Raven (13 page)

“So what’s stopping you?” Charice wondered out loud.

“I…” There was nothing left to say without incriminating herself any further than what she already had.

Charice slapped her hands together so loudly that even the guards at the door jumped slightly where they were standing.

“Oh I see. I understand now, why would one kill something they love? That’s it isn’t it Aiyana? You love him?”

She could see that any chance of her leaving had just gone out the window. Her agitation and frustration suddenly boiled over at her helplessness of the situation and she started to struggle and writhe around in an attempt to be rid of herself the shackles that contained her.

“Let me go! Let me out of here, I’ve done nothing wrong!” she screamed helplessly. 

“Oh you’re not going anywhere, Aiyana. Not until we find you’re a little more compliant with what we’re trying to achieve here,” she smiled.

“You have no right. No right! Do you hear me,” she sobbed.

“Actually we do,” said the Doctor as she reached into her lab coat pocket to fish out a syringe filled with a yellow looking substance.

“Get that away from me, don’t you dare jab me with that thing,” she spat.

“You’re done in here. You’ll be moved to a different holding cell shortly,” she said with finality, right before pricking the skin of her arm with needle. The pain was worse than the old tetanus shots they used to give and she felt the muscle in her arm go dead. She found she was lost for words. Whilst she wanted to scream and yell at them, all she could do was lay there immobile whilst silent tears ran down the sides of her face. She began to wonder if there was anybody out there who would come and save her from this nightmare.

There weren’t any more bright lights or shiny stainless steel tables, that much was certain. The minute she opened her eyes she could see that she had been moved to accommodations more suited to prisoners rather than scientific experiments, which told her in essence that she was no longer a desirable commodity – something they wanted to fawn over and inspect, to dissect and be rewarded with a new discovery that they thought would somehow benefit the human race. No, she was of no use to them just yet and so had just been discarded aside like yesterday’s waste.

The room was nothing but a solid brick cell, containing little more than a tiny cot with a toilet taking up prime real estate in such confined spaces. The drugs they had injected her with had made her feel groggy and dehydrated and she longed for something cool to drink – water, anything at all for that matter. She could see from her position that there were metal bars across the window that would surely grant her freedom to the outside world, but not only did she have the bars to contend with, there was also double glazed glass on the other side.

She could glimpse stars and a portion of the moon, but the sight only depressed her. She wanted more than anything to be flying with Eilam across that sky, far away to a freedom she thought she might never taste again. The APP had the right to hold her indefinitely if she was at all suspected of treason to the law and state, and obviously they were taking her association with a known raven seriously; so serious it was to the point of judge and jury minus the trial.

She sighed as she arose off the cot and made her way to the front of the room, darkness canvassing the walls like it did on the outside world. The bars that separated her from the corridor were such a thick hard steel that it would take a blow torch to get through them. She consoled herself with craning her head between them to try and get a good look at her surroundings. Like her cell, the rest of the corridor and surrounding cells were all made of the same hard concrete that offered no warmth or comfort. The cells seemed to run as far as the eye could see, and as she were unconscious when she had arrived in her new digs, she didn’t see which way she had been brought in, but she guessed that had been their intention in the first place. Wouldn’t do her knowing an escape route now would it?

The cell across from her was empty, but she could see quite clearly there were others occupied around her with people. They didn’t come to the bars to see who the new-comer was; they stayed back in the shadows and kept their distance. They were quiet too, as though there was some unspoken rule that it was strictly forbidden to utter a single word, and the only sound that touched her ears was the incessant drone of electricity that course through the fluorescent light globes. She wondered for the hundredth time where exactly she was. Was she still on the coast or had she been taken elsewhere? She was dying to talk to somebody to try and find out some answers and the only way she was going to do that was if she convinced her fellow inmates to give her the time of day. Across the hall and two cells down on the left looked like her most promising avenue of idle chitchat. She pressed herself as far as she could into the corner space of the bars in order to allow herself to close the gap a little more with the person she was about to befriend.

“Hello,” she said in a hushed whisper. Nothing, not a single word or sound uttered back.
Come on people!

“Hello,” she whispered again, although this time raising her voice to the point she may as well have not even bothered to watch the volume at which she was speaking.

“Hush,” was the angry reply she received from a man evident on keeping quiet.  

“I will not hush until you speak to me,” she snapped, determined to get what she wanted.

“Be quiet or they will hear you,” he said in hushed tones.

“Who will hear us? There’s nobody here,” she said in a quieter voice, intent on keeping the man speaking. The man rose from his cot then and made his way to the front of his cell also, allowing her a better look of him. He was not a very tall man, round and chubby with a ratty kind of race with a big wart at the side of his nose. Whilst he wasn’t smiling, his two front teeth protruded from his mouth in an unflattering way and pressed down on his lower lip as they did so. He was balding on top but still had long straggly hair that hung about his shoulders. He certainly was most unattractive. He put his hands to his lips now and waved his hand at the air, indicating he wanted her to keep it down. She nodded, but continued regardless.

“Who is watching us?” she whispered again.

“They are, they’re always watching, there’s no escaping them now you know,” he whispered with urgency.

“Is there any way out of here?” she queried, careful to keep her voice at a very low volume.

“Many come in here, but few return to the outside world,” he said, his eyes widening to the size of saucers, making her feel like perhaps he didn’t quite have all of his marbles.

“Yes, but can we get out?” she said, a little louder this time. She was starting to find this merry-go-round of conversation a little tiresome with no food or coffee in her belly. He shushed her angrily before continuing.

“You’re not listening to me missy. It’s too late now you know, you’re already here now. There’s no hope once you make it here, oh no. You better prey they just leave you be and forget about you,” he said. “Sometimes we hear the screams, seems to be a lot worse a place where they take them than being in here missy, let me tell you,” he whispered again, his behaviour starting to become agitated and more erratic.

He started rubbing his hands together desperately as though he was washing them but sans the soap and water.

At that moment there was a loud clang of metal the reverberated down the long corridor, a signal that someone was coming.

The man heard it too. He seemed to shut down instantly and started a ménage of ramblings to himself.

“Too late, much too late now missy; I’ve gone and done it now. I told you. There coming they are. Never see me again, nope, never”.  He continued on like this as he retreated to the blackness of his cell, his round frame now gone from sight.

Aiyana stayed put where she was, Waiting to see who it was that was coming. She could tell it was more than one person and they were coming quickly down the hall from the left wing of the building. From the thump of their boots on the floor, she guessed there were at least six of them, all heavy solid men wearing the APP uniform, the spitting image of the guards that had run sentry duty of the laboratory room where she had first been taken. As they closed the gap between them she could quite clearly see she was in fact correct.

They wore hardened expressions with machine guns slung over their shoulders and displayed a practiced military synchronisation to their march down the hall. It was a little unsettling to think that these men may very well be coming for her. The man across the hall still prattled on, awaiting his fate of the guards that marched for a reason. They stopped now outside his cell, his prediction colliding with reality in that instant.

One of the police produced a large key and stuck it in to the lock of his cell and turned it until it clicked open. The man wailed now, begging for mercy and to be left alone, his cries falling on deaf ears as they turned to shrieks of terror.

“No, no, no, please I beg of you. Leave me be, leave me here, please!” he begged. 

It was a hard thing for Aiyana to watch. Whilst wanting to yell out and help the man, to do something – anything! She didn’t want to attract any undue attention towards herself in case they decided to make her their next target. In the interest of self-preservation she kept her mouth shut, all the while hating herself for doing so.
Good God, what has the world come to?
She thought.

They had the man out of the cell now and quickly trotted him off down the hall, all the while his shrill voice haunting her as they did so. It wasn’t long before his screams died out, too far gone to be heard anymore.

It wasn’t long after their party had departed that she heard a funny noise coming back down the hall. It was a strange sound, yet familiar in its action. As the sound neared her cell she could see a frail old man pushing a mop and bucket along with a cleaning cart. He was dressed in head to toe brilliant white overalls and cap. His hunched over frame parked the trolley outside of the cell that had just been vacated and he proceeded inside to strip and clean the area.

The sheets on the cot were replaced with freshly laundered ones and the toilet received a going over. The floor was mopped before the old man returned to his trolley, replacing all his spray bottles and dirty cloths as he did so. As he made his way to continue down the hall in the direction he had been going, he had to pass her cell. His eyes connected with hers as he passed. They were a dull smoky blue colour that looked cloudy with age. If ever there were a soul that could tell a thousand stories, this was it. She wondered why he still had a job at his age, but any other thoughts or questions were put out of her mind the minute he put his finger to his mouth to silence her. She knew now, that if she had any chance of making it out of here then she was going to need a miracle.    

****

Eilam was going out of his mind. His loud cries that were signature to the raven species echoed across the empty landscape. It was just as well he was out of the city by now or every man and his dog would have heard him.

In his raven form, his eyes could navigate the darkness better than the weak eyes he possessed as a human. They scanned every inch of his way home, helping him to fly almost autonomously while his mind kept occupied by more important things. He had been watching Aiyana, like he always did. She seemed to have a hold over him which was quite indescribable. He felt like he needed to be with her, protect her, and yet – he had failed. Failed so miserably that now they had her.

He was determined to get to her, but first he knew he would need the others so they could help him with a distraction. He had been perched in his raven form on a large skyscraper not too far from Aiyana’s own building; watching the balcony with a practiced patience. The balcony was where his focus had been, eagerly waiting for Aiyana to draw the curtains back and welcome him once more. But to his disappointment they had stayed closed.

Of course he had seen her leave the building and watched her return, arms laden with grocery bags – clearly she had been getting food of some sort. What piqued his birdlike curiosity was the man he spotted following her. He knew instantly that this man was trouble, it was like all the other people on the footpath seemed to vanish and he alone stood out, capturing Eilam’s attention. What was he to do about it though? Should he risk exposing himself in the day light in order to warn her, or should he sit back and wait and see what happened?

Later he would wish he’d chosen the risk, because he was now going to have to go to all manner of trouble to get her back. Once Aiyana had gone inside her building he had relaxed momentarily, knowing she was safe enough in there. What he hadn’t been expecting was the man to be joined by more men in the APP uniform, giving him a clear indication that Aiyana was in very big trouble. It was too late to fly to her, and he had to bear the excruciating wait as the men followed her inside. The twenty minutes seemed like an eternity, and he was all kinds of panicked by the time they came back down.

Aiyana was not on her feet either; she was unconscious and was being supported by two of the men into a black van that pulled up to the curb on their exit. He knew that if he let her out of his sight now, he may never see her again. The black unmarked van put on its blinker and pulled out seamlessly into traffic and followed the Gold Coast Highway south.