“It’s part of your training.”
“Usually, I’m given a set of instructions and my instructor tells me what’s going to happen,” she said. But she’d known this new instructor wasn’t going to be anything usual. He’d been watching her nonstop since her arrival. She’d felt him. He was everywhere. Funny thing was, she’d been more intrigued by the game than outraged at the lack of privacy.
“I see. Tell me, when you’re playing operative in the real world, do you have someone telling you what’s going to happen next?”
Helen narrowed her eyes, feeling just a twinge of impatience rising. “Training, I said.” She pivoted around. “I’m not taking any drugs unless it’s the serum that’s specified in the contract. This pill isn’t it, is it?”
“You won’t know till you try it. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m your instructor and yes, this is a training session. Take the pill, Elena. As specified in your contract, you’ll let your instructor direct you as he or she sees fit.”
“Within reason,” Helen argued. She’d added that part to the clause herself. “Tell me. If I take this, what’s going to happen to me? Besides not dying, I mean.”
“First you will fall unconscious.”
Her whole body went taut. “What? No f—”
“Then you’ll wake up in fifteen minutes. You’ll find that you can’t move your body. Certain parts of you will feel nothing. You’ll stay paralyzed for the duration of the session.”
In the two years of her training, even through medical tests, no one had given her any drugs to render her unconscious. She’d been extra careful to establish a mental block when working with the CIA; she didn’t trust them or their tendency to hypnotize certain subjects.
She rolled the pill between her thumb and forefinger. Why now? What did he want to do to her?
“Fighting what you can see is easy, Elena. It’s fighting what you can’t see that will be your ultimate challenge. Remember what’s coming up. A dose of the serum is just like fighting what you can’t see, isn’t it?” A tiny pause. “I can’t force you to take the pill, but you’ll be putting potentially more harmful drugs into your system. This one, I can guarantee you, is a common drug that I know to have very few side effects.”
Helen laughed incredulously. “I’m supposed to take your word for it,” she remarked.
Silence.
Whoever her instructor was, he was waiting.
She rolled the pill again, her thoughts going a hundred miles an hour. Test, that stupid voice in her head had said. He was testing her for something entirely different from her previous trainers. She chewed on her lower lip for a second, then, before she changed her mind, she popped it into her mouth and swallowed.
“Count from ten backwards when I tell you to.”
Helen noted that he didn’t seem to have any problems seeing her in this darkness. Special glasses with image-intensifier? But if so, he still wouldn’t be able to tell whether she had taken the pill. Her eyes searched the darkness. Where was he?
After a few minutes, he ordered, “Start counting.”
She turned around as she counted. “Ten, nine, eight…” There was just nothing to see, not even a hint of light anywhere. “Seven, six…” She had to stop moving. Could darkness spin? It felt like the darkness was swirling all around her. “Five, four…” She couldn’t feel her feet. “Shit…” She fell forward. So that was what the mattress was for, was her last thought.
Her eyes flew open. It was still that darkness but she felt strange. She tried moving but she couldn’t feel her body and she couldn’t see. She didn’t like this one bit. No reason to panic yet. He told her that she wasn’t going to be able to move, but she could feel a warm body against her. A very warm male body.
“What’s happening?” she asked. At least she could talk. “I feel funny.”
No answer. She could feel her vision swaying, like something was moving really fast around her. It suddenly occurred to her that she was being carried. And that she was upside down because her hair kept getting in her mouth when she tried to talk.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, spitting her hair out. “Answer me, dammit.”
Whoever it was seemed to be going faster and faster, until she grew dizzy. He couldn’t possibly go that long. Where the hell was she? No longer in the room, for sure, but why couldn’t she see anything? She could make out shadows now—light and dark shades of blackness. There were strange smells, like foliage and the outdoors, then the scent of clean laundry, then of burning wood, then of salty air. She frowned, totally confused, because she couldn’t see any forest or fire or anything that could give her any clues to her location.
She felt that floating sensation again and from the change of shadows, she could tell that her body was sliding off his as he swung her around. She stared up, trying to see who this stranger was, but it was that odd shadowy shape again.
He should be panting from that long run but she couldn’t hear him breathe at all. Suddenly, he jerked around and there were armed men all around him.
She could only watch in horror as they shot him and his body slid away from her view. She couldn’t help him! She gritted her teeth and tried to move but it was no use. She was totally at their mercy.
They surrounded her. She could hear them now—male grunts and cursing. She gulped in air as they pulled at her body. She could feel them pulling her legs apart….
She bit down on her lower lip. She wouldn’t scream. She wouldn’t panic. She was going to find a way out of this. If she could only see—
The noise around her was jumbled, as if she was standing in a very crowded room. She breathed in as someone started a fight and everyone around her, including her attackers, became involved. The shadows made everything even more confusing since she couldn’t tell who was hitting whom. But she smelt the blood, heard screams of pain, saw bodies falling around her.
And there was nothing she could do.
There’re too many bodies. Just too many people. Those screams.
“Shut up!” she yelled out.
All of a sudden, there was silence. A lone figure climbed on top of her. It was him. She recognized the shape of his body. For some reason she recognized his scent.
“I thought you died,” she whispered. Where did everyone go? And why couldn’t she feel the danger?
She felt his hands on her useless body, felt his hands on her thighs as he slowly parted her numb legs.
Helen squeezed her eyes shut. She must be mistaken. She’d thought—wait, maybe something happened in the dark room and someone took her while she was unconscious. Maybe her kidnapper was a hostile, too.
She let out a hiss of outrage as his hands intimately slid up her inner thigh, then up her rib cage, across her breasts. She was going to kill him when this drug wore off. She was going to tear his hands off first. A thumb caressed her lower lip for a second.
He kissed her on the mouth, his lips moving over hers lazily, as if he had all the time he wanted. She gave an outraged gurgle at the back of her throat when he nudged her lips apart and swept his tongue inside, engaging her in intimate play. She could feel his tongue exploring hers, not like a rapist, but like a lover, coaxing and playful. Blinding fury welled up as she tried her damnedest to turn her head but it was useless. Her mouth was his toy, muffling her curses.
It was the longest kiss she’d ever shared and it was sharing. There wasn’t much she could do when she still couldn’t shake her head free and her mouth was open for him to taste. Their tongues tangled