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A switch went off in my body when the barrel touched my temple. My mind went black and all I could think was: Don’t let him win.
“Who are you working for?” Ruel asked, his voice in a low growl. Had the switch not gone off and I’d not made the changeover to my old self, I might have been scared of him. As it stood, I found it encouraging, almost sexual. I took my right foot, which was still on the bottom rung of the ladder, and kicked him as hard as I could in his testicles. He groaned and I kicked him again, just as hard. This time he loosened his grip on me, so my third kick was aimed slightly higher to throw off his center of gravity. As he shifted his weight to steady himself, I rammed my left elbow into his ribs, and my right hand flew to my coat to pull out the pistol. With the momentum of my elbow swing, my body spun to face him, the Glock’s barrel immediately finding his chest.
“No one,” I snarled in response to his question. His gun was trained on my chest as well. Our hearts were beating hard through our clothing layers and echoing off of the guns’ metal and polymer frames.
“Who are you working for?” Ruel asked again, his eyes bore into mine. They blazed with an energy I’d never seen in him before.
“No one,” I repeated coldly.
We were silent for seven heartbeats. I decided to keep him talking. Talking hurt less than fighting, and much less than a fatal gunshot to the chest. I wasn’t going to win this on strength. I didn’t want to kill Ruel and I didn’t think he wanted to kill me either. He had so many chances already, why now?
“Are you working for Russia or the US?” I asked. My tone came out more casual than anticipated, almost as if we were having a couple’s row over whose turn it was to clean the bathroom.
To my surprise, Ruel laughed.
My right arm did not hesitate to take advantage of his momentary lapse in concentration. It pulled the gun from his chest and struck the butt of it down on his right wrist. Ruel dropped his weapon and my left hand caught it. I sidestepped to my left, away from the ladder, making it so his now injured arm was closest to me. I backed up and continued to circle around him. When I was out of immediate range of a lunge attack from him, I pointed the 27 at him as well.
“Now, let’s talk,” I said. “Clearly, you want me to know that you’re a spy. Why?”
Ruel had turned around with me and now his back was to the ladder. The dim light from the open hatch door illuminated the tunnel enough for my eyes to work exceptionally well. I knew Ruel couldn’t see as well as I could, and with the light shining on him, I was completely in the shadows.
“You think I’m a spy?” he said in response.
“You are a spy. You were sent for me, for my knowledge. Who sent you?”
Ruel laughed again.
“You think this is funny?” I said, and almost laughed myself, given that he had shouted the same line at me back in Moscow.
“It is pretty funny,” he said. His voice was calm, almost as though he was trying to lull me into some false sense of security. That wasn’t going to work. He continued, “You think I work for Russia? That’s really funny. Why do you think that?”
“What were you planning to do with me?” I said.
“Honestly, Emma?”
“You won’t have your tells here, so there’s no way to know if you’re being honest,” I told him.
“My tells?” he grinned. “I do love you for that. But what I don’t love is that you’re also a spy. So, I really want to know, who are you working for?”
“I work for Leavitt,” I said calmly. “I’m not a spy, Ruel. How foolish of you.”
“Yes, I am quite the fool. Believing for one second anything you said was true,” he replied, his tone was becoming angrier. My senses went into full alert and my feet prepared themselves for sudden flight.
“And I might say the same. Still you say you love me. Still you kiss me as you marched me to my death. Why?”
“Your death?” he scoffed. “I don’t want to kill you. No, no, Emma, you are much more valuable alive. What you know, no one else in the world knows. Surely you realize that. With Maria and Andrew dead, you’re it.”
“Of course I know that,” I said quickly.
“So, then, who is it? Are you legit or black market? Who, Emma? Who are you working for?”
“I’m not a spy, Ruel,” I said again.
“Then what are you?” he growled. “You notice every detail, your reflexes are impeccable, you collect information, you steal, you handle guns, you fight, you dance, you lie. Oh, how well you lie. So, what else could you possibly be?”
“I’m not a spy,” I repeated, but something was slipping inside of my mind. Darkness was emerging. Something more than just a primal instinct, something deeper. I had been working to keep it away, so very hard, but it was quickly sliding forward.
“You used to breathe fire and that night you could see in the dark,” Ruel growled.
Memories were flooding now. A dark parking lot. A man in the front seat of a black town car. He stepped out to greet me in his long, black coat despite the warm weather. I wore a black dress, stockings, and silk evening gloves that stretched up to my elbows.
I couldn’t stop the flood. The dam had finally broken.
He flashed a menacing grin that had followed his words, “I wasn’t expecting someone like you.” I laughed. I could feel the adrenaline of my mania coursing through my veins. “I’m sure you were, actually,” I told him.
“You can still see in the dark, though,” Ruel continued, his voice growing louder.
“Stop it,” I said quietly.
“Isn’t that right, Emma? Isn’t that right?” Ruel yelled.
I smirked at the man’s furrowed brow and said, “We both know why we’re here, though. Do you have the money?”
“Of course, do you have the items?”
“Of course,” I said, and pulled a small bag of diamonds out of my cleavage.
“What are you if not a spy?” Ruel had begun to slowly inch towards me with his eyes fully alert, a wild and demeaning grin on his face.
“I’ll shoot you,” I warned, even though it was a lie. I knew I couldn’t shoot Ruel. The anger in Ruel’s voice was very controlled, as if he knew precisely what he was doing to my mind.
“No, I don’t think you will,” Ruel replied. “I know you. I’ve studied you for months.”
The man snickered when I pulled the diamonds from my dress, his hungry eyes lingering on my breasts. “I trust that they were ‘conflict-free’ diamonds?”
I chuckled. “And the money?”
“Right here,” He said and reached into his coat’s inner breast pocket. I saw the gun before he could cock it. I kicked him in the side and he fell to the ground. I walked over to his hand that was still holding the pistol. I stepped on his lower wrist with my stiletto heel and kicked the gun from his now relaxed hand. He cursed. I lifted my heel and turned towards him.
“Is that what you were expecting?”
“You don’t know me,” I said to Ruel, and tightened my grip on the guns. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“So, shoot me. Then what? Where will go? You had your chance to flee. I gave you that.” Ruel was about to reach the danger zone. My legs began to move backwards and deeper into the tunnel.
The man lunged up at me wielding a knife in his left hand. I jumped up and felt the blade slice into my stomach. It was cold, but it didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt when I was in a state of hypermania.
“Don’t come any closer,” I said to Ruel, trying to sound strong. My voice was beginning to falter. The final part of the blocked memory was coming. I couldn’t stop it. I could always stop it, but not now.
“Tell me what you are.” Ruel articulated every word as if each held equal importance to the sentence.
“You missed,” I’d told the man, and stepped onto his groin. He cried out in pain, dropping his hand from the knife’s handle as he cowered to the ground. I pulled the knife from my body. “But I won’t.”
The whites of the man’s eyes seared into my mind as did the feeling of the blade moving easily through his heart under the weight of my body.
“Emma,” Ruel said loudly, too loudly, he was within five feet of me. I wanted to back up, but I was frozen in place. Ruel continued. His eyes stared straight into mine. “All this time you’ve been my target. I thought it would be easy, I’m alluring enough, but you, Emma, you were something different. Something special. I couldn’t do what they wanted me to do. I loved you too much. I brought you to Russia to save you. They were coming for you, they still are, and when they find you, they’re going to extract every last bit of information from that gorgeous head of yours and lock you away for good. I’m the only one who could help you. But now here you are, pointing my own guns at me. Six months of lying to me, and for who? Fool me once, Emma, but you can’t fool me twice. So, I’m going to ask you again, one last time, what are you?”
I stared straight back at him and in a calm, earnest voice, I said, “I’m a killer.”
Ruel stopped in his tracks. He hadn’t expected this.
“A sleeper assassin,” I told him. “I was trained to kill.”
“Who trained you?” Ruel asked. His tone took a 180-degree change. He sounded legitimately concerned. At his shift in voice, my instincts changed. My body relaxed and I felt calm and comfortable. Ruel wasn’t the enemy. For no tangible reason at all, it was very clear to me that I could trust him.
“He lied to me,” I said in disgust thinking of Ronaldo. My mind was in control again. My eyesight worsened. The blackout was over.
“Who lied to you?” Ruel was still standing where he’d stopped.
“Ronaldo. Ronaldo did.” I whispered.
Ruel looked confused. “Who is Ronaldo?”
“I thought you knew me,” I said, then smiled.
Ruel smiled back at me. “Put down the guns, Emma.”
As I slowly lowered the guns, a noise startled both of us. The distinct sound of a car engine approaching and then shutting off could be heard outside. It was not the Quattroporte.
“Are you expecting someone?” I whispered to Ruel.
“No,” Ruel said.
“You said they’re still coming for me?”
“Yes,” Ruel said.
We both hurried to the hatch ladder. I gave him back the 27, and we scrambled up the ladder. He slowed up as he reached the top and shifted to the left side where the hinge was. I climbed up the right side next to him.
He looked at me to make sure I was ready. I nodded. We popped up out of the hatch opening. He reached over to pull the hatch door over us and I aimed my gun in the direction of the road. There wasn’t enough time to get a good look, but I noticed the car was black. No one shot at us and I ducked in as Ruel slammed the door shut. He slid the inside dead bolt into place, which made a loud metallic clang.
I went down the ladder first, and Ruel was quick to follow. He grabbed our bags and placed them to the far wall hidden in the shadows.
“Do you have the other magazine for the 23?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied. “We’re not taking the bags?”
“No, we need to run. Did you see anything?”
“Only a black car,” I said.
He frowned and shrugged.
“Lead on, Navigator,” I said. He laughed and kissed me lightly.
“This way,” he said, and we took off running.
—
“Change the codes. We’re coming up on the central door in…Well, I’d say at our pace, maybe two minutes, give or take,” Ruel whispered hurriedly into his cell phone as we continued to run through the tunnel. Whoever came in the black car was not far behind us. I could hear their boots slapping on the cement floor, and whenever I glanced back, the dim glow of their flashlights was visible in the distance. They likely had a descrambler and the deadbolt had not held them for very long. Laser cutter most likely, I mused. Besides their loud running, they were too sophisticated to be the police.
Ruel hung up but didn’t bother to stash the phone as he increased speed. I struggled to keep up. We had been running at full speed for at least two miles. I assumed Ruel had called the same person he texted back in the car during the ride here, but I still didn’t know who that was exactly. Probably his expat friend from Kiev. Right now wasn’t the time to ask. I needed all my strength to run. Hunger pains shot out from my stomach, attacking my lungs, and my head throbbed in pain. I needed water. Two minutes wasn’t that long. We would be to the central door by then, apparently, whatever that meant.
After we had run roughly a quarter mile more, Ruel slowed down some. He took hold of my hand and tugged me to the left. Suddenly, we were in an entirely new corridor. Ruel hit the call button on his phone and said, “Now.” The sound of hydraulics could be heard behind us and I turned back to see the opening we’d just come through being closed off by a two-foot thick concrete panel. It looked identical to the walls around it.
Ruel was still on the call and still running. Moments later he said, “Now.” I again heard more hydraulics and turned to see an identical panel drop into place, the space in between the panels quickly becoming no man’s land.
“Thanks, see you in a few,” Ruel said. He then hung up the phone and stashed it in his coat. He slowed his pace down to a walk and turned to me with a grin.
“Welcome to Ukraine.”
“Wait,” I began, the obvious truth finally dawning on me. “Are these the KGB subway tunnels? The ones that were never ‘discovered’?”
“Those very ones.” Ruel said, smiling. “Well, some of them have been found, but not these ones. Which is handy in the case of border crossing while being chased by both Interpol and members of an organization that isn’t known to exist.”
“Handy, indeed,” I laughed, and slowed my breathing. I let out an involuntary shiver, my sweat doing its job and cooling me down. Unfortunately, the tunnels were freezing. My stomach growled loudly, and Ruel pulled me into his body.
“We’re almost there,” he said softly. When he let go of me, he fished into his pants pocket and produced a granola bar. He handed it to me and I broke it in half.
“You need to eat, too,” I said while giving him one of the pieces. He didn’t protest.
We started walking again.
“So, who are these people, and what exactly do they want from me?” I asked and ate the half of granola bar in two swift bites. Ukraine felt like amnesty, not that it was, but it now seemed safer to ask these questions, especially now that our unknown followers were separated from us by four solid feet of concrete.
“It’s complicated,” Ruel said.
“We have time.” I waved my hand at the empty hallway spanning ahead of us.
Ruel smiled. “Not as much as you’d think.”
Just then, a series of fluorescent lights flickered on in succession from far down the hall until the light finally reached us. I looked at Ruel, taking him in. His face glistened with sweat and was still somewhat red from his pumping blood. He was looking ahead.
“Ruel?” a male voice called tentatively. I turned toward the voice and saw he was pointing a gun at us.
“Hey, Jeremiah!” Ruel said casually, as if the man wasn’t holding a gun and the two were old friends meeting up for a drink.
I assumed this was the person Ruel had been on the phone with. Jeremiah holstered his gun and started to jog towards us. When he reached us, they embraced each other tightly. It was a rather long hug, one that made me feel like I was invisible. I examined Jeremiah’s profile. It was very familiar. He looked like a more delicate version of Ruel, but his nose and brow lines were larger. They did not fit his proportions. His skin was paler and his lips fuller.
Ruel pulled away from him finally and turned to me. “Emma, this is Jeremiah. He’s my expat friend in Ukraine.”
“No,” I said. It was clear to me who Jeremiah really was. “He’s your brother.”
Jeremiah laughed.
“I like you already,” he said, and extended his hand to me. I shook it. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”
Once he took his hand back, Ruel reached for mine. I laughed to myself, as if Ruel needed to claim me. Jeremiah was extremely attractive, though, even with his disproportions. I remembered that he had a wife who Ruel said I’d really get along with.
“So, where are we going?” I asked. I was tired of these tunnels, not to mention hungry, thirsty, and desperately in need of a shower.
“My place,” Jeremiah answered. “We have about a mile to the stairs up to my van.”
“Do you have any food?” Ruel asked him.
“Yeah, in the van.”
“Let’s get moving, then,” I said, and gave Ruel’s hand a little squeeze after adding, “Oh, and Ruel, you can explain on the walk how you telling me you have no siblings works into you having a brother.”
Jeremiah laughed as we all began to walk back in the direction he’d come from. He had a rich and calming laugh. “He was just protecting me. Weren’t you, big brother?”
Ruel rolled his eyes.
“How much older are you?” I asked.
“Two years,” Ruel said.
“And what were you protecting him from?” I pressed. We were rather beyond secret-keeping now, and all three of us had guns. The playing field was somewhat level.
“From you,” Jeremiah said simply. I gave him a puzzled look. “Okay, not exactly from you, but from the organization as a whole.”
“I haven’t explained that yet,” Ruel said.
“You don’t know anything?” Jeremiah looked at me. He turned to Ruel. “And she’s not a spy?”
“I’m not a spy!” I said, rather annoyed. “Will somebody just tell me what the organization is?”
There was a long pause. The brothers shared a look that suggested they didn’t know where to begin. I kept quiet and waited.
Ruel drew a long breath and began to speak. “Basically, the organization is a loose-knit group of people located all over the world. They could be anyone, from a world leader to a rickshaw driver. They pull the strings that run most everything. Wars, economies, oil spills, revolutions, and terrorism are all determined by the organization. They don’t have a name, and there is no official governing body.”
“Yeah, right,” Jeremiah muttered, clearly disagreeing.
“Well, there is a general leadership for the training portion,” Ruel said.
“So, what exactly does the organization do to achieve this, besides chase after me?” I asked.
“And me,” Jeremiah said and grinned. “Don’t think you’re so special. I’ve had to die twice now.”
“What did you do to piss them off?” I asked.
“I defected,” Jeremiah said. “So did Ruel.”
“You were in this organization?” I looked at Ruel.
“Yes. I was a trainer and a spy.”
“Then he came to his senses,” Jeremiah said.
“So, if Jeremiah defected and has had ‘to die’ twice, whatever that means, how come you’re living out in the open?”
“Well,” Ruel said, and then paused. I half-expected Jeremiah to jump in and finish Ruel’s sentence, but he kept quiet as Ruel continued. “I’m a double agent.”
“For who?”
“The people who defected formed a group that’s working together to overthrow the organization,” he explained.
“So, an anti-organization organization?” I mused.
“Yes, I feel that way about it, too,” Ruel muttered. Jeremiah scoffed.
“So, you’re acting as a double agent and the organization sent you for me, to gain my trust and take me back to them, as if it were my idea,” I said. “And the counter-mission?”
“To bring you back to us, instead,” Ruel said.
“But then?”
“I fell in love with you.” As Ruel said this to me, Jeremiah looked away as to not intrude on our private moment. Ruel continued, “And I couldn’t take you to either group.”
“So, he defected again, but this time from the anti-organization,” Jeremiah said while smiling with amusement. I also detected a slight tone of pride in his voice.
“And you?” I asked him. “You’re still a part of it. Why are you helping us?”
“We Israeli boys have to stick together. Bloodlines and all.” Jeremiah clapped Ruel on the back and they laughed in a way that told me neither respected their nationality or bloodline.
“Israeli?” I asked. That was news. It explained their names though. “Are you Jewish?”
“Oh, Emma!” Ruel said with a touch of a patronizing tone. “I am nothing. I belong to nothing. I was stripped of that a long time ago.”
I nodded, not knowing how to respond. Instead I asked Jeremiah if he, too, was a spy.
“I retired,” Jeremiah smiled.
“Can you even do that?”
“No,” Ruel said seriously. “They will always find you. Always.”
I shivered.
“I removed my tracking chip,” Jeremiah told me. His smile was gone. “They are smart, but without it, I have a head start. Just have to be careful to cover my tracks.”
“But only when you travel?” I asked.
“Not exactly. My DNA, any emission, can be traced. I had my fingerprints removed and two facial reconstructions so that I’m not recognizable in their database should I be caught on camera.” He paused. “The organization is very large and very intricate. It’s impossible to know who is in it and who isn’t.”
“Can’t you just scan them for a chip?” I asked. That seemed obvious.
“Only the spies have chips,” he told me.
I looked at Ruel. His eyes carried the pain they had at the restaurant in Mt. Dora and on my door stoop. The look that said he wanted to let me in, but he wasn’t allowed. He could be found. Always. Which meant if we were together, I could be found. Always. I took his hand in mine.
“Can’t you remove it, too?” I asked Ruel.
“It’s a very complex and dangerous procedure. When you go into training, they insert the chip your second year, when you’re nine. It’s embedded next to your spine, and it grows with you. In some cases, it can become linked to your nervous system, which means it probably cannot be removed without…” Ruel trailed off. “I’ve only known one person to survive the process.”
Jeremiah looked down. I wondered how many of their friends had died simply trying to regain their free will. We all walked in silence for a while. Even our footing was hushed. I could feel the energy flowing between us, the camaraderie of three stolen souls.
“This is the way out.” Jeremiah said, interrupting the silence. We followed him up another ladder, out of another hatch, and back into the harsh winter night. His van was close by. It was a white worker van; it was much thinner than American vans. Ruel walked to the back doors.
“We need to be out of sight,” he told me. We climbed into the dark cabin and sat on the floor. I felt like an illegal immigrant being smuggled. Then, I realized that was exactly what I was.
“There’s a few one-liter bottles of water and a cooler with the food in it. Some rice and beans,” Jeremiah told us. He shut us in, and by the time he started the engine, my eyes had adjusted to the dark. Muffled pop music flowed from Jeremiah’s radio and into the back cabin where we sat. I saw Ruel grin and shake his head in amusement at his brother’s musical choice. The ride was bumpy until we hit an asphalt road. Once things had smoothed out, Ruel opened the cooler and handed me a plastic container full of cold rice and beans. Nothing had ever tasted so good.
“A twice defected spy and a recovering sleeper assassin. We do make quite the pair, don’t we?” I said after we finished eating and draining all three bottles of water.
Ruel laughed. The van hit a pothole, throwing me across the cabin and into his body. He pulled me upright and kissed my forehead.
“Quite the pair,” he murmured.
“So, what’s going to happen in Kiev?” I asked.
“I’m going to go to a safe house and you’re going to go to Jeremiah’s house,” he said quietly. “It’s not safe for you to be around me any longer, but Jeremiah cannot be tracked now. Not without extreme difficulty anyway. Plus, they think he’s dead.”
“But can’t they track me by my DNA?”
“No,” Ruel said. “I sent them false samples in the fall. They have someone else’s blood, hair, urine, skin cells, and fingerprints labeled as yours. You will have to stay away from cameras, though.”
“How am I going to do that in Kiev?”
“You’re not. We’re sending you away, but I don’t know where,” he replied. “I can’t know where, in case they catch me.”
“Right,” I said. I knew that everyone gave into torture at some point. The less Ruel knew, the better. I didn’t want to think about Ruel being tortured, but the other thought pushing forward was even more painful. “Will I ever see you again?”
“Yes,” Ruel whispered. He reached out and held both of my hands. I could see a tear fall down his cheek. I never thought I would see Ruel cry. “First, though, and I’m truly sorry about this, but…”
“But what?”
“Emma, you’re going to have to die.”
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