Urquia

Chapter 14: The kids, pirates and the quest!

*Andrea's POV*

-"Dime, Cris, qué pasa?" ("Tell me, Cris, what's going on?") I read the text she sent me. It's in code.

-"Los niños están haciendo deberes" ("The kids are doing homework") means the two men are walking around the warehouses.

Two new men I noticed a week ago have been following us. I don't know if he sent them, but I'll find out.

-"Los dos niños han terminaron sus deberes y ya se bañaron dentro de nada se van a dormir" ("The two kids have finished their homework, they're already showered and will be going to sleep soon") that means they came to check this place out and went back. She's on them and will drug them and take them to the other warehouse.

-"Bien. ¿Y el bebe?" ("Good. And the baby?") I mean to ask about Nathan's men.

-"No, el bebe esta durmiendo" ("No, the baby is sleeping") means negative, they have no clue.

-"Dale pues, termino aquí y voy" ("Okay then, I'll finish here and I'll go")

-"¿Qué tal te fue? ¿Did you get laid? ¿Is he big?" she blurts out.

-"Cristina!" I gasp, and my eyes widen. I turn red like a tomato and look at Nathan, who is smiling at me knowingly. Did he hear us??? Of course he heard us. He's a bloody werewolf. I purse my lips in frustration, closing my eyes.

-"Don't tell me you did it on the lab table! His d**k's gonna fall off!"

-"Nope," I say, trying to pretend she didn't just say that. But I can feel my face burning.

-"Oh, oh, oh, we still have honey Jim brought us last week! You can rub it on his chest and lic..." I hang up on her before I end up spontaneously combusting with all this embarrassment.

I look at him, and I see him licking his lips and smirking slyly.

-"What are you laughing at?" I narrow my eyes.

-"Your face. You're so cute when you blush like that," his smirk gets wider.

-"My sister is crazy, and I'm gonna kill her when I get home," I say with a smile.

He looks at his watch. It's midnight.

-"I didn't realize we've been here for so long. I lost track of time," he says, scratching his head a bit, ashamed.

-"I had fun tonight, thanks to you," I say with a smile.

-"Me too. When can we repeat?" he asks like a little kid.

-"I... I really, really don't know," I answer truthfully.

-"But I do want to," I quickly add.

-"This whole week, I'm busy with some other projects. But I have a few free hours on Thursday night. If you want, we can go somewhere. Grab a beer or something?" I suggest.

His eyes light up. -"It's a date. Oh, can I take you to a night picnic?" He sounds really excited.

-"That sounds perfect," I beam at him.

I'm leading him to the front door.

-"You're staying here?" he asks, confused.

-"Yeah, I have to prepare a few things for tomorrow. People are coming to bring me stuff to recycle, and I need to be ready. I'll just do that and go home."

He doesn't look convinced, but he lets it be.

-"Okay then, write to me when you get home?"

-"Of course, I will. Wouldn't want to leave you up all night, would I?" I lick my lips, and his eyes follow my action. His eyes turn dark, and he grabs me by my neck and kisses me passionately. My knees go weak for the second time today.

-"I'll see you tomorrow, princess," he says as he leaves. Damn, he has a cute butt, too.

-"Uish, tengo ganas de morderte," ("Ugh, I just want to bite you") I mutter to myself as I bite my fist. He goes to his car. I see him drive off. I take a deep breath, closing my eyes. As I breathe out, I open my eyes now with my serious work face. I call Cris.

-"You took the kids to bed?"

-"Yeah, they're waiting for you."

-"Okay, give me ten minutes; I'll be there." I hang up and prepare the bins for recycling.

I take the lasagna out of the freezer and put it in the fridge so it can defrost easily. I put some cans to cool, too. I lock up everything. Instead of going to my car, I go three more warehouses down the street.

I knock three times, then pause, then once more. The lock opens. I get into a living room exactly like we have in the other warehouse, except this one has a wall full of terrarium-like aquariums. If you look closely, you can see frogs, snakes, and spiders. And on the bottom, a few fish aquariums, too. I change into a jumpsuit and open the door. It leads to a fully equipped wood workshop. It has all kinds of machinery.

I go through it, and in the back section, there are some small rooms for weapons and prisoners. I get into the hall with the cells. There are 4. They are equipped with chains to the walls. They have hooks and a pulley system.

My sister drugged the men that had been following me for the past week. They are tied up to the table facing down, eyes covered but a bit see-through, headphones with Britney Spears's "Oops!... I Did It Again" playing in a loop, legs spread wide.

The room is cold, without any windows and soundproofed, and the lights go on and off every twenty minutes.

I put my acupuncture needles on heat. We drugged the men with a substance we take from a frog. It makes you hallucinate if you take it in very small doses. By now, Cris has made them believe they've been here for days, but it has actually been just a couple of hours.

I don't tend to use brutal physical violence when I interrogate. I like a different kind of torture, using more fear than actual violence. I burst through the door and startle them both. I take their headphones out and with my most happy pirate voice,

-"'ELLO POPPETS! Today, I am going to ask you a few questions. Now, I can guarantee you that if you answer me truthfully, I'll be gentle with you guys. But if not, I—" I get interrupted by one of them.

-"What? What the f**k will you do? What can you do to us, a stupid, weak woman? Get me out of these, and I'll show you how real men do it." Guy number one says, then he spits on the floor.

-"Woman? Is that meant to insult me? I would return the slap if I took you for a man." I say, quoting my favorite female character from GOT. I smile at Cris, and she puts back his headphone.

-"Khaleesi," she jokes. He was the leader.

-"Anthony?" says the other one when he can't hear him anymore. His voice trembles a bit.

-"As I was saying," I continue, -"If you don't tell me anything, it's okay too. I learned how to be resourceful. I'll find out eventually."

Quiet.

I take the acupuncture needles. I put them in different parts of Anthony's hand. At first, he is tense. Then his hand relaxes when he doesn't feel pain. I put some needles into the nerves, blocking them so he can't feel anything. Then I begin inserting them in different parts like between the nails or between the fingers or even reaching the conjunctions of the phalanges.

-"What the f**k are you doing to me? Why can't I feel my hand?" Anthony shouts nervously.

Guy number two hears him, and beads of sweat start to form on his forehead.

-"What are your names?" I ask gently. -"I know your buddy's name is Anthony. What about you?" Silence. Okay then. I take the blocking needle from the pinky. He starts to feel the pain slowly.

-"OH MY GOD, WHAT THE f**k ARE YOU DOING TO ME?" he screams. His face turns pale quickly. Every time he tries to move the pinky, it hurts more. I twist the needle a little bit.

-"Ahhh!!"

-"MARCO! MY NAME IS MARCO!!" says guy two.

-"Hello, Marco, it's a pleasure to meet you!" I say, giggling.

Cris rolls her eyes. It wasn't the first time I did this. Since that terrible week, something broke inside me, or awakened. I don't really care enough to know. A vicious, savage side of me just pops out in these situations. Something so dark, ruthless, and raw—so apathetic—it scares me. I wonder if I'm a psychopath without even knowing it.

Or maybe I am, and this is what I needed to be freed of my guilt, which I really don't even think I have right now. Now I can inflict the pain I have inside. Now I avenge my kids, Cris, and myself and all the souls that went through hell like we did. It wasn't the first time I'd torture people who followed us here. On our way here, a pervert tried to force himself on Cris. And we served him right. He won't molest anyone else. Another time my ex sent a shady detective to investigate us. He spilled everything after an hour. And I didn't even need the needles.

Anthony is breathing and gasping hard, trying to adjust to the pain.

-"Okay, Marco. Let's start with some quick W-H questions, okay?" I say happily.

-"Who sent you?" I wait as he hesitates.

-"OH, YOU f*****g b***h, WHAT ARE YOU DOING! NOOO! STOPPP!!" Anthony screeches and gasps hard.

Cris is inserting more needles now around his body, blocking the rest of his nerves while I'm just taking the needle that blocked the nerves of the ring finger. Marcos's breathing starts to get faster.

-"OKAY, OKAY," he purses his lips, frustrated. -"O-our boss sent us... we were hired by an important man... We don't know him, never seen him... He sent us here just to follow your every move and report. Nothing else, I swear." I take the middle finger blocker.

-"AHHHHH OH MY GOD, MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE, I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING!! PLEASEEE!!"

-"When did you get here?" I ask nonchalantly.

-"We... we got here two weeks ago with your parents, but we started following you last weekend at the club. We got a message with your work address, and we started from there." Anthony is wheezing and sweating profusely. Marco is panting hard.

-"What have you told the person who sent you?" I say.

Taking out two blocking needles at the same time, he screams in agony, and I just giggle while clapping.

-"Oh, I forgot how fun this was," I tell Cris, beaming.

Anthony is about to faint. If I leave the needles there, the pain will continue to escalate. Add that to the music, and you get one hell of a trauma.

-"We've told him who you talked to and where you lived. We took some photos of each family member and where they were. We have sent the photos of the man you were with that night at the club when he escorted you to the car. So he wants us to follow him, too."

I look up at Cris, alarmed. For a second, my eyes show my fears. I don't know how he will react if he sees me with another man. I take a deep breath with my eyes closed.

When I open them again, I take Marco's blindfold off. His eyes widen in horror when he sees Anthony's whole body covered in needles. Then his eyes go to his bloody hand and to my smiling, happy face. And that freaks him out more than Anthony's state.

-"How do you communicate?" I ask, excited, like he's telling me gossip of some sort.

-"He..." he gulps hard. -"He calls every twelve hours at 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. Every time from a different number, and if we don't answer, it means we've been caught. It's been days, so maybe our boss took us for dead already. Our backup might be looking for us by now."

It's only been three hours, so we have time, I think and look at Cris. She's thinking the same. I remove all the blocking needles from the other hand, and one by one, his screams and his agony escalate even more.

He pees on himself, and I giggle, scaring the s**t out of Marco.

-"Now, tell me, Marcos, who is your boss and please elaborate. Tell me your whole life, I want to know EVERYTHING," I say, grinning and resting my chin on my hand next to a fainted, smelly Anthony.

Cris goes to him and starts turning him face up with the chains. His eyes widen, and fear is evident, anticipating. I clear my throat and with a thrilled voice, I say,

-"Did you know there are over seven trillion nerves in the human body? When I traveled to China, a nice old lady taught me how to do acupuncture. It was really handy. I got to learn a lot about the human body. And about how much a person can handle pain.

You see, there's a difference between pain tolerance and pain threshold." (Dramatic teaching pause) "Your pain threshold is the point at which your brain registers pain. Essentially, how much pressure or stimulus it takes for your brain to register something as painful. Pain tolerance, on the other hand, is about how much pain you can endure before requiring intervention."

He swallows the lump in his throat.

-"You see, I don't need drills, knives, hammers, pliers, or acid. Or electricity. I don't even need to use my force. Just like buttons, if I touch this here—" (and as I do, Anthony screams in agony and starts to cry and desperately beg) "—Anthony's pain receptors will feel like they are on fire."

-"But I don't have much time now. So, every time you lie, he will beg me to kill him right here. I'm gonna ask you a few questions now, okay?" We look at his micro-expressions, and every time he lies or doesn't tell the whole truth, Cris puts a needle on him, and I take a few from Anthony.

By the end of our session, which takes about forty-five minutes, he has a lot of needles on his thighs and left arm. Every time I take a needle from Anthony, Marco's anxiety grows, his voice is more urgent and high-pitched, and he's sweating like a pig.

Now it's Anthony's turn to talk. So I take his blindfold and his headphones off.

-"Now, Anthony, it's your turn to answer my W-H questions!" I beam and clap excitedly.

And the horror in his eyes is epic! I ask the same questions I asked Marco. And every contradiction is punished by Marco's pain.

He lies the first time; they did know who hired them. It was my husband, of course. Marco's eyes are bloodshot with tears. He calls out the lies Anthony says, and that makes them compete on giving the most information. They are spilling it like a competition. They even rat on their buddies and their boss. They tell us all the names of the people working with him. And their locations. Cris is looking for each name and their whereabouts. Even the people who would probably work with them from here.

Almost thirty-five names later, Marco faints after almost choking on his own vomit. They gave us all their passwords and their codes and how they operate. Four hours later, we get the whole picture. We take the needles out, put the blindfolds and the headphones back on.

We are ready now, and whole again. We aren't running anymore. I will kill that motherfucker. I'll kill him and his entire f*****g organization. But what would Nathan think of me now? In the end, it doesn't matter. I will do whatever it takes to protect what's mine.

After cleanup, Cris shows me the surveillance cameras. Again, it seems we have some ninja visitors. I don't like being spied on. But we have to play dumb. Maybe he is really interested in me. But spying on us? Really? I mean, come on. We checked him and his buddies, and so did they. But as soon as we ruled out his history, we didn't dig any deeper. That's his privacy, and I like mine. Why is he stalking? Point down, mister.