Betrayed

by Francine Pascal

  “Tatiana?” her mother’s voice called to her again. But this time it was tinged with the most disturbing high-pitched desperation and anxiety. Now the voice seemed to be funneled through a gigantic megaphone only inches from her face, reverberating so loudly through her throbbing skull that each consonant cut like a knife.

  Knife. He stabbed you to death. Open your eyes and look. See if the knife is still stuck in your heart. Maybe your mother, the angel, will help you pull it out.

  “Mama…?” she whispered as her eyes slowly fluttered open.

  “Oh, thank God,” her mother cried in Russian. “I was starting to wonder if you were going to wake up.”

  Tatiana looked up and saw her mother’s beautiful face hovering over her. “I—I don’t…,” she stammered. “Is this heaven?”

  “No, sweetheart,” her mother said quietly, wiping all the little hairs away from her forehead. “I’m afraid we are still here on the earthly plane.”

  “But…”Tatiana was deeply confused. “I’m not dead?”

  Her mother’s eyes widened with her smile as she shifted Tatiana’s head from the pillow on the couch onto her lap. “You are so very far from dead,” she explained. “We got here in time. God did us a rather large favor. You passed out. A nasty bump on the chin, that is all.”

  “And you’re not dead?” She did look so much like an angel. How could she not be…?

  “No, I am not dead. Not in the least.”

  “But what happened to him? Where’s—”

  “No more questions,” her mother pleaded with deep concern in the tiny crinkles at the corners of her eyes. “Questions later, I promise. Now we rest and we wait to hear back from Tom. That is the best thing for now.”

  “Tom’s not dead?”

  “Nobody is dead,” she explained with a slight laugh. “At least, not yet.”

  It might have taken a few extra questions, but Tatiana was finally grasping the realities piece by piece. She shot up from her mother’s lap and wrapped her arms tightly around her neck, squeezing her again and again to feel every living muscle and bone in her body—every living hair on her head. She had no plans to let go anytime soon.

  Her chin might feel like it had been split in two and her mouth might be almost too dry to speak, but all she could think about was everything Gaia had told her earlier that night.

  You were right, Gaia. You were right. My mother is alive. And Loki is nothing but a sick and twisted liar.

  “Now, sweetheart,” her mother said, stroking her hair. “There is one question I need to ask you, okay?”

  Tatiana nodded slowly in her mother’s lap.

  “Tatiana, Tom is out there right now searching for Gaia. We were very much hoping once you woke up that you might know where she is. Do you know? Do you have any idea where Tom will be able to find her?”

  Tatiana tried to focus her brain well enough to remember her last meeting with Gaia. She remembered that Gaia was going to meet Ed for something, but the more she thought about it, the more she realized. She had been so preoccupied with all of her sulking for her mother, she had never even asked Gaia where she was going.

  “I…don’t know,” she admitted. “I know she was going to meet Ed, but…I don’t know where.”

  She was suddenly stricken with a kind of guilt that hurt much more than her aching chin. Gaia had practically carried her all the way home on her shoulders earlier. Now Gaia was obviously still in grave danger, and Tatiana couldn’t even begin to return the favor. She couldn’t even point them in the right direction.

  “Tom will find her,” Tatiana said finally, trying to make herself believe it. “I’m sure he will find her.” She believed it even less the second time.

  Not God. Gaia.

  No one would be dying on her watch. No one.

  Fight or Flight

  “WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING YOU SO long?”

  A deep, dull-witted voice had entered Heather’s hospital room like some kind of gift from God. This was what she’d been praying for in the unbearable darkness. This was what she’d been begging for again and again while Josh crushed her head against the pillow, gripping her arm as firmly as a cold steel shackle. She’d prayed for anyone. Anyone with eyes. Anyone who could stop him. Because she’d just about run out of fight, and she could only scrape desperately at his hands for just so much longer.

  Josh quickly yanked his sweaty hand away from Heather’s face.

  She pulled in as much air as she could in the hopes of forcing a legitimate scream. Whoever had come into the room would surely hear her now. The voice she’d heard sounded hefty and deep. Whoever he was, he must be huge. He’d surely see her and tackle Josh—do something to pull him away from her….

  “Please.” She wanted to scream out to the stranger, but there was so little air in her lungs, she could barely make a sound. “Please, he’s trying to—”

  Josh slapped his hand back down over her mouth. “Don’t you make another sound,” he whispered down to her. “I just need one more second,” he said to the other man.

  “Another second for what?” the dull voice replied.

  “Just give me two seconds,” Josh barked quietly.

  “Oh, now it’s two seconds?”

  Heather’s heart shrank down to nothing. The voice wasn’t a doctor’s or a custodian’s or even an innocent passerby’s. Somehow, in her total panic, she’d missed it at first. But now she understood. They were here together. And as Heather put together the sense of every word the stranger had said, she realized…he wasn’t going to tackle Josh. He wasn’t going to tug him away and beat him up, and he certainly wasn’t going to call the police. Not only wasn’t he going to stop Josh from murdering Heather, he thought Josh was taking too long to do it.

  She was on her own. The only one fighting for Heather’s life here would be Heather. There had to be a little more fight in her. There had to be one more shot of adrenaline she could squeeze out. That’s what adrenaline was for. Fight or flight. And pinned down to a bed and too blind to even find the damn door, flight was definitely out of the question. So fight it would have to be.

  She felt the sharp point of Josh’s syringe touch the tender skin by her vein, and she gave it everything she had left. She followed her instincts and swatted hard, slapping her right hand at that very spot with all of her strength.

  And she connected. She felt it. She’d made contact with something. It had to be the syringe, didn’t it?

  “No,” Josh hissed, with frustration so intense, it bordered on desperation. She heard the faint sound of breaking glass on the floor from a few feet away. Yes. You did it, Heather. You got it!

  “You idiot,”Josh spat down at her in an almost inaudible whisper. “I was trying to help you.”

  Help her? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  “All right, come on,” the deep-voiced stranger complained as Heather heard him moving closer. “We should have been out of here five minutes ago. Which one are you, anyway? One or Two? I don’t know how he ever tells you freaks apart.”

  “I’m One,” Josh muttered angrily.

  One? What was Josh talking about? Nothing they said made any sense. Heather had thought she was thinking more clearly, but maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe her brain was cloudier than ever? What were they still doing here? She’d already swatted the thing away. Please, she begged to herself. Please let this be over. Please let them leave.

  “Yeah, well, I’m going to tell him that Number One wasted a bunch of our time here,” the man said. “How were you trying to do it? For Christ’s sake, she’s just lying there. I could have done this in two minutes. All you need is that pillow and it’s totally untraceable. I don’t know what your problem is….”

  Heather felt her pillow getting yanked out from under her head. Her head fell back on the hard, flat mattress. Scream, Heather. For God’s sake, scream.

  But the next thing she knew, her entire face was completely smothered. It was like being forced underwater. Every
orifice in her head had been shut off completely. She couldn’t make the faintest sound. She couldn’t take the smallest breath. She couldn’t hear anything. All sound had been flushed down some black hole except for her heartbeat, which was pounding like some kind of techno nightmare.

  She screamed silent, inaudible screams into the pillow again and again, trying to grab onto it, trying desperately to push it off her face, but it only made him push down harder. The entire front of her face had gone completely numb. Her nose felt like it might break, and her lips dug down against her teeth.

  God didn’t want to punish her with blindness. That must have been some kind of karmic mistake. God’s plan was obviously for her to die. She’d somehow cheated her fate the first time around, just like Oedipus. That’s what it had to be. She was supposed to die alone, suffering, and in pain. Ed had saved her from it the first time, but now it was for real. No more cheating. Death by asphyxiation. Without a single good-bye to friends or family. Untraceable. That would be her last thought. That her death was untraceable.

  And then the pillow flew from her face. Literally. Like it had wings. Like God himself had changed his mind. Like he’d decided to issue a last minute reprieve and release every bit of pressure, sucking the pillow back into the sky. Heather heaved in air with a series of horribly painful coughs that shook her weak and unbearably sore chest to its core. Her eardrums nearly exploded from the sudden pressure change as sound came swelling back into her ears like a loud echo in reverse.

  She suddenly felt a large tremor from the ground that momentarily shook the bed, and then finally she heard a voice. A voice that was only inches from her face.

  “Heather, are you okay? Can you hear me? Can you breathe?”

  “Who is that? Who’s there?”

  “It’s Gaia,” she said. Heather felt something plastic shoved into her hand and her thumb placed over a button. “Keep pressing that button, okay? Just keep pressing it. We need a nurse in here before I get my ass kicked.”

  It was all happening so quickly, Heather could hardly regain her orientation in the outside world. But she understood at least one thing.

  Gaia had pulled the pillow from her face. Not God. Gaia.

  Vengeful Pleasure

  HE MUST HAVE WEIGHED THREE HUNDRED pounds. The entire floor shook when she flipped him to the ground. The first flip was easy because she’d taken him by surprise. But his counterattack was going to be the hard part. His biceps were literally the size of Gaia’s head.

  Sure enough, the moment she’d gotten the nurse’s pager to Heather, she felt his arms collapse around her chest, lifting her two feet off the ground and hurling her against the blank white wall like a bag of wet laundry.

  “Ooompf.” Her entire right side collided with the wall, crushing her arm into her rib cage and slamming her head against the wall like a hard rubber ball. She heard a piercing ring in her head as it bounced back off the wall and hit the floor.

  “Gaia?” Heather called out. “Are you okay?”

  Get up, Gaia. Get up now.

  She launched herself up from her back onto her feet and landed in a defensive stance.

  “I’m fine, Heather,” she replied. “Just keep pressing that button.”

  There was no way he was getting in another easy shot like that one. Not as long as she could face him. Josh was of course right behind him. Whenever there was an attempted murder, Josh didn’t seem to be too far behind. But why wasn’t he coming at her?

  Gaia couldn’t think about that now. The enormous one was advancing again, and he was quick for someone his size. Quick and well trained.

  He faked to her face and jabbed a hard blow to her gut, knocking her back against the wall. He snapped a high kick straight at her face, but she ducked right, swooping up and under and delivering a swift kick back to his nose. She drew blood, but he looked completely unfazed. Gaia realized that punches and kicks weren’t going to do the trick.

  She launched into a quick jump and roll and popped up by the two metal chairs in the corner. But he was right on her. He swung hard for her face. She sidestepped the punch and used his momentum to shove him the rest of the way straight into the wall. That one, unlike her punch, had hurt. She could tell from his pained grunt and from the massive dent his shoulder left in the wall. He flipped right around, though, and came back at her.

  But now he was in the position she wanted him to be in. He was charging back at her, angry and disoriented. The two worst things to be in combat.

  She stepped back to the chairs and waited for him to lunge, relaxing every muscle and freeing her brain of any and all distractions. Focus now….

  He came at her faster than she’d expected. But she was still ready for him. In one fluid motion Gaia crouched to the ground and kicked out, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him as she grabbed onto the metal chair. As his entire three-hundred-pound frame fell face forward toward the floor, Gaia raised the chair high above her and brought it down mercilessly on his back and head with an unholy metallic crack. He was down for the count.

  Good. Now she could focus on the real enemy.

  She dropped the chair back on the ground and stepped toward Josh.

  “Don’t,” he uttered. “You don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “Oh, I understand exactly what’s going on here, Josh, and I won’t let it.” She took another step toward him, and he took another step back. “No one else is going to die because of me,” she explained. “No one. You tell him that’s it. It’s done.” She took one step closer and Josh lashed out. “Don’t!” he shouted, jabbing his fist forward in a punch.

  Gaia dodged the punch and latched both her hands onto his wrist, pulling his weight completely off balance and then flipping him hard to the ground, nearly twisting the entire arm out of its socket.

  He let out a painful cry as his spine hit the linoleum, and Gaia couldn’t help but take a certain vengeful pleasure in it. Josh deserved absolutely any punishment anyone could devise for him. He deserved so much worse than just to be flipped on his ass. In all honesty, Gaia truly believed he deserved to die. But she wasn’t in this room to be his executioner. She was here to protect Heather from him. And that’s what she had done.

  Except…

  As he lay there writhing in pain, Gaia’s hands still firmly clasped to his wrist, something unexpected caught her eye. She realized that her hands weren’t the only things on his wrist.

  There was a tattoo. A small black tattoo on his inner wrist.

  QR1

  Jesus. One of them. Gaia hadn’t protected Heather from Josh. She’d protected Heather from one of Josh’s clones. Now she was really pissed.

  For one thing, she couldn’t imagine what the real Josh was doing if Loki had sent a “qualified replicant” to kill Heather. But more than that, Gaia despised these genetic imitations of Josh almost more than she despised the man himself. Seeing that tattoo only made her flash back to those horrible nights when Josh and his “twin brothers” had all tag-teamed to mentally and physically torture her, taking her as close as she had ever come to the brink of insanity and nearly gutting Ed Fargo from head to toe. The more she thought about it, the harder she found herself gripping his wrist. And she couldn’t help thinking…Given that he was really wasn’t a human being, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to put at least one of Loki’s murderous living weapons out of commission….

  She never should have stopped to think. She felt a rock-hard kneecap hammer her spine, shooting her forward into the opposite wall as she tripped over QR1’s body.

  She spun around on the floor and saw the huge man towering above her. Apparently he wasn’t down for the count. Never take your eyes off them, Gaia. Remember that for the next time. If there is a next time…

  He really was a huge bastard. And he was wielding one of the metal chairs high over his head. No time to move. This was going to hurt. This was going to hurt really bad….

  “Ms. Gannis?”

  The three-hu
ndred-pound thug let the chair fall to the ground with a deafening clatter as all heads turned to the doorway.

  A young nurse had finally answered Heather’s page. She stuck her head into the room with a look of complete shock. To Gaia’s absolute disgust, for a split second the thug actually made a move toward the nurse. They really didn’t care who they left in their wake, did they? But as the nurse let the door swing open the rest of the way, she revealed the mass of patients who had gathered in the hallway, all of them looking both terrified and fascinated as they tried to peer inside the room.

  Too many witnesses. Gaia knew it. They weren’t going to try anything else with all these witnesses. The patients must have all been gathering in that hallway, hearing the cries and thuds but too frightened to actually head inside. And with good reason.

  “What’s going on in here?” the nurse squeaked with horror as Gaia and fake Josh picked themselves up off the floor. “Ms. Gannis, are you all right?”

  “No,” Heather cried, shaking her head as she stared up at the ceiling and tears fell from her eyes. “Nurse, please, I don’t know these men. I don’t know them and…and they’re harassing me. Please get them out of here. Please.”

  Heather was smarter than Gaia gave her credit for. She knew that if she’d started throwing words like murder around, they might not be so sure this little episode wasn’t just another manifestation of her bizarre “symptoms.”

  The nurse turned her troubled eyes to the two men in the room. But before she could say anything, a rather large security guard stepped in behind her. He eyed the two men up and down, and suspicion, distrust, and anger began to register in his face.