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dissonancedance · 1 year

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Chapter 97

Her father's love crowded inside her, filling her too full, burning her too deep, and she gave herself wholly to the pain of bearing it.

Leif fixed his glare to the map projected on the wall behind Francis, trying not to stare at the clock as it nudged its way past 18:00. His impatience was annoying even to him, aggravation at being away from his daughter for so many hours eating up what little interest he had left in strategy building and intel organization. Creating mission briefs for specialized teams thousands of miles away required him to catalog and arrange countless pieces of constantly shifting information, and he found that he couldn't juggle that with the trouble his Simone was so adept at getting into.

"The target location is a high security prison on a flat terrain," Francis' brittle voice informed, his thumb tapping the keyboard to select the next slide to illuminate on the wall. "That provides the facility kilometers of visibility, making helo extraction a risky but perhaps necessary endeavor."

"Why make them aware at the time of extraction at all?" Leif asked. "This should be a covert infiltration. They won't look for what they don't realize is missing until the extraction has long since occurred."

"We don't have the time to organize covert infiltration. The target is scheduled to be transferred in two days."

"Alright, so we hit them during transport, avoiding the obstacle of the site entirely."

Francis sighed, and Leif pressed his fingers against the tension building behind his forehead. He was being rash, latching onto whatever information was put in front of him in his eagerness to get through it, no longer collecting anything to be put into play in the steps ahead. The old man sat down in the chair across from him, the light of the projection painting schematics over his wrinkles, and lit his cigar.

"You know," Francis started, puffing flame into the cigar until it bore smoke. "Simone's presence has brought a surprising boost to morale. Our boys and girls like what she's been showing them."

"Simone shouldn't have a presence here at all," Leif snapped, knowing his temper had been goaded and far too irritated to care.

Francis let the smoke drift and curl around him, his teeth worrying around the cigar in a rhythmic habit before he finally asked, "Is there anywhere else in the world you would want to be when Simone grows up from being your little girl?"

Leif tightened his jaw against saying something unwise to the Ouroboros leader and bit off the most destructive parts of his sentiment with a firm, "Keep my daughter out of your fucking mouth, Frank."

"It's just a conversation, Leif," Francis responded, his hands held up in an exasperated shrug. "One that you've been avoiding with yourself for years."

Leif gave him a warning glare, that being enough to signal the end of the topic as Francis surrendered with a dismissive wave of his gnarled hands.

"Fine, fine!" the old man said as he turned the projector off. "Go home to your little girl. Get what you need and come back with a fresh mind tomorrow."

The sunlight had faded to a dirty orange smear above the reaching hands of the treeline, prompting the odor of propane to waft up from the courtyard as the torches were ignited one by one. Simone had to stand on her tiptoes atop the headboard to see out the window, the view interrupted by the iron bars on the other side of the glass, but she could make out the thin young man loping across the grass just fine. She followed his lumbering gait until he stopped at the center of her viewpoint, turned to face the direction of her window, and slowly wiped the sweat from his brow with his palm. The glass fogged from the sigh of relief that left her at his signal, that sigh catching in her throat when the lock at the door rattled and scraped. Her skirt billowed like a parachute when she jumped down, settling onto the mattress just in time for her father to walk through the door. Leif's immediate glance over the room to ensure she had remained in their quarters deflated the little bit of hope that he might have started easing off restricting her.

As he set a stack of files down on the edge of the bed, the tension around his eyes relaxed with a smile and he asked, "Have you eaten dinner yet?"

"No, Papa," she answered.

His smile faded with a sour pinch while he loosened his tie. "I hope you weren't waiting for me. You know how late these meetings can run."

She slid off the edge of the bed and walked to him, watching his face carefully for any warning of what his mood might be as she wrapped her arms around his middle in a hug. The stench of the war room clung to him; Aguiyi's cigar smoke, ink, and stale blood.

"I don't mind waiting for you," she said, neck craned back and chin resting over his sternum to smile up at him.

Leif's hooded eyes hid his thoughts, but his hands slid down her back to press her firmly against him. The materials of his clothes were thin for the summer heat and let his warmth bleed through, the firm musculature of his body easy to map against her. She swallowed the shudder that ran through her at the reminder of how much horror that body was capable of.

"Is that what you do when I'm not with you?" he asked. "Wait for me?"

Her scalp crawled where his fingers rose to slide into her hair. The thought that he might feel how rapid her heart hammered against him made her throat tighten, cutting off her ability to speak. She nodded, a slight motion he could have missed if his attention wasn't so horridly, intensely focused on her. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile again and his thumbs moved through her hair to stroke her cheekbones, but the gesture brought no comfort or assurance. The cold steel of his stare went through her.

"And yet," he whispered, each consonant stabbing ice up her spine. "You're still waiting for something."

Simone's knees turned liquid, certain to give out beneath her if she tried to run like the loudest part of her mind screamed for her to do. Her father's long arms had her locked against him and his hands held her face from turning away from his piercing stare. The silence stretched thin and brittle between them, each second ratcheting the dread that squeezed her lungs. He could see every piece of fear that he instilled in his daughter and his gaze was greedy.

"I…" she squeaked, then swallowed to try again with a soft and wavering, "I was waiting to have dinner with you?"

Leif searched her face, looking for something she knew didn't even have to be there to incur his violence, until his smile split with a huff of a laugh and his hold softened. The breath that had been locked in her chest let out a short laugh in response, a mimic of his in the hope that whatever had roused his suspicion had dissipated.

"My silly little girl," he chided lovingly, bending down to kiss her cheek.

She leaned up into the peck, her knees now wobbly with relief as the fearful tension drained out of her. He bent further and picked her up, tucking her against his side like when she was a small child. All at once, the shift in gravity pulled her back to a time when all that his terrible strength told her was he would never let her fall. It was a sweet, cruel trick of the mind. She wrapped her arms around his neck to hold onto him.

"What do you want to eat tonight?" Leif asked, scooting her up high against him to bring her to his eye level.

Her appetite had never been the same since Vermont. She could still remember what wanting food was, though.

"Cornbread," she answered.

"Name a protein and a vegetable to go with that."

"Corn is a vegetable."

He leveled a frown at her, but it had none of the danger of his usual displeasure.

"Try again, darling girl," he suggested flatly.

"I'll eat anything you cook," she said.

"Even brussel sprouts?"

This time, the laugh that bubbled up out of her was genuine. "You're the only one who can trick me into eating that."

He smiled as he watched her laugh, his gaze warm with amusement, no longer that predatory searching. "I still blame your mother for your poor introduction to vegetables. Frozen brussel sprouts steamed in the plastic bag they came in are an affront to the culinary arts."

The mention of her mother hit Simone like a splash of cold water, but she managed to keep her smile and make a sound close enough to a chuckle. These lighthearted moments were too rare to be ruined by all the ugly factors of her life. She stuffed that burgeoning wave of grief back down before she could remember her mother's love, burying it to where it wouldn't be stained.

"There should still be okra and tomatoes in the main kitchen, according to the inventory reports," he said as he carried her into the kitchenette behind the wall. "We'll bring down some sausages and spices and see what we can make with that."

It had been 5 days since Simone had been allowed outside their quarters, 5 days since she'd coaxed one of their men out of his PTSD episode, and stepping into the open air of the loggia lining the courtyard now brought her mind back to the moment of escaping the prison of Henrik's apartment. There were not as many stars out yet and the view was narrowed by the structure of the compound around and above her, but looking up into the endless sky brought the same sensation of vertigo as it did in that moment. She tried not to think about how that was the last night she'd seen Henrik alive or what she'd done to him then.

"Come along, darling," Leif's voice pulled her back into her body, the hardened skin of his palm sliding along hers to clasp their hands together as they walked.

She couldn't help but wonder where Henrik's body was now. If he was still lying in cold storage, his bloodless flesh carved for Aguiyi's research, or if he was entombed in the same crypt that held Bjørn beneath them. Even with the image of his dead body seared into her mind, she couldn't find enough space inside herself to piece Henrik's death to the kind uncle she remembered or the tortured warden he had become. He had tried to stay good, tried in his own way like Anders had tried, and they were both dead now. Running from it without knowing it was part of them all along, but that wasn't what killed them.

"Keeping the seeds and membrane intact within the pod can mitigate the mucilaginous aspect," Leif explained as he cut the okra. "The acidity of the tomatoes also aids this. There are many methods you can use to manipulate nature, but in cooking, I find simple and direct to be most reliable."

Standing next to him at the gleaming stainless steel counter of the main kitchen, Simone mimicked his motions chopping the okra, guiding the knife exactly as he did to produce the same uniform pieces. The shadows of the armed men shifted in the doorways and windows, their radios occasionally chirping to signal their location and status to one another. As Leif used the side of his knife to pile the pieces together in a bowl, she knew that if she screamed, those men would not interfere beyond their current orders to track and report Leif's movement within the compound. She let herself relax into this knowledge. Here, she could scream and no one else but her would have to get hurt.

She wiped her hands off on her skirt, the flowy gauze a pretty blush color that dampened to organ pink, and took a fortifying breath before saying, "I'm going to go see Dr. Braun tomorrow."

"Are you?" Leif asked. He didn't look up from his task of dicing a bell pepper, this sign of his guard making her even more nervous.

"Yes. For an ultrasound," she said carefully. When he didn't respond, she wrung her hands in her skirt and focused on her breathing before adding, "We might be able to determine the baby's sex, if you want to find that out early."

The rapid tempo of his knife stopped, the clatter of its handle hitting the cutting board and the abrupt movement of his body stepping away from the counter making her alarmed that he had cut himself, but then he sighed and finally looked at her. "Simone. I'm not going to make this choice for you, but you know where I stand. You cannot carry this fetus to term. Not here."

"I don't know if… if I can have this," she said, her words not as strong or as angry as she wanted. They came just the same. "If my body will let me have this. I want to try. I want to try to have this baby with you, Papa, if you'll accept it."

Leif kept his eyes on her, but she didn't feel watched as he stared. Whatever he was thinking and seeing in his mind was shut beyond her perception as it so often was when it came to him. When he leaned down and embraced her tight to him, her inability to predict him held her stiff in fear of what he might do until he kissed her in hot and open desire.

"Of course I will," he whispered against her mouth. "Of course I accept our child."

The heated press of another kiss warmed her in a wave of release from a tension she didn't know she'd been holding for so long. His hands slid up the back of her scalp to cradle her head, not to trap her this time, but to deepen this contact and she let her mouth open for him in gratitude. The slide of his tongue and the hard press of his erection were abrupt, the ferocity of his desire startling a whimper out of her that fell blunt against his kiss. Her father's love crowded inside her, filling her too full, burning her too deep, and she gave herself wholly to the pain of bearing it.

"Papa!" she gasped, her panting ragged on the edge of distress when he dragged his lips down her neck.

"That's right," he smiled. His sharp teeth scraped the delicate skin of her throat as he spoke, but it was his words that made her shiver in horror. "Look at how far I've broken you, Simone. You want to bear your own father's child. Say it. Tell me who fucked you pregnant."

The depravity of it twisted a knot of despair and disgust in her gut, but she obeyed and shut her eyes tight as she whispered, "My father fucked me pregnant."

He laughed cruelly. "Haha! So quiet! Are you ashamed that your papa knocked you up? Well, I'm not."

A shocked yelp escaped her when he hauled her up onto the counter, the steel surface frigid on the backs of her thighs as he slotted himself between her legs and yanked her skirt above her hips. That moment of vertigo hit her again, that same overwhelming sense of falling into something endless as she watched him look down at her with lust and greed steeped in his eyes. He pushed her to lie flat on her back and she stared at the ceiling as his hands traveled down to her navel. She tried to remember to breathe when his touch came to rest over her womb.

"My child having my child…" he said softly. His affection was thick enough to choke her on how deep her need for it ached. His fingertips caressed the scar she'd carved into her skin there, the thin curve pink with new flesh. "You're all mine, Simone. Every part of you. You've denied nothing to me and I will always love you for that. Do you regret any of it?"

"No," she whispered, throat tightening on the horrible truth of that answer.

"Such a good girl," he cooed. His hands moved to her thighs, spreading them wider, her moan catching in her throat as his thumbs rubbed up and down the sopping wet center of her panties. "My good, perfect little girl…"

"Papa?" she breathed, lifting her head to look down and see him unbuckling his belt. There wasn't even a door separating them from the men standing just outside the kitchen. What they'd surely heard already was terrible enough, but anyone could look into the room and see them.

As though reading the worry on her face, Leif smiled down at her as he pulled his cock out of his slacks and said, "Let them know what we are, darling girl. In a few months, everyone will be able to see what a good daughter you are for me."

She couldn't do anything but watch as he tugged her panties to the side and rubbed the reddened tip of his cock through the wetness at her opening. The sight of him pressing at her, the thick head spreading her little cunt open and forcing her hole to stretch around it, never stopped making her pant on the edge of panic. No matter how many times he's forced his cock into her much smaller body, that stretch hurt. She whined against her bitten lip, scrunching her eyes shut and forgetting how to make her body relax as he pushed into the resistance of her cunt and sighed in delight. The ache of taking him in all the way, the deep slide of that heavy cock dragging against the walls of her cunt, had her overfull and overwhelmed. Her legs wrapped around his hips, heels digging into his back as she lifted her ass up to press him deeper and mash him past her limit. The pain was perfect.

"So sweet," he smiled.

His hands gripped her hips, fingers digging into the softness of her ass while his thumbs pressed along her pelvic bones, and he began to fuck her in earnest. His thrusts knocked breathy little grunts from her and each ram inside her cunt made her body tense in shock until the high that sex inflicted on her mind transmuted part of that pain into pleasure.

"Papa, please," she panted, no longer able to think about anyone or anything but how her father fucked her. "Can I… ah… Can I touch my…?"

"Not yet," he said.

She groaned, the frustrated sound cut off into a yelp when he rammed inside her in chastisement. Her body tried to curl in on itself to contain the agony, but he kept fucking her hard through it. She shivered instead, that heady rush of endorphins from sex and pain tipping her towards a sweet delirium that had her moaning as he kept hurting her deep and hard.

"That's it," Leif growled through gritted teeth. The wet slide and slap of their skin echoed obscenely in the spacious kitchen. "Show me how well I've trained my little girl to take my cock."

"Y-Yes, Papa!" she forced herself to respond.

She had no choice as he pushed her thighs up, folding her until her knees reached her ears and he leaned over her to leverage his weight into pressing deep into her. He gave her no time to adjust to this position, his cock cramming into her again and again as she tried and failed to stop herself from crying out. Through tear-blurred vision, she could see him watching her, that dark stare greedy for her submission as he gleefully punished her for giving it to him. There was no end to how much he wanted to take from her, no satiating that ravenous greed in him, his love too thick and corrupted by the sickness in both of them as he gave it.

"So good for me," he muttered between the heavy breaths of his exertion. "Made to be mine…"

He leaned further down, testing her flexibility as his weight crushed her legs further behind her, and a spike of fear stabbed through her as his teeth drew close until his mouth pressed to hers. His kiss was soft and sweet in contrast to the punishing pace of his sex and she leaned up as much as she could to chase that sweetness. The tender cradle of his hands at the nape of her neck pulled her delicately into that kiss, the gentleness of his touch marking the ragged map of her childhood with faint memories of how caring he could be. The love of her father that would tuck her in at night and soothe her pain when she scraped her knees was not in contrast to the love of her father that would fuck her bloody to enjoy her pain; it was the same love, too deep and too much.

"Mm!" she moaned into his kiss, the building pressure toward her climax taking her by surprise.

His tongue delved further into her open mouth and the rumble of his moan vibrated through her. She couldn't stop the rising crest of release pulsing from low inside her. The wide column of his cock tensed and swelled in response, his weight bearing down just slightly more, and her cries were muffled into the hunger of his kiss. She came on his cock at the first hot gush of his semen spilling into her, the dizzying height of her pleasure drowning everything else out except for where they were joined. Her senses were muted and distant, filled only with him, his sweat, his skin, his movement.

As awareness bled back into her dulled perception, she kept her eyes closed and held only to the sound of him breathing heavily against her neck. They were alive, their bodies lush with time and vitality, able to heal and create and continue. She wept in gratitude for these gifts, clinging to the body that had created her, reveling in the joy of their survival until exhaustion and the reassurance of his living warmth pulled her into a blessedly dreamless sleep. When she next woke, it was to the sweet smell of cornbread.

#closing the distance #fiction #horror #writing #cornbread

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dissonancedance · 3 years

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Chapter 96

Her barriers were thinning dangerously, sweat starting to slick her palms and douse the nape of her neck, but she had to play this through.

Content warning: Graphic descriptions of violence, references to sexual violence, medical horror, incest, cults, and forced captivity.

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Closing the Distance

Chapter 96

Simone’s words died on the breath that shock had stolen from her as Vidar crushed the breath from Maier. Black lines marred the concrete floor with each scrape of Maier’s shoes as he kicked in inept attempts at traction, his white skin shifting red to blue in a smear of pain. Unable to look away from the pale-knuckled grip around Maier’s neck, she watched her uncle strangle a man with the same quiet placidity as when he lied in a drug-induced delirium. The strength in those long fingers echoed memories of terror and helplessness around her own neck, but the terror and helplessness she felt now was wrapped in defeat.

After all the horror, secrecy, and guilt of turning to these experiments and participating in the irrevocable destruction of the person her uncle once was, they still couldn’t carve the monster out of the man.

“Vidar,” she said, watching his clamping hands grow still at the sound of her voice. “Off.”

Like the loyal doll she’d reduced him to, he backed away from the battered, coughing Maier and turned to her with the same eerie calm that never left him. Before, she could fool herself into thinking that placid lack of expression was peacefulness, maybe even contentment, but what remained behind his blue eye was just as empty as the hollow socket next to it. Having that empty eye trained on her now, alone but for the hacking lunatic on the floor, reminded her too well of the monster still clinging to the cavity of his mind.

The long, puckered scar curled up Maier’s cheek as he laughed between heaving coughs, "Tha-... he-heh, that could have gone better."

“Sick son of a fuck…” Simone muttered, helplessness and frustration transmuting fluidly into rage at the slick drone of that voice. Maier’s shirt ripped when she yanked him up by his collar and snarled into his gasping face, “You stay the hell away from us! If I see you around here again, I'll fucking peel the rest of your face off!"

The corners of his mutilated mouth twitched and writhed into a smile.

“Pretty promises, but not the one I want,” he grinned, the injury to his throat breaking his monotone up into a more human sound. “The deal I had made with you, Ms. Valstad, was to experience the glory of Leif Valstad’s specialty firsthand after helping to free him.”

“You lost that deal when you sold my family out to Aguiyi,” she hissed.

A sharp agony shot up from her wrists as Maier’s hands grasped them, shocking her into losing her grip, and he yanked her down in a swirl of motion. Her rage made her sloppy, gave him the split second of advantage to slam her under him. Her vision flashed white from the force of her skull slapping the concrete. There would be no help coming; Maier’s methodical nature alone had assured her that he had cut off the security cameras before ever entering the lab to indulge his desires in private.

Below the ringing that muffled her hearing, Maier's words came through distant and flat, “The deal still stands, but I have since concluded that this institution is not what he needs to be freed of. The factor that has been preventing Leif Valstad from achieving his full potential is you, Ms. Valstad. We need to discuss your role in the family.”

The fuzzy stirrings of a concussion made her tongue thick, her words slurring as she ground out, “Yeah, well, last time I took your advice, I got fucked in the ass.”

“I would wager that has also occurred since you stopped taking my advice, therefore the consequence is no fault of mine,” he responded in that flat, emotionless drone that enraged her more than the spitefulness of his meaning.

Simone twisted to drag Maier’s grasp to the side and destabilize him enough to shove her hip up and roll him. The maneuver she'd recited a hundred times under her father's training paid off, only for her to be wrenched back before she could clamber away. His grip on her dress stopped her short, the expensive muslin finally tearing loudly when she jerked free from his grabbing hands. The cold, sterile air of the lab plastered itself to her sweat-slicked skin as she rushed to put as much distance and obstacles between herself and the man crawling after her.

“The path Bjørn had left for Leif Valstad did not contend with the possibility that he might reject it,” Maier said, ragged with the effort of dragging his lower half. “So long as you remain alive, his attachment to you will prevent him from embracing his destiny.”

The medical tools laid out on a tray near the sensory deprivation tank caught Simone’s eye as she registered the threat Maier had made. In his state, it would not be difficult to pin him down and drive a scalpel along his arteries until his broken body finally quit. No, not difficult, but it would be risky. She’d underestimated him once before to know that he would not be deterred from his task by mere pain. Her move had to be precise.

"Aside from that being none of your fucking business,” she frowned, trying to hide the wooziness that wobbled her gait as she started towards the tray, "you should know better than to think that killing me would make Leif more cooperative."

“And you should know better than to come into this lab alone. Vidar Valstad is an unstable patient, after all. You see now how the seed of violence still germinates within him.”

She snatched up the scalpel as she circled the back of the lab to stay out of his path, distancing herself from him as well as keeping him far from Vidar. Her uncle’s vacant stare followed her, unaware or unalarmed at what was happening around him, and she shuddered at what was so obvious to both her and Maier. Dangerous or not, she couldn't leave her uncle with this snake. She couldn't surrender to fear again.

“Even if you framed Vidar for my murder, Leif would blame Ouroboros for putting him close enough to get to me,” she said. The scalpel was light in her hand as she held it out of his line of sight and stepped slow enough to goad him into maintaining his pursuit. "He’d rather burn in the fire he lights under Ouroboros’s ass than have vengeance go unfulfilled.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

The exit was past Maier, no safe route out of that room without leaving her uncle there with him. All her weaving and maneuvering hadn't tricked him into giving her an opening to grab Vidar and escape. He had her backed up into an ultimatum: kill or be killed. Even without full use of his legs and caught off guard, Maier had still forced her to play by his rules. More than the fear of what consequences awaited her for killing Aguiyi's right hand man, more than the risk of injury or death in the tussle, it was the bitterness of being forced into this standoff that made her pause.

Simone rubbed the smooth handle of the scalpel restlessly, letting a decision weigh against her hesitation before carefully saying, "There's an unfinished remodel in an attic space that some of the men climb through to get to the roof. It's out of view from the rest of the building, with a clear jump into the trees on the street outside. Someone should seal that off before Leif finds out and gets any ideas of leaving with me."

The length of Maier's silence told her enough for her to confidently lower her scalpel, but his knife did not falter.

"You won't leave without Vidar Valstad," he said, more as a statement of fact than calling her bluff.

Simone looked past him to her uncle, meeting his remaining eye directly before turning her attention back to Maier.

"I won't leave him," she admitted, keeping his focus on her as she laid the scalpel on the edge of the sensory deprivation tank. "Vidar is safe here. We all are. Everyone here acts on behalf of the interests of Ouroboros, and we are Ouroboros."

He didn't detect Vidar coming up behind him with steps as slow and quiet as a phantom's. Simone kept her eyes locked with Maier's as her uncle's shadow loomed over him.

"Everyone except my father, Aguiyi… and you, Maier," she said as Vidar's open hands reached for him.

Simone leaned against the wall as she watched Liu, the nearest member with crime scene forensic experience, assess the smears and splatters on the floor. She was careful not to let her gaze linger in any one place for too long as Aguiyi shifted his attention between them. The smooth concrete obscured the stains in darker shades of gray, but the reek of what they were wrinkled her nose with a horrible familiarity. The good ventilation in the labs had granted these cramped corridors a false sense of openness and had blunted much of the sharpness of the solutions used to keep them sterile, but she could still smell the blood oxidizing steadily into rot. Her uncle’s blood, and not a drop of anyone else’s. She had been careful to assure that. Her frantic scrubbing had eaten through the nitrile gloves she’d used, the cleaning solution stinging the blisters from her father’s training.

“The patterns from the lab to the hall clearly indicate a struggle,” Liu said, mostly to herself while she photographed the mess, although the halted lilt to her tone suggested she only spoke in English for their benefit. Simone moved closer to show she was still listening despite the fatigue and nervousness that weighed her steps into a shuffle. “I only see one set of footprints, so he was maybe carrying something... something that threw off his balance.”

“Couldn’t’ve had much balance,” Dr. Wallis muttered rapidly. He shrunk a little more into himself when they looked his way, but continued, “... kept ‘im sedated near constantly for over two months. Wouldn’t’ve been able to walk straight, haul things about.”

“Never underestimate a Valstad,” Aguiyi warned.

Dr. Wallis choked back a whimper as he nodded, cowering even further into his hunch under the attention of the old man. Simone looked away from him; that would likely be the limit of what he could say for the next few hours at least and it hurt to see what had become of the once-confident, witty neuropsychologist. It was a cold reminder of what she risked in this subterfuge. Aguiyi had allowed her to be punished for running from him before; she could not imagine what penalty might await her for taking Vidar away from him.

“Maybe he had a weird reaction to the drugs?” she suggested.

“A severe reaction from sedation explains it until we reach here,” Liu said as she gestured with her camera to where the bloody path ended in the middle of the hall. “It also doesn’t explain how or why the video feed was interrupted and the lab was unsecured.”

Simone pursed her lips against the urge to frown. “So someone cut the cameras and opened the door for my uncle to slip out like a loose housecat… and then simply vanished?”

“Any ideas, Liu?” Aguiyi asked.

The expert shook her head. “All my ideas are in the evidence. How many others knew Vidar Valstad was down here?”

“No one I wouldn’t trust.”

“Apparently at least one you shouldn’t,” Simone muttered.

A resounding silence brought her to look around. Aguiyi’s wrinkles deepened into a gnarl of a scowl, Dr. Wallis’ pallor turned a sickly shade of buttermilk, and Liu watched her with curious surprise. She wasn’t aware she’d said that out loud until Aguiyi announced, “There are none within these walls who do not live to serve our shared cause.”

The shadow of a scold in his tone raised Simone’s suspicion enough for her to follow where that statement had stung him, chasing that hunch with, “Not everyone here is sharing the same cause, doc. You made Leif their leader, don’t act surprised when they follow his will.”

“You know too little of how Ouroboros operates to be making those kinds of assessments, Little Scratch.”

The ire that fueled his defensiveness spilled over the deepening furrow of his brow and infected her with a corrosive, unyielding frustration. Or maybe it was her own frustration rising to meet his. Her barriers were thinning dangerously, sweat starting to slick her palms and douse the nape of her neck, but she had to play this through.

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” she sneered. “Maybe someone left the door unlocked. Maybe he hurt himself stumbling out of here. Maybe the cameras glitched. Any of these alone are generous assumptions, but all of that together is quite a fucking coincidence.”

“We don’t yet know what happened and neither do you.”

“I know my father wants his corpse displayed in the yard. I know that’s a lot of my uncle’s blood on the floor for anyone who could care to keep him alive to have spilled. Why isn’t anyone asking Leif?”

“Leif doesn’t know about this project.”

“He doesn’t need to know, what he needs is Vidar’s head delivered to him. And all you care about are your fucking projects. Is twenty years all it takes for you to-” Simone snapped, her teeth clicking shut to bite off the rest of what had slipped between the cracks of her composure.

If she didn’t have Aguiyi’s attention before, she clearly had it now. Those broad, sagging, leonine features turned fully to her, eyes now alight with a deadly intent behind thick cataracts as he waited for her to continue. Somewhere on the boundaries of her focus, she knew Dr. Wallis was curling into himself in an attempt to disappear and Liu was watching with wide-eyed wary interest, but all she could see were the decades carved into that face falling away. The cataracts sank back until fiery brown irises glared at her from a face nearly unrecognizable yet too familiar for her to not know.

“All it takes for me to… what?” he prompted, slick with venom.

Simone swallowed the self-consciousness that stalled her tongue before doing her best not to spit out, “Forget your word to Bjørn.”

The fire in his glare receded to a smoulder, but his tone was no less hard as he responded, “We’ll find Vidar Valstad. He’ll need you when we do.”

She held his clouded stare until the buzzing, burning sensation of direct eye contact frothed just below her tolerance and she let her sight drop to his cheek. That roving anger seeped out of her, all the bluster it had garnered departing with it in a sigh that left her feeling deflated, tired, but good.

They hadn't suspected her involvement in Vidar’s disappearance, hadn’t kept her there to watch her sweat and squirm despite her not needing to be there at all. Aguiyi had summoned her to the scene to include her and the gratitude that gesture had implanted in her was inescapable. She was among the first to be alerted to the disappearance of her uncle. She was also brought because Aguiyi correctly guessed how important it would be to her to be included. It was almost easy to believe that he did all of this out of respect and courtesy to her.

Aguiyi reached out to give her shoulder a firm, fraternal squeeze. She did not try to dodge it and the lack of revulsion at his touch burned her all the worse. Such grand gestures of courtesy and respect still felt odd despite the annoying compulsion to appreciate it.

“We’ve got everyone on the lookout, Scratch,” he said, warm and assuring, welcoming her trust with the patience and wisdom of a leader steeped in experience. “You have my word on that, too. If you think disclosing this project to Leif is necessary to help find your uncle, then I won't hold you back.”

The tug of a bond she did not want and was not hers to begin with grated against what she had set into motion. She could see why Bjørn had saddled Aguiyi with his legacy. Bjørn may have been insane, but he could see the inner workings of people as clearly as the movements in his skeleton watch. Through the same pale gray eyes as his, Simone could see Aguiyi as she imagined Bjørn may have seen him: a man with a knack for leadership and devotion that ran so deep it pulled those around him under his wing. It would have been easy to fall into where Aguiyi had attempted to manipulate her if she had let him.

The watch ticked steadily at her wrist as she clasped her hand over his and said, “I'm counting on you, doc.”

“Never thought a French summer would be so warm. Do you want a shorter taper?”

Leif glanced over the document in his hands, considered the clippers the barber held, and answered, "No, let's keep it a scissor cut. Can't go changing my image without consulting the committee first."

The barber let out a chuckle as he traded the clippers for shears. "I thought being on top would give a guy more freedom, Scratch. Doesn't seem all bad, though. Least you got the best barber in the complex to keep your image sharp."

Leif smiled at his easy humor. Only a few months ago, this same man could barely hold a comb steady in his presence. Leif was pleased that his penchant for violence against his fellow Ouroboros members hadn't affected the reproitoir he'd built with the barber.

"You're the best of the best, Athanasios."

Leif turned his attention back to the stack of reports, eager to assess the situation on the Mozambique Channel, but both his and Athanasios's attention turned to the sound of shouting outside the makeshift barbershop.

"What the hell-"

"Stay here," Leif commanded as he pulled the sheet off his shoulders and rushed out of the makeshift barbershop.

Casual though their reproitoir might be, Athanasios obeyed orders as well as anyone among their ranks. Or, at least as well as most. The guards assigned to ensure that Leif was where he was supposed to be were not where they were supposed to be. Instead, the hallway was only filled with the sounds of shouting and scuffling echoing from around the corner.

There were few opportunities that afforded Leif a moment outside of constant supervision. He could use this moment to run, hide among the estate's many forgotten passages, find a way to get him and his daughter out somehow. This was ahead of his plan, but he didn't know when a moment like this would present itself again. Before hesitation let this opportunity slip by, he turned in the opposite direction of the clamour only to be stopped by a woman's voice among the shouting. Leif was rushing towards it before he fully recognized it as his daughter's, his heart hammering and throat tight in a single-minded panic to reach her.

"Simone!" he cried, his voice lost among the many as he rounded the corner and pushed into the tight crowd of men.

A path cleared quickly as they realized who was now among them, but not quick enough as he shoved his way through the throng. His mind raced with a thousand fears only to be confronted with one of the worst when at last he pushed his way to the clearing at the center of the crowd. There, his daughter stood before a man with a knife gripped in both of his hands, her blood oozing around the tip of the blade held against her chest. The urge to rush in and kill this man had him lunging forward, but the grasping hands of those around him held him back in time for him to assess the situation. The blind panic in the man's eyes was zeroed in on Simone's grim stare, the knife seemingly frozen in time. Any interference could kill her.

"What's happening here?" Leif demanded of the men next to him.

"Apologies, sir," the man to his right spoke up above the din. "It's Deleon. He was sparring and started to panic, pulled a knife on his partner. Little Scratch intervened, stopped him from killing."

Leif whipped around and snarled, "And you let her?"

The thin stream of red blooming under the fabric of her bodice made him jerk against the hands holding him back. He had to deescalate this situation somehow; going in hotheaded and half-cocked could easily get her killed. His mind raced with a dozen useless ideas leaping out of the panic that gripped him while he forced himself to watch and wait as Simone slowly reached up to the Deleon's shaking hands.

Leif couldn't hear what she said, only see her lips form the words, "Don't be afraid. You're safe. You're with family now. Understand? You're with family."

Deleon, a man three times her size, trembled and muttered rapidly as her tiny hands slowly pushed the knife away. Leif stood frozen, his breath burning in his chest while she continued to hold Deleon's wild stare as she loosened his trembling hold on the handle. Then, bafflingly, she wiped the blood off on her dress and slid it in the sheath at his thigh.

"We take care of each other," she said, placing her hands on Deleon's slumped shoulders. "That's what family does. No matter what, we take care of each other."

Sensing the threat was low, Leif jerked again to be released to run to her only for those hands to hold fast. He turned to the men to order them, the order dying on his tongue when he saw how they watched his Simone. He knew that look, that stalwart stillness and attentive stare. They looked to Simone and saw a leader.

#Closing The Distance #fiction #horror #medical horror #cults #brainwashing #ptsd

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