by Glen Frost
"A means to an end," he admitted, taking another cautious sip. "It's a useful enough skill in her...in our line of work. You never know when you'll have to bring some extra firepower to the table. But it's all about instilling some discipline. A warrior mindset."
"How's she doing?"
"The girl's a quick study. Most civilians would take a couple of months to reach the level of proficiency she's attained in less than two weeks. So yes, she can shoot. That's nice and all. More importantly, though, she's learning to think like a combat operative. Learning to analyze a situation tactically, to study it from all angles."
"And...?" Hubbard prompted.
"And I think she's a natural. Anya has a mind like a steel trap. I'm going to introduce her to some more...specialized instructors next week to start rounding out her education."
"Have you seen any problems? Any red flags?"
"Just one. She's got quite the temper."
That caused Gina to look up sharply. "Anger — controlled anger — can be an asset to a soldier," she said slowly, thinking out loud, "but in a field operative, I'd tend to see it as more of a hindrance."
"There's the key word: Control. If she can bring some self-discipline to bear, then that inner rage might stand her in good stead in certain situations. If not, then I agree that she'd be more of a liability?"
"Is she manageable?"
"No guarantees, Director. You know this works."
"Of course not. But what do your instincts tell you?"
The SEAL paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Finally he said, "My gut's telling me that we could mold her into a warrior...If she's properly motivated."
"Don't worry about that. Leave it to me."
"You're talking about her daughter?"
Hubbard locked eyes with him, her tone taking on an almost imperceptibly frostier edge. "You really don't want to go there, Commander," she cautioned him.
"You'd better play straight with her, Director," Wilson shot back. "For starters, I'd hate to think I was working for the kind of organization that would break faith with its people."
"I told you to drop it, Neil."
"I also feel bound to remind you that double-crossing somebody with Anya's supernatural capabilities is roughly the equivalent of kicking The Terminator in the balls and telling him he's a pussy. You'll need to bulk order the body bags if she ever gets pissed off at you."
"I said that’s enough, Commander."
"Yes ma'am. Sorry ma'am." Wilson didn't sound the least bit sorry at all.
Gina let out an exasperated breath, waving a vague apology his way. "Anya's family situation is...complicated. But rest assured, Neil, we'll do everything we can to keep our end of the deal."
"I really hope so, ma'am. Because I sure as shit wouldn't want to be on that woman's shit list..."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As things turned out, Officer McCrudden's initial suspicion had been right: There were indeed hidden cameras set up inside Prisoner Zero's medical cell. Two of them, to be precise. Their video feed ran back through cables to a pair of monitors located in the prison infirmary.
The on-duty doc, a transplanted Californian named Dave Felix, had never wanted to work in the prison system. "Frankly, nobody ever went to med school saying 'I want to work in a fucking jail,'" Dave would admit to his buddies once he got enough beers in him for the truth to come out, "but the money's pretty good, and the cocksuckers in a Supermax are generally well behaved. They're all basically in solitary for twenty-three hours a day. It's not like they're all hanging out in the yard and shanking one another."
All of which was true, as far as it went. At fifty-three years of age, it was safe to say that Dave was in the sunset years of his career, a fact of which he was only too aware. Happily married with three kids, all of whom had now flown the nest, he and his wife Janine were focused on just one thing: Socking away enough money for their impending retirement, which both of them were also all too aware was bearing down on them like a speeding express train. Working at the Supermax was a great way for the former family practice GP to pass the time in relative peace and quiet, reading history book after history book on the night shift, while also racking up the balance on his 401K. As far as he was concerned, it was a win/win situation.
The day shift doc, Larry Henderson, didn't have things quite as easy as he did. More prisoners were awake and about, on Larry’s watch, so he tended to deal with aches, pains, anxiety, and the thousands of other bullshit complaints that a doc sees on a daily basis. He prescribed medications, ran the prisoners through physical exams, and dealt with the lion's share of the medical records upkeep. Larry also administered the prescribed regular sedatives to Prisoner Zero, the woman who had been transferred into the prison under ultra-secret circumstances months before. None of the prison guards or medical team — doctors included — knew the patient's background or medical history.
Dave, on the other hand, did mostly fuck all, and enjoyed every minute of it. He was lounging in his office chair in the infirmary when the alarm began to go off, a strident beeping coming from his desktop PC. Annoyed, he set down the book that he'd been engrossed in (an account of the 1941-1943 stretch of the Pacific War) and reached for the mouse.
He stiffened. The pop-up warning was telling him to review the camera feeds from the special medical cell that contained Prisoner Zero.
Hooked remotely into the medical monitoring equipment, the alarm was triggered whenever the female patient's vital signs exceeded pre-programmed 'normal' tolerances. As far as he was aware, it had never gone off once since she had arrived…yet now, Prisoner Zero's heart rate had just hit one hundred and was still climbing.
He double-clicked the relevant link, bringing up a pair of separate windows. Each showed the interior of the medical cell from a different camera angle.
"Holy SHIT!"
The doctor could hardly believe what he was seeing. A still-comatose Prisoner Zero lay spread-eagled on her bed, her backless gown hitched up to just beneath her chin. Kneeling between her legs, a half-naked man was thrusting himself into her for all he was worth.
"That's a fucking guard's uniform!" Dave was on his feet and out the door in seconds, pulling out and unlocking his cell phone as he went. He hit one of the preset contact numbers.
"Security west," a voice answered at the other end. It sounded bored. "Officer O'Malley speaking."
"O'Malley, this is Felix."
"Oh, hey doc. How's it going tonight?"
"We have a situation. Get your asses down to Prisoner Zero's cell, right the fuck now."
"Copy that." O'Malley was suddenly all business. "What's the problem? She wake up?"
"Not yet. You'd better pray that she doesn't before we get to your fucktard buddy..."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Cleveland Steamer wasn't exactly a classy joint, as Kentucky's so-called 'gentlemen's clubs' were measured. The dancing girls (or 'exotic performers,' as they preferred to be known) had a very low teeth-to-tattoo ratio, and quite a lot of the tattoos were mis-spelled.
The first month of her training was now over. Anya was already beginning to think and act like a warrior, and in order to celebrate, Wilson told her that they'd be heading out into the real world for a night exercise. This was Anya's first field trip since joining The Agency, and when she'd heard the term "night exercise" she'd assumed it would involve her slogging her way through a swamp, trying to navigate by the stars or some such shit. She had most definitely NOT anticipated going to a titty bar some twenty miles outside Lexington in the middle of nowhere.
"What the hell are we doing here?" she asked, looking up at the sparking and sputtering neon sign with just a hint of distaste written across her face.
"Stage two of your training starts now. Come on."
They were both wearing civilian clothes: Neil, sporting a pair of jeans, cowboy boots, and a Harley Davidson T-shirt, looked a lot more suited to the bar than Anya did. She was wearing an outfit that looked as if it h
ad come straight from Nancy Reagan's wardrobe, a modest dress that was far better suited to jury duty than it was to a pole-dancing joint. Wilson had delivered the outfit to her door shortly after five o'clock that afternoon, instructing her to be ready to move out within half an hour. That had been her first inkling that cross-country navigation exercises were most definitely off the table for the evening.
Wilson paid the cover charge, a scandalous twenty bucks each, and found them both a vacant table tucked away into the far back corner of the room. It was about as discreet a vantage point as they were going to get. With her newly-ingrained training, Anya couldn't fail to notice that her mentor had chosen a position that afforded them good visibility of the entire club and easy access to the front doors.
"Stay here. I'll get us some drinks." The SEAL disappeared in the direction of the bar, giving Anya the opportunity to sit back and scope out her surroundings. Booming rock music filled the air, competing with the stench of stale piss from the men's restroom to assault her senses. There were two raised circular stages, one at either end of the room, each one equipped with a chrome floor-to-ceiling pole. She was surprised to see that business appeared to be booming: Each pole had a knot of perhaps twenty-five to thirty customers clustered around it, almost all of them men.
A redhead with deliciously pert breasts was dancing her heart out on one of the poles, her long tresses flying about her head as she whirled and spun, hooking a pale, slender leg about the pole and using it as a fulcrum around which to pivot and gyrate. The girl wasn't bad at all, Anya was forced to admit; she'd never been to a titty bar before, and had never engaged in anything more than girlish play with another woman before, but she had to admit that the redhead’s cavorting was beginning to seriously turn her on.
Wilson returned with a couple of bottles of Budweiser, setting them down on the grimy table and taking a seat next to Anya. She had somewhat reluctantly turned her attention toward the second pole, on which a heavily-tattooed blonde was attracting more than her share of wolf whistles and crumpled dollar bills. Anya appraised her with a critical eye. She didn't usually like tattoos on women, believing them to look cheap and gaudy, but this girl had a magnificent fire-breathing dragon inked across her taut, firm body, wending its way from her upper right shoulder (the tip of its tail) across her lower back and buttocks, all the way down to the roaring red snout across her left calf. The dragon rippled and undulated with every flex of the pole dancer's muscles beneath the expertly-inked flesh. The artistry was so good that it distracted Anya's attention from the obviously fake 36D boob job she'd had.
Both SEAL and trainee watched the performances in silence for a while, nursing their beers and alternating their attention between the blonde and the redhead. After ten minutes had passed, the two girls were down to nothing more than skimpy thongs and fake smiles. Their performances finished within two or three minutes of one another; each girl was deluged with a hail of greenbacks, which they bent down to collect from the floor of the stage, thereby giving the horny clientele a grandstand view of their sweaty breasts. The applause was thunderous.
"So what did you learn?" Wilson asked, leaning in close to make himself heard over the music and the noise of the audience.
"I have learned that I am perhaps not as hetero as I once thought," Anya replied calmly, watching intently as the redhead disappeared behind a black curtain.
Wilson tried to ignore the images which were conjured up by THAT particular statement. Instead he went on, "Which one was the better dancer? The blonde or the redhead?"
Anya had to think about it for a moment. "Difficult to say. The redhead tried harder; she was forced to. Her dancing technique was superior, and she put more heart into the performance."
"An interesting observation. Why do you think that was?"
"The blonde had a unique angle with which she could work. Actually, two. The silicon tits are like powerful magnets where males are concerned. Also, the tattoo art...it gave her an air of the exotic."
"All true," Wilson agreed, clinking his Bud lightly against hers. "So what else did you learn?"
"Both girls were playing the hand that they were dealt. Using their individual talents for the best possible outcome. There are parallels to what you have been teaching me."
"Good." The SEAL nodded approvingly. "Sometimes, less can be more. Sometimes, you can make up for a lack of resources by putting in extra effort. That's equally true whether you're talking about combat or pole dancing."
"I had never thought of it like that." Anya laughed. She took another sip of the beer. Although she couldn't even taste the Budweiser, let alone metabolize it, she wanted to keep up the pretense of drinking when out in public. It was all part of her social camouflage, along with the minimal but still continual effort it took to psychically project the illusion that her face was still healthy and beautiful...instead of being mutilated and mostly destroyed at the hands of her former pimp.
"If you had two hundred bucks to burn on a private lap dance with one of those girls, which one would you go for?"
"The redhead," Anya responded without hesitation. "As you Americans like to say, the girl has game."
"That she does. Excuse me for a second. I have to go take a piss."
Wilson disappeared in the direction of the men's room, leaving Anya alone...but not for long. The SEAL had been gone for no longer than a couple of minutes when she became aware of a shadow falling across the table. Looking up, she saw a large man — at least three hundred pounds, much of it carried just above his waistline — looming over her. He was chewing what she assumed was dip and favoring her with a grin that was so shit-eating, it was practically imbecilic.
"Hey darlin'," he drawled, exposing two rows of uneven nicotine-stained teeth in what he must have thought was a winning smile. "How 'bout I buy ya a drink?"
"No thank you." Anya's gaze flickered down at her half-full bottle meaningfully, then looked him straight in the eye. "I am feeling very...fulfilled already."
Refusing to take no for an answer, the big lug crammed himself into the seat next to her anyway, struggling to squeeze his blubbery gut underneath the table. "Aww, don't be like that. You and me could have a whole lot of fun together."
As if to emphasize his point, the interloper placed a hand on her knee. If looks could really kill, the one Anya shot him in response would have stopped his heart right then and there.
"Remove your hand," she warned him, her voice full of menace, "or I will remove it for you. And believe me, you do not want that." Her Russian accent was thickening, just as it always did when she was beginning to get angry.
"Well, why don't you make me, darlin'?" He was slurring, a sure sign that he'd had too much of the club's overpriced liquor tonight. Smirking, the fat man blew her a playful kiss.
The smirk quickly changed to a look of horror. Fatty hissed, his voice now little more than a wordless, high-peached squeak. Anya had his ball sack in her right hand, and was slowly but surely exerting greater pressure.
"I'm sorry?" she said sweetly, feigning deafness. "I did not hear you. Please speak up."
"Let go of me you god-damn cunAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!!"
"I do not like that word. For that, you lose balls." Anya squeezed again, digging her fingertips into the soft testicular tissue. Fatty gritted his teeth, his eyes screwed tightly shut in a desperate effort to shut out the pain. He swung what could potentially have been a haymaker at her, but Anya blocked it with ease, grabbing the wrist and pulling his hand down under the table. She did not want to attract any undue attention, after all. Looking around, she saw that none of the patrons were looking their way...but that could change in a heartbeat. It was time to end this. Now. She leaned in close to Fatty.
"You have two choices, fat man. One, you turn around and leave this place right now and we both forget what happened here. Two..." She gave his protesting nuts another squeeze for added emphasis. "...I turn you into a soprano. Which is it going to be?"
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
By the time they finally made into Prisoner Zero's cell, it was too late.
Ray O'Malley had rounded up three other guards along the way — Anderson, Mitchell, and Carver. They turned the corner and saw Doc Felix coming in from the other direction. The doc wasn't in the greatest of shape; he was winded simply from jogging across from the infirmary, and his forehead glistened with sweat. Damp circles ringed the armpits of his pale blue shirt.
"What the fuck are you waiting for?" Dave snapped, jerking a thumb at the cell door. "One of your colleagues is molesting the prisoner, God damn it! Get your asses in there, and remember — everything that happens in that room is recorded. Everything."
"We got it, doc. Wait here. Danny, you get the door."
Danny Carver nodded, fumbling for his pass key. Slipping it into the lock, he had the outer door open in seconds. All it took was a fingerprint to get the inner door sliding open too.
All four prison guards stormed inside. The inner door closed itself behind them.
It was going to take a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dimness of the room. The first thing each man noticed was the foul stink that assaulted their nostrils: It was the combined stink of piss, shit, blood, puke, and jizz, all rolled into one compact and delightful little bundle.
The only noise was the chirping and bleeping of monitoring equipment and the hissing sound of an automated ventilator unit.
They advanced hesitantly into the cramped room. The hospital bed was empty, its sheets tossed carelessly aside in a heap on the floor. A figure was laying on the ground at the end of the bed. His face screwed up in an expression of disgust, Ray took a knee in order to get a closer look...
"Motherfucker!"
...which was when he realized that he had just knelt down in a puddle of what smelled like bodily fluids.
"Who's got a fuckin' flashlight?" he demanded, standing up hastily. Whatever it was he had knelt in was cold and sticky, making his pants adhere to the flesh of his kneecap.
