Part VII
Everything was fuzzy. Not the kind of fuzzy that textures the skin of a peach or a child's plush toy, but the kind of fuzzy a drug-induced mind attempting to recreate sense of space or time experiences when that same drug is being slowly flushed from the body's system.
The first day was the most unclear. He could barely piece together the events that unfolded. He vaguely felt his surrounding change, being brought into a warm environment after 8 days in the moldy, cold captivity he'd been kept and drugged and tormented and tortured in. He couldn't make sense of all the different voices surrounding him. Did they sound male? Perhaps some were female? Or were they are female? He heard the voices around him, always chattering in hushed tones, urgent and demanding, but he couldn't make sense of the speech like it was an alien language to his muffled mind. He couldn't remember any smells, but something told him there was a metallic, salty taste in his mouth he couldn't quite pinpoint.
The second day was entirely focused on one feeling: pain. Excruciating, explosive, pain. The kind of pain one felt when badly formed bones were being broken again so they could be set properly. The kind of pain of a broken wrist being cut open and cleaned without any medication to numb the feeling in his body and mind. The kind of pain that became so extreme, like a heat radiating inside in your blood that boiled so hot, it all just blacked out in the end as one plateaued at the maximum pain-tolerance threshold. All he remembered of day two was pain and numbness, stretching skin, and the piercing slice of a knife, the sting of antiseptics on fresh wounds, and the crunch of breaking bone. All he remembered of day two was fuzzier than day one after being consumed completely with agonizing pain.
Day three was fuzzy again, but different in its own right. His mouth was metallic, the tale-tell sign of drugs being flushed in his body. He felt cold, shivering and shaking in the frigid air while his body sweat profusely in the overheating of his body as it fount infection and attempted to mend itself. He felt sticky and cold, stiff and hot all at the same time. The third day was fuzzy because he was consumed with the sensation of strong fever and drugs being cycled through his blood. The third day ended more strangely however, as needles were removed from his arm, water and food was introduced for the first time in days, and finally, after all this time, the blinding white pain of his wrist began to be subdued to a more dull ache. It only took one dose to pull him into a dreamless sleep.
The fourth day was not so much fuzzy as it was blurry. Blurry was an adjective Auggie Anderson likely had not spoken, written, or even thought of since losing his sight, but as he woke that fourth day after being pulled from his hellish torture, it seemed fitting to the situation. The timeline of the day was blurry, even though he knew what had happened, it just seemed to blur one hour with the next in a blurry passing of the day's 24 hours.
He woke up blurry, a strange, dull, numbing pound in his head like a subdued migraine that without whatever medication running through his body would have left him in bed all day. To his surprise however, he did get up from bed. There was only one woman now. She did not speak English, and only a few words of German that they could communicate through. He ate some solid food, and drank some fresh water. He was given a bottle of painkillers, and he took one gratefully when the dull ache became too strong. He was informed in very few words that this was a safe house and protocol was that tomorrow he had to leave. He went to bed with blurry thoughts and a blurry array of sensations in his body.
The fifth day came around with a sharp, stabbing pain in his wrist. Auggie Anderson awoke to an empty room in an empty house. The kitchen was cleaned through, the house was silent, and not so much as a glass of water showed sign of life in the abandoned safe house. The only things left for the blind man was some money, a burner phone, the clothes on his back, and a collapsible cane.
With a groan and sharp intake of breath as he moved his pained arm, Auggie stood, put the items his only functional hand could find in his pockets and managed to find his way out of the house and into the city.
It was midday and several hours since Auggie Anderson had left the safe house behind and never turned back. Early in the morning his thoughts revolved around the pain in his bones and head, and attempting to physically navigate a city he didn't know he was in, in a country he was unaware of the name of.
Within an hour or so, however, he'd found a little shop where he bought a pastry for much too high a price, and a lot of information for none at all.
He knew now he was in Austria, and the name of the city, and that he was somewhere near the northwestern border of Austria and Germany. The city was a better class area than the little holes he had ventured into after his Intel on Dellis's disappearance, but shy of calling Barber or Hollman or Joan herself back in D.C., he had little information on how to track Annie down now or how to get home.
So he walked, down unknown streets, passing unknown strangers, into new unknown blocks and probably even cities until he found some information or conversation that could spark any ideas in his still slightly foggy mind. This venture lasted for hours, but eventually the sun rose too high that it was beginning to fall again, the pain in his wrist started magnifying again, and lack of water or sustenance in his stomach threatened to add insult to his multitude of recovering injuries. He was just passing a store that he believed to be higher end women's clothing when he heard his native language in a startling minimal accent being spoken as a woman translated a menu out loud. Finding his interest peaked, and feeling it really was time for another dose of whatever that bottle left for him contained, he gave in to his weaker necessities and made his way towards the voices and clatter of tableware and food serving.
Auggie was careful as he approached the sounds he was following, slowing his steps as his cane scanned the few feet before him until it finally found a solid and hard object in front of him. Reaching his good hand forward, he went to touch the obstruction when a voice piped up in German.
Hiding away all the discomfort he was sensing, the once masterful operative pulled back all of his tricks and manufactured a welcoming smile. He felt the skin in his face stretch slightly and knew he was likely wearing some still fairly unpleasing battle scars. Whether the older hostess noticed or not, however, she very politely asked him if he would like a table, and upon Auggie's out-of-practice German confirmation, offered to guide the injured blind man to a table outside rather than in, upon his request.
The older woman was polite as she lead him to a table and instructed him of the location of a glass of water, menu that would be obviously useless to him, and chair he wasted no time sinking his aching bones in. With some last polite chatter, she left him to his own, and glad for a moment of peace he let his mind wander a bit.
He tried to piece together the puzzle of the past week's events, but it was hard to do so with all the edges of his memories were so frayed and damaged from the physical and mental torment he'd endured. He only faintly remembered the rescue, being pulled down hallways and out the building and being pushed into a van before someone knocked him out finally and he woke up in that safe house.
His mind twitched slightly thinking it over. The hard facts were vague, but he distinctly remembered a thought that he had in that van, a voice that made him think of her voice, even though he was fairly certain it wasn't her voice.
Auggie sighed heavily, and careful not so much as the shift weight in the area around his wrist and arm, reclined back in the heavy plastic seats as much as they allowed and rubbed his sightless eyes harshly with his free hand until he was certain they'd be red to the general public.
"Good afternoon, my name is Julia. May I take your order?" The words hit his ears unexpectedly in a strong German accent, but the fact that he was hearing English at all made his eyebrow twitch. Still, he did not give this information away freely, and instead put on the best smile he could manufacture, and was polite back to the much younger girl.
"Well Julia," he played up the charm despite the growing blackness in his gut. "I'd love something in the sandwich range, but it's the damndest thing-I can't even read a regular menu."
He motioned to his eyes for emphasis, and she went silent for a moment, as he was certain she was feeling three inches tall after noticing his disadvantage.
"How about you just pick your favorite sandwich from your menu and bring it to me?" He smiled again in her general direction and listened to the young woman stumble over vowels and her own feet as she scribbled down something slightly too strongly on her paper pad before her hasty footsteps faded away in the low rumble of mixed languages and voices around him.
He digested his surroundings while he awaited his meal. He knew from the mix of languages around him that this area had more of a tourist background than the surrounding areas he had visited. His close attention to the waitress's voice, step, and stance painted a mental image in his mind. She wasn't very tall, and by the lightness of her steps, in decent shape and early into her shift. Her voice was calm and nothing shy of ordinary business, yet none of this information answered the question as to how his particular waitress had known instinctively to speak English to him when he had spoken near perfect German to the hostess who seated him and didn't carry the standard baggage of a traveling tourist on vacation.
On the subject of tourism, a thought bubbled to the surface of his slightly muddled mind now. He wasn't certain of the date anymore, but he was certain of one thing: his three weeks of vacation were over, and if he didn't contact Joan soon, she was going to send out a rescue mission, and somehow finding him in his current state didn't seem like the ideal situation.
He knew he was physically frowning now as he contemplated this developing situation. If he went home now, he would need to hide his determination to find Annie well under a cloak of the still grieving man who lost his love. If he did not go home however, he would be left with an extended leave without any of the agency's resources to aid him in his covert mission. Even with the help from very few select few on the inside, he found it difficult to imagine tracking down Annie as easily as he had the first time.
Lost in his thoughts and inner monologue, Auggie Anderson sat stoic in his chair with too many thoughts in his mind to warrant enough energy to pay the outside world around him. He became so preoccupied in his thoughts that he did not even hear a different young waitress approach him suddenly to drop off his meal on a heavy plate.
The blind man flinched, not entirely shaken but merely surprised as the plate unexpectedly bumped against his forearm as the waitress placed it before him.
"Oh, thank you," he said the words slightly mumbled but loud enough that he should have had no problem hearing him. He found the sandwich in front of him quickly enough with the waitress's perfectly planned bump on the arm. He listened to her hasty but nearly silent footsteps gliding around him followed by the sound of his glass being refilled by the woman. He expected some form of auditory reply, waiting for a "no problem" or perhaps even a "is there anything else I can do for you?" somewhere in her rushed movement, but instead he listened to her footsteps step away and disappear from the range of his slightly still ringing ears without ever giving any spoken response.
Auggie frowned. Something was off. The sensors and skills he had fine-tuned during his CIA and army training were booting up and turning. The waitress had been careful to tap his arm when she delivered his meal, didn't speak a word, and someone had to have informed his first waitress of his native tongue for her to know to speak English in her introduction.
"Is there anything else I can help you with?" The familiar voice of his first waitress followed the same light footsteps he had heard earlier when she took his order. His good hand was scanning the table for something unknown or invisible clues to something he hadn't yet pieced together.
"Yes," he spoke more quickly than intended. "Another waitress, a woman," he tried to calm his voice and not give away any urgency or unnecessary emotion. "She just delivered my meal and I was hoping to ask her a question. Can you get her for me?" He tried not to give away any ulterior motive aside from innocent curiosity, but deep inside he felt his pulse quicken and skin grow hot in the cool air.
"Oh," he could hear her puzzlement in her voice. "Well I can look, let me see if she is still here." With her last words, Auggie smiled as simple of a smile he could conjure until he listened to her footsteps walk away and immediately continued his tactile search of the table for something he had missed.
There was a glass at his 2 o'clock, a thin napkin he shook out and found empty to his 10 o'clock, and then the heavy plate directly in front of him. A visible frown shaped his handsome features. Without even really weighing the possibilities, he let his only good hand skim the rim of the untouched plate. A corner of plastic such as that of a small bag touched his fingers and his sightless eyes grew.
"Mr. Quinn?" The moment the name hit his ears the world seemed to stop spinning on its axis. The voice of the first waitress broke his thoughts just as he had hidden the unopened bag into his shirt. Mr. Quinn?
"Um," the waitress sounded flustered as she approached him. "I don't know who the other waitress you mentioned was, but a woman just gave me a note to give to a Mr. Quinn and motioned towards you."
Deep in his chest, Auggie Anderson's heart was silent, the blood stopped in their position in his veins, breath caught in his throat, entire body frozen in place. "What does it say?" the words stumbled right off his tongue.
He listened carefully to the crackle of a paper and swallowed thickly, never releasing that breath in his throat.
"She wrote," she paused before reading the note, obvious puzzlement lacing her words and actions. "Mingus needs a vacation."
He blinked.
The waitress shifted uncomfortably as she watched the statuesque man in front of her. She was trying to decide if he was bothered, worried, or simply startled but could not place his expression. "Um," she interjected the icy silence for a moment. "She told me her name was Amber…" she paused with another crackle of a paper. "Amber Truesdale."
Finally, after many inflated moments, that prolonged breath escaped his mouth, and he felt such a rush of emotion and sensation course through his blood and veins, he wasn't sure if he should laugh, cry, or even just shout. He abandoned all the instinctive human responses however and let only a sly smirk grace his lips.
"Yes, I know who she is after all."
Author's Note:
Bet you weren't expecting an update 48 hours after one that took over a week to post, eh?
Actually I had all of part 7 so planned out (and half of it already written) by the time I finished 6 that it really only took about an hour to whip up.
The story is quickly coming to a close as part 8 is the FINAL part (not including the epilogue) so I would love now more than ever to get some feedback on what you think so far, what you like, dislike, whats working and isn't working, and especially how you think this story is finally coming together.
Lots of Love,
- Liz
