Save Her

Natalie - Chapter 5-1

Natalie - Chapter 5

Days pass without Natalie caving in on her threat to stay silent. She wants proof of life for Livia, and since they still hadn’t proven that, she sees no need to answer any more of their questions.

“What should I do?” Natalie whispers to her baby. “How much should I say?” She gently strokes her rounding belly with the tips of her long fingernails, up and down, down and up, then around in a circle. The light touch feels good on her taut skin. Her fingernails send warm sensations in both directions, through her belly and up through her finger’s joints, to the nerves in her elbows. The baby kicks strong a few times, but Natalie doesn’t know how to interpret it. “Is there such a thing as too much information, like I could actually put Dray in any sort of danger?” Kick, kick, kick. “Especially since even he didn’t fully know the extent of his abilities, which seemingly were limitless, or were at least only as limited as imagination and current computer programming could allow?” Kick, kick, kick, kick, followed by a full body roll. Natalie doesn’t know how to translate that from her baby and knows it is silly to suppose he or she could help with these questions.

Today is the day Agent Love will get her what she wants. After hours of stubbornly sitting across from each other the last few days, Agent Love finally came around and said they would produce a video of Livia. In return, she fully expected to learn about teleportation.

“Duh. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time,” Natalie said. Natalie wondered if she could have asked for more, but she preferred to see Livia in video and not in person because she obviously didn’t want her back to this dreadful, cement-enclosed place. That, and she knew their threats could worsen. She knew they could raise the stakes of the danger on her friends and family. She knew that Agent Love was only doing this because they had made an agreement, and she was sticking to that agreement.

Agent Love isn’t the same Agent Love she had first met. Natalie can look deeper into her eyes now, and therefore deeper into her soul. At the same time, Agent Love looked at Natalie less harshly. It was as if she had finally come around to see deeper into what made Natalie special, and though she studied her with the same edged scrutiny of a trained interrogation expert, the focus of her stare was softer, more inviting, less hate-filled. She was good-cop/bad-cop all wrapped up into one hardened package, so Natalie knew danger still lurked within Love, but her optimism guided her to give more than what she asked, as if they had an unspoken agreement to protect the other from ‘them’, even though she was fully a part of ‘them’. That was the part of hope that a prisoner like Natalie knows she has to hold onto for survival. She wonders if Agent Love’s change in demeanor is a ploy to gain trust, and prays it’s not. There’s not much more she can do at this point than to keep trying to win Agent Love over. It’s the only thing keeping her sane while continuing to plot her escape.

The rest of the facility closes in on Natalie. The cement walls feel tighter by a centimeter or two every day, both in the smallish room they had tried to make as comfortable as possible for her, and in the interrogation room where the days carry longer and longer. Her baby doesn’t seem to like it either. She/he wants to see sunlight as much as Natalie does, she thinks. The hope of escape can only sustain mood so much. She and her baby desire proof of light, of night, of the existence of themselves within the solar system for actual sanity. How tortuous it was to be under fluorescents for so long, and how unhealthy. She hates fluorescent lights. She can’t get used to them. “Fluorescent lights are a slow death,” she whispers to her baby. She says everything now quietly in a voice so invisible that her lips barely move with the words. “I wouldn’t wish their unnatural glare on my worst enemy. No, that’s not true. That’s exactly how I’d do it. I’d brighten them at night and dull them in the morning, just as it seems they are doing to us. I’d microwave food and serve powdered milk. I’d give them things they thought were vitamins. I’d put tap water into bottles, and let them wonder about the aftertaste, all under the putridity of the fluorescent bulbs.”

The knock on her door tells her it’s time to go. The mirror tells her to attempt hair control with a ponytail. She hesitates and thinks about not fixing her hair, but she decides to pull it back for her baby, just in case he or she can feel the disgust of her pale self through her eyes. Natalie tries her best to stay happy for her, for him — whatever it is — No! She can’t think like that anymore! Her baby needs a name! She needs to land on a name because thinking of it as an It is unhealthy for her. It enforces her captor’s cement prison. Because if she were not in here, she would absolutely one-hundred percent already know if the baby growing inside was a female or a male, and after determining that she would absolutely have already thought of a name. She would have picked out cute colors of light purple if a girl, and blues if it was a boy. Typical, she knows, but that’s okay.

She senses the guards outside waiting for her. They can wait. She’s energized now to think of a name. What’s a name that fits both sexes? Riley? She wants a name that fits her personality and her lover’s at the same time. Jordan? No. Natalie thinks about the chances of Drayden falling in front of her and the randomness of life. Perhaps something like that? Something random. Drayden loves anticipating the unknown, like who will win the big game, or what the cards will be in a game of poker. Poker? No. Gamble? Drayden, unfortunately, likes to gamble. No, Gamble doesn’t work if her baby’s a female. And then it hits her. No longer whispering, she says: “Vegas. Yes! That’s it! Oh, how wonderful!” Natalie says, looking down at her belly. “Your name, cute little baby! I thought of a perfect one!” Natalie says, rubbing her belly quickly, trying to find where the feet are or maybe the head. “How about Vegas? Do you like it? Your dad will love it! I’m sure of it! My parents will hate it! Ha! Perfect! I now name my baby, Vegas!”

Natalie looks at the guards outside the glass. She holds up a finger for them to wait. She goes to the small sink and turns on the water and splashes it onto her face. She shakes the extra water from her hands and uses the dampness that remains to wet the small frayed strands of her hair that the ponytail didn’t capture. She smiles in the mirror. She curves her tongue onto the front of her teeth and thinks about possibly brushing. She can’t remember if she brushed last night and decides to let it go. She’s content with her appearance. If her breath is terrible, who cares.

“Hi Vegas,” Natalie says to her belly. Kick, kick, kick! “You like that huh?” Kick! “Whoa, Hun, let’s be nice to the inside of mommy’s pouch, okay Sweetie?” Natalie giggles because Vegas does something that feels like little eyelashes brushing against the inside of her mid-tummy, like butterfly kisses, but she’s still too young — Natalie thinks — to have eyelashes.

She leaves the room with the guards and leads them to the room where she knows Agent Love will already be waiting. Natalie’s revived by finding the name. She’s tickled and energized because it feels like more progress. When she arrives in the interrogation room, Agent Love is her opposite. She looks as tired as dust and as stressed as a wrinkle. In front of her is a portable DVD player that’s so old Natalie doubts it will work.

“You’re quite… spirited,” Agent Love says.

“Baby’s helping me today.” Natalie leans forward across the table. “Love, you okay?” Love brushes her off with an eye-roll as if Natalie can’t possibly understand the amount of weight piling up on her shoulders. How selfish. How dare she! Natalie thinks.

“Your video’s ready,” she says, slightly shoving the hunk of old metal technology in Natalie’s direction.

“Seriously? This? How did you find it? In a museum? The first portable DVD player ever made might have value. How many of these are still in existence? It might actually be worth a lot of money now. Are you sure we should chance to break it?”

“It works.”

Natalie gives her another ‘Really?’ look. “You’re Rine International, right? That’s established. You know that I know you’re a member of the fine Rine organization, but this kind of thing, this… archaic tech, it makes me wonder if you’re not being run by a government agency. Come to think of it, maybe I’m wrong, and you’re not with Rine! Rine has money. Resources. But this… this is just sad—”

Agent Love reaches over and hits the play button while Natalie is talking cutting her off. Livia appears on the video, sitting down inside a coffee shop sipping on her afternoon tea — a full British convert by now — looking dismayed and stressed. There are people around her, but Livia stares catatonically, seemingly in her own world. She rubs her temples. She grabs her hair and scrunches it inside her fists.

“What did you do to her?” Natalie asks Agent Love. Agent Love doesn’t look away from the small monitor. Natalie turns back to it. “She’s a mess,” Natalie says, her voice breaking a little. Natalie reaches out and touches Livia’s image. “I’m sorry, Liv,” Natalie says as a tear falls heavy onto her sleeve.

The person recording her must have been at a nearby table because the video wasn’t recorded through the glass, it’s right there. As Natalie looks at her best friend on the video, she thinks of how someone who didn’t know Livia might have thought she was a social vixen, but the truth was that she was afraid of crowds. Her outgoing attitude was a defense against that, ironically, but for those with the luck to meet her or with the gall to introduce themselves, they were blessed with the softness of her smooth, caring voice. Natalie once heard Livia singing in the shower when she didn’t know Natalie had come home. Natalie sat down outside the bathroom door, hugged her knees tight against her chest, and closed her eyes to focus on the purity of sound. The entirety of her voice warmed Natalie and sent her mind to a place of contentment she didn't know existed. Despite the tear that escaped, she held her eyes closed, afraid that the brightness of the light in the room would interfere somehow with the beautiful sound. That night they went to each of their beds at the same time. After a stint of ruffling around in her sheets, Natalie asked her to hum a tune to help her fall asleep. The silence from Livia was such that Natalie wasn’t sure she hadn’t already fallen into a deep slumber until she heard the start of Livia’s gentle beginning, as peaceful as the thought of Heaven’s existence, as comforting as a best friend’s presence.

On the videotape, something distracts Livia. She reaches for her purse and answers her cell phone. Her voice comes out of the DVD’s speaker as clearly as if she’s talking into a microphone. They had bugged Livia’s phone.

Natalie glances up at Agent Love. Natalie shakes her head at her and then turns back to the video.

“I told you, I don’t know where she is!” Livia’s voice is frantic.

“When did you take this? Your people, I mean. When did they record this?” Natalie asks.

“Yesterday,” Agent Love says back to her.

The microphone picks up Livia’s full emotion as if the bug they had planted had been expertly placed within her tear duct.

“I told you they blindfolded me! And drugged me, I think, but I don’t know! I’m so sorry!” Livia sobs to whoever she’s speaking.

Natalie realizes that if they had bugged Livia’s phone, she should be able to hear the person on the other end of the line.

Natalie pauses the DVD player. “You muted the caller,” she says to Agent Love. Love says nothing and gives nothing in return. “Why would you do that? Why would you mute the caller? Or edit them out. It’s Dray, isn’t it? He’s looking for me. Dray’s looking for me, and he knows Livia knows something. He’ll find out where I am, and you’ll be sorry.” Natalie’s heart-rate rises with sudden anger, which made her hand move to her belly instinctually. She takes a deep breath. She wants to stay calm for her baby. Natalie resumes playback.