Save Her

Natalie - Chapter 6-2

“Tell me about the teleportation,” Agent Love said, breaking her spell. Remembering that time with Drayden had made her feel whole and fearless, like nothing at all could hurt or stop her. Hearing Agent Love’s voice brought her back to her gray, trapped reality.

“It was instantaneous. Faster than a spark. I can’t blink in the amount of time it takes to get somewhere.”

“Have you ever kept your eyes open?” She asked.

“Great question, Agent Love. Yeah, I asked him if I could because I didn’t want to be blinded by a flash or something, but you’ll be disappointed to know that there isn’t anything to see. It’s literally like you’re in a picture and then somebody suddenly clicks the scene to another picture. You’re in Madrid, Spain, and then you’re suddenly in Hong Kong. The strangest thing for my brain to accept — well, I guess it’s not the strangest thing — is teleporting between time zones and the wackiness of that whole thing. Like when he took me to Maui the first time, the sky went from being 8 PM London time to nine in the morning the next day in Hawaii. Now if that doesn’t mess with your mind…”

“Can he teleport you without touching you?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. Or maybe he can. I have no idea. It’s an energy thing, right? I mean that’s part of it. When we frag, he holds me tight every time. The truth is, I never thought to ask him because I never wanted anything but to hold him close as often as I could. I think he needs to hold me, though, because he plays with the elevation and lands us exactly where he needs to. But I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t. There’s a lot still to discover. He learns some new ability every day. There are so many things he says he still needs to program. He never sleeps, and he has amazing coding abilities, and still, he says he needs more time.”

Agent Love falls silent and looks down and away to her left and then to her right. Natalie waits. It’s uncharacteristic of Agent Love to delay.

“You said teleportation was the least of the things we need to worry about. Explain that.”

“Agent Love, I think you know more than you’re letting on. I know you guys can do some of these things. Dray told me everything. You got the gray box. You made more of the nano-whatever and injected it. You know what it does.”

“I want to know what you’ve seen him do,” she says.

“Drayden is the smartest man I’ve ever known. He remembers everything. He’s recited entire chapters of books to me until I fell asleep. He mastered quantum mechanics before starting high school. He can hack any computer system in a matter of hours.”

“I don’t want to know what he used to do, I want to know what his new powers are.”

“And that’s why you’re going to lose. You are so focused on what the powers are, but don’t you realize it’s the vessel that makes those powers special? He’s a genius! He’ll out-think you. Trust me when I tell you you should be more worried about his mind than how to overcome his strength. Your miniscule foresight probably imagines powerful guns, tanks, laser weaponry, burning him, or whatever offensive ensemble you’ve amassed. None of that will do you any good.”

“We killed his brother without too much trouble, and he was pretty smart, too,” Agent Love says. Her words drain the blood from Natalie’s face. She already knew they were Reginald’s murderers, but hearing Agent Love say it so matter-of-factly was frightening. It makes her worry about the keycard. It makes her worry about the trust she wanted to put in this woman. It makes her worry about Drayden. They don’t fear him. Not at all. Agent Love’s confident tone suggested as much. That means they know something. Some form of weakening weapon they can use against her lover. In a few seconds, Natalie reevaluates her situation again. She’s the ultimate prize for them! She’s the vessel to deliver a child with the possibility of Drayden’s changed DNA, as well as the vehicle to deliver Drayden himself. She’s the key. As long as she’s here, everyone is in danger.

Natalie looks strongly at Agent Love. Natalie doesn’t care that Agent Love had shut her up, that she had silenced her as effectively as another physical slap across the face. What she cares about is the way she said it, so callously and numbly, because it makes Natalie wonder if Agent Love really is on her side. The keycard she troubled to hide so well might not even work, Natalie knows. She thinks again that it could be a tease — an effective one! — to trick her into believing in some sort of camaraderie, to make her believe they're on the same side when actually Agent Love is the bad cop and the good cop wrapped up into one stony package. Or, she could be warning Natalie about the danger Drayden is in! They had admitted to killing Reginald. So that last statement might have been a warning to not have so much faith in the man she loved. Agent Love was possibly telling her that Drayden wasn’t invincible. Agent Love might be warning Natalie that the evil organization she worked for could easily dispatch of Drayden, so Natalie should focus on getting out. She might be telling Natalie to stop waiting for Drayden because she needed to escape without him.

The thoughts flit through Natalie’s brain at supersonic speed. There are so many scenarios. Read into Agent Love’s statements or just let them go? She has to read into them. It’s not like she doesn’t have the time to think. In here, she has nothing but time. Tons of thinking time. Tons and tons of time to contemplate every possible outcome of every possible hint.

Agent Love will not be able to reveal anything with any clarity. Natalie knows this. Across the table, she holds Natalie’s icy stare. The keycard has to be real. Agent Love has to be warning her. The coldness of mentioning Reginald’s murder was a subtle communication to Natalie to be careful. It was a subtle message to Natalie to be ready. It was possibly Agent Love saying to Natalie that Drayden is in danger and that Natalie needs to get out of here on her own! With Agent Love’s help! The coldness in which she delivered the message was a way to protect herself from the people behind the cameras watching her every move and listening to her every word and to the delivery of every intonation. That has to be what Natalie believes. It’s not false hope. It’s the most factual of arguments. It’s the most logical of paths!

Natalie quickly second-guesses herself. She wants to believe that she’s not falling for a ruse, but she can’t be sure. If the keycard isn’t real, then hope would diminish with each passing day, and Natalie needs hope. She needs it so badly. No matter what, she needs to buy time. Time will allow her to put more of the pieces together. She’ll be able to figure out if Agent Love is really on her side or not. The first step in that strategy is already done: Natalie didn’t mention the keycard. If she had, then the bluff would be called, or Agent Love would be killed.

Natalie decides to land on hope. She chooses to continue trusting Agent Love. She’ll strategize and be smart and wait for her chance for more possible hints from Agent Love, or to relay hints to Agent Love so she can interpret reactions. Hope is not such a bad thing. Hope is essential! Hope can buy time until she escapes from her prison. Besides, Natalie is a positive person. It’s her nature to think Agent Love is on her side. But she’s also really smart, smart enough to know when she’s getting played. She’ll land on hope for now, and she’ll buy more time. She’ll stay quiet about the keycard and not overreact about Agent Love’s statement about Reginald.

“I never met Reginald,” Natalie says. “Yes, he was tremendously smart. I mean, just look was he created. The thing is, Drayden knows that and knows what Reginald used to be able to do with his powers. Right now, my Dray can do so much more. He’s fast, he’s strong, and has more abilities than you could even dream. He won’t end up like his brother, I promise you that. You want to know something else? He obsesses over things. He’s never met a problem he couldn’t solve, so watch out. Right now this bunker operation of yours is what he’s obsessing over. This horrible, horrible place can’t protect you much longer. When he finds it — when he finds our baby and me — you better run and get the hell out of his way, because he will be mad, and I’m not going to do a thing to stop him from taking out that anger on you and everyone else here.” Natalie says this as coldly as when Agent Love mentioned killing Reginald.

Minutes pass without Agent Love or Natalie saying a word. Natalie waits for a wink from her as if to say, “Yes, I’m on your side,” or a toothy grin to portray true evil, but neither comes. Instead, it's a serious stare that told her nothing. If Agent Love does have a plan for escape, then it would have to happen relatively soon. The baby was big now inside of her. Natalie didn’t have very much direct experience with pregnant woman or size or baby growth, but she knew her baby was far more significant in size than it should be at this point in her pregnancy. At the rate her baby was growing, she worried that she might be less than a month from delivering; or, god forbid, she could have the baby sooner.

“How often did Drayden visit you?” Agent Love finally breaks the silence.

“He was always there when I woke up.”

“He only visited in the mornings?”

“No, of course not. I saw him a lot. He stayed with me every day at different times throughout the day. He came and went. Sometimes he wanted to stay longer, but couldn’t. He was solving his brother’s murder. He was dealing with his new powers and adding to them. I needed to study. You know, life stuff.”

“What happened to the little brown book?” Love asked.

“Oh that. Yeah, I’m sure you’d want that because then you could see the coordinates of where he used to go to hide. He memorized those a long time ago. Numbers are as easy for him to remember as his name. I’m sure the book has been destroyed.”

“You made love to him that night in Hawaii.” She said this as a statement, but Natalie nodded as if it were a question.

“It was morning. But yes. We made love for the first time. Since then it’s too many times to count. He’s insatiable, and so I am when I’m with him. But it was also so much more than that. It was a connection of wholeness I had never felt before. Being next to him felt so… natural. So perfect. We talked for countless hours. He told me about his past, which I didn’t mind one bit, because there was goodness in him that was so obvious. He told me stories of Reginald when they were younger, stories of his mother, his relationship with her, and how I was so different from anything he had ever known in his life.”

“Did you ever meet his mother?”

“No. Dray didn’t want that. ‘Not yet,’ he kept telling me.”

“He must have explained why.”

“He didn’t have to. Reginald was her favorite. That was made very clear to Drayden growing up, and I think he wanted to figure out who killed Reginald before seeing her again.”

“Maybe that’s what he wanted you to think,” Agent Love said callously.

“It doesn’t matter. What I thought about it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Is that why you’re alone? Is that why you go home to an empty house with nobody to hold you? Nobody to accept your tears of loneliness on their shoulder? Because you’re insistent about what other people are thinking?”

Natalie hated herself for saying it as soon as it came out. She wasn’t the vengeful type. Retribution didn’t suit her. Natalie had hurt Agent Love. Natalie could tell. The wince was slight, but the eyes reveal everything. In Agent Love’s eyes, Natalie saw pain for just a fraction of a moment. Her questions stop. Natalie fights the urge to apologize. These people don’t deserve her apologies.

“I wanted to help him sort out his issues with his mother. I wanted to meet her because she had clearly been so negatively impactful on him. I thought maybe if I just met her then I’d understand what he had gone through. That’s all. Really. Just a meet and greet would have sufficed. He could whisk us in, introduce us, and then whisk us out leaving her behind forever. I thought it only fair since he had met mine, but I don’t think it was ever going to be. At least not for a long while. I think he had put her into a place in his past that he never wanted to revisit. Like with Reginald’s passing, so did Drayden’s connection to his mother end forever. So there. I said it. I hope you’re happy. He didn’t want us to meet, but I didn’t stop asking. I’m petulant that way. I can’t help it.”

“You said Drayden was adding to his abilities. Explain that.”

“You’re messing with me, right? Certainly, you know this. Certainly, you know that I know you know this. Drayden is a computer programmer who essentially has little mini computers all throughout his body. Do the math.”

“What can he program them to do?”

Natalie looks at Agent Love with disbelief. “If you’re sincerely wondering about that, then I’m going to be so giddy going back to my room tonight. Reginald was the mastermind behind the molecular nanotechnology, and he was the one who programmed them to do certain things before they were in the host, but he also programmed them to accept new code. Nobody codes better than my Dray.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Like I would know,” Natalie says before snorting a laugh. “I’m not a coder. The truth is, I don’t know all that he can do. He doesn’t sleep, so he’s able to spend all that time researching and applying that research. He codes a lot. I mean, like all the time.”

“One example today. Please,” Agent Love said.

The ‘please’ caught Natalie off guard, just like it did the first time she heard it. She rewarded Agent Love then, and she wanted to reward her again. Natalie liked it and wanted more of it.

“One of the coolest ones? He can make himself invisible. Not entirely, but similar to how a chameleon blends with his background, you know? He’s shown me, and it’s fantastic. You can’t see him. Not at all if you’re not looking for him. When you know he’s there, though, you can see him if he’s in front of a wide background because it’s impossible for the nanos to assume all the different rays of light. But if he’s against a wall or any flat surface, then you just have to bump into him. It’s really fantastic.”

Agent Love nods, which Natalie interpreted as appreciation. Agent Love picks up her notebook and pen, stands, and leaves without looking at Natalie or saying goodbye. Just before exiting the room, Natalie says:

“Agent Love?” Agent Love stops and turns. “I forgive you for hitting me. I’m not mad.”

Agent Love pauses. From across the room, Natalie can feel her analytical eye contact reading her. Finally, she nods. Natalie nods back. Agent Love turns back to the door and exits.