Chapter 4 #2
“You made it pretty clear the last time I saw you.”
“What?” he protested. “I did no such thing.”
“You told me that you didn’t want gratitude or to be seen as a hero. You didn’t want anything like that. Even though you were my hero back then.”
“BS,” he replied, with a chuckle. “Let’s face it. You were already way more adept at saving yourself than I ever would be.”
“And yet so much in my world came crumbling down very, very quickly.”
“Sometimes life is like that,” he noted, his tone calm. “And often it’s all about how quickly you can pick yourself back up again.”
“Sometimes you don’t pick yourself up at all,” she murmured. “It’s just… it’s hard. It hurts, and you can’t really move very much with all that pain, physical or otherwise.”
“Maybe so,” he agreed. “On the other hand, you’ve done phenomenally well. So don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Sure, sure.” She moaned. “Then I lost track of you and everybody else.”
“That was by choice, wasn’t it?”
“Sure. I was dealing with some tough stuff, and… I figured that everybody was better off without me.”
Now he groaned at that. “Is that why you didn’t get back to me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t want to be a burden to anybody. When I lost my abilities—or thought I had way back when—that’s what it felt like.”
“But when you got them back again,” he asked, turning to look at her curiously, “did you still think you didn’t have any friends?”
“Pretty much, and then I got really sick, and everything got weird.”
“When you say weird , what does that mean exactly?” he asked, curious.
Just then came a shout up ahead, and, using his flashlight, Wallace could make out Riff coming toward them.
Riff took one look at her and grinned. “Glad to see he found you,” Riff greeted her, with a smile.
“Hi. Believe me that I’m very grateful he did.”
“Yeah, that was pretty nasty,” he noted, “and you can bet that MI6 wants to know all about it.”
She groaned at that. “Of course they do.”
“What they’ll want to know is what happened, who did this to you, and what connection it has with MI6,” Riff explained.
She shrugged. “I don’t think my kidnappers have any connection to MI6, but I think they’re using MI6 resources to find people who have abilities, so they can set up their own energy-working team.”
“Which follows along with what we were wondering,” Riff agreed, with a nod, looking over at Wallace.
“It does, but it sucks,” Wallace noted, “because I don’t know how many other people Jonas and his guys had that they were talking to, but if it was just us?
… Then the possibility exists that MI6 already had a leak in the sense that some other guy, some poor other guy named Wallace was picked up as me, and then Amy was picked up as well.
She’s convinced them, we hope, that she has lost her abilities, and they think they’ve got one up on MI6. ”
“I did tell my kidnappers that, if I had been a viable candidate, MI6 never would have let me leave until they had me all locked down and certainly wouldn’t have just dropped me off at a hotel. The kidnappers seemed to believe that line more than anything.”
Wallace frowned at her and nodded. “That is the truth too.”
She frowned back at him. “Really? So, I already failed then?”
He laughed. “No. It’s not that you failed. There was no failing. It seems to me that is one of those things that they’re still trying to sort out the viability of.”
“No, it’s past that,” she argued. “MI6 was already making inquiries with other people, meaning that it was well past the point of their still deciding if I was a worthwhile candidate. I think we were being actively interviewed, and I just didn’t make the cut.
” She stopped and then laughed. “God, can you imagine,…. failing at that, something that’s tormented me my entire life, and here even now is still causing me hell?
I wasn’t even going to talk to them about it, until I decided that I should probably reconnect with the world around me, especially after being so ill and having so many changes happening.
” She shook her head. “A bloody nuisance, the whole lot of it is.” Up ahead she saw a bit of light.
“Please tell me that’s daylight out there. ”
“It is,” Riff confirmed. “What we can’t be sure of, though, is that we’re alone.”
At that, she sucked in her breath, stared at him, and asked, “What do you mean?” Her voice was a harsh whisper.
“If the kidnappers know you guys were being interviewed, and they also know that Wallace here was about to disturb them, what are the chances that they have been following you or us—or me for that matter—and aren’t waiting up ahead?” Riff suggested. “We can’t take a chance of running into them.”
“That’s lovely,” she muttered, as she stopped in her tracks and turned to stare at him. “What do you suggest we do then? This isn’t exactly where I want to spend the rest of the day. I want to go home and have a shower.” She sniffed the air around them and winced. “Definitely a shower.”
“A shower would be lovely,” Riff agreed. “We just have to confirm that we aren’t followed from here.”
“How do we do that, when I don’t even know where these guys came from? And they took me from my hotel. I thought for the longest time that it was some test by MI6, thinking they would get to see me use my abilities to get out of this.”
Riff stared at her for a moment. “That’s an interesting idea,” he noted. “One we’ve also been considering. I’m still not so sure these kidnappers have the brains to do something as advanced as that though.”
She snorted. “I see you’re a big fan too.”
“Not so much,” he said, with a wry smile.
“I prefer private over government any day. Government does this shit all the time and never even apologizes,” he noted, with a headshake.
“And, no, I don’t know that’s what this was all about.
However, as soon as we get back to civilization, we’ll have to let MI6 know that we have you, and you will have to answer some questions. ”
“Do I really have to though?” she muttered, with a shake of her head.
“I’m not sure I owe them a damn thing. I didn’t really want to come over, but coming over is one thing, while getting kidnapped after somebody found out about their super top secret meeting is another,” she added in a mocking tone.
“If MI6 has leaks like that, they surely aren’t safe enough to work for.
I don’t appreciate getting kidnapped as a result of their leaky ship. ”
“I agree,” Riff replied, “and I’m certainly prepared to back you, should you want to argue it. Yet I think you’ll find it a whole lot easier to just go through the exit interview process, regardless of how much information you choose to give them.”
“It’s not as if I can give them much anyway,” she said.
“Did the kidnappers keep their faces hidden?”
“No, they didn’t—or their voices either for that matter,” she shared. Then she stopped and nodded. “That just supports the idea that they probably weren’t planning to come back for me.”
“It’s possible,” Wallace interjected, as he approached the entrance of the tunnel. “I wouldn’t want to think of them doing that, but seeing their faces means either you wouldn’t be allowed a chance to confirm who they were or they had no worries about your doing that.”
While she pondered exactly what that meant, she heard a shout up ahead. As they stepped out into the sunlight, they were suddenly surrounded.
*
Wallace, Amy, and Riff were quickly placed in vehicles and escorted back to MI6 HQ.
As they walked into the building, escorted by a man on either side, Jonas impatiently waited for them.
When Jonas laid eyes on Amy, Wallace watched the relief cross Jonas’s face.
“It’s a damn good thing I saw the relief on your face,” he snapped, “because we’re still contemplating whether you’re behind all this in the first place. ”
Jonas stared at him, his jaw dropping. “What?” he cried out. “You’re still hanging on to that nonsense?”
“If you’re testing people to see what they can do,… this would be one hell of a good way to do it,” Amy stated. “So, yeah, it did cross my mind that you might have been behind this.”
“Dear God,” he muttered, “it’s not as if any government operation will sanction something like that.”
She laughed. “Are you sure about that? Seems to me you guys sanction all kinds of shit, and it’s not as if you wait or look for approval before you do.
” He flushed at that and then glared at her.
She waved her hand about. “Don’t mind me.
I’m just a little cranky after being kidnapped, held against my will, then running for my life through the sewers. ”
“Did they do anything to you?” he asked.
“No, they didn’t,” she muttered, “unless of course kidnapping qualifies. But I got the definite impression—when they all took off and left me alone—that they weren’t coming back and that I was an easily disposable item.”
Jonas nodded. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised. When it comes to those for-hire groups, if you don’t fit what they want, they don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Yeah, and what they wanted was to set up a team. Apparently just the same as you’ve been talking about,” she muttered.
“The question is, who the hell in your organization is giving away your secrets? Why would I even want anything to do with a company, a government, that can’t even keep its own employees safe, particularly when we didn’t even get through the interview process?
” she asked, with a snort. “But now you’re off the hook since I know you were letting me down easy by dropping me off at the hotel. ”
Jonas’s jaw worked several times as he processed all the information she was sending his way, the pace of it making his head spin. He shook his head. “I didn’t say you wouldn’t be part of the team,” he muttered. “I was trying to figure out where to go from here and was taking Wallace to the hotel.”