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Nadine decided to take a teleporter home.
It was a lovely day out, warm, with a breeze blowing in from the north, and she made the instant decision to crack her windows when she got home. The breeze reminded her of the weather in the Eastern Province, where it was always a bit cool, no matter which season of the year.
While she could have walked a couple blocks and caught a trolley, she was tired, and she hadn’t slept so well in the waiting room last night.
And talk about a wild morning.
She needed time to process what Roman had told her, and more importantly, how she could use it to her advantage. Having an exemplar with a unique ability would prove useful to her cause.
A smile took shape on her face.
It had been a Hail Mary to confess everything to Roman, to put that much trust in an asset.
And it had actually worked. It was risky, sure, but he had also put faith in her to keep his secret, and now they held each other’s secrets, both of them in a Catch 22. Nadine from a couple of years ago would’ve been worried about this. As it stood, she was fine with how things had turned out; not only did she have an asset, she had a powerful asset, and he seemed determined to help her.
Hell, he seemed genuine, and even if he wasn’t, even if all this was a ruse, she could adjust accordingly and move forward.
So, a win-win situation.
A red prism of light lifted from the street as the teleporter appeared.
He was an older man with a long gray beard, and as soon as he made eye contact with Nadine, the two of them zipped away.
They reappeared in her living room, both rising from the ground again, the teleporter leaving without saying a word.
Removing her shawl, Nadine stepped out of her heels and relaxed onto her couch for a moment. She yawned, happy that she didn’t have to go in to work today.
Sleep started to come over her, but she also had to use the restroom, so she figured she would go to the restroom, change, and actually sleep in her own bed.
Truth be told, Nadine fell asleep on the couch half the time, mostly due to the fact that she’d never had a couch growing up, and she found the piece of furniture rather remarkable.
As she stood, she felt a slight pinch at her side, where her scar was located. It had long since healed up, but every now and then, if she moved in a particular way, she would be reminded of the time she’d almost been killed by that Type II.
Nadine stepped into the hallway that separated her bedroom from her bathroom. She paused, thinking she’d heard a floorboard creak in her room.
You’re hearing things, she thought as she moved into the bathroom.
Once she finished up, Nadine opened the door and crossed the threshold into her bedroom.
Later, when trying to piece together what had happened, she would recall seeing a large man with red skin smiling at her. She would remember something striking her in the stomach, something slamming her into the wall, something dragging her out of her bedroom as she blacked out.
Nadine’s next memory felt like a dagger giving birth in her skull cavity. Dragged up a flight of metal stairs, her thoughts came to her in a flash: red man, stomach, knocked out, pain.
The red man was still with her, ahead of Nadine now, dragging her by an ankle.
She’d been trained for a variety of things, but even with extensive training, there was only so much a human could take.
Nadine let the moment of shock pass, doing as she’d been instructed in her Capture Preparedness class. She began by trying to get a sense of where she was. It was a large building, with an open space in its center.
A slight draft.
A warehouse, she thought as the side of her head slapped against another step. Her vision was blurred around the edges, and smacking against the metal stairs wasn’t helping.
“Almost there, little princess,” the red man said with a cruel laugh.
Nadine tried to reach her arms out to get some leverage, but something was wrong with her arms. They were numb; it felt like a million tiny needles were pricking her every time she tried to move.
I can’t activate the Zero Ring, she thought, which spelled bad news for the Eastern Province spy.
The ring was her trump card; it had saved her ass before, and not being able to use it meant she was at the mercy of the red man.
Nadine strained her neck, trying not to hit her head on the next rung. She was scared, but she was alert enough to steel herself and wait for an option to present itself.
They reached a doorway and stopped while the red man spoke to someone.
“Keep moving, this isn’t for you to see,” the man said, and Nadine turned her head the other way, pressing her cheek against the ground.
The last time she’d seen Kevin Blackbook, he’d been standing on the edge of a building threatening to jump.
Now he stood ten feet away from her, wearing a black-and-turquoise superhero outfit. Desperation splashed across her face, desperation that was quickly muted as the red man dragged her into a room, her cheek scraping against the floor, her mouth naturally coming open and leaving a trail of spittle as she was moved across the threshold of the door.
“Get on the bed,” he told her. When Nadine didn’t respond, he lifted her by one arm and forcibly placed her on the bed.
Not able to sit up, she fell to the side, her body going limp again.
Thoughts fired inside her head. She’d learned in training that most puzzles had solutions, and even though she knew this was just a saying to placate agents caught in rough places, she took this concept to heart, hoping that an opportunity would present itself.
If not, maybe she’d get lucky.
And if neither of those things happened, she’d simply die.
Images of her father and mother flashed in front of her mind’s eye.
I will stay alive for you, she thought to them. Seeing the red man return to her with a wet cloth in his hands did little to calm her fears.
“Paris will meet with you later,” the man told her. “For now, it’s time to sleep.”
He pressed the cloth over her mouth and soon, Nadine was back in the Eastern Province, running through a field outside her home. The air was crisp, and her mother and father were not far behind her. She was happy, carefree.
Dead to the world.
