In my peripheral vision, the man I had tackled to the ground, picked himself up and started moving back toward me. Tom grabbed the knife and in a single cut, freed himself from the safety restraint holding him in place. The approaching man started to run and Tom rolled himself out of the wreck, throwing the knife at the running man as soon as he was clear. Tom grabbed the gun off the ground where I had dropped it and despite the knife piercing the center of the running man's chest, he pulled the trigger sending a bullet through the middle of the man's forehead.
Unseen rustling sounds emanated from the brush behind me and I could do nothing but lay still on the pavement. Tom's fingers deftly ejected the mostly spent clip in the gun and slapped a fresh one in its place. With one hand he grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me along the pavement toward the front of the car while his other hand laid down a barrage of gunfire covering our desperate retreat.
I saw the dull black of her combat boots first, but I knew beyond all doubt it was her. I wanted to scream, do anything to warn Tom she was there. My body remained paralyzed and useless lying on the road looking up at Olivia aiming her gun at Tom's back. There was a click from her gun and I could feel Tom start to spin around to find the noise's source. Even as he did, Olivia squeezed her trigger with a smile on her lips. A moment later Tom fell to the ground beside me, blood gushing like a river from his wounded head. His eyes blinked a single time and then his eyes froze in place capturing their final glimpse.
Olivia knelt down next to my head and grabbed a handful of my hair to pull my face up off the ground. She stared into my eyes, smiling with pride at her success. A noise behind me caught her attention and she glanced up. Words were spoken I could not understand until the conversation ended with Olivia nodding her head and dropping mine back to the asphalt. Unable to do anything more, I simply watched as she stood towering over me.
"You really are just a pathetic little girl," She said, looking down on me while she shook a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack.
Olivia slipped the cigarette into her mouth and lit it with a lighter she pulled from a pocket in her vest. A cloud of smoke puffed from her lips and floated in the air over her shoulder obscuring the blue sky beyond. With her boot she rolled me onto my back and came to leer over me with her smug smile and taunting eyes. She waited while the sunlight burned into my unblinking eyes and tears slipped from the corners, rolling from my face into my hair and then she slipped a pair of dark sunglasses over her own eyes. Olivia threw her head back and let loose a laugh, echoing with the taunting chuckles of schoolyard bullies remembered.
Cold, icy water drenched my body in a brutal splash. The nightmare faded away or at least I hoped it had only been a nightmare. The image of Tom's deadly still body remained burned in my mind's eye, but it had just been a dream or so I told myself. My eyes snapped opened and my gaze darted in every direction only to find darkness. I gasped for air as sensations beyond cold returned to me. My arms were strained with the weight of my entire body and bound together, stretching toward the ceiling high above my head. I was swaying slightly and the very tips of big toes tickled a smooth, wet floor below.
"You fucking bitch," I said.
Olivia wiped her face off with her hand and shook a finger at me with that irritating smile still plastered on her face. Slowly, she stepped around to my left and behind me, giving the men an unobstructed view of my nakedness. The part of me that might have actually cared was far too occupied by the pain in my arms to be distracted by a few leering boys. Olivia stepped out on my left side with her head hanging back a moment before pausing to look me close in the face.
"Someone has been a bad, bad girl," She said.
Right, and I am looking straight at her too. Okay, maybe not straight but you trying turning your head when the only thing keeping your body upright is a pair of exhausted arms you used to call your own. I settled on a tired smile that was supposed to say what I was thinking without me actually saying a word at all. I think it worked because a half moment later she reached out behind me and slapped my right buttock where Dr. Michael's recent paddling had left me the most tender.
I sucked in air sharply and only narrowly avoided crying out with the pulsation of reinvigorated pain coursing through my nerves. The force of the blow caused my body to swing like a pendulum in and out of the narrow beam of light illuminating me for their pathetic game of voyeurism. I decided she was definitely talking about herself and given the chance I was most certainly going to let her know, but it was best to keep my head for the moment and bide my time.
"What did you do to me?" I said.
Olivia held up a bullet up for me to examine as I swung passed it. If I could have shrugged, I would have. The object held no meaning for me other than I could have sworn I had been shot in the back with one of those nasty things and should be laying on a slab instead of swinging from rafters. She took her time in explaining anything, apparently expecting the bullet to say it all for her. I considered informing her that bullets do not usually talk, but I had a feeling that would only aggravate my situation further.
"You're security file says you should know what this is," She said.
"My security file probably says a lot of things," I replied. "The question is how much of it is accurate."
It was an interesting revelation from her lips. I am sure she thought it no longer mattered and perhaps it did not, but knowing she had access to Quondam's security files narrowed down the search for our spy. If I kept my head about me I figured I had a good chance of learning some useful information, useful so long as I survive the experience at least.
"It's a non-lethal round for a standard 9mm. Nifty little things, they release a nerve compound into the victim which can incapacitate a 250 pound man for up to four hours. I put two of them into you just in case," Olivia said.
My memory took me back to my first meeting with Mr. Candle and the tour through the company he had taken me on. A floor guarded by military types and a set of labs developing ammunition of the type Olivia was speaking about. The project was supposed to be a secret and none of the ammunition should have been available for sale anywhere. All of it was clues to just how deeply Olivia's employer had infiltrated Quondam Innovations.
"What do you want from me?" I asked as my swinging slowed toward a stop.
"Who says I want anything?"Olivia said.
"If you didn't want something I would be dead," I said.
"You should be," She said, "But it's not me keeping you alive."
Olivia sidestepped her way in front of me, careful to avoid getting too close to my slightly swaying legs. If my shoulders had any strength left in them I would have used as leverage to kick the smug smile off her face, but the strain of supporting my weight had drained the possibility away. Her piercing gaze seemed to read the desire and failure in me as she continued on her way to stand tauntingly on my left. Upon reaching her new location she reached back behind me and slapped my left buttock with her right hand, sending me swinging again. I cried out as much from the pain in my arms and shoulders as the sting imparted on my already sensitive rear.
She reach out and stopped my swaying with her left hand resting against my chest. Every impulse inside me wanted to pull away from her vile touch and yet I could do nothing except endure. Olivia seemed to know the thoughts and reflexes within me as her hand shifted from firm pressure against my flesh to a soft tracing of my breasts with the tips of her fingernails. I shuddered unable to suppress the desperate need to pull away and the pain it caused me gave Olivia even greater pleasure. Tears slipped from the corner of my eyes.
"You aren't so tough," Olivia said.
"Says the one afraid to let me stand on my feet in front of her," I said.
Taunting one's captor is probably not the best of ideas, but it does come with a certain sense of satisfaction. The pain was not going to end anytime soon and she could do almost anything she wanted to my body, but whatever it was she or her employer wanted from me it was locked inside my brain and so long as I kept my wits about me, I was safe. It was only a thread from which to cling and there were no guarantees, but knowledge can be its own leverage when everything else fails.
"Afraid of you?" Olivia said with skeptical laughter resonating within her voice. "I like watching you suffer and squirm. You're hanging here for nothing more complicated than my pleasure. Does that anger you?"
"That you're a selfish bitch who gets off on the pain of others?" I said. "It's sad really."
Olivia increased the pressure of her fingernails against my skin and dragged them over the top of my left breast, lightly snagging on the skin as she went. I gasped when her nails caught on the sensitive flesh of my nipple and sent a jolt of cold pain throughout my body. She let her hand drop to her side, satisfied in the reaction she had elicited from me. I focused on controlling my breathing and attempted to ignore the various pains begging for relief.
"What should I call you?" Olivia asked, stepping away from me and into the shadows of the larger room beyond.
The place felt old and abandoned to me although I had nothing by which to make the determination. My hands were bound in leather cuffs and attached to a shiny chain not even old enough to have gathered rust on any of its links, but the chain was wrapped into a large hook descending from someplace high above and the hook appeared rusted in the dim light. The echoing of sounds in the room told me the ceiling was more than a few feet above me and the walls to the sides must be wide as well although the darkness hid the borders of my confinement well.
Behind the leering men I could make out the shape and shadows of a railing giving me the feeling there were additional levels below and possibly above as well. The dampness and cool temperature reminded me of being inside a cave and I considered it highly possibly we were underground in an old mine. I had read about the mines scattered through the desert in Dr. Michaels' notes, many of them having been abandoned since the beginning of the 20th century. It seemed an ideal location to hide from the world.
"We know you aren't Virginia West," Olivia said, from the shadows. "Eventually we'll figure out exactly who you are, there are only so many possibilities. You might as well tell us because what's the point really?"
Mr. Candle's warning about endangering my family if anyone knew my real identity suddenly sounded a lot more important than ever before. It was horrifying to hear Olivia talk about it all so casually as if the life and death of everyone I know was inconsequential. She probably thought I would be foolish enough to think I could protect my friends and family by cooperating with her, but I was certain if she ever found a single name, that person would be tortured or killed in her sick game. I stayed silent, knowing that in the end my anonymity was much harder to pierce than the alias used to protect it.
Olivia laughed a hollow, humorless laugh, edged with evil and darkness. The sound was truly terrifying, surrounded by cold air and dim light shrouded in damp darkness. I watched the men watching me as their expressions grew somber and serious for a brief moment in response to her shrill laughter and the satanic nature to which it alluded. Were it not for the increasingly strong pain emanating from my shoulders and arms, I would have smiled at the realization her own men were more afraid of her than I.
"Don't be foolish," She said, stepping back into the light where I could see her. "One way or another you are going to tell me what I want to know."
It took me a moment to understand her meaning and the threat she was implying. In her hand she held a riding crop with a curiously green tip. She slapped it into her open palm with a wide grin spreading across her face when she knew I finally understood what she intended. I swallowed my fear knowing I had nowhere to run and no place to hide so long as I was bound in the air.
"Green is really not my color," I said, trying to sound braver than I felt.
Olivia laughed again, but this time she was amused.
"Don't worry, it still brings out the red," Olivia said. "And red is definitely your color."
She sauntered toward me allowing the crop to sway in her hand. I was hardly surprised when she disappeared behind me and even less so when I heard the implement whistle through the cold air to slap against the tight and tender flesh of my backside. It probably would have caused minimal discomfort on its own, but with the condition Dr. Michaels had left me in, it stung like an electric shock. My leg jolted wildly of its own accord causing additional pressure on my arms. I screamed unable to endure the pain in silence and knowing it was pointless to hold it all inside anyway. Olivia emanated pleasure from every sense of her being no doubt punctuated with her nasty smile and taunting eyes although I could see none of it.
"Do you want to tell me your name now?" Olivia asked, whispering in my ear from behind.
The cold water she had doused me with trickled down the length of my body mixing with sweat produced by the forced effort of holding myself from the ceiling leaving me drifting between hot and cold. Her close proximity left me feeling revolted and I shuddered. The result was an immediate jolt of pain in my shoulders as my twisting weight increased the already significant pressure.
"Not really," I said, shocking myself by saying the thought aloud.
Her response was a flurry of whipping with her green tipped crop. I listened to the whistling swishes and stinging slaps with detachedness. The skin of my buttocks slowly increased in warmth under her efforts and while the slaps accentuated the discomfort already present, I found myself craving the warmth like a blanket in winter. The pain was a welcome distraction from an otherwise untenable situation.
Olivia, apparently tired of waving her green tipped wand, made her way to stand in front of me once more. She was still smiling, but her eyes betrayed the frustration she felt. No doubt, she had expected me to fall all over myself in trying to please her with anything she wanted in the hopes she would spare me further pain. She was not the only one surprised by my tenacity, but I guess I always have been a bit on the stubborn side.
I watched as she lifted the green tip and laid it gently against my chest. Our eyes met for a moment and I could feel her disappointment when she realized I was no more afraid of her newly implied threat than I had been with anything else she had done. She tried to mask it by dragging the tip along my skin almost tickling my breasts with the lightness of the touch and the gentle flickering as it moved along the mixed surface of tight and loose flesh.
"You'll tell me what I want to know," She said, but the confidence was lacking in her voice.
"Or what?" I asked.
The threats were obvious and she had exhausted them, if not completely, at least to the point we both new nothing on the horizon would be any more effective. She could have stepped up the treatment to something more severe, perhaps even permanently disfiguring, but her hands were tied by something or someone else. I knew it and she knew I knew it which left her in a precarious position between what she had to learn and could not do to learn it. I might have laughed, she would have in my place, but I suspected all she needed was a little push and there might not be any lines left she would not cross.
"That," An authoritative male voice said, from the shadows beyond us, "Is a very good question."
Good stuff. It's chapters like these that make me want to root for the villain rather than the protagonist. ;)
ReplyDeleteGood post, Ash...Virginia still stays strong willed even in that compromising position...Olivia sure is wicked definitely a good scene between them...bring on the next chapter...cant wait
ReplyDeleteQ5 has never been better than it has in the last couple of months, in terms of the action, the suspense, the mystery and the spankings, not to mention a little B&D. Please keep bringing on the pleasure and the pain.
ReplyDeleteMichael
Ashley, an excellent chapter, whose is the authoritative male voice, that may cast a little light on what is becoming an increasingly murky situation.
ReplyDeleteWarm hugs,
Paul.