part0112

" U nderstood," Savage said with a nod and placed his hand over his right ear so he could hear better. "Thanks for the update, Anja. We'll be in touch."

He gripped the steering wheel of the car a little tighter and tried not to let his frustration show.

It did, however, despite his good intentions. Jenna appeared more than attuned to his emotional state and narrowed her eyes. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing much," he replied and made an effort to keep his tone light and jovial. "I got word that the people who sponsored this mission would rather not be involved in any of the illegalities of it, so they would rather keep themselves clear of the situation—which leaves us, for the most part, high and dry."

"That doesn't sound good," the girl replied. "It does sound like they're looking out for their own skins, which wouldn't be something people who sent you to save me would do."

"They didn't send me in to save you, technically," he clarified. "I was sent in to find stolen merchandise to help them shut the place down. We saw you on one of the video feeds, and I decided to act on my own initiative and get you out since... Well, I don't really care for people who like testing their new stuff on other human beings. There are some other reasons on top of that, but…well, you probably don't want to talk about that."

Jenna shrugged. "I do know they were doing it for someone in particular—the person who sponsored the lab, at least. And I know it’s a woman they were working for. Over the past couple of months, I've heard people talk about how the testing on me wasn't progressing fast enough and that they needed to up the schedule, all while talking about how 'she' wouldn't be happy about it."

"She is a woman called Edwina Smith, apparently," he explained. "Unfortunately, I don't know much more about her or why she's so interested in testing the shit that came from the Zoo, aside from the obvious monetary aspect to it. It seems like there's something bigger involved, but I'd need to know more about it before I come up with any new assumptions."

"Why are you interested in her?"

"Well, aside from my overall dislike of the people who profit from the oddity that is the Zoo and the fact that people are dying to get to that stuff out for them?" he asked, not sure how in tune with what was happening the girl was. "She may be connected to people who made very pointed threats against myself, my family, and people I care about as well as their families."

"How pointed were those threats?" She was a sharp one, he realized.

"Killers targeted me and my friends," he replied and forced his gaze to remain on the road and his hands to ease their vice-like grasp on the wheel. "When they failed, teams of killers attacked my family and another family, all while trying to convince us to get off their backs and talking about how they were really the good guys in this whole debate."

The girl nodded. "Did you do anything to deserve that kind of treatment from them?"

Savage shrugged. "Probably enough to have them send someone to kill me. But there are lines. The kind that if people cross them, they get crossed right the hell back."

She nodded but didn’t say anything further for a moment. He realized that he probably hadn’t come off as a fantastic person to the young woman, but he didn't really need to. If she didn't want to be around him, that would be her decision to make.

"Are you a good person?" she asked suddenly.

"What?" he snapped in response and narrowed his eyes, although he still focused on the road. "You ask a lot of questions, you know that?"

"Sure," she replied. "But if you like, we can make it an exchange. You answer a question, and I answer a question. And I know you have some."

He nodded. "That’s fair enough."

"So, do you think of yourself as a good person?" She repeated her question calmly.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I'm sure there are people in the world who would have good reason to say I'm not. They might even have a solid case to state that I'm an outright terrible person."

"That's not what I asked, though," she said. "Do you think of yourself as a good person?"

"It depends on the day and time if you ask me," he said, which was dumb because she had asked him. "I'd say the most flattering way to say it is that I try to be as good a person as I can. I fail often in that regard, and honestly, it's almost unavoidable in my line of work, but I do try."

She smiled. "I guess that's as honest an answer as someone can give. What line of work is that, exactly?"

"I think it's my turn to ask you a question now," he pointed out. "Isn't that how this game is supposed to work?"

"Did you really want to be rescued from the lab?"

She paused and scrunched her eyes for a moment like she hadn't actually thought about it. He wondered if she had obeyed instructions from other people for so long that simply following him when he said that he was there to get her out seemed natural.

It was, he thought suddenly, like resisting or questioning him hadn't even occurred to her. It made him wonder if they had used conditioning and brainwashing techniques to make her a more pliable test subject. They would have had to be careful about it since mental tricks like that could get in the way of medical testing.

"Okay…" she started to say, then paused, leaned back, and toyed with her seat. "Well, yes, I wanted to get out of there. But contrary to what some people might think, they didn’t actually treat me badly in there. They're not monsters."

"Aside from the whole keeping you in a lab against your will and using you basically as a human guinea pig?" Savage pointed out.

"Something like that, yeah." Jenna laughed. It was a clear and happy sound, free of the kinds of weight that he normally would have expected to be present in a girl like her. "But yeah. I had my own room. I had three meals a day and all kinds of things to do between the testing. They brought in a couple of tutors here and there and kept me up to date on my studies and larger global events. I even have a TV in my room most nights. I know, I must sound like some lost Stockholm syndrome case to you."

"Do you want me to lie about that?" he asked bluntly and watched her from the corner of his eye. "Because...well, honestly, yes, there are some serious red flags about that."

"I know," she replied. "I remember that they didn't even tell me that my parents were dead until a couple of months later. And they gave me this whole speech about how I would be remembered for decades to come as the girl who helped to cure cancer, and that if we stopped now, my parents would have died for nothing."

"Yeesh." He growled, the sound heavy with disgust. "So many red flags."

"I know." Jenna shook her head. "I don't consider myself the sharpest of kids, but that speech immediately made me think about how they might have killed my parents."

"Yeah, I glanced at the details, and they were as shady as fuck," he agreed.

"Okay, my turn." She sounded genuinely excited. "What do you do for a living that gets you into random labs where you rescue girls from glass cages?"

"Now that you mention it, you kind of remind me of Hannibal Lecter," he pointed out.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"A— Never mind." He decided to avoid that particular pitfall for now. There would be time to educate the girl on horror classics later. "I used to work in special forces for the military. These days, it's more along the lines of hunting the assholes who make a profit any way they can, including killing or harming innocents. Technically, I work for folks who make the profit as well but also fight unofficially to make sure that those who profit off suffering are out of the business altogether."

"Okay," Jenna said and tilted her head in query when he eased over to the side of the road. "Why are we stopping?"

"We need to find another car," he explained. "This one is burned and will be out on a hundred APBs by now."