Taken By Terror by Lolita Lopez
Chapter Nine
Hours later, Maisie’s heart hammered in her chest as she was led out of the ship and onto the massive battleship the Valiant. The general gripped her upper arm in his massive paw as he escorted her down the ramp. He had a firm, but careful grip. Even though he believed the worst of her, he didn’t seem to want to hurt her.
When they reached the end of the ramp, the general steered her toward a group of intimidating men. They wore the uniforms and insignia of Shadow Force, the same elite unit that Terror served in, and that was a terrible sign for what awaited her. She glanced back at Terror, but he studiously avoided her gaze.
So much for his help.
Angered and betrayed by his coldness, she turned her attention back to the men in front of her. Both wore stony expressions that chilled her right to the bone. Whatever they had planned for her would be a hundred times worse than anything she had ever experienced.
Stay strong. You can get through this. You can do this.
Cuffed and shackled, she was presented to the leader of the group. He towered over her and had shoulders as broad as the general’s. He sneered down at her. She focused on his mouth as he started to speak. “Quite a bit of trouble to catch this little rabbit.”
Whatever was said behind her was unknown, but the leader of the Shadow Force turned his head and addressed the men next to him. One of them—a blond—stepped forward with a black hood in his hand. She recoiled at the sight of it. From somewhere behind her, Terror suddenly appeared. He scowled as he argued, but she couldn’t tell what was being said. The general got involved and then one of the pilots—Hazard, she thought—jumped into the verbal fray. There were too many moving mouths, too many words being said too quickly.
As she tried to figure out what was happening, the blond with the hood took advantage of the confusing melee and covered her head without warning. She reached up to tear it off, but the cuffs on her wrists were grabbed. A hand on the back of her neck applied pressure in just the right way, and her arms went numb and heavy.
Unable to fight, she had no choice but to follow the rough nudge of the man controlling her like a puppet. Blinded by the hood, she was gripped by the most intense sensation of claustrophobia. She couldn’t hear or see, and every forced step filled her with anxiety. She expected to trip or slam into a wall. Trying to calm her panic, she inhaled deeper breaths and focused on the directions of her escort. Straight. Left. Left. Right. An elevator. Straight. Right. Left. Right. Right. Left. Another elevator. Straight. Right. Straight.
The hand on her neck yanked hard enough to make her stumble. In the next moment, someone grabbed the back of her borrowed jacket and hauled her upright while simultaneously steering her forward and then to the left. She was spun around and then shoved straight down until her bottom slammed into the hard surface of a chair. Her wrists were hooked to something in front of her. A table? The shackles around her ankles were attached to the legs of the chair.
She tried to control her breathing as her anxiety skyrocketed. The room was unnaturally cold compared to the other spaces she had traversed. She assumed she was in some kind of interrogation room. The colder climate made sense. They would want her uncomfortable and afraid. Though, how they expected her to talk with her hands shackled so tightly in front of her was anybody’s guess.
She lost track of time as she sat there, hooded, cuffed and freezing. Willing herself to stop panicking, she reached out until her fingertips brushed the cold metal table. She left them there, barely touching the surface, and closed her eyes. As a child, she had often amused herself by using her fingertips to “hear” things. Her mother had taught her the skill, showing her how to feel the vibrations of sound through metal and other conductive substances.
The background vibration she detected never changed. It was the slow thrum of the ship, the electrical currents racing through the wiring and the rush of air through the vents. If she concentrated hard, she could feel the thud of footsteps and the pulse of voices in the room to her left. It was difficult, especially when her hands were trembling from fear and cold, but she could feel it, just barely, as footsteps moved closer to the room where she sat. They grew stronger under her fingertips until the door opened, and the pressure in the room changed, probably an imperceptible amount to anyone else. There was another set of footsteps, heavier than the first, and then the jagged vibrations of something scraping against the floor. A chair, she decided, as the table moved slightly.
A third set of footsteps entered the room, these eerily similar to Terror’s but not an exact match. That third set of footsteps stopped behind her, and the fine hair on the back of her neck stood on end from the close proximity of the man behind her. With her senses limited to smell and touch, she picked up on the different scents on each man. There was the same crisp, bright soap scent emanating from each of them, but their body chemistries altered it slightly. One man smelled of rain and moss and the slight sweetness of wildflowers. Another like leather and steel. The one behind her smelled of citrus more than anything, as if he had just finished peeling and eating an orange. The scent took her back to that first day in Terror’s cell.
The hood was whisked away, pulling strands of her hair with it, and she winced at the sting in her scalp. Her eyes adjusted slowly to the almost painfully bright light in the cramped interrogation room. The man sitting in front of her at the table wasn’t anyone she had seen on the deck. She didn’t need to know his name to know what he was—a detective. She knew the type well—serious, intense, always questioning, always curious. He eyed her like a specimen meant for study, and she shifted uncomfortably.
A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed the man who smelled like citrus was the same one who had hooded her on the deck. His entire manner mimicked Terror’s, from the way he stood to the slant of his head as he watched her and the cross of his arms across his chest. She decided they must have been trained together.
The detective rapped his knuckles on the table, and the vibrations gained her attention. She raised her eyebrows questioningly. He motioned to his mouth and asked, “Can you read my lips?”
She nodded.
“My name is Keen. I’ll be conducting the interrogation. Are you able to talk? To vocalize?”
She nodded and then shook her head.
“So you can make sounds but you can’t speak intelligible words?” he guessed.
She nodded. There was no way she was going to tell this stranger how many people had made fun of her when she was a child trying to mimic the shapes of mouths and the sounds she assumed came out of them.
“You’re familiar with a tablet?”
She nodded.
“Good.” He slid a tablet in front of her. “You type your answers to our questions. It’s a text-to-speech program. Do you understand what that means?”
Tired and aggravated, she lifted her cuffed wrists and pulled the tablet closer. She typed out her answer to his patronizing question. “I’m deaf, not stupid.”
Her interrogator’s jaw twitched. He clearly wasn’t a fan of sass. “We’ll see. Now, I’m the lead investigator for Shadow Force. Can you tell me your full legal name?”
She typed out her answer. “Mairead Faris.”
“Called Maisie?”
“Yes.”
“Your parents were Sandrine and Marcott Faris?”
“Yes.”
“You mother and father were both Harcos?”
“Yes.”
“And where were you born?”
“CIB-2.” When Keen frowned at her answer, she huffed and typed out the full name. “Chavez Ingot Belt—Planet 2.”
Keen glanced up from his tablet. “On planet or off?”
“On planet,” she clarified. “Sort of.”
Keen arched an eyebrow. “Sort of?”
She tapped at the tablet. “My father was the mine’s head engineer. He and my mother lived on Groundwork B0101.”
Keen’s eyes narrowed as if he were trying to place the name of the ship. “A terra-former?”
She nodded. “I was born on the ship and moved into the first colonized housing complex before I was a year old.”
“You were born a Defect?” He abruptly changed the subject and gestured to his own ear. “Or did you acquire an injury to lose your hearing?”
She tried not to show how it bothered her to be called a Defect. “I was born this way.”
“Your mother was also a Defect?”
“Yes.”
“And your father? He was born deaf?”
“Yes.” She held up a hand before he could ask more questions and hastily typed out her question. “We can save time if you show me what you have on your tablet and ask me if anything needs to be changed.”
Keen’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I’m running this interview.”
Badly, she thought to herself. Not wanting to rile him, she simply nodded. Her gaze moved from Keen to the towering hulk of a man leaning against the closed door. He was the rude, aggressive man from the arrivals deck. She could feel his serious stare even when she looked away from him to study the mirrored glass on the wall next to him. She believed with every fiber of her being that Terror was behind that glass.
What was Terror thinking right now? Did he feel even the slightest bit guilty about handing her over to be interrogated like this? Why did he kiss my cheek in the forest?
Keen tapped the table to get her attention. “Tell me about your father.”
“I don’t know much. He died when I was very young. Four,” she added, knowing Keen wanted her to be precise. “I only have vague memories of him.” She glanced at the giant man. “He was tall like him. Big. Strong.”
“He was an engineer?”
“Yes. He owned the mining company and designed all of the tech and machines.”
“Your family was wealthy?”
“We were.”
“Until your stepfather?”
Maisie began to understand just how much information Keen had compiled on her. It was creepy and unsettling. “Yes.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Randy?” She shrugged and typed out her real opinion of him. “He’s an asshole and a coward. He likes to play at being some big, tough soldier, but he’s so stupid he doesn’t even realize that he’s being used by them.”
“Them?”
“The Splinters,” she clarified. “He isn’t one of you. Sky warrior,” she clarified. “He’s just a regular human. I see the way they look at him. The way they judge him and sneer at him behind his back. He’ll never be good enough to be one of them. They only keep him around because of the money he gives them.”
“Your money,” Keen said, emphasizing the first word. “The money your father left in a trust meant to take care of you for your entire life. The money your mother let Randy access.”
The pain of that old betrayal broke through the surface, and she nodded slowly. Not wanting them to think the worst of her mother, she explained, “Randy is manipulative. It’s one of his gifts. Mom was sick. She was dying. He was her husband, and she trusted him to take care of me. I don’t blame her for any of it.”
“You don’t blame your mother for abandoning you with a bunch of Splinter terrorists?”
She bristled at the way he described it. Her fingers smacked the screen of the tablet as she angrily typed out her answer. “My mother died. She didn’t abandon me. There’s a huge difference.”
“She left you with him. She could have made other arrangements,” Keen insisted.
She rolled her eyes and smacked away at the tablet’s keyboard. “Like what?”
“She could have given you to family.”
“My father and mother were only children. My father was a war orphan. My mother was abandoned because of her deafness.” She didn’t want to get into the awful tale of her parents meeting at that home for unwanted children on a planet called 4S-8KN. Instead, she said, “There was no family to take me. Just Randy.”
“What about him?” He turned his tablet around and indicated a photo of an old man, his hair shockingly white and his eyes bluer than the sky. “Do you know who this man is?”
She shook her head.
“He’s your grandfather.” Keen swiped to another photo of the man in full Sky Corps uniform. “Admiral Flint. Retired Director of Shadow Force.”
She studied the man on the tablet. There were similarities she couldn’t ignore between this man and her mother and herself. His nose, the shape of his eyes, the pointy tip of his ears—she recognized the same features in her own reflection. Keen wasn’t lying. This man was her grandfather.
“He’s not my family.”
Keen frowned. “I just told you—”
“He might share my genes, but he’s not family. He’s a monster.” She waved her hand to silently tell him to get the old man’s photo out of her face. “He abandoned my mom because she couldn’t hear. He’s trash, and I want nothing to do with him.”
“What you want doesn’t really matter,” Keen replied tersely. “You’re his granddaughter which makes you his property.”
“The fuck it does!” She smacked at the tablet’s keyboard. “I am no man’s property!”
“On this ship you are,” Keen said. “And considering the trouble you’re in right now, you may find yourself begging the old man to stand up for you.”
“I’d rather go to prison.” She meant every word she typed.
“That can be arranged.” Keen sat back in his chair and shrugged. “Once I get what I need from you, I don’t give a shit where you end up.”
She smirked. “That’s probably the first completely honest thing you’ve said to me since this bullshit interrogation started.”
“Probably,” he replied. “If you want to talk honesty, why don’t you tell us why your mother threw in with the Splinters? Was it because her old man threw her away for being useless?”
Maisie pushed down the bitter feelings that arose. Her poor mother had been so young when she had been sent away and abandoned. What she had suffered in that orphanage had been horrific, and Maisie would never forgive her grandfather for what he had done.
“Is that why your mother joined up with Randy? Because she hates us,” he gestured to himself and then the other men in the room, “for what happened to her as a kid?”
Maisie shook her head. “I don’t know why my mother made the choices she did. All I know is that my mother married Randy after my father died because they owed him a debt.”
“A debt?” Keen perked up at that bit of information. “What debt?”
“I don’t know. She never said, and I learned not to ask questions like those.”
“What kind of questions?”
“The ones with answers that might get me killed.”
“Probably why you’re still alive,” Keen remarked. “Still, it would be helpful to know more about the ties between your mother, father and Randy.”
“You’ll have to ask Randy those questions.”
“I can’t.” Keen turned his tablet toward her. “He’s dead.”
She scanned the images on his tablet screen. Randy, her stepbrothers Kurt and Karl and all the other men who lived at the mine were laid out on metal slabs. Most of them had been shot. Randy, however, had obvious signs of torture on his body. She grimaced and glanced away. He might have been a real bastard, but she didn’t think anyone deserved torture.
“How long?” she asked, wondering if that was why she had been left in the prison camps.
“The day we rescued Terror,” Keen explained. “When did you start working for Devious?”
Keen’s sudden shift of focus threw her off kilter. Certain he was trying to confuse and frustrate her, she took her time answering him. “That’s an expansive question.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Expansive is an interesting way of describing your relationship with him. Let me narrow it down for you. When was the first time he asked you to spy?”
“He never asked me to spy.”
Keen seemed unconvinced. “Never?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t have to.”
“Because?”
“Because he used to put listening devices on me without me knowing what they were,” she explained. “I didn’t understand what he was doing until I was older. I realized someone was messing with the buttons on my shirts. They were heavier and felt clunkier when I was getting dressed. I took one apart and noticed there was a tiny little device between the two layers of plastic. I caught Devious in my room, going through my shirts, a few days later.”
“And then?”
“And then he asked me to pretend I hadn’t found the device.” She shrugged. “So, I did.”
“Why?” Keen studied her with narrowed eyes. “Why did you want to risk extreme danger to yourself to help him?”
She shrugged and thought about how to answer him. “I don’t know. It seemed like the right thing to do. What the Splinters were doing—are doing—is terrible. I don’t support them or their tactics, but I couldn’t get out. I was stuck there. If I had to be there, helping Devious from the inside seemed like the only way I could make a difference.”
“So, you helped him out of the goodness of your heart?” Keen shifted in his chair. He glanced back at the hulk leaning against the door and said something that made the other man laugh. Hating that she couldn’t see his mouth, she was left to wonder at what ugly thing he had said at her expense. When he turned back to face her, Keen wasn’t smiling. “You know what I think?”
Certain he was going to say something stupid, she shook her head.
“I think you’re lying about all of it.”
Certain she had misunderstood him, she asked, “Excuse me?”
“You’re a liar,” he said, enunciating each word slowly and clearly.
She frowned and typed out her reply. “No, I’m not.”
“The thing is—we have all of Devious’ reports and all of his transmissions,” Keen explained. “You’re never mentioned in any of them. Never. Not once. Not even under a code name.”
“And?” She didn’t think that was so strange. Surely, if he had been worried that he might be uncovered as a double agent, he wouldn’t have put her at risk by naming her in his dispatches.
“Maybe you were never his asset,” Keen suggested. “Maybe you never really worked for him or with him. Maybe the whole time you were just a sneaky little bitch sharing details about Devious and his work with your stepdad and your stepbrothers and all the other Splinter shitheads surrounding you.”
“You’re insane,” she snapped angrily. “I never told anyone about my connection to Devious. Never.”
“Not even Terror?”
She blinked and then hastily typed out her answer. “That’s different. Devious asked me to tell Terror that I worked for him.”
“Did he?”
“Yes!”
“And Terror is the only one you told?”
“Yes!”
“Then how the fuck did this happen?” Keen swiped at his tablet’s screen before tossing it across the table at her. “Explain that!”
She flinched at the sight of Devious—or rather, what was left of him—hanging by his bound, bruised wrists from the ceiling. She had to swallow the rush of sickness that threatened to erupt at the sight of his horribly decomposed body. She looked away, desperate to clear the macabre image from her mind.
Yet, even as she tried to purge the image of Devious’ bloated corpse, she couldn’t shake the idea that something was wrong. There was something off about his body. Steeling herself, she turned back for another look, but Keen swept away the tablet before she could get a better look.
“You know the other reason I know you’re a liar?” Keen tapped his tablet a few times and then turned it. On the screen were columns, photos and notes in tiny font. “This.”
She leaned forward and squinted to read the screen. At first, she couldn’t make sense of the information. It wasn’t until she read the labels on the far left that she started to piece it together.
DNA? Fingerprints?This was the evidence processed from the mine. She glanced at Keen who seemed decidedly smug and then returned her attention to the test results. Her gaze slid down to the final section where the findings were summarized.
Unknown female DNA sample shows 35delG causing congenital and complete hearing loss.
There is a 24% DNA match between unknown female sample and known male ID D1311545 a/k/a Flint. Kinship Category: Granddaughter.
There is a 21% DNA match between unknown female sample and known male sample from decedent ID A7131429 a/k/a Devious. Kinship Category: Niece.
There is a 54% DNA match between decedent A7131429 a/k/a Devious and decedent A7131421 a/k/a Crow. Kinship Category: Brother.
She reread the sentences four times before lifting her gaze to Keen’s face. Bewildered, she pointed to the column for the unknown female and then tapped her chest. “Me?” she mouthed.
“Yes.”
Forgetting that he couldn’t read sign language, she hastily signed. “Who is Crow?”
Keen shook his head and mocked her hand movements. “I don’t understand that shit.”
Shoving down her fury at his rude remark, she stabbed the keyboard. “Who is Crow?”
“Your father,” Keen stated as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Your father and Devious were brothers. Your father,” he turned the tablet and double-tapped a new folder, “was a Splinter.”
Maisie stared in shock at the images of her father as a young man in various operations. Someone had taken up close images of him building bombs, firing weapons, standing over dying men with a gun pointed at their heads to finish them off. Sickened, she looked away. She didn’t want it to be true, but there was proof right in front of her.
“I guess the poison apple didn’t fall far from the terrorist tree,” Keen remarked cruelly. “You are the perfect spy. A sweet little honey pot with those big eyes and that pretty face,” he said, leering at her in a way that made her feel nervous. “I’m not surprised they chose you to tend Terror. He was weak, hurt and vulnerable, and you walked in that room looking like a little slice of heaven. Made him feel bad for you because you’re deaf. Made him feel protective over you because everyone else in the mine called you names and made fun of you. And now look at you! You weaseled your way into his heart and right onto this ship where your terrorist scum family wanted. How long before you betray Terror like you betrayed Devious?”
“I am not a spy!” She reared back at his ugly insinuation. “I did not betray Devious!”
“Then who did?” he demanded, slapping the table so hard their tablets rattled.
“The doctor,” she answered. “I think.”
Keen sat back. “What doctor?”
“The old man,” she clarified. “He came to drop off supplies and treat some of the Splinter operatives who had been wounded in a job off-planet. After he left, they took Devious from the canteen. Not long after that, they came for me.”
Keen seemed skeptical but picked up his tablet anyway. He tapped and scrolled until he found what he wanted. “Is the doctor in one of these photos?”
She glanced at the two rows of photographs on the screen. They were all older men in their uniforms. She zeroed in on the man in question and held up four fingers to indicate his position in the lineup.
Keen glanced over his shoulder at the man with the crossed arms and nodded. He turned his attention back to her. “Let’s go back to the beginning...”
Exhausted and still bewildered by the DNA test results, Maisie slumped forward and rested her arms on the table. Is this ever going to end?
