Chapter Seven: Counting Down
Around mid-morning, someone rapped on Yuri's door. He hopped down from the window sill as Repede looked up the foot of his bed. Yuri opened the door to find Estelle and Sodia, both looking concerned. "What's up?"
"Yuri, have you seen Flynn today?" Estelle asked.
Yuri frowned. "No… is something wrong?"
"The commandant didn't show up to work this morning." Sodia tried and failed to mask how worried she was. "It's very unlike him to miss work."
"Have you checked his house?"
"I knocked, but nobody answered."
Yuri leaned against his doorway. "That's weird." Flynn wouldn't skip work without a very good reason. "Maybe he's sick and didn't hear you knocking."
"I thought about that," Estelle said. "If he is, we need to get into his house to see him, but we don't have a key. Did he give you a spare key by chance?"
Flynn didn't, but that didn't mean Yuri couldn't still get in. "Yeah, I can get in. Repede, let's go."
Yuri wasn't too worried on the way to Flynn's house. Flynn had probably come down with something after all the stress he'd been under, and he fully expected to find him asleep in bed. Even if that wasn't the case, he had probably gone out to run an errand this morning that took him a lot longer than he'd expected. Last night, the snow had picked up around midnight and covered the ground in about a foot of snow. Yuri hoped it stuck around this time since he enjoyed the satisfying crunch under his feet.
When they arrived at his house, Sodia asked, "Does he have a key hidden around here?"
"Not that I know of."
"Then how do you plan to get in?"
"Give me a minute." He walked away and into the narrow gap between Flynn's house and the house next door. There was only a few feet between the houses, which was enough room to leap up, grab a pipe and then kick against the rough stone walls. With one foot on Flynn's wall and the other on his neighbour's, Yuri slowly made his way up.
"What are you doing?!" Sodia snapped.
"I'm sure he's left a window unlocked up here."
Sodia gaped at him. "You can't break into the commandant's house!"
"That sounds like a challenge."
"Yuri be careful." Estelle looked up at him with pleading eyes. "If you fall from up there, you could be really hurt."
His calves shook from exertion as he inched his way up. He glanced at Sodia and called down, "Don't worry about it. I've had worse falls."
Sodia shamefully glanced away, but Estelle was too focused on Yuri to notice.
He reached the second storey and inched along to the window to the study. The ground was about fifteen feet below, but so far his muscles held out. The tricky part came when he reached the window and had to use one hand to pull it open, and he had to trust in his legs to maintain balance. With a grunt, the window slid open. Thick curtains covered it, because it was rather useless so close to the neighbour's wall. He took a deep breath, and then pushed off from the neighbour's wall. There was a split second where his stomach flipped and he thought he was going to fall, but then momentum carried him through and he crashed through the curtains and tumbled to the floor.
Yuri jumped to his feet and dusted himself off. "It's just me, Flynn!" There was no answer. Yuri slid the window shut, and then ventured into the hall. He took a right turn and poked his head into the master bedroom. "Flynn?" The bed was neatly made and there was no sign of its occupant. "Huh. Guess he's out."
Yuri made his way downstairs, not really caring that he left snowy footprints in the carpet all the way down. He unlocked the front door and pulled it open. "He's not here."
"Are you sure?" Estelle wiped her feet on the mat just inside and looked around in concern.
"He'd have to be purposefully hiding from us. I didn't see the cat, either."
Sodia closed the door behind her, giving Yuri a dirty look. Yuri got the feeling his housebreaking skills failed to impress her.
"Oh, there she is!" Kat emerged from the dining room and ran toward Estelle. Purring loudly, she wound herself around Estelle's legs and rubbed her face against her calf.
Estelle giggled a crouched to pet her while Yuri scoffed, "Sure, she likes you."
"You have to treat her properly." Kat jumped up on Estelle's knee and meowed, and when Estelle straightened up again, she darted down the hall to the kitchen at the back of the house. "What's wrong, Kat?"
Estelle hurried after her. Yuri wasn't too concerned with Kat, but this might give them a clue as to Flynn's whereabouts, so he followed. In the kitchen, Kat stood meaningfully by her food dish and stared at Estelle with wide eyes while purring insistently.
"What's wrong? Are you hungry? Yuri, do you know where Flynn keeps her food?"
Yuri shrugged. "Probably in the cupboard."
Estelle picked up the bowl and went to the cupboard while Sodia said, "The commandant would never forget to feed his cat. He must not have been here this morning."
"Yeah. He loves that stupid thing."
Estelle pouted over her shoulder. "You should be nicer to Kat, Yuri. She's really sweet if you give her a chance."
"She started it."
"Yuri, she's a cat. Be the bigger man here."
Yuri scowled at the cat, but she was too busy digging in when Estelle put the food bowl down to notice. "There weren't any footsteps leading away from Flynn's house outside. That means he must have left before midnight."
Estelle leaned against a chair. "What could he have gone out for?"
"Commandant Flynn had no reason to go out. He was very tired when he left and told me he planned on going straight to bed."
Worry crept over Estelle's face. "Do you think he didn't leave willingly?"
"There's no sign of break-in or violence," Yuri said. "Well, there is sign of break-in because I just did it, but there was nothing before I got here. Given how starving that cat is, I think it's possible he never made it home last night at all."
"Oh, no." Estelle clutched her hands together while Sodia's face went taut with concern. "Where could he be?"
Yuri had to admit he was beginning to worry. Flynn dropping out of contact for less than twenty-four hours wouldn't usually be cause for alarm, but there was a serial killer in town who had a personal obsession with him. This might be very bad. "I don't know."
"I'll alert all knights in the city to begin a search. Finding the commandant will be our top priority."
Flynn awoke with a throbbing headache and an urge to throw up. The next thing he noticed was deep pain in his shoulders, elbows, and wrists, though his fingers felt numb. As he came to his senses, he realized ropes dug into his wrists and suspended him from the ceiling. His legs were bent beneath him and scraped the floor, so he pulled them forward and stiffly pushed himself upright. He couldn't quite stand flat, so his calves felt the pressure of being forced onto his toes. At least the pain in his wrists and shoulders lessened, but tingling needles shot through his arms as circulation returned. He shivered and goosebumps sprung up across his bare chest. Wherever he was, it was freezing and someone had taken his shirt.
Where the hell am I? It was pitch black. Actually, something was tied around his head. A blindfold. Where the hell am I?
He took a long, deep breath. Think, Flynn. He remembered walking home, and then there had been an old man… but he wasn't an old man! That's right, he'd smashed Flynn's head with a cane. That was probably why his head hurt so much. With his arms pressed against the side of his head, he could feel a lump where he'd been struck.
He swayed on his feet, still feeling a lingering dizziness from… he'd been drugged. In all probability his abductor was none other than the Heartbreaker. Well… at least he'd found him. He told himself to remain calm, but that was difficult to do when he was blindfolded, tied-up, and at the mercy of a murderer who liked to cut people open.
Flynn tried to focus on something else, like figuring out where he was. First of all, it was freezing. It chilled him to the bone and he couldn't stop shivering. There wasn't any wind, though, so he had to be inside. He couldn't hear anything from the street, and there didn't seem to be any light coming through the blindfold, so he guessed he was in a basement somewhere. He didn't have much slack to move his arms around, so the ceiling the rope was attached to must be low.
He twisted his wrists to see if there was any give. His wrists were swollen and sore, and having hung from them for possibly hours, the knots were pulled taut. No luck there. It was hard to think rationally about an escape attempt when his brain still felt muddled and dizzy from the ether and it was a constant battle to keep from throwing up. There was no point using up all his energy in flailing around trying to pull free, so he took the fact that he hadn't been killed yet as a good sign and waited patiently.
Waiting patiently was hard. He tried to stay standing, but the strain on his calves was too much. He was so frustratingly close to the ground, but not quite enough that he could take pressure off the balls of his feet. When his legs inevitably gave out, he fell forward and the rope around his wrists jerked him to a stop. It was hard to appreciate relief in his legs when it was replaced by numbing pressure in his arms. His forearms burned, his elbows and shoulders aches, and his hands throbbed and swelled with trapped blood. Every time he switched positions he grew certain that this was the more painful option.
How long had he been down here? It must be the better part of the day. He still felt sick, but he was hungry, too. Was this the killer's plan? Leave him down here and let him die? At this point it seemed better than getting cut open, but he wasn't sure if he'd still feel that way after another… however many hours it had been. It felt like it had been at least twenty hours, but with nothing to see, nothing to hear, and pain dragging out every second, he was probably overestimating.
He kept picturing his knights finding his gutted body on the street. He imagined Yuri standing over the crime scene and his chest ached. Imagining how much pain this would cause Yuri was almost worse than the dread of being murdered itself. He was going to die having never told Yuri how truly important he was to him. Keeping it bottled up had seemed the logical thing to do, but now that he was pretty sure he was going to die, he wished he'd had just one chance to hold Yuri in his arms and damn the consequences.
Footsteps interrupted his thoughts. Flynn tensed, every sense on alert as he listened to the steps slowly approach. They were accompanied by a sliding sound, like something being a dragged. Earlier he'd longed for his abductor to come back just to break the monotony of hanging here, but now that the time had come, he was nervous. He pulled himself up on his aching legs and took a deep breath. He had to remain strong. Hopefully the person got here soon, because Flynn wasn't sure how long he could hold himself up.
He didn't have to wait long. Hinges creaked and a metallic door clanked against a cement wall. The footsteps came closer, still dragging the heavy object. Flynn hated to think it, but by the sound of the weight and shape, he had to guess it was a body.
"Good evening," said a male voice.
Evening. He'd been abducted in the evening and he was certain more than just a couple of hours had passed. He must have been down here for an entire day - no wonder he was so tired and hungry. This did make him worry about the others, because if he'd been missing for an entire day, they must be worried about him. His heart ached when he thought of how distraught Estelle must be, but then it also ached when he thought about how he was now face-to-blindfolded-face with a serial killer and his hands were bound. "Am I to assume you are my abductor?"
Footsteps approached, leaving the body - assuming that's what it was - behind. He coughed a few times and then said, "In the flesh. What an honour it is to meet the great Flynn Scifo in person." His breath smelled heavily of tobacco and made Flynn's nose wrinkle.
Flynn pulled at his wrists and wished for the hundredth time he could see. If someone was threatening him, he preferred to look them in the eye. "If you wanted to meet with me, I'm usually open for appointments between noon and four."
A fist hit his jaw without warning. His head would have snapped to the side, but with his arms pulled up, his bicep cushioned it.
Flynn ran his tongue over the gouge in his cheek where it had dug into his teeth. "Is this how you treated all your victims? Did you do this to Tabitha Zimmerman, too?"
Another fist, this time to his stomach. His knees buckled and he fell forward, jerked to a stop by his wrists. He took fast, cold breaths through his teeth to quell the urge to vomit. When he got himself upright and thought it was safe to talk without throwing up, he panted, "Why… did you… kill them?"
"Got your attention, didn't it? Like the glorious commandant has time to pay attention to any old murder scene."
Flynn felt sick, and this time it was unrelated to the nausea he was still fighting off. "That's what this is about? Getting my attention?"
He let out an ugly cough. "Doesn't that just make you mad?"
Blow after blow rained down on his torso. Flynn gritted his teeth and chomped on his lip to hold in any sort of cry. He lost count of how many times the man punched him, but knew that by the next morning his body was going to be black and blue. Assuming, of course, that he was still alive tomorrow morning. He took small comfort in the fact that none of the other victims showed signs of assault, so maybe he didn't plan on treating him the same as all his other victims. Of course, maybe that meant that unlike the others, the murderer planned to keep him alive while cutting him open.
It finally ended with a solid uppercut to his jaw. Flynn hung from his wrists and panted for breath, hoping this was the last of it. His whole body ached, and his arms burned because he had strength to hold himself up. "So… that's your… plan? Beat me up?"
"You're pathetic. You haven't even gotten close to figuring out who I am yet. What have you been doing for three weeks? Sitting on your ass?"
Flynn stumbled a few times before managing to get to his feet and take the pressure off his arms. "If you want to tell me your name I would be pleased to hear it."
"Oh, no, that would be too easy. I think it would be much more fun to watch you struggle. The whole city's watching, Flynn. Why haven't you caught this guy yet, huh?"
A soft moan from a few feet in front of him distracted Flynn from replying. The body! They weren't dead yet! He might still have a chance to save them.
"Oh, our other guest is waking up." There was a soft thud and then he said, "Wake up, dear. Oversleeping is rude."
The moaning grew louder as the she came to consciousness, until it turned to a fully-awake muffled cry. "Mmph? Mm! Mmmm!"
"Let her go," Flynn demanded, his heart accelerating. Being trapped down here alone was bad enough, but he could not abide letting an innocent civilian get hurt. "Ma'am, this is Commandant Flynn Scifo. I'm going to get you out of - ugh." Another punch knocked him off his feet again.
"It is indeed Flynn Scifo, but I'm afraid he's not going to do much good for you."
The woman started sobbing through her gag, and from the sounds of rustling she was trying to thrash around on the floor. She must be bound as well. He wondered if she was blindfolded like he was.
"All right, Flynn," the killer stood close in front of him. "Since you're doing such a shitty job on this case, I've decided to give you an important clue. See this? Well, no, of course you don't." He slashed his hand and a knife grazed diagonally across Flynn's chest. He gasped in surprise, but it wasn't very deep. "This is a knife and as you can feel, it's very sharp."
Blood trickled down his chest but with the cold and panic he barely felt the pain. "Let her go," he demanded as firmly as he could.
"Um… no. I'm going to kill her."
"Mmmm!"
"No!" Flynn yanked at his restraints. "Release her. Take me instead."
"My, aren't you a dashing knight." The knife slashed across his face, cutting a horizontal line under his eye. "I despise that attitude of yours, you know?"
"Please, don't kill her. Please. You can do whatever you want to me, just let her go. She has nothing to do with this."
"See, this is what I mean!" Another shallow slash on his chest. "You don't even know her! Where do you get off acting like you're some noble super human who will save every person in the empire?"
His pounding heart probably wasn't doing anything good for the blood seeping out of his chest and dripping down his face. "I'm only trying to do the right thing. You can, too. Just put down the knife and we can talk about this."
"Shut up!" He thrust the knife through the narrow gap between Flynn's cheek and arm, cutting open the top of his shoulder. "Listen up, Flynn. This is important. You need to count how many times I stab her."
"What?"
The woman on the ground screamed again.
"I will do no such thing!"
"You'd better if you ever want her pain to stop." He heard the swish of a knife and a dull thunk, and the woman's screams grew louder. "That was one. You were supposed to count."
"No! Let her go! Please, stop this!"
"I'm going to start over again. That one doesn't count because you didn't say it."
"You're insane!" Blood trickled down his wrists. He'd thrashed in the binds enough to tear skin.
"That doesn't sound like counting. Let's start again." Another thunk, and another scream.
Tears welled up in Flynn's eyes. He could handle the bloody gashes on his own body, but listening to an innocent suffer was unbearable. "Stop! Please, I'm begging you, let her go!"
"Beg all you want; I want to hear you count. It is important, after all. Here I go again."
Flynn heard the squelch of a knife sinking into soft flesh and, not knowing what else to do, gasped, "Three!"
"No, I told you, the first two didn't count! And you got it wrong this time, so it doesn't count either."
The woman cried and moaned on the ground and Flynn gasped for breath. "I'm sorry… I'm so sorry."
"Here we go again."
Swish. Thunk.
"One!" he gasped, hating himself for saying it. He heard the knife again and blurted, "Two!"
"Good, now you're getting it."
With every strike of the knife, the woman screamed, but she was almost drowned out by the blood rushing in Flynn's ears. "Th-three!" Tears soaked into the blindfold. This would be less painful if he was the one getting hurt. "Four! Why are you doing this?!"
He received no answer except for another stab. "Five… six…" The woman never stopped screaming. Flynn knew in his heart she wasn't going to survive this, and logically there was nothing he could have done to save her, but he still felt like such a failure. He was the commandant, sworn to protect people and make them smile, and all he could do was stand here uselessly while one of his people was horribly murdered right in front of him. He didn't even know her name.
"Keep it up, Flynn."
"Seven," he forced out. "Eight. Nine. Ten." How much longer could this go on? Surely the poor woman would die of blood loss soon. He must be stabbing her in non-vital areas just to draw it out. For the first time, Flynn found himself wishing an innocent would die, because he couldn't save her and he couldn't bear to listen to her suffer any longer. "Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen." He couldn't manage to put any energy into it. It was useless to beg and he just wanted this to stop. "Fourteen. Fifteen."
"And here we go! Last one, Flynn! Make it count!"
The knife swept down, but this time the woman's scream cut off with a gurgle. Blood sprayed against Flynn's torso and he couldn't hold back a scream while the woman's voice choked out. "S-Sixteen!" he screamed, desperately believing that this had to be the last. He could clearly picture a knife in her throat, with eighteen other wounds across her body oozing blood. The soft gasps didn't last long, and at last she was allowed to die.
"Why?" Flynn croaked. He hung from his wrists, having lost the energy to stay on his toes. His whole body shook with rage and pain. "Why did you do that?"
"I told you, Flynn. It's important. You'd better remember that."
"You're a monster," he hissed.
"Maybe." He tucked the tip of his knife under Flynn's chin and raised his head, the woman's blood smearing on his throat. "You think you're so much better than me. You're not, you know. You think I'm a monster? Admit it. There's a part of you that wants to ram a knife into me nineteen times so that I know what that girl felt."
Flynn tensed. He couldn't fully deny it. He would never do such a thing, but a visceral beast inside him screamed about her blood dripping down his torso, and roared with delight at the prospect of making this bastard pay for what he'd done.
"I thought so. Maybe part of you is a monster, too."
"I'm nothing like you," Flynn snarled.
"Perhaps. You really seem to think so, at least." The knife pulled away.
He walked away, and Flynn told himself that being told to remember this in the future probably meant he wasn't going to be killed just now. Less than a minute later, the killer returned and shoved another rag in Flynn's face. He tried to yank his head away, but the man clutched the back of his head with his other hand. With his arms restrained and all energy gone, he didn't have the strength to fight it. The dizziness intensified and he dropped out of consciousness.
Yuri didn't know why he was at Estelle's place other than that he was worried and didn't know what else to do with himself. Estelle let him in, but without her usual exuberant smile.
"No word, huh?" She'd promised to come running the moment the knights reported Flynn's whereabouts. It was evening now and she hadn't come yet. Yuri didn't think she'd forgotten about him, but he couldn't stand sitting around playing card games with Judy, Karol, and Raven and doing nothing.
Estelle slowly shook her head. "No." Before Yuri could sit down, she embraced him. "I'm so worried, Yuri."
"Yeah." He squeezed her with one arm. "I wouldn't ordinarily be so worked up about him, but given the circumstances…" They didn't have to say it, but both of them were terrified that tomorrow morning someone would find Flynn on the street with his chest ripped open.
Estelle pulled back and sat on the couch. Yuri sat next to her, and they were silent for a few moments. She leaned against his shoulder and said, "We'll find him. I know we will."
Yuri nodded more confidently than he felt. "Sure we will. Flynn's been through worse stuff. We're probably worrying over nothing."
"Some people on the Council think he ran away."
Yuri stiffened with anger and a glare settled onto his face, directed at no one in particular. "They what?"
"I heard some of them saying he's embarrassed by the mix-up with Zagi and ran away to keep from having to face everyone."
"That's ridiculous."
"I know. I'm so angry with them, but there's no point starting a fight."
Kat poked her head around the corner, and Yuri finally had someone to land his glare on. She scowled at him - if cats could scowl - and then disappeared. "What's she doing here?"
"Oh." She leaned forward to try to see Kat around the corner. "I didn't want her to be all alone. And… I worried Flynn wouldn't be home in time to give her dinner."
Yuri glanced to the dim grey sky through the window. "Well, you were right there." He sighed and leaned back. "All the other victims were taken in the night and showed up the next morning. It's been a whole day and Flynn hasn't shown up yet, so this can't be like the other victims."
"I really hope so. Oh, Yuri, I should probably tell you something. We've been so caught up today with Flynn that I didn't think of it, but Raven and I went to visit Zagi yesterday."
Yuri turned his head, more confused than surprised. "What for?"
"We thought he might be able to give us insight into the mind of the Heartbreaker."
"Did he?"
"He told us that the person we're after isn't like him. He's not doing this for fun or pleasure. He has a higher goal he's working toward and somehow that revolves around getting Flynn to catch him. Zagi says he wants to be caught, and that all the victims so far are just pieces in his game."
"Huh. If he wants Flynn to catch him, why would he catch Flynn first?"
Estelle shrugged. "I don't know. I talked to Zagi before this all happened, so maybe his analysis would be different now."
"How did you get him to agree to help?"
"Um, actually…" she fiddled her thumbs. "We promised him he could fight you. Is that ok? It's the only thing he wants, so we told him instead of a regular execution he could have a duel to the death with you."
Yuri considered this. It wouldn't be ideal, but he was pretty sure he could do it. If it helped them catch this bastard and get Flynn back, it was worth it. "Yeah, I guess I can do that. Geeze, I'm so sick of fighting this freak."
"I know. Hopefully this will be the last time."
"Whatever. Chances are Flynn won't even let me go through with it." Assuming, of course, that Flynn was around to disapprove.
