Chapter 24: Many Meetings Gone Awry

Date: November 10, 3007
Time: 22:00
Location: Navasota Island

Deidre’s mind was in chaos. Whatever they were doing, they were doing it well; a red fog was roiling through her brain, consuming everything it came into contact with. It was like a taste of the devil’s kiss: the kiss of insanity.

The world was a haze of crimson, as if everything was bloodstained and tainted. Deirdre fell to the floor; her legs would not listen to her anymore. A pair of dark-red boots stood in front of her, unmoving like two stone pillars. She rolled over onto her back, her tears and sweat mingling together before dripping to the cold concrete floor. If this was what hell was like, Deirdre would die. The irony almost killed her.

The face above her swam in an uncertain ocean of illusion. The drug had cut the fine line between the real world and the unreal world. All bounds and limits were gone in one second. Whoever this was, standing above her condescendingly, was going to suffer for what he did to her. If she could ever recover.

“Yura way ck,” a muffled voice echoed in her ears, pounding on her eardrums like mallets on an actual percussion instrument. Though the world did not clear up, the repeat of the words seemed to be more apparent now, “You’re awake.”

“Who… who are you? What… what do you… you want?” she gasped. The voice that came out was like an alien’s. But it was her own: spoken from her very lips. His footsteps as he circled around her were deafening, each a miniature clap of thunder. Deirdre felt like she was listening to an all base drum concert, and she had the best seat in the house: front row and center.

A pair of strong hands grabbed her combat uniform and pulled her up to face him. Deirdre’s brown eyes lolled from one side to the other, unable to focus upon the face in front of her. A puff of smoke choked her airways, sending noxious fumes into her lungs. “Ready to talk?”

Deirdre heard the question, but could not respond. She didn’t want to anyways. Why would she answer to such a demanding person? He was being so rude, grabbing a woman by her uniform. If only she had her sniper rifle back…

A vicious slap whacked across Deirdre’s face. Her mind suddenly cleared up. The blurry world became clear as day. A man with black hair and red eyes was staring at her, literally nose to nose. Deirdre realized his eyes were straying all around her body, as if looking for the weakest spot to infiltrate. But she knew exactly what he wanted, and by god she was not going to let him have it.

Deirdre spat into the man’s stone cold face. He flinched a little as he wiped the saliva out of his eyes, but smiled surprisingly. Deirdre watched in horror and disgust as he ran his spit-covered fingers down his chin and into his mouth. She wanted to retch at the vile action. Who the hell is this guy? What the hell is this guy?

And then he punched her full on in the gut. Deirdre’s lungs emptied themselves of air; she felt lightheaded as if exposed to pure space. Gasping for breath, she staggered back up, clutching her stomach in pain, “Who… who are you?” The wind was still knocked out of her.

“The name’s Rey, little missie, and if you don’t tell me everything, you will know a lot more about me. More than you can possibly imagine,” he threatened in an inappropriate tone; a smile flickered across his face. Deirdre knew what the sick man wanted. But at the same time, she had no clue what he wanted from her. Panic struck her in a head-on collision. It was fatal, but not quite.

She was pushed down into a metal chair; ropes flew out mechanically and tied her tight, disabling any movements whatsoever from the neck down. Rey kneeled down in front of her, placing his gnarled hands on her knee; she looked away in disgust. There was a fire burning inside of Deirdre, and Rey was putting it out with gasoline.

Suddenly, she felt herself falling into a hole. But wait, she could still see Rey in front of her; his paws on her knee caps. However, she was falling. Deirdre felt like a black hole had opened up in her stomach and was sucking everything in from the inside out. A cold sensation crept through her body, and she noticed the world start to swirl around her. Tell me your mission objective. Deirdre blinked nauseously, Tell me where you’re from. Tell me what I want to know. Tell me…

Then it occurred to her. Everything that was happening hit her in one sickening punch to the mind. She had trained extensively for this, yet failed to recognize it until now. Deirdre focused on the surroundings, forcing them to come back in sight. And then there she was, tied to a metal chair, looking at the Rey’s slick black hair, and pushing off his mental attack.

“So, you can block me,” he said dryly and stood up. Rey ambled over to a cabinet on the far corner of the room and opened it with a click of a latch. “Well, we have ways of dealing with you people. The good ol’ fashion way.” Rey turned around, brandishing a bloodstained baseball bat.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, now pacing around the room with the bat held in his hands like a rifle. Deirdre looked at the sleek wooden bat that contained numerous points of fractures, no doubt from the many impacts it had made with bone and flesh. The wooden menace jeered at her, now swinging back and forth like a pendulum. A pendulum waiting to slice her head off.

“Why? Taking a survey are you?” Deirdre spat, her eyes still following Rey as he walked around the room. She was tied to a chair in an isolated room with a merciless man wielding a veteran baseball bat. Obviously the best thing to do was to piss him off even more.

Deirdre heard a slight chuckle, then in a rush of footsteps, found her jaw wrenched in the direction of Rey’s face by his crushing hands. “Do not agitate me!” he spat into Deirdre’s face. Hatred boiled up inside of her, waiting to be unleashed. Rey raised the bat.

Suddenly, the only door to the room busted open, flooding the dimly lit chamber with a sick yellow light. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway, staring at Rey and Deirdre. “Rey, Mikhail wants you.”

Rey whipped around, a maniacal glint in his eyes. “I’m dying to see him…” he snarled sarcastically and the man left, leaving the door open. Rey’s red eyes returned to Deirdre, who sat, defiant as ever, in the cold, confined chair. “I’ll be back my pretty, and then, the real fun starts.” He paused, scanning her body, pausing particularly at her chest. “But for now…” Deirdre would have screamed if her face was not suddenly covered by his hands. And then she felt him, his sick rough tongue sliding from her neck to her chin, licking her in a long, drawn out, diseased motion. The door slammed shut, leaving her in darkness once more, trembling and sweating like no tomorrow. There would be no tomorrow for her now. No amount of time would ever free her from the personal vendetta she had purring inside of her heart.

Date: November 25, 3007
Time: 01:30
Location: Navasota Island

The clearing fell into an eerie silence. It seemed almost impossible that one second ago the area was in chaos and pandemonium. It was certainly impossible that one minute ago everyone was sitting peacefully in front of the crackling fire. Now, in a little more than a minute, Deirdre was trapped in an unbreakable net, a man was standing on top of the squad with a smirk etched across his face, and a newcomer woman was on top of Rena. Her words had caused the painful stillness, and they lingered in the air like a recent rainstorm.

Now the two were frozen, as if in time; not a soul dared to move, unwilling to find out what was going to happen next. Deirdre felt like curling up into a little ball to escape everything. But nothing of the sort was going to happen. She was going to witness the next events whether she liked it or not. It was the force of fate, and all that defied it were sent straight to hell.

“Wha…what?” Rena stuttered in the cold night air. That was it? That was all she could muster after such a radical statement? Deirdre scoffed at the brilliance of it. The sheer idiotic brilliance.

“You heard me Rena,” the newcomer muttered quietly, “It was him, not me, that made a move.” The awkwardness of the conversation was unbearable. Deirdre wanted to shoot herself, but was forced by fate to continue listening.

“I remember it clear as day, Rena,” the woman on top of her breathed, “The trauma has never left me.” She paused, and then painful words started to flow out in a river of dark memories, “I remember walking to my room after the Christmas dinner. I heard you two talking, and decided to take a detour to leave you two be. But when I turned the corner, you were gone, and I bumped into Rey. He grabbed me and pulled me close to him and kissed me. I guess that was when you saw us, because I immediately broke away from him, throwing him away with my mind. I’m sorry but, that is the truth, and you can read my mind if you want to see it for yourself.”

She finished the brief summary, and Deirdre still had no clue what she was talking about. But it seemed like the magic had affected Rena, who was frozen on the ground, unable to move or speak. It was like looking at the body of a dead loved one in an open-casket funeral. Rena was probably already dead on the inside. Though it had nothing to do with Deirdre, she still felt sympathy for her, if all of this was true, of course.

The woman pulled Rena up in a swift motion and walked away towards the man. She looked out into the night forest with her head hung low, no doubt in tears. The man suddenly released the netting, and Deirdre found herself underneath the Duck’s crushing weight, “gerroffme!”

Duck clambered over her, touching her “accidentally” on certain parts of her body. Disgusted, she straightened up and dusted her combat suit off. Deirdre suddenly realized there was no weight on her back, and sure enough, her A-3 Asianic Sniper Rifle was impeded from her grasp by the man standing between the squad and their weapons. So close yet so far.

“Hello,” the man smiled dryly, “I am Mikhail Shale.” Deirdre’s eyes widened in shock, “I know you are here to hunt me and to kill me. I cannot let you do this, because if you do, all of you will die. Your general has betrayed you. He wants you to die. And like I have already told Nova over there, we must join forces in order to get out of this sh** alive.” Deirdre was utterly bewildered. What the hell did he just say? Why did he look nothing like his profile picture in the manila folders of the mission briefing?

Silence fell once more in the night. The wind swayed the trees slightly, their leaves rustling over the clearing where seven people now stood, each fighting their own personal wars, their feelings compressed inside their hearts like packaged toys. There was a swooping sensation in her stomach, but she ignored it. Deirdre decided to take the chance.

“Mikhail, why should we believe you?” she asked, drawing up her defiance once more, “After all, you had those horrible… horrible things done to me when you first caught us.” Deirdre was not stupid. She was not about to let the rest of her squad mates know what Rey had done to her.

Mikhail smiled knowingly and replied, “Because I haven’t killed you yet.” Deirdre knew when a conversation ended, and shut up immediately, overwhelmed by his simple yet brutal logic.

Suddenly a scream of rage echoed across the clearing, rebounding off of the black barks of the trees. Everyone whipped around to look at Rena who had just apparently exploded in fury. “THAT BASTARD! REY IS GOING TO DIE!” And then, Deirdre realized what had happened. In the silence, Rena had read her mind, and knew exactly what she was withholding from everyone else. Thinking back to it, she still found it as revolting and repulsive as ever. In fact, one of the key factors that drove Deirdre for survival was the hope that she would meet Rey again, and make him suffer for how he had violated her.

To Deirdre’s surprise, Mikhail started to laugh wildly, “Oh Rena, believe me, you’ll get your chance to repeat those words to him yourself.”

Rena stared back, a satanic fire burning inside of her eyes, and suddenly Deirdre found fear creeping through her body like a the dripping of a runny egg, “Believe me, I will.”