Bane

“You have what you came for. Remove the tracker.” I don’t tear my eyes away from the car Elena is in until it is completely out of sight. I feel sick, lower than I ever did on my worse day in prison. And on top of that, I have to fight every urge in my body to take off after her.

Phantom makes a motion with his hand again and another man steps forward holding a device. I drop to my knees so he can reach the back of my neck and a moment later I feel the sharp sting of a needle puncture my skin. It burns but the pain isn’t nearly enough. I deserve so much more.

“Let me see it,” I say when he removes it. I don’t trust them not to screw me over and activate the device anyway, effectively eliminating someone else that knows too much about their secrets. He opens his hand and shows me the small device sitting on his palm. Phantom clicks a button on a device he’s holding and the little flashing light stops.

“Just like we agreed upon. You gave me the girl, I give you your freedom.”

“And you’ll take Elena to the facility because of her pregnancy? Like we agreed upon?”

“Of course. She is incredibly important to advancing the science behind our future procreation. She will be well taken care of. Now if you will excuse me.” Phantom turns and walks back to his car. Once he’s inside and it has turned to drive away, the rest of his men lower their weapons and get in the remaining two vehicles. It only takes another few seconds before Vruzzy and I are standing together, just the two of us.

“We found her just to give her up again?” Vruzzy asks.

“I had to. That was the agreement. The girl for my freedom. If I didn’t deliver her, they would detonate the device in the back of my neck. It was the only way I could see that we both have the chance of getting out of this.”

“So we’re going after her?” he asks.

“Of course we’re going after her.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so!” Vruzzy slaps my back, a little harder than necessary, and gets back into the van. This time I sit in the front with him.

“So what the hell is going on? Phantom is working with the Commissioner from Earth’s mission?”

“Phantom is the Ambassador for Kosmora. He has managed to climb his way through the ranks, reaching a very important and powerful role in the government.”

“How the hell did that happen? He recruited me as a bounty hunter when I was young which turned into me doing his dirty work for him as I got older. How can someone like that become so powerful in the government?”

“It’s just what you said, he’s extremely powerful. He gets what he wants.” Vruzzy starts the van. “We go after her?” he asks.

“Yes, but we need to figure out a way to get inside.”

“Well, why don’t we try to catch them before they can get her inside?”

“It’s four vehicles to one. I don’t like those odds. Don’t you have some men we could enlist?”

I look over at him, his head nods while he thinks about it. “Yes, I have some men. Tell me what we’re getting ourselves into before I ask them to get involved. Phantom said the girl is pregnant?”

“Yes, she’s pregnant, with my baby.”

“Oh, well you didn’t waste any time, did you?”

“It just happened,” I say by way of explanation. “There’s a research facility where they plan on using Earth women as breeders as a way to once again have the option of surrogate birth versus babies grown in tubes in a lab.”

“No shit. And these women have agreed to this?”

“No Vruzzy, they haven’t. From what Elena discovered, her government is planning on shipping women over here in exchange for some of the resources Earth needs that we can give them. Whether the women like it or not,” I add.

“That’s messed up,” Vruzzy says.

“Yes, it is messed up. Which is why I need to get Elena back before they so much as touch her.”

“I agree. I mean, I don’t think she will want anything to do with you after all of this, but we should get her out anyway.”

Vruzzy’s words hold too much truth. I’ve been thinking about it but now that he said it out loud, I worry that he’s right. How will Elena ever forgive me for lying to her and handing her over to be sent to a lab?

“It doesn’t matter,” I say.

“What?” Vruzzy asks.

“It doesn’t matter if she never forgives me. I’m going to save her from that place and help her go wherever she wants. Even if it means never seeing her again.”

“Or your child?”

I don’t answer him right away so he continues.

“I mean, it just complicates things…that’s all I’m getting at.”

“Yes, it does complicate things.” For now, I leave it at that. We’ll start with finding her again and then see what happens from there. “But we still need to get her.”

“Oh yeah, I’m with you on that one.” Vruzzy nods and puts the van in drive, taking off in the direction of the van. We can only assume that they’re driving straight to the research facility. The same facility where I was supposed to hand her over the last time we were there. Obviously she means a lot to me if I hadn’t been able to hand her over until I had no other choice.

“I assume that since you’re the smartest tech guy I know, you can get us into the facility even with fingerprint panels and security cameras?

He makes a noise out of amusement and sounds completely annoyed with me. “Ah, yeah.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just thought I should make sure.”

“Well, it’s slightly insulting. I mean, fingerprint panels…I can do that in my sleep.”

“Okay, got it. That’s good. I mean, why do you think I came to you in the first place? I know you’re the best at what you do.”

“Yeah, no, I get it.”

“It’ll be good. A quick in and out. You get us inside and I’ll get Elena. We’ll be quick and efficient.”

“And you’re sure that you can get Elena once I get you inside? I mean, I just want to make sure you haven’t lost all of your skills since you’ve been in prison for the last ten years.”

“I’ll get her,” I say, ignoring his tone. “Even if she despises me now, I’ll get her.”

We drive in silence for a while. Eventually I turn to Vruzzy and say, “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?” he asks.

“For helping me out. It has been a long time, you have no obligation to me.”

Vruzzy’s quiet at first and I wonder if he’s still annoyed with me for questioning his skills. Then he says, “It wasn’t right what Phantom did to you.”

“I appreciate that, though I’m sure you’re the only person that knows it was Phantom that set me up. Everyone else just thinks I’m a murderer. And I’ve got the mark to prove it.” I point to the tattoo just under my eye, the permanent marking that brands me as a killer.

“No, everyone that works with me knows the truth. If it ever comes up, I set them straight about it.”

Vruzzy and I go back a long time. He’s one of the first guys I met when Phantom recruited me all of those years ago. He was always the guy on the other side of my ear piece, walking me through how to get into places I wasn’t supposed to be able to get into.

“It still haunts me, you know?”

“I know,” he says. “It haunts me too and I wasn’t even in the room with you.”

“You were in my ear though, it’s like you were there.”

“Yeah. It’s ironic when it all went down. I was so damn proud of you for being able to get into that warehouse. At the time we had never gotten through a security system like that. You finally picked up the skills for it after hearing me say it in your ear for so many years.”

“That’s true. I can remember some of the basics but everything has changed and evolved since I’ve been inside. It’s like I don’t recognize anything anymore.”

“The sounds of the guards surrounding you, the shouting…I’ll never forget it.”

“For me it’s the image of all of those men, dead on the floor. Men that were no different from me at the time. Phantom took out the competition and played it off like I went crazy. That something inside of me snapped and I shot all of those men.”

“And now the real killer sits in one of the highest positions in the government, overseeing treaties between our planet and others. It’s not good.”

“Elena wanted to expose all of it. That’s why they wanted her. Initially they wanted me to kill her but I couldn’t do it. Instead, I negotiated for them to keep her at the facility because of her pregnancy. I figured it was the best shot I had at getting her out of there before they could do anything to hurt her.”

“Why didn’t you just tell her you had a bomb in your neck?”

“She would have tried to get away from me much sooner if she knew my motives. And how could I ask her to sacrifice herself in order to save me? Someone she hardly knows?”

“Well, she is carrying your child, so I don’t think I would say she hardly knows you.”

“Yeah,” I say, turning to look out the window. “Once we get her out of there I’m going to find a way to help her expose everything that’s going on. That’s the least I can do. And after that we’ll see what happens.”

“That sounds like fun. I can get that news story into any system you want. Like I said, I can do it in my sleep.”