Chapter 2.2

"Yes, officer?” I asked.

“How old are you?” he asked.

Suppressing a groan, I reached under my tank top and pulled my dog tags out. This happened easily once a week, if not more. I held them out to him. “Seventeen, sir,” I said.

He took my tags and began to scrutinize them. I waited patiently as he scanned them. His eyebrows furrowed and he scanned them again. “Ma’am, you’ll have to come with me,” he said.

“Uh,” I looked around for anybody, only to find the street mostly deserted. A few people were walking away from us. “Why?”

“It’s just a routine matter,” he said. His lips parted into a smile that I assume was supposed to make me trust him but did just the opposite.

I raised a questioning eyebrow. “What’s the issue, officer? I’m just going home and I work here, I am allowed to be on street level.”

“Your tags aren’t reading properly, you need to come with me,” he said.

Not good. I took a step back before I even realized what I was doing and the officer's hand shot out, his fingers wrapping around and digging into my bicep. "Don't go running now," he said, pulling me closer to him. “Itold you, it’s just a routine matter.”

I tried to pull my arm from his grip, but it was like iron, tightening even more every time I strained against it. He began dragging me back to his vehicle. This vehicle, a hovercar by all appearances, sat docked in the mouth of an alleyway. I thrashed against him, trying in vain to slow him. I tried to drop my weight but he wrenched me forward, pulling me off balance and making me stumble after him. Air rushed from my chest as he slammed me against the side of the vehicle. His hand went to my neck and he forced it down, effectively immobilizing me.

“You really shouldn’t have resisted,” he said.

I drew gulping breaths, recovering the oxygen I lost and realized we were now hidden from the street by the hovercar. Not good. Before I could try to shove him off me, my arms were wrenched behind me and cold metal clasped around my wrists. His hand closed over my collar and straightened me up.

“See, is it really that hard?” he asked and resumed his leaden grasp on my bicep.

I tried to pull away once more as he propelled me towards the vehicle once more and released my arm this time. The world flashed white for a moment as my head made sharp contact with the pavement. A constant ringing noise filled my world as I tried to blink the surroundings into clarity. The officer’s lips moved but nothing came out as he used his boot to roll me onto my stomach.

A blade erupted from the center of his chest and he stopped in place. His head slowly lowering to look at the item on which he suddenly found himself impaled on in the moment before it retracted and then reappeared. The blade left his chest once more and he collapsed to the ground.

A man stood in the officer’s place, a long blade extended down from his forearm. He wore a set of scratched battle armor with a shemagh over his face. The blade folded itself up and slipped silently into his forearm as he walked closer.

I pushed backwards, my arms and lower back scraping uncomfortably against the ground. His hand closed over my arm and he pulled me to my feet.  His hand clamped over my mouth before I could draw the breath to scream. I found myself being pulled deeper into the alleyway and two more people stepped out. A man and a woman, each dressed in armor but neither had a shemagh.

“You didn’t have to kill the cop,” the woman said. I only knew she had spoken because she motioned back down the alleyway to the corpse of the officer. Her voice sounded gravelly and distorted.

“Well I couldn’t let him come after us, now could I?” my captor snapped. His voice sounded high pitched but rough. Like stone scraping on stone.

“Enough!” the other man growled. “Bag her, we’ve spent enough time here as is.”

The woman produced a bag and threw it over my head. My captor’s arm wrapped around my neck and pinched. The world faded from existence and I felt my limbs go limp.

I should have gone with Carly…

***

“Wakey, wakey,” a masculine voice said as someone gently smacked my cheek.

I pulled away from the hand and moaned softly. My neck felt like someone decided to jab at the inside of it with a fork, repeatedly. I opened my eyes slowly, allowing them to adjust to the light around me. Cold air blew across my shoulders from somewhere above, chilling me to the core. A tentative tug to move my wrists caused metal to pinch against my skin. Two men stood before me, one knelt in front of me and one leaning against the back wall.

The one knelt in front of me, I think he’s the one who woke me up. A rather large man by all appearances, he was very muscular, except for his right arm which was a bionic. A shemagh lay draped around his neck and he wore a pair of cargo pants, boots and a tank top. This had to be man who killed the officer and grabbed me. As my eyes locked up with his, he gave a small smile.

“Ah, good, I was sort of hoping I didn’t kill you,” he said like it occasionally happened.

Panic began to build in my chest as I looked to the man leaning against the wall. He stared back at me with a mask of indifference.

“Where am I?” I croaked out. My voice sounded horrible.

“You think you get to ask questions. That’s cute,” the man in front of me said. “You are Tawny Jameson, correct?”

The panic in my chest blossomed into full blown fear. The thought of falling back on my Hacker interrogation resistance training flitted through my mind. No, not yet. “And if I’m not?” I managed to ask.

The man gave me a crooked smile. “Deploy,” he said. A small series of clicks emanated from his arm and a large blade unfolded itself, extending far past his hand. He had an assault augmentation on his bionic. He brought the blade around and touched the top to my throat. The cold steel sent shivers across my skin. “What do you think? Are you Tawny Jameson?”

“Yes,” I said. A tear began to streak down my cheek.

A loud banging on the door caused me to jump where I sat. The blade scratched down my throat. The man in front of me closed his eyes and shook his head. He lowered the blade from my throat and it folded itself back into his bionic arm.

“Go away,” he called.

“We brought her to help us!” a female voice shouted. “Or did you both forget that?”

The man at the door pushed off the wall and opened the door.

“Damnit, Kai, don’t—”

I lost the rest of the conversation as the door shut behind him. The man in front of me stood up and rolled his neck. “Now, she wouldn’t have me hurting you anymore than I already have. Don’t worry, it’s nothing much. Just a drug to keep you under while we transported you back here, it’ll wash out of your system in a few hours. It does play hell on your throat, so try not to talk too much. My friend says you were trained to be a hacker, but you haven’t seen any front line combat, is that true?”

I nodded.

“You have been working for the government as a mechanic ever since a training accident?” he asked.

I nodded once more.

The door opened once more and a familiar face walked in with the man from earlier. I felt my hopes soar as Victoria gave me a small smile and then looked to the man.

“Nick, that’s enough, cut her loose,” she said.

Nick looked back to the man at the door who nodded.

“Vick, what if she isn’t who you say she is?” Nick asked.

“Tawny hasn’t changed,” Victoria snapped. She crossed to me and knelt down.

My hands jerked against the officer cuffs as I tried to reach for her. “Vicki,” I croaked. “I’m—”

“Don’t talk, that drug will do more damage the more you talk,” she said. Her finger gently lifted my chin and she turned to look at Nick.

“Hey, that was technically your fault,” he said. “She jumped when you started pounding on the door.”

“And it was your blade to her throat,” Victoria snapped. “Get out, both of you.”

“Kai, she can’t just kick us out,” Nick said turning to the man at the door.

He tilted his head and started to walk out.

“Kai! This isn’t fair! Come on!” He ran after Kai and the door shut behind him, leaving me alone with Victoria.

She produced a key from her pocket and walked behind me. The cuffs peeled away from my skin and clanged against the ground. I began to rub my wrists, immediately realizing my wrist interface no longer resided on the inside of my left wrist. I grabbed my waist, then my neck and hair. Belt, goggles, mask, all gone. My heartbeat jumped up as I frantically felt around for my wrist interface, the rest I could replace rapidly. Not my wrist interface.

“Don’t worry, your stuff is in my room,” Victoria said. “You’re safe, you’re safe.”

I barely heard her as I started to ‘shut down’. My fingers began to numb as I retreated inside my own head, preparing to cut off the external world from my mind. For lack of a better term, Victoria and I had dubbed it shutting down since the instructors at boot camp had a mouthful of a name for it.

“Tawny, no, don’t do that,” Victoria said. She grabbed my face. Her fingers interlaced behind my head and her thumbs rested on my cheeks. “You’re safe here. No one is going to hurt you, I promise,” she whispered tenderly.

“I need my wrist interface,” I said.

“Alright, I’ll get it,” she said. “Take a deep breath for me.”

I complied, my breath hitching a little as I let it out and tears beginning to blur my vision. Victoria pulled me into her chest and I wrapped my arms around her shoulders. A sob split my lips and I felt myself slide from the chair and into her lap. It felt good to be in her arms once more, to feel her chest rise and fall against mine.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “I didn’t want to leave.”

“I know, honey, I know,” Victoria whispered in my ear. She gently rocked me in her arms, whispering softly in my ear. “Everything’s okay now, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”