by Jade Powers
Hannah thought that given her life expectancy, every semester was vital if she wanted to graduate before she died. Then again, she had considered dropping out anyway. Circumstances might just have resolved her own personal dilemma.
Joan stopped in front of a steel door. She handed Hannah a key on a bland key ring. “It’s a small room, but you won’t have to share. Are you hungry? Do you want to shower and change? I can show you the cafeteria and library now if you want, or it can wait.”
Hannah was feeling overwhelmed and off-balance. She wanted more than anything to be left alone for a few hours, but it occurred to her that she would probably be too self-conscious to bother Joan later, so she said, “Let’s do the full tour now. I’ll grab a book at the library while we’re going through if you don’t mind.”
At the cafeteria, Hannah admitted that she was starving, so Hannah grabbed a burger, fries, and coke while Joan chose a healthier chicken wrap and water. The cafeteria reminded Hannah of a small restaurant. One wall was lined with four-seater faux leather booths, maroon in color. It was smaller than the University cafeteria. Hannah estimated that maybe fifty people could comfortably fit in the room at one time.
The food was great. Hannah and Joan ate and exchanged small-talk. Hannah told Joan about the classes she was taking, while Joan talked about her boyfriend and how they met during a mission in Seattle.
Joan was so bubbly and friendly that Hannah couldn’t help liking her. They would have been friends had they met during one of Hannah’s classes. Hannah wasn’t sure how to bring up Drake, but finally she said, “So what’s Drake’s deal?”
With a laugh, Joan said, “So he gave you the freeze-out? Don’t mind Drake. He’s had a lot of stuff going on lately. His fiancée wanted a certain financial status, but also wanted Drake out of the business. Four years back she ended up ditching him for some banker’s brat. Then he dated Lauren and the fall-out was brutal. Drake’s been a cold bastard since.”
Hannah blushed. The freeze-out? Her experience of Drake had been anything but. She said, “No, it wasn’t like that. He was fine. I was just wondering what he was like, you know, during every-day situations. During the rescue, he was so...”
“Intense?” Joan asked, and her knowing smile gave Hannah a twinge of jealousy. The lift of her eyebrow, along with that perfect face and golden hair only added to Hannah’s discomfort.
“Yeah, that’s a good word for it,” Hannah said, “Somehow the words slipped out before Hannah could consider them, and Hannah asked, “Did you and Drake ever make love?”
With an explosive laugh, Joan said, “Drake? He is sooo not my type. When he’s not on mission, his nose is stuck in a book. He has access to tons of parties and celebrity get-togethers, but if there’s not a business reason to be there, he avoids them like the plague.”
Hannah jumped to his defense, “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
Joan patted Hannah’s hand, “Honey, I saw the way you looked at him. If you’re interested, go for it. He hasn’t been involved with anyone `in at least two years.”
Just at that moment, an alarm rang throughout the building. A voice over the intercom said, “System breach. All hands follow emergency lockdown procedures.”
“Holy shit,” Joan said. She put her hand over her mouth, “Sorry. Come on. I need to get you to the safe room.”
“What’s going on?” Hannah watched while the two men eating in the booths near the door dropped everything and ran out.
“We’re under attack,” Joan said. She stood up. “Leave everything here. We need to hurry.”
Joan wore heels as part of her office job, but she ran faster in heels than Hannah could run in sneakers. Out of breath as they reached the stairs, Hannah said, “Wait.”
“This is life or death. Come on,” Joan double-timed it down the stairs, leaving Hannah to wonder if this was the compound of superheroes or something.
Hannah hated running down stairs. She felt a sense of vertigo and kept expecting to fall. Even grabbing the rail, she didn’t feel secure. At the bottom of the stairs, Joan looked up, “We’re almost there. Hurry!”
Her feet didn’t want to move any faster, but somehow Hannah made it to the bottom of the stairs. Joan led the way down another corridor to a door that looked like a bank vault. It was steel. Sliding the door open, Joan said, “We’ll hide here.”
The door slid closed. Joan quickly typed into the keypad at the side, and a second set of metal doors closed them in.
Other than the metallic doors, Hannah loved the room. There was a carpet in the center with comfortable chairs and a sofa. The walls were lined with books. Hannah asked, “Is this the library?”
Joan mumbled, “Yes.” But she wasn’t really focused on Hannah. Joan stepped briskly to a screen that hung on the wall to the right of the door. She hit a few buttons and turned it on.
Men in full body armor swarmed the doorways. Behind the men Hannah could see...she gasped, “Is that a tank? A tank?”
Joan shut off the screen, “Yeah. You saw what happened in Waco? We need to get out of here fast.”
At the corner of the library, she knelt and reached her hand behind the books. The entire floor shifted with a mechanical screech that made Hannah’s ears ring. The bookshelf moved a foot to the left.
Hannah covered her ears with her hands until the screeching stopped. Joan was fidgeting near the hole until the bookshelf came to a complete stop. Individual books wobbled back and forth, but not a single one fell. Joan swung down into the hole created by the shifting metal. She called to Hannah, “This is our best chance. Let’s go.”
They climbed down a ladder into a hallway that looked like a vault, all metal and the walls so close that they would have to walk single file. Joan rapidly hit buttons on the keypad next to the ladder and the mechanical screech started the door in the opposite direction.
The air was thick in that little hallway, and Hannah felt as if the walls would collapse. She said, “What is going on? Why are we being attacked? Who are you people?”
Joan didn’t answer. She grabbed Hannah’s arm and dragged her down the hall. There were yellow lights in plastic covers every ten feet toward the bottom of the walls. Hannah ran beside Joan, certain that even if she stopped, Joan would keep running.
Hannah’s heart beat faster when Joan removed a panel slightly larger than a Frisbee and went on her hands and knees. She snaked her way into what Hannah presumed to be a vent. Hannah swallowed hard and considered staying just where she was.
“Joan, I can’t go in there. It’s too tight. I’m not that small.”
Joan’s reply echoed in the metal tomb, “If you stay, they will find you. It’s only a matter of time.”
As if to prove Joan’s prediction, something exploded in the distance, and Hannah heard the chut-chut-chut of rapid gunfire. Hannah knelt by the vent. Joan’s feet were already almost out of sight.
She belly crawled into the vent. The metal roof was so close, she couldn’t even crawl on her hands and knees. The vent smelled like dust and Joan’s feet. There was a t-shaped end. Joan had already pulled herself around the corner.
Hannah called out, “Joan, I can’t go that fast!”
Joan stopped. At least, Hannah thought that was what happened because she could no longer hear Joan’s slide, thump, slide, thump, motion. Joan called back, “I have to get to the perimeter and call for help. I’ll come back for you.”
This felt just like P.E. when they had to run laps and all the other kids shot off like rockets, leaving Hannah and her buddy, Molly, in the back. Only this time, her life depended on speed. Hannah felt every bit of her extra weight as she hauled it forward. Belly crawling is hard for people in shape. For Hannah, it was nearly impossible.
She thought of Drake, of their awkward parting and she wanted to scream obscenities at him and Joan and the whole world. Instead she pulled herself forward, sometimes trying to use her feet as leverage against the side of the wall, sometimes just her arms. She heard shouts
above her, then behind her.
Tears formed in her eyes when she heard a distinct voice say, “Got something here, Sir. Heat signature in the vents. Do I shoot?”
Hannah screamed, “I’m here. Don’t shoot me. Please.”
She wanted to live. It scared the hell out of her that she was in this position to begin with. She felt like a coward pushing back, going back toward the men who had captured the secret base. Hannah didn’t have any idea who these people were as opposed to who Drake and Joan were. They could be international spies for all she knew.
The man who asked if he should shoot her said, “Come out and we won’t shoot.”
Blinking back tears Hannah said, “I’m trying. I don’t know where you are. I’m coming back through the vent.”
Someone knocked on the wall and said, “Stop there.”
Hannah froze, wondering what would happen next. She heard noises just ahead and a panel of metal fell to the floor with a clang, sending so much light into the vent that she had to squint.
“Hello?” Hannah called out. She didn’t want to be killed by mistake.
“Come out slowly. Are you armed?”
“I’m not armed. I’m a college student,” Hannah said, and slid her way to the opening. It took her last bit of strength to pull herself out of the hole. Two pairs of hands helped, which really meant she was dragged out, her shoulders and knees scraped and cut by the metal sides.
Everything hurt. Even though her knees and arms were bleeding where she lost skin on the metal, Hannah felt relief to be out of that vent.
Her relief wouldn’t last long.
Hannah watched the rest of the carnage unfold while she was handcuffed in the back of a Stryker right next to the guy giving the orders. He was cold, that one. He was in his fifties and balding on top, but the gravel in his voice and the precision with which he carried out the attack on Drake’s base was a sight to behold.
She didn’t know what this was, paramilitary, military, or something else. But it didn’t take long for her to figure out that they were cleaning house. The troops dressed in black dragged a dozen bodies out, dropping them in a pile.
After a particularly gruesome moment when the headless body of a girl in a blue blouse and khaki’s stained red was carried by the camera, Hannah turned her head and closed her eyes. It was too late. She couldn’t unsee that image.
In a quiet voice Hannah said, “Why am I still alive? I don’t understand.”
The commander didn’t look at her, didn’t answer. Strange that even though she’d gotten the news that she was dying, the thought of death at the hands of these men terrified and enraged her. This was America, the land of the free. Hannah watched this man stare at the screen while the handcuffs cut into her wrists, and all of those platitudes and watch-words and rah-rah sessions from elementary school fell away. How were these people not on the news?
People are people. It came as an epiphany even if it shouldn’t have, even if she should have never been so jaded about the rest of the world and so optimistic about her own corner. And now, she was expendable. That’s why he didn’t answer her question. She didn’t fit, not with these bodies. They would probably take her to a remote wilderness and dump her body. Her parents might wonder. Would they grieve? Not even Hannah could answer that question.
Damn it. She wanted to live. The tension in this guy as the bodies were being dragged out gave Hannah a decent idea about where her fate would end up. Maybe she could stop this slaughter. Hannah said, “It’s not there.”
“What?” He swiveled, his whole body turned toward her, a rugged face with cold, brutal eyes trained on her.
“Aren’t you here for that new technology they stole from Miami?” Hannah asked, and wondered if it was a betrayal of Drake to say that much. She wouldn’t ever do something to purposefully hurt him. Somehow his touch had brought her peace, if only for a few hours.
“I thought you were one of the guests. How do you know about it?” His voice was clipped and the muscles in his biceps flexed as if he were thinking about hitting her. He spoke to her with dismissal, as if she were completely unimportant.
His attention was uncomfortable. Hannah said, “Somebody planted the device they were looking for on my backpack. I was kidnapped. These people rescued me, and now you’re attacking them. I don’t know what’s going on other than that, but I do know that it all relates to what they planted on me.”
Even in his curiosity, he didn’t see her as a person. She could see the dismissal in his eyes as they flickered across her face and down her body as if assessing her. “Do you know what it does?”
Somehow Hannah knew that the right answer was vital to her current state of health. She shrugged, “It doesn’t look like much. I would have thought it was one of those stress balls if I’d seen it on someone’s desk. What does it do?”
Again, he didn’t answer. Just turned his head to the screen. Hannah worried about Joan. Did she make it out? Did she call for help?
The man she was sharing the Stryker with grinned as another body was dragged out of the compound. Hannah frowned.The body of the corpse was dressed in the black uniform of the attackers. The lunatic was smiling at his own losses. An uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of Hannah’s stomach. She was sharing a rather small space with a psychopath.
“Not here, Boss,” said a voice over the radio.
“Let’s get this place cleaned up. Get the bodies into the shed and fire it up,” said the psychopath who still didn’t have a name.
Hannah turned her head and had to swallow bile. A soldier knocked on the door. Hannah wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it was a soldier, but she wasn’t sure who would be able to kill and drag bodies out without flinching, maybe a specialized police force. Hannah realized that if she actually figured out who had attacked the compound, she would probably be murdered then and there.
Another captive, a guy in white boxers with a broken nose and black eye was dragged into the vehicle to join Hannah. He didn’t look like the quintessential mercenary soldier. His hair was mussed and his upper body was on the pudgy side. No weights and martial arts for this guy. With four people in that tiny space, things were starting to feel crowded.
Hannah almost said something to the guy with the broken nose. A drop of blood dripped on the floor, and Hannah watched as the muscles in the psychopath’s neck tightened. She could almost hear Drake’s warning in her mind, There are a lot of government agencies who want this technology. A few corporations, too. They’ll want to know what you know. They probably already set up listening devices in your room at school in case you return. Sorry. It’s what they do. You’ll be safe with us. Alone having seen that sphere, you won’t last a day.
Funny. She hadn’t lasted a day, anyway. If they would spy on her, they wouldn’t hesitate to listen to anything she and this beat-up guy said to one another. Even Hey, I’m Hannah seemed dangerous.
“We’ve got a few hold-outs in the armory. We can blast them, but you wanted the op over by o-eleven-hundred. Was it really only eleven o’clock? Somehow Hannah thought she had been sitting there longer. The skin on her hands chafed.
“Call ‘em in. How many drones do we have?”
“Thirteen.”
“A good number. Let’s finish up,” said the commander.
She wondered what they were talking about when they said, “drone”.
The building with the bodies was set on fire with an accelerant that made the whole thing go up with a whoosh and sudden flames. They also started fires in a few of the other buildings, maybe to make it look good. Hannah had no idea how to quantify these people or what she was seeing.
Hannah was man-handled and buckled into a seat, as was the other guy that had been taken. A few soldiers took seats in the vehicle, making her feel like she was in an overly full city bus, except they were facing each other.
It shocked Hannah that these military vehicles could make an attack and then drive along the freeway as if nothing had happened.
Her whole sense of justice and law and fair-play lay in tatters. She sputtered, “How is this possible? This is America. You can’t just kill people and set buildings on fire.”
One of the soldiers laughed and patted her knee. She tried to move it away, but that just put her closer to the other soldier. He said, “Sweetheart, we just did.”
They rode for hours in a convoy of army vehicles. Didn’t anyone call for help? Maybe not. Maybe some things were better left off the grid. Drake didn’t exactly call the police to recover the statue and the weird mind-control device.
They were watching monitors of the outside terrain. The freeways gave way to a wide highway in the middle of nowhere. Her only clue was that the terrain was hilly and full of pine trees. They turned onto a service road, opening the gate to one of those gated facilities that dotted the countryside, looking if not harmless, at least contained.
Hannah watched the soldier’s faces. None of them seemed at all perturbed by what they had just done. One of them had a smear of blood on his arm, while another’s knuckles were skinned. Hannah could just imagine him bragging about ‘the other guy’.
Kidnapped. Almost twice in one day. That had to be a world record.
Night fell. The caravan switched drivers and kept going. Hannah’s arms were numb. After the past few nights she was exhausted. She found her head bobbing even in the midst of danger.
Sometime in the middle of the night, they stopped in front of a huge white building, one story. Razor-wire surrounded the building. The trucks drove through gates and past the wire. Hannah couldn’t see the whole area, but from the second fence, she figured this was as much a prison as the state penitentiary.
She was forced outside the vehicle and lined up with three women under a bright security light. She counted ten men. One screamed. He’d been shot in the knee and was dragged out of another vehicle. Even in the chilly air, a bead of sweat dripped down Hannah’s forehead.
Fourteen men and women taken from their homes and presumably their families. Hannah had the least to lose. If she was going to die anyway, she could at least make some noise. Not now, though. There were too many armed guards, a few with rifles. She didn’t know a lot about weapons, but she knew now was not the time. It was one thing to risk her own life. The other men and woman might be shot if Hannah caused trouble.
