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He walks over to another roller door and throws that up to reveal our transport for the day.
“Get in the van.”
I look toward the doors swung open to the short interior of the van. When we went out to dinner, Tom put me in a car. He let me see through the windows, look out around me, and get my bearings. I suppose that privilege has been taken away from me, along with what I thought might be love. The van’s windows are blacked out, and in the rear of this thing I will have no idea where I am at all.
What choice do I have? I can refuse to get in the van, but what does that achieve?
I get in the van. He gets in with me. It’s just the two of us, apparently. That’s not standard operating practice, unless a mission is particularly perilous, or an utter waste of time.
As we drive along, I feel the road rumbling beneath me. I don’t know what they want me to do. I haven’t been briefed. Or maybe I have been and wasn’t paying attention. All I can think about is Tom, and the Head’s threat to hurt him. If she does, I will capture her and I will kill her so slowly she begs for death.
Previous times I’ve been out, the van has been loaded into the belly of a plane. I’ve been flown all around this big planet for hours at a time in sedated states, woken to do the job they wanted me to do, and then put back to sleep for the return journey.
Ken Ares reaches for me, a sedative injection in his hand. I hear the soft ssst of the needle but I don’t feel it. I look up at him, ready to tell him that he’s an idiot, and that he missed me, but he flickers a wink and moves away.
What is going on?
I sit quietly, behaving as I would if the sedative had taken effect, but I keep my eyes on Ken. He’s up to something, though he seems to be following procedure and protocol. I guess he’d have to seem that way if he was trying to fool the person on the other end of the video surveillance which covers every mission.
Seeing Ken makes me hurt inside. I miss Tom, and Ken is enough like Tom to trigger the memories we had together. Sitting here quietly, I have nothing to do but think. What did she do with him?
It’s funny how you can’t feel momentum until you lose it.
The van has come to a halt. Ken looks at me. “Alright,” he says. “This is where this ends.”
He throws the door open and I find myself looking out at the inside of a tunnel full of traffic. Cars zoom past, two lanes both ways, horns blaring for no discernible reason except maybe for the fact it is fun to make noise. I recoil from the sudden intrusion of the world that Tom once told me was more real than the one I have lived my life in.
“What are you doing?”
“This is a communications dead zone,” he says. “We’re getting you out.”
This is happening so quickly. I have dreamed of nothing but escape for weeks, but I never expected it to be simply delivered to me. This is too easy, and I don’t trust it.
“Getting me out? What does that mean?”
“Tom made plans for you, if anything ever happened. We were to get you out of the facility, set you free. That’s what we’ve done.”
“Who is we?”
“Mary and I. Mary’s my wife. Or will be, soon enough.”
I stare at him, suddenly terrified. “I can’t be free. I don’t know what to do with myself!”
“You have to go, Electra. I’ve got some money for you. And before you do, you have to beat the shit out of me. Make it look good. I’ll tell them that you overpowered me.” He smiles. It seems to be a rare expression on his face, and it breaks my heart, because it looks so much like Tom’s. I have been wanting to destroy someone from the moment they took me away, but not Ken.
“She threatened to hurt Tom if I did anything wrong. I don’t want him to be hurt.”
“She made that threat to manipulate you. We both know that.”
“Just like we both know she doesn’t make idle threats.”
“Let me and Tom worry about Tom.”
He’s telling me to abandon the man I love. I don’t need months of how to be a human lessons to know that is wrong.
“We never got to money,” I say. “He didn’t teach me about it. I don’t know how it works. Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?”
Ken shakes his head. “Like a little lost kitten, when it comes down to it, aren’t you.”
