Chapter 1 - Captive

Triela woke to darkness and a throbbing pain behind her eyes. She could feel without seeing that there was a ceiling just above her face and very little room to either side. Her first thought was, Coffin!, but after a brief moment of panic, she checked herself. Calm down. If it were a coffin, it would smell earthier, and besides, I'd be dead already from lack of oxygen. She took a deep breath.

On trying to move, she discovered that her hands had also been bound tightly behind her back, probably with plastic ties, from the way the bindings bit into her wrists when she gingerly pulled against them. Her body, in general, was one huge throbbing mass of aches. Some she remembered getting - scattered, disoriented images flashed through her mind - like the stabbing pain along the right side of her back, from Pinocchio's knife, or the tenderness of her ribs where he'd kicked her. But others, like the dull ache in her shoulders or an annoying cramp in her left leg, had obviously developed while she was unconscious and cramped up in the small space she now found herself confined to. The pain was minimized by the fact that a large percent of her body (her left wrist - which, she was pretty sure, was fractured - for example) was composed of synthetic materials which she couldn't actually feel.

The more pressing question was: where was she, and how would she escape? Beneath this lay another, rhetorical one, which she chose to ignore. How, after all of Hillshire's special training, could she have lost to Pinocchio again? Instead of acknowledging the feeling that the bottom of her stomach seemed to have suddenly dropped out into thin air, Triela focus on what she could learn about her surroundings, given the pitch black and the fact that her arms were useless.

At first, nothing seemed to pop out - no sounds, no smells, but then two things clicked into place: first, the floor was vibrating slightly, which meant she must be in someone's car, probably in the trunk, and they were going at around 40 to 60 miles per hour. Second, that there were no sounds of other cars or even air whistling past the car. This was more troubling than finding that she was locked in a trunk, because it meant that the trunk was soundproofed; she could scream and scream and all it would do was tired her out and waste her own air. There was ventilation, she guessed, from inside the cab of the car, otherwise she'd have suffocated by now. But if the trunk was soundproofed, it was likely locked, and with her arms bound and one hand possibly out of commission anyway, there was no chance she could put a hole in the trunk and wave for help.

Shit. Before she could philosophize on that point any further, there was a clicking sound from above her, and suddenly there was light. Not much - only moonlight - but enough that an infuriatingly familiar face was now visible, leaning over her.

"Pinocchio," Triela growled. She lay still, like a cat tensed and with its ears back, but she knew there would be no pouncing on her part.

The young man ignored her, calling over his shoulder, "She's awake." A woman's voice replied,

"Damnit. I told you she'd wake up, Pinocchio! What if she'd managed to untie herself along the way? You'd open the trunk and she'd spring out and kill us all!"

"She can't do anything. I broke one of her wrists," said Pinocchio matter-of-factly, as if they were discussing the merits of a particularly mediocre wine.

"Well, get her in the house, then," snapped the woman, and strode out of Triela's field of vision.

Up until that moment, it had all seemed so unreal, almost, or at least that there might be a chance of rescue, that Hillshire and Henrietta and the others would swoop down in a helicopter to save her, or at least that maybe she could save herself, but the unconcerned, absolutely nonchalant way these people were talking about her as if she weren't even there, just a thing underfoot - it made her blood boil and her eyes well up with tears.

"Fuck you!" she shouted, her voice cracking unconvincingly. There was no protocol for this. She'd never panicked before, but only because there had never been a real reason to. These terrorists were going to kill her, maybe torture her for information first, and that would be the end. There was no rescue coming, and she was so crippled and constrained that even a soft bombmaker could laugh at her without fear. Her own terror - another thing she had rarely, if ever, felt - was swiftly rising. "There are more like me coming after you!" Triela bluffed weakly, hoping they couldn't tell she didn't even believe her own words. "They'll be here in a couple - a couple hours at most, and if you've killed me, they're not going to cut any deals - "

"If they're like you," Pinocchio cut in with his soft voice, "we have nothing to worry about."

Rage boiled up, and Triela could feel herself reddening. He thought she was useless, too! Maybe it was true, but what right did he have to say that to her? She struggled into a sitting position, feeling every joint in her body creak with protest. "They're coming, and they'll save me, and I'm going to kill you!" she screamed, thrashing with the effort of trying to free her arms, and feeling the burning sting of prosthetic bones grinding together and old cuts tearing open.

Pinocchio put one hand on Triela's shoulder and pushed her back down. "Shut up. You'll only make things worse for yourself." He leaned down, and Triela flinched, unable to back away. His face hovered inches from hers. "You took the necklace my uncle gave me. Personally, I'd like to take you apart, one piece at a time, but my associates seem to feel we can better find out what we're up against from a living captive. But don't push me." There was nothing of a psychopath's maniac gleam in his eyes. His face was deadly calm, the corners of his broad mouth turned down only slightly.

Triela spat in his eye.

Slowly, his expression not really changing, Pinocchio wiped at the side of his face with one hand. Then, just as calmly, he reached down and wiped the hand off on the front of Triela's blood-soaked shirt.

"I wouldn't do that again if I were in your position." A knife flicked out of his sleeve, a just-visible sliver of glinting light, and it gently grazed the base of her top button. The button came off cleanly and rolled onto the floor of the trunk with a soft plunk. Triela felt her heart stop for a split second; her chest got tight and she couldn't breathe. Surely, he wasn't going to - !

But the knife flicked back in, and abruptly, his face was no longer inches from her own. He studied her for a moment and then said, "Next time, I'll cut higher."

A moment later his knuckles collided with the side of her head and Triela knew nothing else.