“I don’t understand, Chaynal. You used to be such a good soldier,” drawled a man standing in the shadows of the dark room. Chay couldn’t make out his face, but the voice was more than familiar to him. His old commander was running this interrogation. He had a strong feeling that they’d called him in special. Chay glared at him, keeping his mouth tightly shut.
He was handcuffed to a metal chair that had been bolted to the floor. He could tell by the look of it that it had been used plenty of times before. No one ever cleaned it, he supposed. It smelled of blood and urine. His hands were linked behind him, attached to each other and the chair itself. His feet were also cuffed to the chair, the bolts in the floor making it, unfortunately, impossible for him to get them loose. He was a very strong man- but not that strong. He was rather proud of how careful they’d been with making sure he was secure, though. He was certain that not everyone got such an uncomfortable treatment.
Of course, he had friends in the lowest of places- or rather, a friend. That person was most certainly their main target. Chay was bait, and he knew it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t chock full of valuable information. For a while, he’d wished he wasn’t. Maybe then they’d have just put him in a nice empty cell and waited for his partner to come along and rescue him. Chay soon realized that this man was far too sadistic for something like that. He’d torture an innocent man if he could make it look like a reasonable interrogation, he thought.
Chay had been given a proper empty cell, but he wasn’t often left there. He spent most of his time trapped in this damned chair, either alone or with this drawling ass of an ex-superior officer pacing around him, asking what Chay found to be rather stupid questions, and occasionally falling into fits of frustration and attempting to simply beat the answers out of him.
Of course, Chay was far too used to these sorts of treatments, and had been trained to resist torture and interrogation- by the very man who now stood behind him.
“I reckon I’m still a good soldier, Tristan- just ain’t yours.”
A fist collided with the side of his head, which was knocked to the side quite roughly. He winced, keeping his eyes shut for a moment in an attempt to make the stars swimming at the edge of his vision go away. He’d been seeing a lot of stars for the past couple of days, and had resigned himself to seeing them until Tristan got sick of the game and shot him good and proper- or beat him to death. It didn’t really matter either way. He’d be going to the same place.
“Shut up, you idiot.”
Chay fought down an urge to make noise for the sole purpose of disobeying the man, deciding that it would be best if he wasn’t beaten to death just yet. Tristan didn’t seem in a shooting mood.
After another hour of taunting and beating, Tristan departed for what Chay assumed was lunch, leaving the blonde man hunched over and adding his blood to the dried stains on the chair. Slowly, he stretched out his shoulders, leaning back against the chair and chewing on his tongue. He thought this was, by far, the worst part of the interrogations. He was so bored. At least with Tristan around he had someone to talk to.
Sort of.
It didn’t matter. Chay swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling, making a face at the camera just above him. It wasn’t as funny as it would have been if he could see the people watching on the other end- but at least it was something.
On the other end, a woman leaned over the bleeding carcass of a security guard and typed madly on the keyboard, monitoring all passages and rooms in the rather small complex. Her eyes landed on the image of Chay, and she grinned. ‘Idiot.’
She was tall for a woman, and absurdly thin. Her face was rather severe, and her hair a bushy mess, kept contained in a ponytail. She was wearing a pair of sunglasses, despite being inside, and a snug black t-shirt, and dark jeans tucked into heavy boots. She was apparently well armed, and withdrew on sleek pistol from the holster at her hip as she moved away from the screens and to the door again. She guessed that she had about fifteen minutes to get to Chay, and then back out, before she drew anyone’s attention.
She moved quickly and quietly down the halls, a map of the place imprinted on her brain. She’d studied this place for ages before coming to get her friend- and she almost regretted it, judging from the cuts and bruises that covered his face. Not that it mattered now. She’d get him, get out, and they’d be on their merry way.
Not that it had been easy getting that far, of course. Getting in had been a nightmare, and she’d already dispatched six bullets, and done away with five men. The sixth had just been for distraction. And there had been so many damned cameras that she wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to get to Chay in the first place. She’d set off one alarm- which had resulted in all the deaths. She’d convinced one of the guards to phone in that everything was quite alright, thank you, and the issue had been settled, before knocking him swiftly across the side of the head with the butt of her pistol.
She entered the room Chay was in with admiral quiet, raising an eyebrow at Chay as he hummed “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to himself, his eyes still on the camera above him. She moved closer, removing a rather fancy sort of laser-metal-cutter from her pocket. If there was one good thing about being a rebel, it was the nifty gadgets.
“Shut up, you idiot. We’ve got to go.”
Chay snapped his head up, not quite able to get a good look at Jean before she got behind him and began to cut his arms free. “What? Oh.” He sounded very much like a man who’d just been woken from a rather nasty dream. He craned his neck around to get a good look at the bushy hair and smiled broadly at her. “You never struck me as the hero type.”
“Yeah, well you never seemed like much of a damsel.”
She glanced up at him, eyes still shielded behind her shaded glasses, before turning back to her work. She’d gotten his left leg free- which he was stretching thankfully, and had just started on the right. Chay’s face grew solemn. “You didn’t have to come, y’know. It’s not safe here.” Jean didn’t respond, cutting through the last bit of metal before clicking the device shut and rising to her feet. “You’re too important for-“
“Hush.” Her mouth thinned into a tighter line than he’d ever seen her wear before and she wrapped her gloved hand around his wrist, proceeding to drag him through the halls. He noticed her sticking things against the walls as they went, but followed silently and obediently. He was quite the good soldier when it came down to it. That, and he felt guilty for making her upset at all.
“Was it really necessary to blow the place up?”
“Was it really necessary to get caught in the first place?” Jean countered, arms crossed and back shoved into the corner of the couch. She still had her sunglasses on, but was wearing much more practical clothing- one of Chay’s blue t-shirts and jeans that weren’t quite so skin-tight. Her feet were bare. Chay was sitting in a recliner that didn’t work anymore, turned sideways with his legs over the arm. He was wearing much the same outfit as he had been in that damned room he’d been stuck in, only this time it was clean. A white undershirt hugged his torso and showed off his muscular build, and jeans that were torn in so many places that it took a great deal of effort to come up with a way for each rip to be there in the first place. His tennis shoes were obnoxiously dirty, and Jean was fairly certain that they had lit up at the bottom at some point.
“Hey. I didn’t ask you to come rescue me.”
“And I didn’t ask you to get caught. Your orders were simple. Get in, leave the message, and get out.”
“And I did all that. It was after I got out that the problems cropped up.”
Jean glared at him through her shades, but said nothing. For some reason, this made Chay smile. Not his goofy grin, but a sort of proud, affectionate smile.
“You were worried.” Jean kept silent, but looked away from him. “You’re more important than me any day, Jean. You shouldn’t have come.”
“You’re right. I should have just left you there.” She pulled a blanket from the back of the couch and threw it over herself, stretching out on the couch and sighing. “Feel better?”
“I bet you haven’t even slept yet.” He stood up and plucked her glasses right off her nose- something he was proudly certain that, if anyone else tried, would most likely end up with Jean ripping their faces off and eating them for lunch- with her usual coffee. He was greeted by her haunting, silver blue eyes just before she shut them and shooed him away, waving her hand absently before rolling onto her side. He folded the sunglasses and put them on the tiny coffee table.
The house wasn’t so much of a house as it was the remnants of a dozen yard sales with walls around them. Everything looked as though it had been purchased from a thrift store, and most surfaces were bare. There was a bookcase, with a small television fitted on the second shelf down, a DVD/VCR hooked up to it, and a large hole cut in the back so that the cables could all get to the wall. There was an entire set of encyclopedias on the bottom shelf, a bible and a dictionary on the shelf above that, along with a box that was shaped like a book which held a rather tiny pistol. The coffee table had a small chess set on it, and the rest of the room was occupied by a card table and three folding chairs. This was all attached to the kitchen, which was also home to the washer and dryer. Down the hall were two bedrooms- one of which Chay slept in, and the other which had been converted to a training room of sorts.
Jean never slept in a bed. She couldn’t relax anywhere, let alone a place where she couldn’t be on the first line of defense for her team- even if Chay was the only member she had. After the last group she’d been with, anyone was worth protecting- especially the blonde giant of a man that kept her company. Chay left her to sleep, moving into the kitchen to make himself something resembling a proper meal.
The message he’d sent had been for headquarters, wherever that was. Jean said it was in France- which he believed. Sometimes she’d slip into the accent, and she was always muttering to herself in words that he was certain weren’t English. They’d met several months ago, in New York City. They were living in a suburb now. Each of them had been on the verge of suicide. At least he thought so. He felt much better at this point, and he thanked Jean for it. But she still seemed so… glum and serious all the time, and always appeared to stuck inside some horrible memory- like she was still seeing it, along with everything she was seeing now.
He wouldn’t push her about it, though. The last thing he needed was to make the one connection he had with anything meaningful upset. Jean was a member of a ‘terrorist organization.’ At least, that’s what it was publicized as in the news. After a bit of research on the subject, though, any person could find that everything they did was in order to take out some corrupted bastard. The government had become incredibly strict recently, and Chay, having experienced military force from the giving side, was certain he didn’t like the idea of anything they were doing.
Meeting Jean was a doorway, and helping her was a path to making amends for everything he’d done as a ‘good soldier.’ Apparently, though, she’d been without a team for a while now, and she’d sent to HQ for support. He wasn’t sure why the headquarters was in France, now that he thought about it. It just seemed that that was where all the revolutionary stuff came from. He frowned as he poured himself a glass of milk, sniffing it to make sure it hadn’t gone bad in his absence. He still wasn’t entirely sure what this group was all about. He just knew that he was willing to throw his lot in with Jean any day.
((…Hope it’s not too confusing. Feel free to join.))
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