nice guys don’t work for people like that.

  “Good,” I said, grinning at him like an idiot. “I’m starting to feel like maybe we could be friends.”

  “I would like that,” he said before looking away from me. “More than you’d know.”

  I thought about prying into what he meant by that, but I didn’t think it would work. Also, it would be a little less endearing than I was going for. I sighed and shook my head as we reached the door that led to the command center. Chances were that my mother was on the other side.

  “Are you ready?” Roberto asked, squeezing my hand one last time before releasing me.

  I looked up into his face, and it was filled with concern. That was a little weird, right? I bit my lip, steeling myself before nodding. “Yes,” I said, and the cold in my voice made me shiver a little. “I’m ready to see my mother.” And kill her, I added in my head. I still wasn’t quite sure how I was going to manage it, but she was half-dead anyway. Surely it wouldn’t be hard to finish the job.

  The door opened with that same hiss that every door in the facility seemed to possess, and half a breath later, I was staring at Gabriella de la Mancha. She was sitting in her mechanized chair, head leaned back against it, as she stared up into a view screen. A huge map of the world was spread out on it with various colors pinpricking their way across it.

  Roberto pushed me into the room, just a little bit of force on my shoulder to make me move. My breath caught in my throat as I stumbled half a step into the room before forcing down my fear. Steel filled me with each successive step I took so that by the time I reached her side I was an invincible robot.

  Gabriella still hadn’t turned to look at me as I glanced from her to the huge map. “Colorful,” I said, my words cold and uncaring. “What’s it supposed to be?”

  “The pink ones are the places I’m going to bomb in the first wave. Red is where we expect the secondary fallout shelters will be. Black,” she turned to look at me as she spoke, “black will be where we unleash the viruses.”

  “Viruses?” I asked, running a hand through my hair in a show of brazen nonchalance. “Small pox?”

  “Yes, actually,” Gabriella replied, reaching out to poke my arm. Her flesh felt like paper as she pulled up my sleeve to show a bright red pinprick. “I took the liberty of having you vaccinated.”

  “Thanks,” I replied, barely resisting the urge to throw off her hand as she started to stroke my arm. “That was very kind of you.”

  “I know,” she said, looking past me toward Roberto. I didn’t see what he did but my mother nodded once before switching off the screen. Her chair swiveled toward me, and she seized my hands in hers. The movement was surprisingly quick for a lady who looked to be on her last legs. “You might think my methods are a bit…” she paused, twirling one hand in thought, searching for the words.

  Crazy, insane, diabolical? I offered in my mind.

  “Extreme,” she said after a moment. “But let me assure you, they are not. My actions will undo centuries of elitist bullshit. We say we have a meritocracy, and that’s how we justify the fact that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. But it’s a lie.” She swiveled around so that her chair was facing the screen. She pointed at it and the huge screen flickered to life, showing a thousand companies in an instant… only it was spread out like a family tree.

  “Maybe it’s merit that the son of the CEO of Mega Corp 1 is the executive vice president of Mega Corp 2.” She glanced at me to see if I was paying attention, and then satisfied, she turned back toward the screen. “But all this inter-relation can’t be coincidence. You mean to tell me that the best and brightest all belong to the same couple families?”

  She grinned, showing her teeth. “We’re all just serfs pretending that we have choices in countries where presidencies are handed down through families like the kingdoms of old. I’m just going to stop the nepotism. Give us a chance to reset. Besides, if those people are so great, they’ll rise back to the top.”

  “With you as the leader?” I asked, not able to tear my eyes from the map because… unfortunately it made her seem slightly less crazy.

  “Me?” She laughed, and it turned into a wet, choking cough. “How am I to lead the world, Abby? I’m going to die in about three days. No…” She turned, pulling the visor off her head to reveal a pair of hazel eyes that looked exactly like mine. They were rimmed with red and bloodshot with deep purple bags under them. “My daughter, you are to rule the world.”

  “What?” I asked, trying to reach out toward her as the world went all sorts of topsy-turvy.

  “It’s why we broke you out, my dear. You are to inherit everything. You are to rule over it all. When my body fails, only your biometrics will unlock the keys to my kingdom. Once I’m done kicking over the elite, you’ll be the most powerful woman in the world.” She coughed again, bloody spittle dribbling down her lips before she could dab it away with a napkin that was blotched with red-brown stains. “It’s why they keep stealing you away from me, my daughter. They want to keep you from your inheritance.”

  “My inheritance? You just said you were going to give control over the whole world to a sixteen-year-old girl. Are you crazy?” I asked, unable to look at her because if what she said was true then the government had been lying to me. Which… okay, they had been doing for my whole life, but it also meant that Stephen and Esmeralda had been lying to me too.

  “I can assure you, Abigail, I am perfectly sane,” my mother replied, her lips in a tight smile.

  “What if I don’t believe you?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Well, it’s fortunate that my plans do not fully rest in the hands of a sixteen-year-old girl. I have contingencies in place, after all,” Gabriella de la Mancha said, waving one of her hands in dismissal. “In three days’ time, you’ll know the truth for yourself. If you don’t step up and seize control, the world will fall
into chaos. Sure, I’ll kill a billion people… but you’ll kill so many more.”

  I opened my mouth to say something. What, I’m not sure, but something definitely, but just as the words were about to squeak out, Gabriella gestured at Roberto. “Why don’t you show my daughter back to her room? She has a lot to take in. Besides, there’s a certain someone there, whom I’m sure she’s dying to ask questions.”

  The world fell away at the sound of her words. Who would I want to question? Was it my mom? No… she was dead. That left only… Stephen.

  15

  The door to my room swung open to reveal Donovan sitting on my bed. His golden hair fell around his face in a wave that made him seem girly rather than attractive. He was leaning back so that his chest muscles strained his black tank top. When he saw me looking at him, he grinned and raised one hand, waving at me.

  “Yo,” he said so casually that I couldn’t believe it. Hadn’t this jackass just killed my mother, and what about Stephen? Was he dead at the bottom of the ocean?

  Before I knew what happened, I was across the room. My hand lashed out, trying to slap him across the face, but it didn’t work. Donovan’s hand shot forward, seizing me by the wrist. He held me away as a wry grin spread across his face.

  “Mon petite, are you upset?” His voice was cool and calculated. His eyes filled with amusement. “Surely, it cannot be over the Esmeralda Banks business, can it?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at me.

  Behind me, I heard the door whoosh closed, and as I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Roberto was nowhere to be found. I was all alone in this room… with Donovan.

  “Yes,” I snapped, turning back toward him in a rush, my other hand already moving.

  He sighed, free hand lashing out and smacking into my shoulder. Stars shot past my eyes as my limb fell limply to my side. He stood, jerking me forward off my feet and flinging me on the bed like a rag doll.