It was a tiny sound, small enough to lost amid the usual shuffle of late night guards and the crappy heating but just big enough to jerk her out of sleep. After all, her bed was underneath the ventilation system.
Immediately, she got out of the rough sheets and kneeled on the mattress, ignoring, like always, the painful dig of the springs.
"Ace?" She whispered, a hopeful message thrown into the dark, dusty vent.
"Mmm?" Came the whimper.
Maya Zeller smiled in relief. "Hey baby. Bad dream?"
"Uh huh."
Maya wished for the millionth time that she could see his face.
"Anything I can do?"
"I want my dad."
Maya sighed and rested her head against the cool metal of the wall. Of course. The one thing she couldn't give.
"I know baby." She sighed. "I want my husband." He had been a kind man way back. A kind man that had just happened to have the skills CyberTech needed. Then she had been kidnapped on her way home from work and suddenly she was here. Comforting a young boy she couldn't even see through a vent.
"Will you be able to sleep okay?" She whispered, ignoring her other neighbor's poundings on the wall as he attempted to silence her.
"Yeah." Ace mumbled.
"Did you get enough to eat?" Maya mumbled through a mouthful of salad. She almost never left her bed anymore. Ace needed her, so she was there to comfort him. She had always wanted kids, even though Edward had always protested that it wasn'
"Yeah!" Ace giggled. "I got a action figure!"
Maya smiled and rested her head against the wall. "That's great, honey. Now you have something to play with. Don't have to be stuck talking to me, eh?" She bit into her roll and listened for a reply.
Nothing.
"Ace?" She dropped her fork and pressed her ear against the wall. "Honey are you okay?"
Nothing.
"Any questions?" The man in the suit smiled. "This incentive program can be hard to understand sometimes."
Maya gritted her teeth and turned her head away, rubbing at the rash the rough prison clothes gave her. Gray and formless, rough and smelly. Maya longed for her comfortable blouses and sweatpants, probably sitting in the dusty wreckage of their home. Damn those thorough CyberTech agents.
"How are you treating my husband?" She asked casually. It was a loaded question and both of them knew it.
"He's just been promoted." The man said with a sickly smile. "Which reminds me."
He pulls something out of a brown paper bag and sets down next to her elbow. "A gift." He smiles.
Maya glances down. A cotton shirt and jeans.
"Where's Ace?"
Slowly, the man slides the pile of clothes back into the bag with a raised eyebrow. "Safe." He said and nodded at a guard to escort her out. She tries to struggle and get away, to try to be free, but the guard has a bruising grip and she's slammed into the table as the well dressed man accepts a drink from a polished sliver tray and strolls out of the interrogation room.
Her whole arm is scraped up and there are bruises everywhere. She had long since sacrificed a pant leg for makeshift bandages and had long since used every name in the book, throwing the insults at the camera in the corner of her cell.
Then the lights go out and Maya tries to get some sleep. The darkness becomes gray as her eyes adjust. Her arm is throbbing now and the grayness seems to become strange as if it were just a thin veil hiding a whole masterpiece of colors. She knows then that she's delirious and slowly it seems like the grayness is seeping in and hurting her, twisting her insides and making her sick.
But really she just wants to go home.
On the second day, the dreams are the worst.
She's staring at the bedside table, trying to get it into focus and make her mind wake up, when she hears it.
"Miss Maya?"
She sits up, her mind whirling and the room tilts. "Ace?" She rasps. "Where are you?"
He giggles and it sounds so clear, like he isn't speaking through years of dust and stale air.
"Ace?" She asks, reaching out as the room spins,
She can remember exactly when Edward began working for Cyber Tech. He was a talented man, her husband. Talented enough to do free lance work, always finding well paying contracts. They lived a comfortable life and on the side Maya tried to give to a lot of charities. Homeless children had been her favorite cause. She always attended the benefit dinner held for such a charity. The invitation for is year's dinner had come with the letter, a smooth, sleek envelope of shiny cardboard.
Edward had opened it, puzzled, as Maya pored over the details of the invite. She hadn't seen him turn white but she did see him abruptly get up from the breakfast table and almost run into his office.
Then came the visits. He never told her what they were about, but every other week or so he would make his way downtown and meet some manufacturing brass looking closely at his work.
Soon he barely even came home. Maya crossed off the prospect of an affair the moment she saw him come into bed after one such meeting, he was exhausted. Whoever these people were, they were wearing him down.
She had tried to figure out what was going on, but the home computer locked her out, something that had never happened before. She hadn't mentioned it to Edward. Didn't think she had to. But then they had kidnapped her...
And now she was here.
Ace comes back three days after she's released from the makeshift infirmary. They let her see her husband, or so they said. She could hardly remember more then a smile and a warm kiss on the cheek. But Ace was back and life almost seemed normal again. Apparently the "action figure" had been rigged to sedate him, so they could use him for something or other.
She began to make up stories, centering them around the rumors of a super team that had been circulating among the guards. The Calvary, a brilliant (but good) hacker, two geniuses, and their leader, a kind, strong man named Phil.
Ace contributed to these stories. He told her about Skye, talked about his dad and chattered on about his favorite superheroes. He almost seemed like a normal kid, if not for his imprisonment.
"We've reevaluated your behavior and your husband's and have decided to reward you." The man in the suit grimaces.
This time, Maya takes the clothes
"What will you do when you get out of here, Miss Maya?" Ace asks, one afternoon.
Maya smiles and pauses in her new project of sketching on the walls with a pen.
"Give you a great big hug." She teases and Ace giggles. "Kiss my husband." Ace groans and starts talking about cooties, unaware that Maya is lost in space, pen in hand, it's path unknown.
What would she do? Well wasn't it obvious?
Maya would make them pay.
Maybe an anti-climatic ending, but we know how it goes. Zeller and his wife are reunited! Maya is not the confirmed name of Zeller's wife, I made her up because she seemed like an interesting person and I seem to ignore all of my exciting ideas for my mundane, weird ones.