Freefallers - Chapter Two
#2 of Freefallers
Chapter 2 - Raising another....
A spotlight glared through the fog and the windows of the warehouse. Mark shielded his eyes as he watched it land. Soldiers jumped out of either side and moved in formation to the building. They did a tactical sweep and then began helping the slave girls. A second helicopter landed, bringing a medical team.
Mark and the young tigress, who still clung to him, moved to the medical helicopter.
"Jesus Mark did you make that mess in there?" A wolf yelled over the beating of the rotors. He approached from behind dressed in full battle fatigues. "We were actually expecting to take someone in for questioning."
"Don't worry Kyle, any questions you need answered are right here." Mark held up a small digital camera. "I don't intend on letting the assholes get away with this." Kyle reached Marks side and walked with him.
"Is she one of them?" Kyle said attempting to help Mark carry the girl. She pulled away and grabbed Mark tighter.
"Yes, she's been drugged, they've all been drugged." At the medical helicopter, a human medic helped Mark lift the tigress on board. Kyle pulled himself up and sat across from them.
"My name is Kyle, what's yours?" He smiled at the girl but she stared at the floor. "Damn she really is out of it isn't she?" A medic was called over with a drug flushing kit.
"I overheard the suits talking about some new docility drug." Mark held the tigress close as a needle was pressed into her arm.
"She seems to like you though." Kyle laughed and hopped out of the chopper. "Drinks are on me next time!" He waved and sprinted back to a group of soldiers.
"She's going to have to lay out sir." The medic said prepping another needle. Mark nodded and looked down at the girl.
"I know you can understand me, these people want to help you, you have to lay down and stay very still." She held fast too him. "Don't worry I'll be right here." He whispered in her ear. She looked up at him and he smiled. Her grip loosened and Mark helped her lay down. The medic attached an IV drip to her and motioned for the next patient.
The helicopter took off as another medical chopper landed to tend to the rest of the slaves. Once off the ground the medics pulled the side doors closed and set about keeping the girls alive. Many of them were suffering from extreme overdoses of the docility drug and barely had pulses. Mark stayed by the tigress he had rescued, he held her hand as she began to loose consciousness. She looked at his face, and for the first time she could remember, she felt no fear. Then the world blurred and a deep sleep overtook her.
The blistering heat of the midday sun beat down on the bustling masses of the city like a furnace from hell and the early morning fog had made the air muggy and thick. That combined with the crowded streets made everything seem tight and claustrophobic. It was bad enough to try and weave around the people who weren't watching where they were going, but now the body heat of some twenty thousand sweating citizens drove the already insane temperature up another ten degrees.
At this point Mark was glad he had left his sweatshirt with the tigress. He had ridden with her all the way to a local hospital, where she had been transferred to a drug rehabilitation ward. She had still been unconscious when Mark had left, but he had whispered in her ear that he would come and check on her in a few days.
Now, as he traversed the perilous crowds, he found his thoughts drifting back to that strange moment when he had pulled the girl away from his lips and they had stared at each other. The embrace, the kiss, at first Mark had just attributed them to the drugs. The girl had known nothing but servicing men, she only did what had been taught to her, and yet, when Mark's eyes and hers met, it was almost as if she was aware of what he had done, even though any doctor would tell you she was so drugged up it was surprising she could even move.
Mark quickly snapped out of his thoughts when he nearly walked out into traffic. He was dwelling on this too much; there was nothing he could do about it. He would stop in to see the young tigress once or twice more, but just like every last one he had saved, he would have to disappear from their lives. Forced to toil in shadow without recognition, this was the path he had chosen and he would live with it.
Turning a corner Mark descended a short flight of stairs to a below street access door. Ignoring the warning signs posted on the door, he began picking the lock with a bit of wire. A few moments he felt the tumblers snap into place and he pushed the door open slowly. Before he had it opened it more than a few feet wide however, Mark noticed someone had a gun on him. The laser light traced up his chest and came to rest between his eyes.
"Stoppen sie dort wolf!" A heavy German voice shouted. A bull stepped out of the shadow behind the door and motioned for Mark to get inside. As he did, the bull forced him up against the wall and frisked him. "Bereich?" The bull pressed the gun into Mark's back.
"You know where I'm going." Mark heard the bull snort and felt the gun muzzle lift from between his shoulder blades. He turned to see the bull pressing a button on an intercom. After a few muffled words were traded, he returned and looked Mark in the eyes.
"They aren't happy to see you." The bull sneered in a thick German accent.
"They generally aren't." Mark was ushered down a dark hall, until he felt a door in front of his nose. The bull pushed it open and let Mark inside. "Getting a little friskier with that search aren't you Adrian?"
"Fick dich." The bull mumbled as he slammed the door. Mark found himself in a crumbling, abandoned subway tunnel he knew all too well. The floor was coming apart in places, and a fine dust fell from the ceiling whenever trains from the nearby tunnel went by. He proceeded down the left tunnel along the access platform and broke into a light sprint. The first hole in the floor was small enough to jump, and Mark cleared it easily, the next however was a good three meters wide and took some skill. Mark ran at it on an angle and jumped at the wall not slowing down and running along the wall. Landing on the other side he rolled under a collapsed water pipe and jumped down onto the tracks. Continuing his sprint, Mark vaulted over an overturned dumpster and grabbed an extruding pipe on the wall. Using his momentum, he swung into another access tunnel. Inside he slammed into a door, flinging it open and ducking into a roll as two reptiles swung heavy metal tipped staves at him. Quickly turning and grabbing one of the staves, Mark yanked it from the lizards grasp and butted him in the stomach. The other lizard took a swing at Mark's legs. He jumped and smacked the second lizard in the temple with his staff. With both his attackers incapacitated Mark turned to the three hooded leopards watching him.
"I train with you for twenty years and you think I'll fall for that?" Mark threw his staff to the floor.
"Welcome back Mark." The largest of the three leopards removed his hood revealing a large scar at either edge of his mouth. "We hear you were successful."
She could only hear the muffled voices of a few women, but things were becoming clearer. Her strength returned enough that she was able to lift her arm to rub her eyes. A voice quite near her spoke.
"She's coming out of it at an amazing rate." She opened her eyes but was only able to make out vaguely humanoid shapes. Another voice spoke.
"Doctor I think she's awake." A figure moved close to her face and shined a light in her eyes. She put her hand in front of her face and saw the orange striped fur.
"Incredible, I think she's almost completely free of the drug." The figure lowered to a squat as she turned her head to look at it. "Can you hear me?" She nodded. "Now, I don't want you to panic, but you are in a hospital, do you know why?" She shook her head. "You were being held by some bad men, the agency rescued you, do you remember that?" Again she shook her head, suddenly a face flashed in her mind. Gray fur, tall ears, a sweatshirt, a smile, she couldn't remember a whole image. "Can you tell me your name?" She thought hard, suddenly coldness filled her stomach, she couldn't remember her name. Tears formed in her eyes, and she began to scream.
"Doctor she's panicking!" A nurse rushed to her side and held her arm, the doctor held the other.
"Get me a sedative!" The doctor yelled and a third nurse grabbed a syringe and filled it. The girl screamed and flailed about as she felt the sharp pain in her arm. Suddenly, her body went limp and wouldn't move when she wanted it to. In her head, she was in the same place it started, the pain, the horror, watching her friends slowly disappear or die. Trapped in her mind as she was groped and forced to watch girls raped. She wouldn't take it, couldn't take it any more. A fire started building in her chest; her heart pumped faster, adrenalin rushed through her body. Suddenly she could feel her legs, then her arms. She looked up at the doctor who was standing over her. Her arm shot up and throttled him her claws sinking into his neck.
"Alexis." She sat up and brought his head level with hers. "My name is Alexis."
Mark walked along a catwalk in an unused underground train yard. In the place of trains sat a dozen or so wooden training dummies all being battered to splinters by young men. Following one of the leopards, Mark ducked as a large portion of a wooden torso was flung by an awkward kick.
"There are more trainees than I remember." He said brushing sawdust off his shoulders. "And they seem to be less talented."
"Do not mock them; you were once as poor a fighter, perhaps even worse." The leopard continued on. "But we have had to lower our standards; we are finding less and less gifted children each year." The two exited on the other side of the catwalk. Proceeding down a poorly lit hallway, they reached a large metal vault. The leopard began dialing a combination into a lock. "It seems that our genes are not spreading as wide as they once were." He dialed in the last number and the vault door opened. "The students we do find, their talents are less than the one from previous years." The two proceeded into a bright room lit from the floor and walls, in the centre of the room stood two ledgers. "It's as though the gene is degrading."
"Well maybe if we were allowed to spread it." Mark said half jokingly.
"You know why that cannot be!" The leopard turned on him and looked him in the eyes. "If it were possible, we would allow it, but women do not survive the gene, it will kill them in time, painfully." He turned away slowly and moved to one of the ledgers, Mark moved to the other. "Could you look the one you love in the eyes and tell them it will be okay while their organs rupture?" Mark didn't need to look at his master's face to know there was pain in it. "We may not understand why we are the only ones who can survive the changing phase of the gene but we will accept it, you know the code." Mark sighed and recited.
"You shall not let another being suffer." His mind flashed to the tigress for a moment but his master's voice called him back.
"Enter his name in the ledger and I shall enter the crime." Mark nodded and dipped his pen in ink. He entered the name of Desmond Regent, and watched as his master entered the crime of rape, abuse of women, and slavery. "Now you will tell me why you broke an order and killed everyone in the warehouse?"
"I kept within the code; those men were all guilty of crimes we punish for."
"Perhaps but you were told to at least leave the junior CEO alive so that the agency could question him." Mark laughed.
"So he could use his status and get them to let him out in a week?" He threw his camera to the leopard, who caught it and thumbed through the images. "I've got all we need right there, the head CEO of the city division's son is raping an eighteen year old girl, we don't need to question anyone." The leopard was about to object when a cell phone rang. "Sorry." Mark grabbed his phone from a strap on his leg and flipped it open. "Hello?"
"Hey, it's Kyle, we've got a situation here." He sounded out of breath.
"What's up?" Mark could hear something smash on the other end.
"The hospital called a few minutes ago, they had some trouble with one of the girls." Shouting was heard and more smashing. "We couldn't figure why they called us, until we got here, it's your tigress, she's freaking out, screaming to see the gray wolf." Another smash and screams. "She's holding one of the nurses hostage."
"Why do you need me, she's just and eighteen year old girl?"
"Look why don't you get down here and see for yourself?" Kyle shouted to someone on the other end and hung up.
"They need to see me at the hospital." Mark snapped his phone closed and bowed to his master. He felt the leopard lay his hand on his head, Mark rose.
"Fall free my brother." The leopard bowed slightly and Mark took off in a full run.
"Shit, this bitch is really nuts!" A soldier said ducking behind an overturned table, reloading a tranquilizer pistol. So far they had hit her with twenty eight fully loaded tranquilizing darts, but she managed to shake them off and pull the darts from her body, and each time it made her angrier. A gurney came flying out the door and a nurse screamed.
"Don't fucking come near me!" Alexis screamed. She threw a heart monitor out next and flinched as another dart pierced her arm. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pulled it out of her bloody arm. "Fuck you!" She flung the dart back in the direction it came striking a soldier in the leg. He yelped and limped back to cover where to tranquilizer caused him to pass out.
"Where the fuck is this guy the captain called?" One soldier called to another.
"Cap' said he'd be here in ten minutes." The other yelled back.
"How long ago was that?"
"How should I know?" Just then an elevator signal rang and the doors slid open. Three soldiers, already tense from the situation turned and fired into the empty elevator carriage. "Why did that come up?"
"Because originally I had planned to take it, but the damn thing took too long and the stairs are just too much fun." A voice echoed out of the stairwell, and Mark climbed up over the railing, ran to the overturned table and ducked. "Where's Kyle?"
"Captain's down a floor helping the wounded, by now she's taken down about five of us and at least half a dozen hospital staff."
"Holy shit." Mark was surprised, the hospital staff made sense, but Kyle's men were experts. Highly trained spec-ops soldiers, not the kind of guys you hear getting taken down by an eighteen year old girl. "I'll take it from here."
"What, just you?" The soldier handed Mark a tranq gun. "No offense man, but we shot her with almost thirty tranqs, if she responds to you I'll buy a round for the whole damn squad."
"You'd better be prepared to do that." Mark handed the soldier his gun back. Standing up, Mark raised his hands. "Hello in there."
"What the fuck do you want?!" Yelled a frantic voice.
"I'm coming in, I'm not armed, I just want to talk."
"I'll fucking kill her I swear!" She screamed again.
"Look at least let me walk out where you can see me." There was silence for a moment, some shuffling as Mark heard her move farther away from the door.
"Alright, but no closer than the door, or I'll slit her throat!" Mark took slow, heavy steps so she could hear him approach. He stepped into the doorway and saw a mess of surgical tools, medical equipment and gurneys, and hiding behind it all was a young tigress with a scalpel to a nurse's throat. "Who are you?!" The girl shrieked.
"You don't remember me?" Mark took a step closer into better light. A metallic clang rang out as the scalpel was dropped. "You can go." Mark said to the nurse. The tigress broke into more tears as she dropped to her knees. Mark walked up to her slowly. Alexis stared at the floor and watched his feet.
"You...you." She sputtered, her mouth was bone dry from crying.
"Someone get me some water!" Mark called as he got down on his knees and put an arm around Alexis.
"I...remember you." She looked up into his eyes, and saw him smile the same way he had the night they had met. "I can't remember anything."
"You'd been drugged, you don't need to remember that." Mark took a canteen from a slightly shaking soldier who bolted out of the room. He tilted Alexis's head back and held the canteen to her lips. She sipped at the water and slid her arms around him. Mark felt the wet blood on his side and looked at her arm, which was full of puncture marks. He grabbed some nearby bandages and wrapped her arm, all the while she stared at his face. "You know, normal people pass out from just one of these." Mark said tying off the bandage.
"Hold me again." She said still staring at his face.
"What?"
"Please?" Mark put his arms around her again. He felt her press against his chest.
"At least tell me your name." Mark said, smiling at her.
"Alexis." She felt the same warmth she had that night. "My name is Alexis."