by Jack Stroke
“Amber… You shouldn’t have come.”
“You called me. You knew I would.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
He stood, accentuating his oddly angular frame. Amber pointed to the door.
“Is she in?”
Tony took a step forward, blocking the entrance.
“Move. Or I’ll move you.”
“Umm, no. She’s not. She’s out. Listen, Amber, this isn’t a good idea.”
“She has my godson.”
Tony wrung his hands together, no clue what to do with them.
“What?”
“I should never have told you he was here. I mean, I should have, of course. You had a right to know. But I should never have done it. Mother won’t be happy at all.”
“Well, thank you for telling me, Tony. I appreciate it. Now you are going to tell me where she is.”
A sheen of sweat peppered his brow. “Amber, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Look, it would be best if you just go.”
“Best for who?”
“All of us.”
He placed a hand on Amber’s elbow. She stayed put.
“I’m not going anywhere, Tony.”
“Amber, please.”
Just then the door to Mother’s office opened.
“What is going on out here?”
53
Mother’s eyes fell on Amber. Or appeared to. Difficult to tell from behind the sunglasses.
“Amber, what a pleasant surprise.”
Tony’s hands began to visibly shake. “Amber is just… I…”
“Quiet, Tony.” Mother gestured towards her office. “Amber, please join me.”
They left Tony in the reception area, a pile of nerves.
Mother took her seat behind her desk. “Sit, please.”
“No.”
“Amber…”
“I have been travelling all day. I don’t think I can sit anymore.”
“Fair enough.” Mother rested her arms on the desk, appearing relaxed as ever. “You seem… agitated.”
A slight understatement. Amber felt like a can of drink, all shaken up and ready to explode.
“What would you expect, Mother?”
“Why should we expect anything? We didn’t know you were coming.”
“Where is he? I want to see him. Now.”
“You know that is not going to happen.”
“You can’t do this. You can’t just grab a kid off the street.”
“We can’t?”
Could Amber dive across the desk? Whack the sunglasses from Mother’s face? Slap some sense into her? Who would stop her?
“This isn’t okay, Mother,” Amber spat.
“What isn’t?”
“This. Any of it. You have abducted Ben.”
Mother shrugged. “This is no ordinary job. You know that. We have to have a specialist program.”
“Program?! He’s not in your program. He’s not going to be. He’s just a boy. You can’t do this to him.”
“He’s seventeen.”
“Exactly. He’s seventeen.”
Mother studied Amber, weighing up her response.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes, okay. If you have an issue, go report us. Although we are not sure who you would report us to. You may try the police, we suppose. Good luck.”
She shuffled some papers on her desk. Discussion over. Amber dismissed.
Amber slapped the top of Mother’s desk with an open hand. Hard enough to make her palm sting. It was as much a gesture of frustration as anything. Mother stared back impassively.
“You told us yourself the boy wants to be an agent.”
“No, I…” Amber tried to kill Mother with her glare. “How do I do that? How do I forget who you are, what you are like? After all this time, you’re still playing games with people’s lives. Why, when I think I can finally trust you…”
Amber turned away, needing to move.
Mother showed no hint of reaction to Amber’s abuse.
All those years ago, chained to the desk after being abducted, Amber’s fear eventually began to subside. Her mind shifted from terror to asking questions. Making connections. Entertaining odd ideas.
What if her abduction had something to do with Diamond Logistics and that bizarre interview she’d had? With that Mother person? What if this wasn’t some random abduction? It didn’t seem likely, yet what other explanation was there? Amber was an ordinary young woman. It’s not like she had wealthy parents or anything. There was no reason for anyone to target her. There was no one to pay a ransom for her, and no money to pay it even if there was.
Young Amber made a choice. She would confront her attackers when they returned. Tell them she knew what was going on. Demand to be taken to Mother.
Except the kidnappers never returned.
It was difficult to know how long she sat there. Eventually she started to pay attention to her shackles. Could she free herself? It appeared possible. But should she? What if trying to escape simply made everything worse?
In time it seemed worth the risk. With some effort she managed to free herself. She escaped, opening the door not only to a way out of the room but to a whole new life.
The abduction had been a test. The first of many.
One thing was for sure, if this was anything to do with this Mother woman, Amber was going to kill her.
54
Amber stared at the twisted old woman in front of her. Why did she always feel several laps behind Mother? How did Mother seem to know Amber’s every move like she had tried it yesterday?
Come on. Think. Did this have anything to do with Ben really or was it about Amber? Was Tony in on it? Had Amber been played from the start? Lured her?
“Why didn’t you at least tell me?”
“About what?”
“About taking Ben.”
“You would have had objections.”
Typical Mother. And in a startling moment of clarity, Amber knew it wasn’t Mother she was furious at. If you get beaten in a game, there is no point in whinging you are losing. No, you play better. Until you win. Amber had to play better. Starting right now.
Pacing wasn’t doing her any good. Neither was aggression. Amber forced herself to sit, adopting a different tack.
Deliberately settling herself with a deep breath, Amber said, “So what happens now?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you have calmed down.”
“I’m sitting, aren’t I?”
Mother pressed a button on her intercom.
Was Amber calm? She wasn’t entirely sure. There was one certainty. Things were slipping out of her control. Not for long though.
Tony hurried in with an apologetic expression. He handed Mother a tablet.
“Don’t get Tony in trouble for telling me Ben was here. He was only trying to help.”
Mother gave the faintest of smiles. “Tony is a grown man. He has license to do whatever he feels is right without reprisal from me. Right, Tony?”
Tony scurried out again, not saying a word. Mother handed the tablet to Amber.
Ben appeared on screen in only his boxer shorts. He was chained to a table. Seeing him like that was confronting. Amber watched him shake. She longed to reach through the screen and save him.
“He’s shivering.”
“That’s most likely because he is cold.”
“We can’t… We have to do…”
“Just watch.”
Ben didn’t sit for long. He began fiddling with the chain.
Something wasn’t right about what Amber was watching. Something she couldn’t quite figure.
Quickly Ben was tugging at his binds. Amber found herself barracking for him as though she was witnessing some sort of sporting event. Willing him to realise he could release himself. Instead, he managed to separate the chain from the table with brute force. The other end
remained attached to his wrist.
“Isn’t he supposed to…”
“More than one way to skin a cat.”
Looking around, Ben got to his feet. His eyes found the exit. Then Amber realised. The timing of all of this was too good. This all happened the exact moment Amber was handed the tablet? Her heart fell.
“This isn’t live, is it?”
Mother shook her head. “Two days ago. He got out fast. In the top ten percent of candidates. Several hours quicker than his godmother.”
Amber ignored the self-satisfied smirk on Mother’s face.
“He didn’t get the chain off his wrist though.”
Amber stared at the empty chair on-screen. The image turn to static.
She rewound the footage to before Ben left the room. Well before she began watching. When he was first chained to the table. She zoomed in on his face. He looked scared. No, terrified. Worse than she had seen him look and she had seen him confronted with guns in his face, by people intent on putting a bullet in his head.
“What happens from here?”
“That depends on what happens in the final days of testing.”
“Testing. Cute euphemism.”
The abduction portion might be finished, but the torture was just beginning. Days of mental, physical and emotional abuse.
After escaping the room, young Amber hadn’t been allowed to leave for another five days. It was gruelling. Perhaps not as terrifying as the abduction had been, but not far off. Extremely demanding, both mentally and physically. Constant, with very little rest.
Something Amber had willed desperately to be over and never wanted to do ever again.
55
Amber waited in the shadows out front of the Diamond Logistics’ facility. It was about ten minutes from the company’s main office where she had spent the afternoon with Mother.
The main entrance to the facility would be heavily guarded. Not so much that an ordinary citizen would notice, but enough that there was no way for Amber to simply waltz her way inside. Guards would stop her immediately and refer her back to Mother.
Even standing nearby, the place gave her the chills. It was an old building, used primarily for education and lodging. More euphemisms for torture. Amber had lived there on and off for five years when she was training to be an agent. A long time ago now, thank goodness. She had zero desire to ever step foot inside again, except Ben was in there somewhere.
From her time in training, she knew the facility well enough to recall it was vulnerable from the top.
While she’d waited for darkness to descend, Amber had made a trip to a nearby hardware store. She purchased a rope and a metal rod she converted into an improvised grappling hook.
The facility roof itself was nothing special, merely a flat concrete space with some air conditioning units. It was out of bounds to students and strictly speaking not somewhere Amber was supposed to even know about. However, she used to escape up there fairly frequently over the years - when she needed some space or wanted to be alone. No one else seemed to be aware of it.
The adjacent building was a multilevel car park. Amber entered, climbing her way to the top of the concrete stairs. At the uppermost level, she strode to the edge. It was too far to jump from building to building unassisted.
Amber attached to the rope to her makeshift hook. Her rope skills weren’t her greatest strength, and it took several attempts to catch the hook on the lip of the facility. When she successfully had it hooked, she tied her end of the rope to a fire hydrant. Adopting an upside-down crawling position, Amber scurried along the rope from the car park to the Diamond Logistics facility roof.
Once there, she stopped to listen. She couldn’t hear anybody about. Amber wasn’t sure what she would do if she encountered someone en route to Ben. Obviously she didn’t want to hurt anyone from the facility - they were all on the same side, ostensibly. Still, she wasn’t about to let anyone stop her from getting Ben either.
The sight of the roof’s locked door made her smile. How many times had she picked this thing? The door offered up little resistance. Once inside, she was greeted by the same familiar set of dark stairs.
She froze. Something wasn’t right. Something she could sense, not see. She waited for her brain to catch up.
That’s when she saw the blinking red light by the door. Dammit. That had never been there before.
56
An alarm. She had triggered an alarm. What was that doing there? Stupid question.
Now she had to hurry. She couldn’t hear anything. Must have been silent. They were on to her though.
She dashed down the stairs and was immediately reminded what a warren of rooms and corridors the facility was.
Where the heck might Ben be?
The sheer volume of choice overwhelmed her. She stood and stared at the doors.
Footsteps dragged her crashing back to reality. Amber took refuge in a broom cupboard. She waited. Two people rushed by.
The pause gave her a second to take a breath and calm her mind. Think things through. Come on. She knew this. Where would Ben be? In his bedroom. It wasn’t that late, but training was tough. Especially in the beginning. Ben would almost certainly be down for the night. At least that narrowed things down slightly.
She let herself out of the closet and hurried along the corridor towards the dorms. How many people might be staying in the facility at the moment? Impossible to know. There was an abundance of rooms.
At stages when she lived here, Amber had felt like she was the only person in the entire place. Other times there were seemingly hundreds of people. Diamond Logistics was likely that. Never compelled to reveal too many of its secrets. At least not to Amber. She had no desire to burst in on anyone else. And even if Ben was here by himself, she didn’t want to open dozens of doors trying to find him.
Amber rushed down a corridor. She could hear people moving about.
Then it struck her. She knew precisely where Ben was. Her old room. That was the sort of perverse idea that tended to appeal to Mother.
A series of turns led her to her former dorm. She made it without being challenged. Her heart settled in her mouth. She paused to catch her breath before barging in.
The room was extremely basic, just a single bunk and a blanket. As suspected, Ben lay on the bed dead to the world despite the time. Megan would never believe it, Ben in bed so early. Training and testing did that to you. It was hardcore. Amber hurried over to the bed and shook him lightly.
“Ben… Ben…”
He opened his eyes. “Amber.”
“Come on. We’re going.”
He stared at her, brain groggy. “Okay.”
Footsteps rushed past outside. No one came in. Amber waited for Ben to collect his things.
“What… What should I bring?”
“Everything.”
He attempted to focus on her. “Wait, I’m not coming back here?”
“No…”
She hurried out to check the corridor. No one about. They just had to make it back to the roof, and they were home free. She turned and looked into the room. Ben hadn’t moved.
“Ben. Now. We’ve got to go. Hurry.”
He crinkled his eyebrows. “Wait, you know… is this… ?”
“What?”
“Is this part of it?”
“No. I’m taking you home.”
“What?” He looked at her, still struggling to wake up. “Home?”
“Yes, come on, Ben. Now.”
“But…”
He sank back on the bed. What could Amber do? The boy needed to move but showed no signs of going anywhere. He was too big to physically force out of the room. Certainly not up to the roof and across the rope.
“Ben. Come on!”
“But… I thought this was a thing.” He rubbed his eyes. “We can’t… Won’t this… ruin my chances?”
Oh no. Footsteps banged down the corridor. They were too late. No time to take evasive action or hide.
/> Amber backed into the room. She eased the door closed. Maybe they wouldn’t come in here. Maybe they would hurry by.
She took a fighting stance, ready to hold her ground.
The door opened. Mother appeared, trailed by two guards.
“Oh, Amber,” she said, her voice heavy with disappointment.
“We’re leaving, Mother. I’m taking Ben with me.”
Amber stood between Mother and the boy.
“Is that right?”
Amber assessed the situation. Mother wouldn’t be an issue, physically. The two guards would be tough to beat. She didn’t want to fight, but she would.
“Does Ben get a say in this?” Mother asked.
Both women stared at the teen. Amber could see it at once. He was loyal, so he didn’t want to go against her and say he wanted to stay. Take Mother’s side. But that was definitely what he wanted. To stay. Fortunately, Mother saved him the embarrassment of having to respond.
“Get some sleep, Ben. You are doing very well. We will sort this out.”
Mother swung her arm towards the door. Amber didn’t want to leave Ben.
Really though, what choice did she have?
57
Mother took Amber out to dinner. An expensive restaurant a few blocks from the facility. The place was jumping despite the late hour and showed no signs of slowing. The crowds didn’t matter. Mother had no trouble getting a table. As usual, the older woman observed Amber, staring directly into her soul.
Amber’s heart raced. What was this? A mission? Was this Mother’s plan all along, luring Amber here? Did Amber actually make any choices herself? She stole glances at everyone, figuring out who was at each of the tables in the room. Assessing their strengths and weaknesses. In case she needed to know. She couldn’t help it.
“Relax. This is just dinner, Amber.”
“So you say. Every job is a test, every test is a job.”
“True, and this is neither.”
That didn’t help.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I can’t turn it off. Being out with you, I can’t help but try and predict who the target is, who the biggest threats are. Waiting for you to subtly hand me a gun under the table.”
