A Warrior's Journey (20 page)

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 literally 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 her 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.