The Secret Beneath The Waves

Chapter 12: The Cooking Show

*Picture of Oliver at the top of the page. 

Chapter Twelve - The Cooking Show

"Get out" the man said, as he pulled up the door. Obediently, they all climbed out. They were then pushed towards a door. It was light again, about ten o'clock from the way the sky looked. The man holding Oliver and Tony kicked open a door, marked with a number ten, painted white in the top right corner. The outside was entirely white. There was a faded out poster, that took up one entire side of the building. It was a woman, who grinned widely as she held up some sort of food in each of her hands. The words "Can You Cook?" were written in a cursive script above in green lettering. A television show. They were being pushed into a studio for a cooking show.

Inside was exactly as Spencer predicted it to be. Wires were strewn all over the place. Cameras were hanging from the ceiling, several of them had the lense smashed in. they were lead to a large room. There were several benches on one side. There were long slashes in the wood. At the top were two cameras,, mounted on the ceiling. One had the lense smashed in. The other didn't. On the other side, there were several counters, two rows of four. There was a stool behind a couple of the, and a big holder, filled with egg beaters, knives, spatulas. A long row of ovens lined the back wall, microwaves were built into each of the counters. Spencer was shoved onto the bench, on the right of Shawn. There was a bit of a scuffle, and Oliver was pushed down next to Shawn, sporting a bruise near his eye. They sat in silence. The man with the accent near Shawn, stood on her left, and the other man stood on her right, next to Tony. There was something glistening over their pockets. Both wore long trench coats. They were shiny and a dark gray. Knives? Squinting she saw them clearer. Guns. She drew a shaky breath and Tony glanced at her concerned. The antagonizing tranquility lasted a few more seconds, before an uneven shuffle of footsteps was heard. Spencer could barely make out a dark figure in front of the counters. She couldn't see his face.

"You have arrived" he said. His voice, to her surprise seemed American. "We brought the serum" Shawn said. "Now give us Adri." the man laughed scornfully. "Adri? That's her name? She never spoke a word as long as we had her." he shook his head and signaled to one of the men. A spotlight turned on, drenching the room in a blinding light. The man was staring at something on one of the counters. The vial. He reached out to grab the liquid with both hands. One of his hands was gloved and the other wasn't. He turned it in his hands, inspecting it. Once he was satisfied, he yelled. "Bring in the girl."

A door was opened seconds later, and Adri was pulled in by two more men. She looked like hell. She had a black eye, and there was blood coming from under her chin. Nonetheless, she met Spencer's eye and grinned goofily. Spencer smiled back, but her smile was forced, her focus was on the two men behind her. They had the same build, and as they came into the light she thought the drug was still in her. The first man was Aidan, and the second......The second was Maxence.

Maxence. She still saw his face, pale in fear, his eyes wide as he was pulled farther under the ocean. She'd beaten herself up for days after. It had been her fault. Or...was it?

He looked at her, there was a dash of regret in his eyes. But she averted her eyes almost instantly. Looking back at the man in the center, she saw that he was still looking at the vial, but she got the feeling that he had seen the entire encounter. "Do you know why your here?" he asked. The team said nothing. "Well, you better hope that no one knows your location. You may then have a slim chance to make it out alive." And that was when he turned towards them. The side of his face they had seen was normal. Ivory skin and blonde hair, with murky blue eyes. But as he turned, she thought he had a mask over the other side of his face. Then it dawned on her. That's not a mask she concluded. "My name is William Hatchet. The Director." His voice was the same as the caller.

The other side of the man's face looked like it was decaying. It looked like his face was literally being eaten away. "I see you've met Nicholas. You have him to thank for the bomb in your boat in the Bahamas." he pointed to the man with the accent. He took off his glove, and from the tips of his fingertips to a little beyond his wrist, the same thing had occurred. A milky white cataract covered the eye on the rotting side of his body. Oliver's tan skin had turned a shade of green. Yet, something about the man was oddly familiar. He focused his functioning eye on her. "I was a diver, like you Spencer" his eye focused on her and the hair n the back of her neck stood up. "I was part of another Aquatic Research team. One day, our job was to dive to investigate a shipwreck, somewhere off the coast of Washington. I was the best diver, so I went first." he clenched his teeth. "All I found, was disease. There were numerous skeletons. A black mass covered the entire bottom deck. I thought it would not affect me, I was in a diving suit." he laughed mirthlessly. "I was wrong." He stretched his hand, and pieces of the rotting flesh fell to the floor and hissed. Like when you drop a match in water. "Believe me when I say I am sorry about this, but since you have brought me the serum, I have no use for you anymore." he flicked his hand at the two men. "Dispose of them."

"Wait!" Spencer yelled, trying to buy time. She looked at Maxence. "How did you survive?" The Director answered for him. "We would have just let him be. However he and his brother were the only two spis I had. Didn't you ever wonder how we knew about the serum in the first place?" Spencer focused her attention back on Aidan and Maxence." You were part of the French and German team that worked with our branch on the serum." She looked between the two of them. They both hung their heads. "You betrayed us. Why?"

It was Aidan that spoke. "We were forgotten among our team. Replaceable." she looked straight into her eyes and she remembered something he had said at the Bahamas. You are not sorry now, and even if you were, you will definitely not be later. "You were the reason the boat exploded. You told them our location. You would have murdered your own brother!" The Director smiled grimly. "We did not want to save him. He is replaceable here too. As is Aidan." Hatchet regarded the twins. "You will help to get rid of them." The unknown man grabbed Shawn, injecting him with the drug hey had used before. He dragged Shawn out the door. Maxence grabbed Adri and Oliver. Spencer tried to bolt, to grab the serum. If Hatchet used it, the effects would be even more disastrous. She'd barely gotten two steps when she felt a cool metal against her temple. A gun. "Permission to kill?" Nicholas's deep voice boomed from behind her. Hatchet smiled. "Permission granted."

There was a bang and blood spattered all over Spencer.

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