Save Her

Natalie - Chapter 6-1

Natalie - Chapter 6

Five days pass since Agent Love slapped her and slipped her the keycard. In that time, Natalie had hidden it the only place she could, inside the seam of her pillow because she couldn’t get it into the mattress without making it obvious. Now, she can only hope they would not exchange the pillow for another.

She thinks about the card in a continual loop in her head. It’s as much worrisome as it is hopeful. Having possession of the card quickly becomes a torturous symbol of her inability to escape, and her need to hurry her escape. Her belly is growing far too rapidly. She’s slowing down a little more every day.

The first night she had the card, she forced herself to stay awake and tugged on the seam of the pillow with little pulls so the cameras could not tell that she was fidgeting. Finally, a small thread loosened, and she could open it enough to fit the key through. Then she fell asleep. They didn’t change her pillowcase the second day, so the second night she stayed awake as long as she could, manipulating the key deeper into the polyester fill inside. The third day they came in and exchanged her sheets and pillowcases and did a quick sanitizing of the bathroom. Natalie sat and watched and tried not to care, but she watched it anyway because she was worried about Agent Love. If the guards found the card, they couldn’t do much more to her, but it would mean Agent Love’s doom. The guard changing the bed did so with a pace not for the meek. He grabbed her used pillowcase by the ends and in one swift motion dumped and lifted it away from the pillow. He then inserted the pillow into the new case and just as quickly put it in. Natalie had inadvertently stopped breathing when the guard pulled the pillowcase off. She breathed normally once the pillow was back on her bed. The key was safe. It had not fallen to the ground. That night she felt around and made sure the key was far enough inside so that another such shaking would not reveal it to her captors. The fourth night she fell right asleep. Only if they took her pillow would they find it.

On the fifth day, they escort her out of her room towards the interrogation area. Waiting for her is Agent Love. She’s as stone cold and hard to read as any other day, while Natalie is split inside, trying her very hardest to control her conflicting emotions of gratitude and confusion. Love’s stare waits patiently for Natalie’s eyes. Natalie stares down at the table. She’s afraid to look up. She fears what she might reveal. Natalie can’t act calm about all that had happened. She starts the story from where they had left off without taking her eyes off the table.

“My parents were furious at me for my betrayal. But they didn’t take it out on me; not directly. They took it out on Drayden. That comes later. You and the people behind the glass and the cameras seem pretty focused on hearing about teleportation as if that’s the greatest thing you have to worry about. It’s not, just FYI. Teleportation is the first thing he learned. It’s one of the things his nanos were programmed to do instinctively. I’m not sure if ‘instinctively’ is the right word to use since we’re essentially talking about mini computers inside cells, but whatever, that’s the word I’m going to stick with.

“Drayden’s back with Livia and me outside on the walkway after my parents leave. Livia, god bless her, mentioned some amount of homework she had to do. She hugged me quickly and whispered close to my ear: ‘You bad bad girl.’ It made me smile. I wanted to be bad. Or, really what I mean is that I just didn’t want to be goody goody Natalie. I’m always goody goody Natalie, and trust me, it can get boring.

“‘You think your parents will ever forgive me for stealing their daughter?’ He asked with the cockiest of grins.

“‘No,’ I giggled. ‘They’ll hate you forever.’

“‘You okay with that?’

“‘You mean okay with you stealing me? I guess that depends on where you’re stealing me to and for how long.’

“‘Do you trust me?’ he said, stepping closer.

“My eyes met his. ‘I trust you,’ I said back.

“I could have kissed him right then and there and been the happiest woman on the earth. We stood close enough to each other that it would have been but a simple leaning forward, but he had other plans. Much more spectacular plans than what my simple romantic mind could imagine.

“He reached out his hand for mine. I took it and we began our slow walk away. Drayden’s hand made me feel safe. He held onto me like he was afraid I’d slip away, but gently enough I could let go if I wanted to.

“‘Landing in front of your car was a complete accident,’ he said, breaking the silence. Falling into London was… random.’

“I looked at him like he was crazy. ‘Now I’m sure you bonked your head.’ He shook his head ‘no.’ I said, ‘You climbed that tree. You fell.’ He shakes his head ‘no’ again. ‘I pulled that leaf from your hair.’ At this, he nods. ‘But you weren’t in the tree?’ He shakes his head ‘no.’ ‘And falling into… falling into London was an accident?’ He shakes his head ‘yes.’ ‘I ran you over, didn’t I? I didn’t imagine that part, did I?’

“‘Yeah, you ran me over,’ he said with a smile as if it happened to him all the time. As if getting smacked by nine hundred kilograms of steel was an everyday occurrence. ‘I’d say I’m sorry for scaring you and messing up your car, but the truth is, landing in front of you was the best thing that’s happened since I can remember.’

“I stopped walking because I was waiting for the punchline, you know?” Natalie looks up at Agent Love for the first time since the slap. They make eye contact, and they each hold it, and Natalie’s not sure what emotion will overwhelm her. She might crack. It might be tears or it might be frustration. Her pregnant emotions are unpredictable. Anything can happen at any moment. What Agent Love did for her is still puzzling. She’s the enemy. She’s the interrogator. Yet there’s a keycard back in Natalie’s room that might free Natalie from this horrible place, and it was gifted to her by this woman sitting across from her. Natalie wants to believe that Agent Love purposely gifted her the keycard to help plan her escape. However, two other possibilities invade Natalie’s brain. The first is that maybe it was an accident. Maybe in Agent Love’s anger, the keycard had somehow slipped from her grip and landed inside Natalie’s clothing. If that was the case, why had Agent Love not tried to get it back? Maybe she didn’t realize where she lost it. Or perhaps she had a spare and didn’t know the one in Natalie’s pillow was even gone. That’s one scenario. The other was far worse for Natalie and was one she pushes out of her head quickly whenever it enters: What if the keycard in her pillow is a fake? What if it’s a mean ruse to torture her thoughts of getting out of this cement prison, only to not unlock any doors at all?

Agent Love purses a small smile. “Go on,” Agent Love says gently. The gentleness makes Natalie need to look away again.

“‘You’re not being straight with me,’ I said to him. ‘If my car hit you, I mean for real, then there’s no way you would have been able to walk. Nothing of what you’re saying is making any sense, so if this is some way to impress me or to mock me, then I should just let you know that I won’t put up with either.’ I pulled my hand away from his and crossed my arms across my chest.

“‘I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,’ he said, and then looked around for a private spot. ‘Please?’ He reached out his hand again, and after a beat, I took it. ‘I guess I’ll just have to show you.’ I followed him begrudgingly under a nearby tree that was far enough away from the overhead streetlights. ‘I need you to close your eyes,’ he said. I looked at him like he was crazy. ‘C’mon, we trust each other, right?’ I shrugged my answer. ‘This won’t work unless we trust each other,’ he said, and I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I feared that he meant ‘us’ so I nodded my approval. ‘Good, now please close your eyes.’ I closed them and felt him step close and then hold me close to him. I raised my chin, expecting a kiss. Instead, he gently pulled our bodies even closer together. My breasts were against him as he whispered in my ear with his warm breath: ‘Eyes closed.’ Suddenly there was a warming around me, an electricity that emanated from inside my stomach to the outside of my skin. The feeling was pure, like a rebirth, and when I opened my eyes, we were on a balcony overlooking the lapping waves of Maui.

“I gasped and looked down at myself, up and down him to believe it was true, and then all around me to make sense of everything. He just smiled that lovely smile I can’t get enough of and waited for me to completely freak out.

“‘How did?! Where!? What is going on?! I don’t understand how…’

“‘We’re in Maui. You ever been?’

“I pushed away from him. ‘Maui?! Like Maui Maui?! Hawaii?! How did you—? How did we—?’

“‘Teleport. At least, I think that’s the best word for it.’

“‘That’s impossible!’

“‘Actually, scientists have been able to teleport atoms for a while—’

“‘This doesn’t make any sense. This can’t be real.’

“‘Tell me about it.’

“My mind was utterly blown. I didn’t know how to react and consciously tried to calm my silly girl nerves about exactly how I should react. I wanted to call Livia. I wanted to scream delightedly into the phone that he had teleported me to Maui. Maui! Via Teleportation! Teleporting! I couldn’t help but smile as I took it all in. The electricity that had enveloped me as quickly as an instant had left my body just as fast and left me with a euphorically heightened sense of reality. ‘This is amazing,’ I said to him. I turned towards the waves, breathed in the sweet-salty air that was so different from anything I had ever smelled in England, and breathed out. I breathed in again more deeply, and out again. It was so real. His hand touched my shoulder from behind.

“‘When I landed in front of your car, it was my first time. I can’t quite explain the science behind it yet, but this is how I travel now.’

“‘You can go anywhere you want?’

“‘I think so. So far, yeah. If my brother were here, I’d probably know that for sure.’

“I turned to see Drayden looking forlorn, no longer the confident stud who had stood up to my parents. ‘Reginald, right?’ Drayden nodded. ‘What happened to him? Where’s your brother now?’

“‘Somebody killed him,’ he said. ‘That’s one of the reasons I needed that little brown book you found. My brother’s coordinates were in there from places he visited, and I couldn’t let anyone else see them. This condo — it’s one of his.’

“‘Could he do the same things as you? I mean survive car accidents and magically be in different places?’

“‘He invented this,’ he said, moving to the edge of the railing, blocking my view of the Maui sunrise. ‘As far as I know, he was the only one who could do this. Then I found his research and the next thing you know — voila.’

“‘I guess what I mean is how did somebody murder him? I mean, my nine-hundred-kilo car didn’t cause you a scratch.’

“‘I’m mostly invincible,’ he said.

“‘Mostly?’

“‘Yeah, mostly. I’m still figuring it out. Reggie knew more about this, and someone could get him, kill him, so yeah, mostly is probably the most accurate.’

“‘If somebody killed… I mean, if your brother was killed… are you in danger?’ Why did someone kill him?’

“‘Don’t know yet,’ he said. ‘But I’ll find out. And when I do…’

“Seeing him there on the balcony like that… it’s a painting I’ve thought of doing many times. The pain and anger in his eyes. The way the morning sunlight washed over his right side, silhouetting enough to darken one eye. It was vengeance in that one. In the other eye was hope. Love. The sunrise behind him expressed the promise of a new day. A new future.

“I stepped near to him. I felt the skin on his arm. It looked like mine, but it felt smoother. I looked up to his neck and felt it, too. His Adam's apple swallowed as I caressed the skin under his chin, by his jaw, his eyelid. ‘Did I hurt you with my car? I mean did you feel any pain?’ He shook his head again. His lips were so close. I wanted to feel those, too. I could tell he wanted the same. I closed my eyes. Our lips touched. Then our tongues. Then our bodies.”