Beating Ruby

by Camilla Monk

  I was trying hard to distract myself from the inhospitable atmosphere, when the younger guy reached behind me to undo the handcuffs. For a moment there, I actually thought things were looking up. Wait. No. The young one had pulled out a hunting knife at the same time that Baldie tore March’s jacket away from my body. As soon as it hit the ground, he grabbed my arms, and locked them in place. I screamed and jerked against his grip, sweat matting my hair to my forehead. I squeezed my eyes shut when the long blade made contact with my sweater dress. He ripped the front with a single gesture, tearing a few inches from the top of the silk dress I wore underneath as well. I tried to curl my body with a yelp of shame and horror, now that I stood in that cold cellar with my bra visible. I saw the corners of the younger guy’s lips curl into a salacious smile. Anywhere, anytime, show a man a glimpse of lace underwear and he’ll be happy.

  The part of my brain that was busy leafing through all possible scenarios warned me that we might be looking at rape in the immediate future. Yet they had done no effort to undress me any further . . . Sahar seemed pleased with the way things were going so far and watched with a catlike smile as Baldie’s palm connected with the side of my face without warning. The gesture had been meant as a slap, but given his strength it felt more like a punch. I fell to the ground, tasting blood in my mouth.

  My ears were ringing so loud I barely registered Sahar’s voice. “What did you find in Roth’s apartment? What did he do to Ruby?”

  I remember Alex advising me to tell her everything. Part of me wanted to. My cheek hurt, my knees too, that had been bruised upon hitting the ground. But the pain seemed to simmer out of control inside me, boiling, overflowing in a surge of rage. If I told her about the code Thom had hidden in Ricardo, she’d kill us anyway, and he would have died in vain, like Van Kreft.

  “There were only pictures that you sent him to threaten his family,” I rasped. “He wanted to let someone know he had been forced into this.”

  A few inches from my face, one of her silvery heels tapped the floor impatiently. “Keep going.”

  I thought she had been addressing me, but the order had in fact been directed to Baldie, who dragged me to that tub. I couldn’t believe how loud I was screaming, how much strength I still had in my legs as I kicked the ground helplessly. His hand fisted in my hair, and he hauled me with an iron grip. Pain exploded in my skull. I saw the layer of ice cubes, a shadow underneath, and my entire upper body was forced into the water.

  I wasn’t prepared for anything like this—the temperature shock, the burning sensation in my lungs, feeling myself drowning. That wasn’t what ultimately caused me to lose it and inhale a huge gulp of icy water, though. I opened my eyes for a second, not even long enough to be sure I wasn’t dreaming. A ghost lay underneath the ice. Ashen, bruised skin, blond hair. Wille . . . Wille was in the tub.

  Baldie pulled me out. Water had made it inside my nose, probably in my lungs as well, since I was choking, coughing a string of drool, and gasping for air. I could feel my heart beating everywhere in my body—in my chest, my head, my ears. I couldn’t see very well, and I was shaking too much to even scream anymore. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably; I bit my tongue hard, drawing some more blood.

  Sahar walked to the tub and knelt near me. The material of her silvery dress was a shimmering blur before my eyes. “You see, I have my own little nerd up there, and he’s working on scouring every single line of code in Ruby. And he, too, says that March was lying, that there is no virus meant to turn Ruby against us.”

  “Then . . . then . . . why are you . . . doing this?” I stuttered, feeling, with a modicum of relief, Baldie’s grip on my hair lessen.

  “Because I don’t like you, for one. And because I had my men pay a visit to a certain Mr. Degraeves after March destroyed everything there.” A smirk revealed her incisors, the same pointy shape as Guita’s. “I know you found something in Roth’s apartment, and I want it, whatever it is,” she said, grinding out each word through those sharp teeth.

  “He didn’t . . . It was just pictures.” I thought I must have sounded convincing, since the part about the pictures, at least, was true.

  Maybe not that much. Or maybe it didn’t matter to them. Baldie hauled me up and plunged me back into the tub. Stupidly, I had thought it would be more bearable the second time; if anything, it was worse. More painful, more terrifying. When my lungs started struggling for air, I think I went into shock for good. I opened my eyes again, and this time it was okay. I was able to accept what I was seeing, and Wille’s lifeless features brought me a disturbing sense of peace.

  I surfaced back to reality when my body hit the ground, dirt sticking to my drenched skin. Every breath was a painful spasm that ended in a shivering hiss. I wanted to tell them to go die, or something badass like that, but I could hardly speak. My throat was sore, and I coughed the words more than I spoke them. “You killed Wille . . .”

  “He wasn’t really useful anymore, and he couldn’t think with anything else than his dick anyway. I was furious when he told me he had mentioned the auction to you, but in the end it turned out for the best, right?”

  Tears rolled silently on my temples. “There was nothing . . .”

  I heard Sahar snap her fingers, and the younger guy, who had been watching the scene silently so far, came to help his colleague bring me to my feet. I was little more than a marionette at this point, shaking like a leaf, and standing only because they had locked their hands under my armpits to hold me upright.

  She cupped the side of my face. “I know March. I know him well. He’s a great pro, but not exactly a genius. And maybe you don’t want to talk, but he will, because he’s just a fucking lackey, whereas I brought a Fortune 500 company to its knees!”

  “No . . .” I murmured, allowing my head to loll down.

  At this point, I honestly thought Raptor Jesus had abandoned me, or that maybe, like with Job, he was testing my faith and allowing Satanasaurus Rex to persecute me. Meanwhile, I registered Sahar speaking to those guards in the corridor. “Bring them down here.”

  She turned to me with a sardonic grin. “I’ll show you that with the right move, there’s no intel you can’t obtain.”

  A pitiful sneeze shook my frame in response. I closed my eyes. Footsteps were echoing outside of the room, male voices. I could feel some strength return to my legs, but I chose to hang limply in Baldie’s grasp, to spare whatever energy I had left. Door hinges groaned and a cool breeze hit me, leaving an icy sensation in its wake wherever it licked my naked skin.

  My lids fluttered open. March and Alex stood in front of us, still handcuffed. Behind them, the wooden door had been closed again, and two armed guards stood on each end of the room. I recognized their black combat gear, but they wore less equipment than they had back at the club, probably because they thought their prisoners now posed less of a threat. Had I been the one in charge of overseeing supervillain activities in Sahar’s lair, I’d have made my goons keep their weird goggles and rifles. The quiet fury in both men’s eyes as they took in my sorry state boded no good.

  A snarl revealed March’s teeth. “Sahar, I’m extremely worried for you.”

  She giggled and bent down to pick up an old rusty hammer lying in the dirt. “You’re worried? For me? March, have you seen Hostel?”

  Oh God. The last thing you want to hear when someone hell-bent on torturing you is holding a hammer is a reference to a torture-snuff movie where people get their toes broken one by one by a maniac with a hammer. In my sneakers, my toes curled of their own will, as if to escape the prospect of getting squished into a bloody pulp. I stared at March and Alex in growing panic. Their shoulders seemed to be twitching, beads of sweat pearled on their brows in spite of the cold, and there was the same expression of intense concentration on their faces. Not just anger, but rather a frightening determination.

  Alex looked me in the eyes, a smile forming on his lips. I understood that he wanted me to focus on him, not the rest of this n
ightmare. “What about you, Island, have you seen it?”

  I let out a quivering breath. “Not really—I closed my eyes.”

  Sahar laughed. “I know, right? It fascinated me, the idea that money could buy something like that.” She ducked her head, and in an instant all amusement vanished from her features, leaving only a stony mask. She walked up to March, waving the dusty hammer inches from his face. “You’re going to tell me what was in Roth’s apartment and if that asshole rigged Ruby. I know you are, because if you don’t, it’s not your legs I’ll break.”

  He didn’t react to her threat, just looked straight ahead at me, and his lips pursed. I realized that seconds ago, Alex had made a similar face. As March would later teach me, there are a few things a gentleman should never forget when getting ready for work: a small knife strapped to your ankle; mini antibacterial wipes in your pocket—that one might have been a matter of personal taste; and, of course, a couple of steel pins in your cuffs, in case of an emergency. Even then, getting rid of hinged handcuffs remained a somewhat tedious business, especially under watch. Nothing more annoying than having to interrupt your efforts constantly. Thank God, Sahar’s evil little show did a great job capturing her audience’s attention . . .

  In any case, she hadn’t expected March to grab the hammer from her, with a right hand that should have been still properly handcuffed behind his back. He didn’t strike her, though; Alex did. Here again, I’m pretty sure she hadn’t anticipated receiving a brutal punch in the face at the same time that the hammer flew across the room and rammed between Baldie’s eyes. His head was thrown back under the force of the impact, blood splattered on me, on the floor, and I felt his grip around my arms weaken as he tumbled backward into the tub.

  The whole thing had occurred in the space of a heartbeat, and the three remaining men in the room looked completely disoriented for a couple of seconds at the sight of their dead colleague’s upper body sinking into the reddened water, while Sahar sat on her ass and clutched her jaw with a loud wail. I knew from prior experience that those two seconds were more time than March needed to start a bloodbath. I heard Alex yell for me to get down. I crawled as best I could as someone started firing, and the last thing I saw clearly was March taking a silenced gun from the younger guy, who lay on the ground, his own hunting knife planted in his bloody throat.

  I guess Sahar and her goons had missed another critical point. Here in this confined space, and with their colleagues on the other side of a closed door, it wasn’t March trapped with them—it was them trapped with March . . . and Alex, who had gotten rid of his remaining handcuff bracelet and helped himself to Baldie’s gun as well. By then, it was too late for the two remaining guards. There were more gunshots, one of the guys was hit in the stomach with some kind of sharp barrel-making tool, and it was over.

  Loud thumps echoed on the other side of the door, making it tremble and creak. I figured the rest of Sahar’s men were trying to come to the rescue. Either March or Alex had turned the iron key in the door’s ancient bar lock, momentarily blocking access to the cellar. I saw Sahar crawl on the floor, trying to reach for the key and unlock the door. I scrambled toward her, pulling on one of her ankles to stop her. Her other leg flew to kick me, and I rolled away just in time to avoid getting stabbed in the face with a five-inch heel. Alex saw us and lunged at Sahar, shoving her away from the door while March picked up his bulletproof jacket off the floor and threw it on me.

  Blood pumped so fast in my veins that I thought I was seconds away from heart failure. I so wished there’d been time for him to hug me, tell me everything was going to be okay, but someone shot repeatedly into the door’s aged wood with an automatic rifle and it burst open, several men barging in with a terrible din. I curled up in my corner, shielding myself under March’s jacket, and saw little of the chaos that followed.

  There were gunshots, screams, the sounds of bodies being rammed against the walls. I only peeked a few times, but all I caught were scenes I’d rather forget: Alex wrestling with one of Sahar’s guards, the muscles in his forearms straining as he drowned the guy in the tub’s reddish water with loud, sickening bubbling sounds; then knees, knees that dropped to the ground before the rest of the body followed, and wide-open, teary eyes gazing at me. A guard was dying, a pool of dark blood growing on the ground under his chest, and he was watching me. Or was he already dead? Part of me knew that this was an ill time for sentimentalism, but I couldn’t help the chill that spread through my body, carrying a wave of nausea.

  When March and Alex finally helped me up, the room spun for a while. I eventually looked around. There were now eight, maybe nine bodies on the ground. So much for March’s retirement projects. Cries and barking sounds reached us from a tiny cellar window above us.

  I gripped his arm. “Sahar? Where is she?”

  “She got away,” Alex said, picking up a magazine and a rifle from one of the dead men.

  March’s hands cupped my face, his thumbs wiping dirt from my cheeks. “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.” Not really, no.

  “Take this.” Alex handed me a semiautomatic pistol.

  March glowered at him but made no attempt to take the gun from me. I didn’t want to use it either—and had no idea how to—but I could understand Alex’s decision, given the circumstances. I took it, shoving it in one of March’s jacket pockets.

  “They’ll be here soon. We need to go!” he hissed.

  We ran through the cellar doorway and into the corridor that led to it. Above our heads, heavy footsteps were already echoing on the floor, along with orders in German. I didn’t understand everything, but I gathered that Sahar wanted me alive to tell her about Thom’s plans, whereas a deep voice discussed the merits of making “Jagd-Trophäen” of March and Alex’s heads—that’s hunting trophies, for those of you who chose to have sex in high school rather than taking German.

  March shot the lock to one of the corridor’s doors and kicked it open, sending shards of rotten wood flying all around us; Alex and I followed him into a darkened room. This part of the basement was just as humid and moldy, only much more cluttered. Discarded paintings rested against the stone walls, there were spiderwebs and sheet-covered furniture everywhere, along with an incredible amount of bric-a-brac, ranging from dusty tankard-shaped lamps to Dschinghis Khan vinyl discs dating back to the eighties. A pleasant smell of detergent floated in the air, which I connected with an old washing machine, apparently still used to clean those sheets and some worn gardening clothes.

  I think the three of us experienced the same sort of relief when it became clear, judging by the narrow windows, that this part of the basement granted access to the gardens. Behind us, though, beams of white light tore through the darkness. Voices. The sound of guns being armed. The lights vanished; I figured they counted on their night goggles to help them.

  Alex pulled me against him to hide behind a huge portrait, while March glided toward our assailants like a shadow. I saw him disappear between two sheets, a ghost among ghosts. The men started spreading out in the room, making little hand gestures to each other. One of them walked right past Alex and me, so close I could see the pockets on his combat gear and smell some sort of smoky cologne. A squeak almost escaped me, but Alex’s hand clasped over my mouth before it could come out.

  I’m not much of an expert at these things, but by then I more or less understood March’s tactics of choice. For example, he’d often rely on surprise—such as smashing a guy’s face with a hammer to spark the chaos in which he swam like a shark in water. In here, however, outnumbered and with limited visibility, he’d probably wait and let the guards place themselves where he needed them for an optimal shooting angle.

  My heart skipped a beat when I saw one of the guards approaching the long sheet hanging from a canopy bed. He hadn’t realized that March stood behind it, right next to the statue. I experienced an odd combined feeling of power and helplessness when I realized this guy would be the first to be
shot, no matter what happened. This was like looking into one very dark crystal ball. I knew he was going to die, and he didn’t.

  Alex’s hand had let go of my mouth, but all I could produce were shallow intakes of air anyway. A muted thump resounded in the room, at the same time that the man near the statue fell to the ground, as expected. My chest tightened, but I held on to Alex and struggled not to make a sound when the rest of the guard’s teammates started firing relentlessly at the canopy bed. I covered my ears, watching the bed disintegrate into a haze of shredded white fabric and wood splinters. Alex pulled me down and forced me to crouch, to avoid getting hit by a random bullet.

  All that shooting was useless anyway. March hadn’t been facing the guard he had killed, he had been on his side, and he’d already flitted farther away, somewhere on the group’s right flank. Unfortunately for those guys, two of them had to reload, and they stopped firing. Not the kind of luxury you can afford when you’re standing less than three feet away from “the South African.”

  Across the room, I saw the sheet covering a long table billow slightly, as if caressed by a gentle breeze. Several black holes appeared one after another in the pristine sheet, at the same time that three men fell to the ground. The fourth and last guard took cover behind a wardrobe and started firing in March’s direction, reducing the table to the same shredded mess the canopy bed had been turned into earlier.

  The shooting stopped as March’s adversary adjusted his goggles to search the room. He hadn’t noticed us yet. Against me, I felt Alex shift.

  “Hey!”

  His gun wasn’t silenced, and the single detonation rattled down my spine. The man collapsed before I could fully process that Alex had leaped out from our hiding spot and killed him.

  A shadow rushed between a bookshelf and a medieval wooden statue. March appeared. “Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” he whispered, as we made our way through destroyed furniture and lifeless bodies.