One hundred and thirty-five: Kidnapped

Gunfire. Gunfire and explosions. Grunts, shouted commands and cries of pain.

I didn't know where I was anymore. The familiar was unfamiliar when riddled with smoking holes and flames.

An attack, as scary as it was, was like a breath of hope. Maybe a bullet with my name would finally find me and put me out of my misery.

"Have you got those agents out of the way?" a familiar voice whispered.

"Yeah," another voice replied. "Alistair's gone home for the night and the Bosky King has lost his touch. He wasn't alert at all. We caught him by surprise and quickly got him under control."

"Get the slave girl. Come on, let's go. Once we've sold her to the highest bidder, we're going to be rich."

"I've got her. Let's go."

~~~

A soft bed, but hard hands. They used the wrong slave commands and my body screamed in pain. Fingers flew across my body, trying command after command and only made things worse. I couldn't breathe anymore.

Colourful swearing filled the air.

"This one's different."

"We knew she'd be different. How'd we know she'd be so different from all the others?"

"She's going to die and waste all the money we spent on her. What do we do? How can we save her?"

"Get her master here. Get the Bosky King. He might be able to save her."

Relief came at last with the arrival of the Master, however he was not able to finish the job. He was pulled off me. The pain began to grow again. After the kidnappers took a long discussion and my ragged clothes were dripping with sweat. They allowed my Master to have me again until the pain was gone.

"All that money for nothing. We're going to get nothing for this. We should just kill them."

"Yeah. At least take some revenge. We may as well take the girl and have fun with her ourselves before we kill her. She's useless otherwise. We can sell her to those researchers afterwards."

"Why don't we sell them both to those researchers? After all, neither of them will live long after the researchers are done with them. What did the Bosky King say? They're like a matched pair right? The slave needs her master to live or something, right?"

Wrong. They were wrong.

Distant swearing grew louder with proximity.

"Intruders!"

"The Bosky King's gone mad!"

There were whooshing and crashing and banging sounds. Wailing, crying and screaming. Then there was silence.

Hands tugged at me.

"Wake up, Jean."

But I didn't move.

"Wake up, Jean," the hands tugged again.

I blinked into Kiran's eyes set in a much older, blood flecked face and was confused. My entire body ached, but for some reason, I was more frightened by his appearance than anything else.

"Kiran?" I asked. "You look old. Why do you look so old?"

"Jean," Kiran smiled a very strange, tired smile. "You're awake. You all right?"

"Yes," I said, suddenly noticing all the blood. I tried to get up, but found that my entire body was too heavy to move. "I'm all right. I just can't move. What about you? You're covered in blood."

"Jean," Kiran whispered, handing me his phone with bloody fingers. His fingers made a gesture on me and I could move again. "Take my phone. Call the police. Call the ambulance."

I did what he told me and dialed the emergency number, but didn't know what to say when the emergency worker asked me to state my emergency. Kiran was helping to hold my weak, trembling hand. He whispered into the phone.

"Help. Ambulance. Police."

He dropped into a faint and the phone fell to the ground with a clatter. Faintly, I heard a voice asking if we were still there.

"Kiran? Kiran, wake up. Kiran!" I forgot about the phone and nudged my Bosky soldier. When he didn't move, I fell out of the bed to reach the phone.

"Hi," I puffed. "Here, still here. He's fainted. Covered in blood. Can't find the original injury," I said, patting Kiran over. Then I found it. "Stomach wound. Deep stab."

Then I heard swearing from behind me. A bloody devil hauled himself up off the ground. I screamed when I felt myself being lifted up and thrown across the room. I hugged the phone to me in order to protect it from being smashed. A chair rose to fall and smash itself over me. At this, I grunted. That's all I could do. I could only hope it wouldn't break any of my bones.

A door slammed open somewhere and I gasped, hoping that the emergency workers could hear everything.

"Someone's here."

"Yeah. Right," the bloody devil snorted, raising the chair once more in his hands over me. "I already killed them all."

BANG.

The bloody devil looked down at his chest, dropped the chair and collapsed.

"Whoa," a man's voice exclaimed. "What happened here?"

"Is - is that - is that Kiran?"

"Then that - that must be his wife? Whatsername? Jean?"

"The slave queen! I told you they'd gone to kidnap her. Finally found her."

"Forget the rest."

"What about Kiran?"

"He looks dead. Nothing we can do about it."

"But it's Kiran."

"You damn half-Boskies. Fine. Take him along. We might have a use for him cleaning toilets until they pay a ransom."

"What about the slave queen?"

"Don't worry about her. She'll do as we tell her until we get all the technology out of her. Then she won't be alive anymore to complain. If the rumours are true, when Kiran's dead it'll free her from his control, so that she can be free of the slave controller. Things are so boring when the girls don't struggle a bit."

The phone was wrested from my hand and flung across the room. I was picked up and fondled at the same time.

"Come on. Let's go."