“They love it when you come dear. It’s been so long.”
“Yes, I know I’ve been busy with work and the time got away from me. I have something for you Mama!”
All the children called her ‘Mama’ as she was exactly that to them. Once she had cared for her and Missy just as she now cared for these unwanted children.
“You’re getting those dark circles under your eyes again. The old nightmares?” The old woman asked with concern.
“Never mind about my dark circles, look at what I brought you!”
She poured out the little pouch into Mama’s hand.
“Oh my goodness dear! There’s enough money here to feed the children for years!”
“I want it to do more than that Mama! I want to get all of us out of here to South America! It’s more stable there and the children will have the future that they can’t have here.”
Mama looked at her deeply for a moment, “Is that the only reason my dear Yevy?” “No, I need to get out of here! I don’t like what I am becoming! I need to get out!”
Mama folded her hand over the gold, “Then that is what we will do. Give me a couple of days to make preparations and we’ll be ready to start our new life elsewhere.”
Evette turned to go, but turned back as Mama called her name. “Thank you Evette! You have always been an angel to us when I’ve needed you most. I didn’t know how I was going to go on feeding the children much longer.”
Mama got up stiffly and walked over to Evette and enfolded her in a hug. Somewhat shyly Evette returned the hug. Mama and the children were the only ones that she could stand to be touched by, but even with them it was awkward to return a touch of any kind.
She left then and quickly made her way back toward her apartment. She was almost there when her phone began to ring in her pocket. Picking it out of her pocket she saw that it was from the Committee station and she groaned aloud.
Opening it she answered, “Evette Moran speaking.”
The voice that came back to her was urgent in its demand, “We need you to come into the office. We know it’s early and that you had a late shift yesterday, but it’s urgent!”
“Why what’s going on?”
“There was a gun battle earlier this evening that killed several of the alien suspects and about two hours ago we captured two more. Committee member Tomlinson has asked for you by name to assist in the interrogation.”
“I’m on my way!” Evette shut the phone and headed for the office. She was as curious as everybody else was about these strangers from space.
Chapter Ten
Survive the Day
The sun was coming up and I wished it wasn’t. The dark had offered us some concealment, but we would just have to make do. I was careful not to poke my head over the edge of the roof to far as I starred at the building where they had taken Larc and Talaric. Orhanin and Thanic were further back on the roof in hiding.
We had agreed that it was just too risky to mount a rescue attempt during broad daylight. So we would have to wait until dark to rescue them. Larc and Talaric had gone to get some food and hadn’t come back. When we had figured out something wasn’t right we had set out in search of them.
We had seen them shoved into one of the vessels like the one that we had driven into the city. We had to practically run our guts out to keep up with the vessel with the flashing lights, but we had managed it just barely, by running down side alleys and cross streets, until the vessel had finally stopped at the building we now watched.
Dawn’s early light lit the scene up well enough for me to see a red haired woman make her way towards the front of the building. The armed guards parted to let her pass and then reformed to keep spectators or protestors I wasn’t sure which, from approaching any nearer to the building.
She apparently was an important person.
Evette walked into the Committee office shielding her surprise at what she saw there. She had never seen the place such a mad house before as it was now. Doors were opened before her as she was ushered past jabbering groups of people in her path. Deeper she went into the building until she reached the interrogation rooms.
Committee member Tomlinson rose out of a chair to greet her. She couldn’t help but be shocked that she had been assigned to this interrogation.
After the pleasantries were out of the way she burst forward with the question that she was dying to ask, “Councilman why me?”
The Councilman, who didn’t seem like a bad sort of guy, smiled slightly and said, “You mean why do I have someone, who doesn’t typically practice rough interrogation practices doing the interrogation?”
“Something like that.” Replied Evette.
“The answer is that I don’t think these men will crack under any amount of pain. If we learn anything it will be out of a slip of the tongue caused by a masterful use of wit and the well applied sensualness of the female form. You posses both my dear.”
She inclined her head at the complement and continued past him to the window of the interrogation room. She stared through the glass speculatively.
Apparently she hadn’t been the first option despite the councilman’s complement. Rough practices were clearly already in evident display upon one of the strangers in the room. He was beaten to a bloody pulp, while the other one remained untouched left to watch the torture of the other man. They were both naked and cuffed to steel chairs that were arranged facing each other.
Sometimes having one watch the other being beaten was an effective technique, but not with these two men. That woman she had questioned the day before had been right. Whatever Greek gods had looked like they must have been modeled after these men, to say they were buff looking was putting it mildly.
Both men were larger than typical and were well over six feet in height, with the heavy build to go with it. Even cuffed and naked they appeared more intimidating than the oaf in the room beating away at the one with a club.
She winced at the severity of a particularly hard hit that sent blood spraying against the far wall of the room. The man being beaten was a good bit younger than the man solemnly watching the torture of his comrade.
She studied the unbeaten man. He was in his mid thirties or so, but other than that she couldn’t tell anything else about him, because the cool reserve of his face masked completely any emotions he might be feeling. She doubted that she could crack that reserve with any amount of pretty turns of phrase or earthy promises of her body, if she didn’t succeed though, it might soon be her being beaten to a bloody pulp.
That was the way the Committee worked if one failed them. Why had these Greek gods come to this decrepit hell hole of a city?
For what reason had they traveled across the galaxy to experience the torture of this place? Suddenly the man watching his friend being beaten to death turned his head to look directly at her.
She knew he couldn’t see her through the one way glass, but she didn’t doubt for a second that he knew she was there watching him. His face may have showed no emotion other than a cool disdain, but his eyes!
His eyes were like liquid blue flame, as they scorched her through the glass with the depth of the wrathful hate he was feeling. She had never seen anyone like him before. It was as if he was looking into the depths of her soul and had found her wanting somehow. He turned his head away and she was left with the feeling that she had been weighed in the balances, judged and sentenced.
“Intense isn’t he?”
She breathed in and realized that she had been holding her breath. She turned to see the committee member studying her carefully.
She mustered up a charmingly confident smile even though she was still shaken up inside, “Excuse me councilman I need to go change my clothes. I have work to do.”
She turned and walked down the hall toward her office as he watched her go.
Evette stepped into the room and couldn’t help the genuine disgust that she felt for the third occupant in the room. Ronald, his fat gut sagging, was liter
ally worn out from beating on the younger man, who still sat as straight as he could in his chair not making so much as a sound of pain. He was covered in his own blood and both his eyes were practically swollen shut.
“Get out! Now!” Evette ordered pointing at the door.
Ronald slunk out puzzlement written all over his dumb beastly features. Any other man would have cracked by now, but the beaten man hadn’t even spoken so much as a word and the other man hadn’t shown the least sign of apprehension over being the next to be beaten.
Ronald just couldn’t understand it as he lumbered out of the room shaking his head. Evette approached the cruelly beaten young man and set a little box and some towels down beside him on a table and began to wipe the blood away from his face gently with a wet towel.
He was shaking beneath her touch from the beating, but he did his best to stiffen himself against her touch. She could feel the steely gaze of the other man on her from behind and it had a nervous effect on her beneath her studied calm that she did not like at all.
The man had her completely off balance somehow. There was something about him that was just different from any other man she had ever known, but she wasn’t sure what defining characteristic it was that made him different. Under the guise of wiping the blood off with one hand she slipped a hyperdemic needle out of her pocket and injected its contents into the young man’s arm out of sight of the observation window. She covered the needle up with a bloody towel on the table.
When people were brought to these bloody little rooms they weren’t likely to leave them alive. That was the Committee way. She didn’t think that those who found themselves here had to suffer any more pain than they already were. The needle had been full of a powerful pain killer. She knew her act of mercy would be frowned upon by her superiors so she hid it from their view.
She new with the magnitude of this case that if she failed she would be taken to the basement and lined up against a wall and shot, her body would then be thrown into the furnace, where all the bodies were disposed of. Life was cheap and patience short for those who failed the Committee.
Instinctively she already knew she wouldn’t be able to make the two men talk. Something of which she thought the Councilman might also be thinking. Ronald would be finding out for himself right about now what the price for failure was. She was only biding her time hoping she could make her interrogation last for two days. If she could make it out of the office on the second day and slip into the city she could join Mama and the kids and leave the city for forever.
If only! She had steadily been working on the young man’s face all along with no ulterior motive behind her actions. When she was about finished he looked up at her questioningly. Her actions had not been those of someone patching someone up for another round of beatings later on.
There had been tenderness in her touch and the young man had sensed it. He was probably feeling a lot less pain now too because of the shot. It was little enough what she had done for him.
She had done the same for others over the years and none of them had told on her in regards to her act of kindness towards them. She came to the moment that she had been dreading and turned to face the other man, after she put down her cleaning supplies. She met his eyes not entirely sure that she wanted to. He had such a strange impact on her.
His eyes that had expressed so much wrathful emotion before were now completely changed. His gaze was still guarded, but perhaps slightly less hostile. In fact she could see curiosity reflected in there depths.
There was a slight thump of sound and at the sound his eyes flared with awareness for a moment. He looked at her as if seeking an answer to the riddle of the sound. She decided to give him the answer that he sought. Her eyes traced over to the younger man and then down to the bloody baton lying on the floor.
Her eyes drifted meaningfully from Ronald’s dropped baton to the closed door of the cell. Her gaze came back to the stranger’s blue eyes and she blinked ever so slightly. His eyes showed that he comprehended her perfectly and with that realization she watched the dawning of the fact in his eyes that she was completely at his mercy.
Her life depended on him playing along with her to make her look good. A new awareness of the situation flooded into the blue depths of his eyes and she blinked again to show that she knew the completeness of the reversal of the situation just as he now did. He sat back ever so slightly in his chair to regard her somewhat speculatively, as if he was weighing the thought in the balances on whether or not to play along with the game and prolong her life.
She touched the bloody rag that hid the needle that had helped his friend. She had done his friend a favor, would it count for anything to his stoic counterpart. Her eyes rose to meet the strangers and she despaired.
There would be no help from him. His gaze was hard and unyielding suddenly. His gaze showed no mercy for her in the precarious situation that she found herself in. And why should he?
She turned back to the table and the supplies she had brought into the room with her. If he wasn’t going to cooperate then she had little choice other than to make her escape now. Her hand slipped through the folds of some extra towels she had brought along to close around the handle of the pistol with a silencer on the end of it.
She was pretty certain as to the location of where the councilman would be standing on the other side of the one way glass. She’d take him out first then the guard at the end of the hall. She started to pull the pistol free when the man spoke, “Is this how the people of this world greet strangers?”
Her hand paused briefly on the handle of the automatic pistol and then she released it and turned back to the man cuffed to the chair, who seemed to dominate the room with his presence.
“It’s hard to say. To my knowledge you are the first such strangers to visit our world. It is regrettable that our first meeting has been so,” shrugging her shoulders for lack of a better words as she gestured around her to the obvious purpose of the room around them. “Perhaps we can get our first meeting back to better ground so to speak.”
“Well I’m all for that. Just unbind my hands and we’ll discuss the terms of an agreement between our peoples and put this unfortunate circumstance behind us.”
Evette was taken aback by the offer and immediately distrusted his sincerity. What then could his angle be?
Her eyes tried to discern the truth buried in the swirling depths of his vivid blue eyes. He was playing the charade along with her! Okay then.
“I have to ask, why are you suddenly so willing to tell us what we wanted from the beginning?”
He waited a moment before responding, “I believe it’s possible that both of our sides have gone about this first meeting in the wrong way.”
The mystery man rattled his chained hands. He was offering what she needed to survive, but it came at a price, trust. She was going to have to trust them. She went to the door and waited for it to be opened.
When it was she held her hand out, “Keys.”
After a momentary hesitation the keys were dropped into her hand and she turned back to the occupants of the room. She walked up to the big naked man with the probing eyes and knelt down to unlock his ankles and then his hands from the chair.
She couldn’t help that her breathing was rapid as her efforts to remain calm failed her. At any moment she expected to be picked up bodily and broken over the man’s knees or simply just have her neck snapped. He could do far worse to her than just kill her if he wanted to, because no one would come to her aid in this room.
She was alone with a powerfully dominant male that she had just released from being tortured. Her only hope lay in her ability to reach the pistol should he try to do more than just merely kill her. As his hands came free there was a brief tensing of his abundant musculature and she correspondingly tensed in expectation of a grisly fate at this man’s hands.
Nothing happened. She avoided looking at his lap as she got up. She didn’t want to know.
She turned h
er back to him and went to work unloosing the young beaten man from his restraints. As a teen girl she and Missy had slipped into a traveling carnival one night.
They had been stumbling around in the dark giggling and shrieking at the strange noises all around them, when someone had turned on a light. There had been a cage not four feet in front of them. Crouched down in the cage had been the tensed body of a tiger ready to pounce on them if it weren’t for the cage it was cooped up in.
The incident had left an indelible mark on her. Kneeling down now with her back to the man behind her she felt again, as she had as a teen, in front of that caged tiger, only it wasn’t in a cage anymore, but free to spring upon her and rip her to pieces.
The young man was incredibly tensed as she finished releasing him, but he did not move. She glanced up to see that his eyes were locked on the man behind her. She rose to her feet gracefully and turned back to the blue eyed tiger. His gaze was intent as usual.
“I will see what can be done to furnish both of you with adequate clothing and beds that you can rest on as I’m sure that you’re both very tired from your ordeal and long journey here. Shall we continue our talks tomorrow, when you’re better rested and have had something to eat?”
The blue eyed man stood up followed by the younger man and advanced on her. She had to fight very hard to not press up against the door behind her. He was very tall and the word imposing wasn’t enough of a word to describe him. Her eyes rose from his chest to his eyes. Eyes that seemed to spear through her defenses with ease every time that she gazed into them.
“Thank you miss?” “Evette.” She answered.
“As I said Evette thank you for showing the common courtesy to us that you have. We look forward to furthering the relationship between our two peoples tomorrow.”
She nodded and turned to leave, but then turned back, “You didn’t mention what your names were?”
A Warrior's Journey Page 15
