"Hold F3 and highlight the box there," my new supervisor, Marlene hovered patiently over the computer. I repeated what she'd shown me with a few clicks, and she stood back to appreciate the fruits of her training. "That's it!" She announced warmly. "You young ones can do it quicker than I can. There are some files over there, I need you to separate the ones missing any information. Then go through those and separate them into platoons, they need to be sent back to the right building with a covering document. You'll find the template for that under the access forms folder, called 'missing information template'. Print however many you need and staple one to the front of their original forms."
Marlene was happy and gregarious, with a thin gold chain for her glasses that hung loosely around her neck. I hadn't seen her actually place them on her nose yet, but as an accessory they suited her. She was short and overweight in a motherly, matronly way, her somewhat wiry brown hair styled with a nod to the bouffants of the fifties, plenty of lashings of hairspray creating volume in a Southernly fashion. I liked her immediately, and she'd been incredibly patient and thorough in her training throughout the morning and afternoon. We'd eaten lunch together, which she declared was time she normally spent reading 'trashy literature' but that she was glad to have somebody to chat to. I was replacing her colleague who had been on and off with illness, leaving Marlene to fulfil the work of two people herself. The hours I'd spent in Building 91 with her comforting guidance had been the happiest ones I'd had in longer than I cared to remember.
By the time I'd finished sorting the forms and had found the correct correspondence address for each platoon it was half past four. I'd been waiting for this time with anxious anticipation all day, wondering with feverish panic if Jase would arrive early and catch me slipping out. I'd actually told him I would stay later as I didn't want to seem like I was running out the door on my first day.
"Well dearie you've done a brilliant job, you go and get home and I'll see you next Tuesday," Marlene smiled proudly as the clock flickered towards twenty to. I couldn't believe my luck. I did believe in fate, or that things happened for a reason, and what other reason was there to Marlene letting me leave early, than so I could evade Jase's clutches and enjoy a walk across the shore alone? I thanked her gratefully after offering to stay and help with anything else, and grabbed my bag from under my desk. You're going to do this. You're going to really, really piss him off.
I'd text him. When I could see the beach and it was nearly five o'clock, I'd text him. Just to let him know I was safe and that I was going for a stroll, that was all. I'd check in, and then he couldn't be too mad. There was some sick thrill in knowing he would, in knowing I was punishing him slightly by rebelling against his suffocation. You could be punishing yourself, too. I had been wrong before, but I was beginning to believe Jase wouldn't hurt me. His presence still struck a dagger of fear into me at times, but we'd spent night after night together in the quiet apartment and I hadn't been interrogated or tortured so far.
I peeked all around Building 91 before I turned in the opposite direction to where I knew Jase would be coming from. All I had to do was walk to the other side of the base, no more than thirty minutes if I hurried. Sea breeze whipped my hair as I scuttled along the military roads, careful to stick to the main one in case I accidentally ended up in the middle of a heliport or something equally as dangerous. The path would have been clearer if not for the airstrip in the middle, which I would have to divert around by the golf club. I'd spent some of my break checking my path online, and it was near enough one straight road. By the time I reached the golf course I felt unexpectedly tired, the rush of evasion obviously settling and making way for the exhaustion of a full day. It was five o'clock, just after. Shit. I typed out a brief message-
Let out early, gone for a walk on base.
That was all the information he needed to know. My gut lurched as I watched his profile switch to online, I quickly turned the phone off and shoved it in my bag. There, you can enjoy yourself in a minute. I paced down the road, gazing out to the empty airstrip and then to the horizon ahead. The base had its own private beach, fenced off from the rest of the island and I was approaching the parking lot, mere seconds away from my coveted moment of independence. I practically skipped across the sandy asphalt and through a path lined with tall waving palm trees until my shoes sunk into the slinky softness, relief at having reached my checkpoint flooding me.
The sea beckoned me forward as though it too was proud of my accomplishment. I had done it, I had done something by myself. My own decision about where to go and what to do, all planned and executed alone. I basked in the glory of that knowledge as I headed for the shore, sitting suddenly on the sand to remove my shoes and socks. There. My heels dug in to the gritty velvet, tiny grains slipping between my toes. When I reached the denser, wet sand and the ocean began to lick my feet I took a deep breath, wholly satisfied and for a moment actually happy. I strode further across the shoreline, the sea swirling around my ankles. I folded the bottom of my trousers up to my shins so I could feel the water against my skin. It looked temperamental out there, beyond the first rippling waves. But on the safety of the shore it was bewitchingly soothing, each lap against my legs proving my disobedience worthwhile. The beach was near empty with only three or four other groups, mostly families basking in the final hours of sun. As I looked ahead there was nobody, as though the expanse of grainy silken land was mine and mine alone. The wind licked through my hair and bit at my ears as muffled shouts of play echoed from the families behind. I felt at peace, and I was determined to soak every bit of it up.
"Paige!" The thunderous holler across the beach turned my blood cold. I didn't need to turn around to know who the call belonged to, but I did anyway. He stood a good few hundred feet away, his figure intimidating even in the distance. How had he found me so quickly? I turned my head back to face the empty horizon before slowly beginning a meandering walk across the sand, reluctantly pulling my feet further and further away from the rippling surf. I could begin to make out the features of his face, all set in hard lines with absolutely no emotion to speak of. Was he mad? Did he understand? There was no way of knowing. Not even his words gave very much away at the best of times. My shoes swung in my hand as I forced myself towards him, knowing my slither of solitude was always only going to be a glimpse of tranquillity I'd have to leave behind. Still, it was worth it. Even if Jase had a syringe prepared for me back at the apartment, it was worth it. Nothing is worth that, but those blissful moments were more beautiful because they were finite.
Jase said absolutely nothing as I paced closer to him, his arms crossed over his chest in authority. There was nothing I wanted to say either, what would the point be? He was angry, and I didn't care. By the time I reached him the wind was picking up and my hair blew back in a stream towards the sea. He didn't move at first, instead standing contumaciously in front of me with his hulking frame rigid in the sand. He glowered, silent, offering no reaction. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of breaking the silence first, nor would I allow him to see the tremors of fear.
Eventually he turned and led the way to the car, parked haphazardly in the lot. Jase swung my door open, slamming it to a close behind me before veering around the bonnet to get in. The silence engulfed us as he buckled up and sped the car towards the nearby north gate, driving recklessly in the haze of his poorly concealed anger.
*
Jase had to remind himself he had a passenger in the car as he stormed the vehicle down busy streets, seething with fury he had to smother if he was going to maintain control.
He had spoken to Ant only a few days prior about Paige's increasingly rebellious spirit, who had advised him to lay down the law and stop pussyfooting around. It came naturally to Jase to bark orders when it was necessary, but his laid back approach was doing him no favours when it came to his current situation. Up until now he hadn't been able to treat her as his subordinate, as he would do the recruits or other lower ranking personnel he came across. He had tried to sit between the role of an uninvolved roommate and a bodyguard as soon as they left the home, but the dynamic wasn't working.
It wasn't until Jase slammed the apartment door behind himself, flinging his shoes to the corner of the hallway that he set his mind to the approach it needed. Paige removed her own shoes quietly, and began to head to her bedroom before Jase reached out and seized her the soft flesh of her arm with his large hand.
"Get off!" Paige recoiled instantly and tried to yank herself away, to no avail.
"You think that was clever?" Jase breathed through his nose carefully.
"Get off or I'll scream!" Paige stood still, not wanting to fight against him knowing the inevitable outcome would only leave her hurt.
"Scream all you want, nobody will come," Jase kept his voice low and even. Why did he have to scare her to command her obedience? "Do you think that was clever?"
"I went for a walk on the base," Paige cried weakly, her pretence futile even to her.
"Don't act like a teenage girl, Paige. Do you know how reckless that was? What if somebody had been watching you, waiting for you to be alone? It would have taken seconds and you could have been gone," Jase loosened his grip and allowed her arm to drop, gazing at the red imprints his fingers had left against her pale skin.
"Who on earth would have been watching me?" She felt the lurch of anger rush up her throat. "I went for a walk on the base. If you had to think of the safest possible place in the world for me to be; what is safer than a military base with guards at every entrance, armed patrols across the perimeter, huge metal fencing surrounding the entire compound; and even running in to the sea? And it's on an island!" Paige threw her hands up as Jase scoffed in disbelief, shaking his head to himself.
"You think you're in a bubble of safety just because you're amongst military personnel? You cannot trust anyone-"
"Yeah, least of all you," Paige hissed, enjoying the fraction of a reaction from Jase as he recoiled slightly, his face suddenly dropping.
"Look, I know it's hard... to live with me, to be around me-"
"No you don't know. You have no idea what it's like-"
"Do you really think it's easy for me? Do you think this situation has no effect on me whatso-"
"How dare you compare your discomfort at recognising the consequences of your actions, to how I feel!" Hot tears sprung into Paige's eyes, and she furiously blinked them away. She had never loathed someone more. Not al-Raheem, not her mother, not her father, not that man- nothing compared to the passionate hate Jase inspired within her.
"You're right, that was wrong of me to say," Jase conceded, setting his features grimly to assume the man he needed to be. "But it doesn't change the fact that what you did was dangerous, and it won't happen again. I'm under instruction now to keep you safe. If I need to treat you like a child to do that, I will. You won't go to work, you won't have unchaperoned doctors appointments or meetings with Jack, not if I can't trust you to take your own safety seriously. You can't trust people just because they're on base Paige, not Lorres, not Jack, not your therapist," Jase's eyes bore into hers as he implored her to see reason, blazing green meeting cool blue. "I was under orders from high up in Jordan- it was my job," he offered the weak explanation knowing full well it was wholly inadequate. "I know you don't like it, but I am the only person you can trust here."
"Why would I, when you're lying to me even now?" Paige stared back, her words quiet and suddenly calm.
"About what?" Jase challenged, caught off guard by the unexpected confrontation.
"Why would I not be safe on the base? Why should I not rely on the same people who assigned me you as personal protection?" A precipitous silence hung between their bodies.
"You shouldn't trust anybody," Jase sighed eventually.
"Except for you?" Paige's eyes glittered with frustration.
"Yes."
"At least until you're under orders to tie me up again, right?" Paige's words smacked Jase hard. He could feel every shimmer of hatred radiating from her, but he knew the role he had chosen was the right one to take for now at least. Paige shot him one last look of disgust, and turned to confine herself to her room.