Authors Note: The original plan was not to release this chapter to later this week/early next week. But I received a rather warm welcome back and some very kind words from Mopargirl1 and well here you go!
"Come on Liss." Barney Ross pleads as he thumps his hand on her chest just above her heart. If he presses any harder he's risking breaking at least one of her ribs. Not something they need right now, but it is better than dead. "Come on."
All at once the life comes back to her. Her eyes jolt open and her lungs gasp out for oxygen. Barney rolls her onto her side as she takes in gasping breathes like a fish out of water. "Guards?" She gasps out.
"They didn't come." Barney confirms to her. After what they estimated to be a week, they realized that the holding cells are the only place not watched by cameras or listened in on by planted microphones. It was the only place they could talk freely.
"Good." Lissa says resting her head back on the floor breathing deeply. "Was it long enough?" She asks, hope in her tone. The only way the bio chip would transmit the message to Billy was if her heart stopped for over twenty seconds. She pulls at the inch thick flexible metal collar just below her wind pipe, it stopped bothering her days ago but now it feels like it is putting pressure on her throat. After having Barney strangle her, she wants nothing more than to breathe freely.
"Nearly took me a minute to bring you back. One minute, twenty one seconds you were dead." Barney says as he leans back in the cell. He rests his head in his hands. "Took far less than that to make me wondering if I'd be able to bring you back."
"Barney…Dad…you had to do it." Lissa tells him shakily pushing herself into a sitting position. She puts a bruised, bloody and dirt covered hand on Barney's knee. "Killing me was the only way to get word out to Billy. With Fake Lissa and Fake Barney around them, they were all at risk. Now Billy knows." Lissa tells him. She didn't like the idea of having to trigger the dead chip. But after all their time here and they were no closer to finding a way out of here. Every day they risked making it out alive. "Besides, being dead has never really stuck with me."
A small grin crosses Barney's face. That's the thing about him and his daughter, neither of them could seem to die no matter how hard their enemies tried. The two share the grin with each other and for a moment all feels normal. Like they are back in Maine having one of the near weekly barbeques sipping beers, roasting hot dogs over a fire on sticks and laughing over old missions. The same type of flexible metal collar is ringed around his neck as Lissa's.
But the reality comes back to them quickly. The lights in the holding cell area are turned up to a near blinding hue. Their cell is sound proof to the outside, only a door panel of bullet proof glass allows them a view to the hallway outside. They don't know who their neighbors are, they can't even talk to them.
Three guards with generic white face masks on stop in front of their cell. The loud buzz of a locked door rings out in the cell and the panel door slides into the wall.
"Alyssa Hollis." One of the guards says looking to her.
"No." Barney tells him and at that the other two guards pull out collapsible batons from the utility belts around their waists. The batons are snapped into full length and a crackle of electricity runs through them.
"Don't." Lissa says looking to Barney, "Save your strength. We need it" She tells him as she climbs up to her feet. If the guards were coming for her it meant she and Barney would be going into the Battle Ground again soon. It had been the pattern since she woke up here after being taken in New York while leaving the CIA office she was working out of. Leave the cell, face some sort of interrogation, be cleaned up, go into the Battle Ground, rest and repeat. It may not have been a week since they were taken, it could have been longer or it could have been shorter. Their lives were only marked by the trips into the Battle Ground so far it had been six.
The guard who opened the door grabs ahold of Lissa's arm and presses a button on a key panel to shut the door.
Lissa looks back at Barney the whole time she's pulled away from the cell. "I'll find you! I promise I'll find you inside!" With the door shut she knows Barney won't hear her and she doesn't bother saying anymore. Instead she focuses on looking into the cells they past, trying to see if any of the other members of The Expendables are here. She knows Billy isn't, after studying every player and every kill in the Battle Ground she knows he's not here. That's the only real comfort she has.
Her eyes are heavy from exhaustion and the stress. Since the first time she entered the Battle Ground she learned she can't trust just her eyes. It's how she nearly ended up smashing a rock into Barney's head. If it wasn't' for the way he flexed his upper arm muscles before throwing a punch she would have killed him. The Battle Ground kept things interesting by using the collars around their necks to project different faces on them. The suits they wore into the Battle Ground could also alter the way viewers saw them. Barney's tall and muscular frame could be turned to tall and lanky with just a few adjustments to the program that ran the collars and the suits. It makes finding allies and fighting off foes inside the grounds a lot harder.
The guards stop outside of a small room and push her inside, the door shuts behind her. The room only has a single table with a chair on either side. Sitting in one of the chairs is a person who now makes Lissa's blood run hotter.
"So tell me what will it be today? You traded me information so you and your daddy could be roomed together. Perhaps you'll trade for weapons to have inside the Battle Grounds? Or perhaps you'll trade for a little bit of hope." The person asks and he drops Lissa's compass necklace onto the table.
"Fuck you Derek." Lissa says looking to the foster brother she idolized, the same one who showed her how to hack and the very same one she thought Sedov and Garrett killed years ago for helping her escape from Sedov's clutches. "That's what I have for you today."
Authors Note: For those who don't remember, the character of Derek Hollis was introduced in the first part of Lissa's story "What We Become" and is mentioned in "The Hack" (the one shot set pre-What We Become). When little Alyssa Howard become an orphan, she was fostered into the Hollis family. There Derek taught her everything he knew about hacking and at age 16 she hacked her way out of the foster care system becoming Alyssa Hollis in honor of Derek. In What We Become he's assumed dead for helping Lissa escape from Garret and Sedov's clutches.