Chapter 32 - Just a Quick Look
A soft knock on the door distracted me.
Before I could turn my attention back, Grant was off me and casually leaning against the window frame. He smiled at me with a confidence that surprised me.
The door opened with a force and Joel appeared in the space. His whole body deflated in relief when he saw Grant on the other side of the room. He shoved his fists in his pockets, dropped his head so that his hair hung down and shuffled his feet. His lifted his eyes to me and then he noticed my expression.
“Cissy, are you alright?”
I nodded.
“Sorry for busting in, but I’ve realised something - every time things have gone wrong for us it was because we made decisions without talking. We are a couple Cissy, we need to make joint decisions because this affects us both. We are getting married Cissy, I want to be a part of your life.”
I blinked at him.
“Cissy, we can’t keep secrets from each other and we have to start trust each other more. I want to be involved with this. I promise I will be supportive and fair but I need to have a say. This affects us both.”
I opened my mouth as I glanced back to Grant who merely raised an eyebrow at me. I knew the stakes. I knew what he wanted me to do. The question was - how was I going to do this?
“So what does he want? What do you want Grant?”
I looked back at Joel and bit the inside of my lip.
“You can tell me.”
“Yes, tell him Cissy. Tell him what you want to do.”
I closed my eyes for a second and gathered my thoughts.
“Cissy? What’s wrong?”
“Umm,” I started but couldn’t continue. I glanced back to Grant who nodded slowly without taking his eyes from mine.
I closed my eyes again and decided that the only way I could do this was to blurt it out, “He wants me to break up with you.”
Silence. I cringed as I opened my eyes.
“He what?” Joel growled through his clenched teeth.
“He wants...”
“I heard!” Joel snapped
“Joel, I...”
“Cissy, I thought I was clear about this...” Grant sounded furious.
“No! No Cissy! No, you are not going to do that!” Joel then pointed at Grant, “This was your game, wasn’t it! All of this, the bomb, the innuendos, the secrets, all specifically designed to torment me! You never loved her. You never felt anything at all for her. All you wanted was revenge. You wanted to make me suffer because I married the other Cissy. I won’t let you destroy us just because you stuffed up. You rejected her Grant. You made your choice. Don’t blame me for that!”
“It was your fault, dork! Your fault she cheated on me! Your fault she had to marry you! Your fault she’s dead! You are to blame!”
I swung myself out of the bedroom door as Grant and Joel launched themselves at each other. I leaned heavily against the wall facing the living area as something heavy collided with the other side.
“Gavin, I need your help,” I rubbed my face and cringed as Joel’s muffled swearing filtered through the wall.
Gavin nodded and together we charged into the room to find the Grant pinning Joel to the wall while throwing his fist into his face. Gavin didn’t hesitate to jump in and wrestle Grant until he was face down on the floor. I tried to hold back Joel. He pushed against me but didn’t hurt me. I wrapped my hands around his face and slowly eased it down until his eyes met with mine.
“Enough Joel, Gavin has him,” I spoke softly as his jaw muscles strained.
His breath was ragged and he eyes were pained but he didn’t say anything, he just twisted from my grip and strode out of the room.
I watched him leave but didn’t follow him. He needed to have some space to calm down and I had things to do. I found Grant’s bag and together Gavin and I taped his wrists and ankles as he flailed, fought and swore at us.
Gavin took the guns, tasers and UGODs from him as I weighed up my options. I dithered. I knew what I thought should happen but Joel was right. This wasn’t my decision to make alone. This impacted us all. I made sure that Gavin had Grant before I went in search of Joel.
It didn’t take me long to find him. He had Blair pinned down in the living room and was almost snarling in his face. Despite his position Blair smirked as he whispered his reply. Joel’s eyes lifted to me then he swung himself from Blair and in the same movement dropped him back to the sofa.
“I have the gate address from Blair. You don’t need to make any more deals with...” his face puckered as if tasting something bitter and he glared into the space behind me, “him.”
Then, before I could react, he picked me up and carried me into our bedroom.
“Listen to me Cissy. I won’t lose you again. Not over him. I have lost you too many times and I won’t let you walk away from me again. I couldn’t take losing you again.”
“Joel,” I whispered as his body pressed up against mine and his eyes searched mine.
“No Cissy, we will do this together.”
“I said no Joel,” I whispered.
“You said no?”
“I said no to him, before you came in. I would never...” I started to say but his lips came down on mine and he kissed me.
“I am marrying you Joel.” I smiled at him as his lips left mine, “I want to be your wife. But I want to be able to settle in your dimension without fear of these Collectors.”
His lips relaxed a little and lifted just a tiny bit at the ends. His shoulders were relaxed and his body pressed into mine in a completely different way than before.
“And...”
“And, I asked you first so I am not going to let you get out of this so easily.”
“And...” he prompted again, his lips now curling into a cheeky smile. “Come on, you can say it...”
I rolled my eyes at him, “And I love you and can’t live without you.”
“There, that wasn’t so hard now was it?” he said as his lips met with mine and we fell backwards on the bed. “And just so you know, I love you too and I am never letting you go.”
I eased away from him when his hands got a little too adventurous, and smiled at his pout.
“Well you have to let me go, now for instance! We have a decision to make.”
“I vote yes to the decision to stay in bed and find a way to empty that box of its contents.”
I laughed at him as I wriggled free of his grip before bouncing off the bed. I was free before he could make any more decisions in that direction.
“Sorry, lover boy, we’ve got bigger problems than that!”
“Bigger? What are you trying to say Cissy?” He pouted.
I laughed at him as I left the room to find Grant taped to a kitchen chair but still glaring at me, Blair also had his wrists taped and was, ohh yes, glaring at me too. And to complete the picture Gavin was dancing around the room singing a medley of songs all altered to include the words ‘duct tape’. Currently he was pirouetting to ‘The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Duct Tape...”
“Gavin, I am seriously beginning to worry about you,” I frowned at him.
“Something’s missing in my life, baby it’s you, baby it’s you and duct tape,” he sang at me.
“You can leave my soon-to-be-wife out of your depraved sexual fantasies, thank you very much,” Joel scoffed at him from behind me.
Gavin pulled a sad face.
“OK, if you are quite finished torturing the prisoners Gavin, we have a decision to make.”
Joel growled and I knew he was about to make a suggestion what we could do with Grant so I quickly turned and pressed my fingers to his lips.
“Listen Joel, if Grant is telling the truth then we probably don’t want to physically harm him any more than we have. Plus we need his help.”
Joel’s eyebrows shot up.
“Well if Blair gave you the right address and this is where The Taken are, then I want to check it out.”
“Check it out? Is that some sort of code? What you are really meaning is that you want to send Joel, Grant and me into hell to save a bunch of people we don’t know?” Gavin scoffed.
“No, I just want to see what’s going on.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Cissy,” Gavin laughed, “Dead, you know, dead as a dead thing.”
“Cissy, we have no idea what will be there when we land,” Joel said slowly.
“I know but I don’t trust that he didn’t just give you a random address. Plus Blair is wanted by the company so I am guessing that he wouldn’t want to gate anywhere dangerous,” I smiled at Blair, “Cause we are taking him too and I am betting that if we have to run, who knows what might get left behind.”
Blair ground his teeth as he glared at me. I just flashed him a smarmy smile before I turned back to Joel.
“What do you think?”
“Just a quick look, to see if they are there?”
I nodded.
“Ok, providing that your next wild scheme revolves around our wedding plans,” he smiled.
“Gavin?” I turned to him as I asked softly.
“I’m in!” Gavin smirked and began singing ‘Tape me up before you go-go’ softly until Joel silenced him with a look.
Then I turned to Grant, “Are you going to play nice Grant? If you don’t we will push you through the dimension gate with nothing, we’ll send you back butt naked. Understand?”
“The company will hunt you through every dimension, if you do that.”
“You are probably right,” Joel nodded, “But I’m not entirely convinced that they won’t do that anyway and well... it might be worth it. So what’s it going to be Grant?”
“Alright, but I get to take the UGOD’s back to the company at the end of all this. I’d find myself without an address if I didn’t return with those.”
I looked at Joel who nodded back at me. Gavin cut and ripped the tape off with a small smile. Grant shot to his feet muttering several expletives as he rubbed his hairless wrists and glared at the now innocent looking Gavin.
“If we are going to do this, we should go now,” Grant said.
“Now?” Joel’s eyes flicked back to the bedroom and his shoulders slumped a little. He glanced back at me with a look of disappointment. I just chuckled softly as left him and went to collect our things.
The jump was uneventful as Grant stayed away from me and Gavin was manhandling the bound up Blair. We landed in a field of tall maturing corn. Joel’s hand never left mine as he steered us in a direction. It didn’t take long to find a small settlement.
We hid in a section of forest to the North of the buildings as the sun rose.
“So what now?” Gavin looked around, “How do we know we are in the right place? It’s not like they are going to have ‘I’m from D-zero’ tattooed on their foreheads.”
“This doesn’t look like a prison,” I said as I looked out over the quiet group of wooden houses. Curtains were being drawn and movement showed that the inhabitants were waking.
We were still arguing about the best way to verify that these were The Taken when a shrill whistle silenced us.
On the outskirts of the houses stood a man with a gun and a silver whistle in his mouth. He blew it once more but men were already forming a rough line in front of him. These men were wearing heavy dark clothing and hard hats, miners. As they marched off another whistle of a different tone had another group of men and women running. These wore farm overalls and straw hats and disappeared towards the sound.
“I think we are in the right place,” Joel said softly.
“Why? This isn’t so different to how my dimension works,” Gavin shrugged.
“I know the guy who took the miners. His name is Robert Black, I trained with him.”
Blair laughed, “Yes, I remember Black. He is the reason that D108 is out of bounds, he couldn’t keep it in his pants nor could he keep his mouth shut. So this is what they did with him, I did wonder.”
“There isn’t enough people here,” I whispered as I did a quick estimation of the number we had seen. “Lyle said they have taken hundreds of thousands.”
“This is only one of the places that I know of, and I don’t know where they all went to. I thought you would want to come here because the family of Lyle’s second-in-command are here.”
“Mark’s family are here?”
Blair smiled, “Yes, I made sure I knew where they took his family. I figured that this information would be useful given how difficult he became after they were collected.”
I was about to run towards the building when I remembered my promise to Joel. I turned and smiled a sheepish grin at his narrow eyes.
“I know what you are thinking Cissy and no.”
“There are hardly any guards Joel.”
Joel shook his head softly, “What happened to ‘just a quick look’?”
“This is a quick look, just a little closer up than back here,” I smiled at him.
“Fine,” he frowned but followed me silently.
We crept around the buildings but found them all deserted and the only noise came from a number of large halls in the middle of the small town. I edged up until I could peek through a window. Inside was a small factory. The women and men there were bent over workbenches and focused on their tasks.
Joel looked in and nodded towards the other end of the hall. Through the window we could see a guard at the main doors but he was on his own and the weapon he held was swinging loosely at his side. As I watched he slumped to a chair as he accepted a hot cup of something.
I looked at Joel. He rolled his eyes back at me. He knew what I was thinking. We could take him. It wouldn’t be hard. Hell, it would be simple. Then with the workers free we would have all day to find makeshift weapons. The mining group left with what looked like only one or two guards. With the element of surprise on our side, I was sure we could do this without any shots being fired.
Joel whispered to Gavin and he silently disappeared into the shadows. Joel nodded to me and held his finger up while mouthing ‘wait here’ at me. Then he too disappeared running against the building, stopping occasionally to peer into a window, then he darted towards one of the other large halls.
I continued to look through the window as I waited.
“You should have dumped him,” Grant sneered behind me.
I didn’t say anything I just spun around bringing my palm up to his face. The slap echoed off the walls and windows around us and I froze with my palm still in mid flight. I listened but could only hear Grant’s muttered swearing.
“Shut up Grant!” I hissed at him as shoved him up against the wall, “Shut up. You manipulated me and used me for your revenge and I will kick your ass when all this is over.”
“I’d like to see you try,” he smirked.
“My money would be on my wife,” the soft growl surprised me. I turned as Joel wrapped his arm around my waist so I found myself pressed up against his chest and looking up into his eyes. “You Ok?” he asked as he looked at Grant’s face with the red imprint of my hand still flaring on his cheek.
“Fine,” I smiled back as I breathed his warmth in, “Just a little misunderstanding, right Grant? So what did you find?”
Joel glared at Grant and before he could answer me Gavin was puffing softly against the wall next to Grant.
“Small School, no guards but the teacher might be a handful. She looked fierce,” Gavin whispered with his eyes widened for emphasis.
“The other building is storage, and I only saw the one guard,” Joel added.
One guard? That seemed impossible. There had to be at least a hundred people in that hall. There was only one way they were keeping them from overpowering this small garrison of guards, fear and intimidation. These people must be so frightened and beaten that they don’t have the strength to rebel.
“So are we going to do this?” I asked as I looked up into his eyes.
“The company might find reason to be annoyed with us if we do.”
“But these people Joel. It’s not right. Anyway, how’s the company going to find out?”
Joel gave me one of those you-have-to-be-kidding-me looks as his eyes lifted to Grant and Blair.
“If they tell they will be admitting their own part in this adventure.”
Then Joel gestured to the room full of workers, “And before you suggested it - I’m not wearing a disguise again.”
“Come on Joel. These are your people. They don’t deserve this. We owe them this. We can’t leave them like this. I know we had to leave the dimensions to sort out their problems but this is different. These people don’t belong here and shouldn’t be here.”
Joel looked at Gavin then at the other two men. I didn’t see their faces but I assumed that Joel saw what he was looking for because he nodded at me and took in a deep breath, “Fine, but we do this my way.”
“Of course,” I answered innocently, “Don’t we always?”