AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Who were you with?” I asked him. “Your group. Who else besides Natalie?”
“There was a boy, maybe fifteen. Your father…”
“Jack.”
He nodded. “Natalie’s husband. And then my partner. Another teen. She helped the teen boy get here. He didn’t want to come over.”
“No one else?”
“I think there’s others, but they weren’t in the room with us. I can guess they’ve got everyone in separate spaces like we are.”
“So they put Alice in a group of people who didn’t know her and she had no connection to previously?” I wrinkled my nose, shaking my head. I backed up until I was next to Raven, nearly sitting on his body, like I could protect him that way. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe someone like you could get debriefed about Alice, be brought in to protect our people from her and not know that was who we were in hiding from originally.”
“There’s a lot of women named Alice,” he said. “I know a few.”
“Sure,” I said. “But the people I know, they aren’t stupid.” I motioned to the door. “I know they’d know Alice, they’d know to keep quiet and just find a way out and not talk. But you’re not smart like that. Just like your friend out there wasn’t too concerned I’d rush him after I broke the camera. He was too confident. He had you as backup.”
The man raised an eyebrow and then scooted closer to me. “You think I’m not who I say I am?”
That’s when I noticed the bruising around his face, the discoloration was off. I’d seen this before. “Not when you’re using makeup instead of actually manning up and getting really beaten to try to trick me.” I motioned to Raven behind me. “That’s what a bruise looks like. I know the difference.”
He sighed slowly and nodded. “I guess we’re on to plan B.”
It took a few quiet minutes of us staring at each other to realize he was waiting for the plan to happen wasn’t going to tell me about it.
The door opened quickly. Another male body was carried in, this one lanky, bag over his head. And another followed, pale and bruised all over. Both seemed unconscious.
Buble was grabbed by the elbows by our guard to haul him up. “I was sure she’d crack easy.”
“Don’t underestimate any of them,” he said as the guard cut his bindings. He turned to me. “We don’t want to hurt any of you. Honestly. Torture is for amateurs and doesn’t really get anywhere. We don’t want to kill anyone because dead bodies are messy to dispose of. We don’t want you, compadre. Just talk to us about who is in charge. That’s it. Think about it.”
The accent had changed. The compadre… Hispanic? Alice worked with a lot of Germans before, which doesn’t mean she couldn’t switch things up…But the way they talked about a boss and he’d talked about her, I was questioning everything.
Still, I had no idea who he was talking about. It was probably a good thing I didn’t know anything about the Academy. If they had tried torture or something worse, I wasn’t sure how easy I’d break, not that I’d want to. Dr. Roberts…He was as high up as I knew, and it sounded like they didn’t know anyone else.
I was left alone with the additional two bodies, both unmoving. I didn’t recognize either offhand.
After that last bit, I didn’t want to be tricked again. Besides, I wasn’t going to get very much information out of unconscious people. For the moment, I left the bags over their heads.
There was nothing to do but wait and see who woke up first. For now, I was alone.
TRAITORS, ALL OF US
It took probably a good hour of sawing away at my binds using the sharper edge of the ring before the ones at my wrists broke free. My unconscious companions didn’t move. One of them snored a little for a bit, but that stopped and it had been quiet since.
While I was working on the binds of my feet, I tried to make some sort of plan. Going out the window was probably useless since we were so many stories up. Going out the door, I knew now there were at least four, that Buble guy and his tired guard and one more out there that had shushed tired guy before and the guy who helped carry in the two new unconscious people. If they were right about there being more guards, that was a lot of people to take on. And just because the two didn’t have weapons on them, that didn’t mean they had none to work with at all.
After my legs were free as well, I put the ring back on and checked out the fallen camera without getting into its view. There was no telling if it still worked but at least it was pointed at the ground. It’d been attached to the wall with a bracket—now broken-- and the wires went through the wall to I guessed some power source.
The bedroom’s single closet was locked from the inside, but looking underneath the door, it appeared empty. At least, the floor was bare. I’d need something to break into it, a flat card or a bobby pin… but unless there was an escape hatch in there, it was useless to bother with.
Escaping by myself was one option, which could be tricky, if they were right and there were guards in the hall. Another option was trying to get word to people outside we were in here and needed to be rescued, again tricky. If this wasn’t Alice, it was likely her people could be out there, too…I was having a problem with trusting anyone right now. I wasn’t sure if this was Alice or not. It was hard to figure out from in here.
They’d said not to trust anyone, both Axel and Blake. These new people already tried to trick me once for information I didn’t have anyway. But they believed I knew something, or else they wouldn’t bother. Joke was on them. If they wanted someone high up in the Academy, I was the wrong person. The only other person in the room I knew would know was Raven, and they kept him unconscious.
If I left, would they let Raven basically starve to death while unconscious? I wasn’t sure I could leave him like this.
As I was examining the window, trying to figure out the best way to remove the coverings and at least see outside, one of the bodies behind me started to move, the pale, severely bruised one.
I went to him, waiting and watching.
The outline of a face struggled a bit, the cloth going in and out of the mouth as he tried to breathe. He mumbled something like, “help”.
I debated on this, but then hooked my fingers into the neck of his black hood and lifted up, just enough to get the bag over his face.
He blinked rapidly at me, squinting up at my face. He coughed shortly. “I think I know you. Your picture…”
His bruises were real, as was the bleeding from the edge of his lip, swollen. His face was as pale as the rest of him otherwise. Short, dark hair, strong nose. No one I remembered meeting before. “Who are you?” I asked.
He gazed at me and hesitated like he was trying to decide to tell me. He had marks on his nose like he usually wore glasses but they’d been removed. Maybe he thought he knew me but couldn’t see that well now. “Cornelius.” He coughed and sucked down air like he was trying to prevent himself from puking.
I blinked at him. “…Buble?”
He seemed surprised by this. “You know me? Did they tell you?”
I left the hood up on his face but backed away, again hovering over Raven, checking for any signs he’d wake up soon. “I’m done with this game,” I said to this Buble. “Is this round two?”
He struggled to sit up on his own, but as he did, his hood fell back over his face. “What?
” he mumbled through the cloth. As he did, he coughed, the material making it worse as he was sucking the cloth into his mouth as he inhaled. He spit to get it out. “Get this off.” The demand was striking. A tone similar to what Axel would use when he barked orders.
Might as well let him talk. At least it was something to do. I went over, hooked fingers at the neck and lifted until the bag was removed. “Are we trying again, Buble? How many of you are there?”
He blinked rapidly at me, and then at the window, his binds, and then the other two unconscious on the floor. He focused on Raven. He started breathing rapidly, shaking. “Tell me he’s not dead…Eugene Ravenstahl?”
I was stunned by his use of his real name that I didn’t answer him.
When I didn’t respond, he got visibly angry and seethed. “Talk to me. Is he dead?”
I shook my head, confused by this Buble. “No,” I said. “Not dead. Just unconscious.”
He seemed to calm down. “The other one? Who is he?”
“He’s not dead, but I don’t know who he is,” I said. I sat near Raven, using my knees pressed up to my chest to somewhat mask my nakedness for the moment. “Unconscious like you were.”
“Why don’t you remove the mask and find out?” he asked.
“Because they’ve already tried to trick me once,” I said. “I don’t think I know him. I certainly don’t know you.”
He continued to blink and squint at me. “You should remove it. It’s difficult to get enough air through the cloth. He’ll have a hard time recovering if he can’t breathe freely.”
“How do I trust you?” I asked. “If it’s another one of their people, I may as well leave the hood on.”
He shook his head and looked around the space. “How did they trick you before?”
“He said he was Buble… Are you saying that’s you?”
“It’s my name,” he said. “I was with the others.”
“Was Alice with you?”
He turned to look at me, his eyebrows going together. “Alice? The one we were hiding from? No.” He licked at his dry lips. “They didn’t give us water?”
