Hello there my dear readers!
Finally, I'm posting this chapter! It took forever to write and it's not even that long. I actually think it's the shortest of them all but it was so difficult to write that I just felt like I needed to finish it and put it out there.
Something happened to my muse during this chapter because, like I said, it was really hard to write for me and I admit it's not one of my greatests ones.
Either way I hope you enjoy it well enough! I would still like to read your comments about it!
She quickly closed the door and turned to her.
- What are you doing? – asked Jessi, surprising Annabeth with the amount of fear in the other girl's eyes – you can't leave the room! – she was hissing as to not wake the other occupants of the room.
- Why? – Annabeth asked.
- They'll find out and they'll hurt you and us!
- Listen Jessi I need to find someone. The girl I talked to you about. I really need you to tell me if you've seen her or heard someone else talk like me – she almost pleaded.
- What difference does it make? You're here now and you won't be able to escape! We've tried and it's not possible! – Jessi was truly scared by now, tugging on her arm to get her away from the door. Sensing the girl's growing distress, she let herself get further into the room.
- Okay, okay. Calm down Jessi. Nothing's going to happen to you, but I need to go out there.
- No, no, no. You can't.
- You said you tried to escape before? What happened? – she even sat down on the floor, bringing Jessi down with her to calm her nerves and give her the sense that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe she could play this to her advantage. Everyone else was listening, although a little worried because they couldn't afford to waste too much time.
- Some of us tried the first week I arrived here. We thought we could sneak out at night when everyone was supposed to be asleep but there is always people downstairs, even when there are no lights on. We got caught and they beat us. Told us if we ever tried to leave again they would kill us but they didn't just hit us, they came up and hurt everyone else for letting us leave! – Jessi was now desperately grabbing her arm to the point of making it painful – that's why you can't leave and I can't let you!
- Alright Jessi please calm down! – she tried – can you tell me what the basement looks like?
- What?
- The basement… where they do the drug testing. You've been there right?
- It's the door between the first desk and the kitchen space. Why?
- Do you know if it's locked all the time? – Jessi looked at her stragenly again.
- How could I know that? I don't know!
- Okay... – Annabeth tried again – all the times they have taken you to the basement; can you remember if when you got to the door, the men used a key to unlock the door or if they just opened it? – Jessi tried to remember.
- They just open it. They don't use a key. Why do you want to know? Are you still planning on going out there? – she asked, mortified.
- Listen to me Jessi. I'm here to help you alright? I can get you all out of here but I need to go out there.
- No! You'll get caught! You'll…
- I won't get caught. I promise! I know what I'm doing okay? You don't need to worry. You just have to stay here and wait until I come back. Okay?
Although reluctantly, Jessi nodded and Annabeth gave her a wide reassuring smile. She got up from the floor and headed to the door. She gave her one last look before opening the door and sliping outside.
From what Jessi had told her, there shouldn't be anybody on the hallway at night, only on the ground floor, but nevertheless she walked slowly and making sure the coast was clear before proceeding.
She carefully inspected every room, mindfull of not waking any of the girls sleeping in them and she relayed the information through her comm after she was done. There was a total of 32 girls in the facility. And after her first inspection of them, she didn't recognize Emily among them.
She reached the stairs and peeked down, seeing nobody near the bottom and making her way slowly to the ground floor. Just as Jessi had told her, there were about four people. Two of them were sleeping on the uncomfortable looking couch, one was pacing near the front door of the house and the other one could be heard in the kitchen space. The cigar man was nowhere to be seen, as were the whole other lot of people working in the computers earlier when she had arrived.
If she was silent enough, she could make her way to the basement without being seen and, if what Jessi had told her proved to be true, she would find the door unlocked. She waited until the man pacing in front of the door disappeared out of view into one of the corners of the living room before going down the rest of the steps and pressing herself flat on the wall. She used the darkness of the house to her advantage and found her way to the door standing between the first desk and the kitchen.
The man in the kitchen was too busy making a sandwich with the little light provided by his cellphone to notice the shadow moving almost in front of him and just when he turned to the sink to drop the utensils he had used, Annabeth quickly opened and closed the door to the basement, sliping inside without anybody noticing anything.
Since finding out that the drug testing took place in the basement, she had gotten the idea of finding any kind of drug that would help her knock out the men posing as guards around the house so she could get inside the computers on the living room and try to find the information that they still needed to sort out before raiding the house. The conversations the bug had caught before hadn't been enough to determine the existence of other "test locations" and, since she couldn't find Emily on any of the rooms above, she needed to find the records she was sure the organization had.
Feeling her way into the basement while her eyes adjusted to the poor excuse of a light that came through the small window, she saw a cabinet filled with different vials. Some of them didn't have names but numbers instead. She supposed those were the drugs on the testing phase, because the ones that did have a tag with names on it, were well known drugs and there was everything from morphine to diazepam. She found a vial that would work perfectly taking people down quickly and efficiently and put it inside one of the pockets of her skirt. All she needed now was a syringe.
She was making her way to where she could make out the rest of the medical supplies when she heard the door of the basement being opened and the light turned on.
- Shit! – she cursed under her breath at the sudden brightness while diving underneath one of the cots in the room. Hearing her curse, immediately the questions started flying inside her ear.
- Are you okay? – Kono's voice.
- What happened? – Danny.
- Can you talk? – Steve.
She ignored them all and focused on the pair of legs making their way down the stairs and into the basement. She didn't think she had been discovered, or there would at least be another person coming down and they would be in a hurry. Instead, this guy's pace was slow and careless. He approached the drug cabinet she had been standing on only a few seconds ago and reached to grab one of the morphine vials. "Great, a junkie" Annabeth thought and relaxed a little bit when the man didn't notice anything else missing from the cabinet. She silently urged him to take the vial and go back upstairs, but no such luck.
She debated into waiting for the guy to leave or just taking him out right then and there, deciding that she couldn't keep wasting time and making her way from underneath the cot she had been hiding and walking in a small crouch toward him. The guy had his back towards her while searching for a needle to fix himself with the drug and that's when she jumped into action. She took the man into a choke hold from behind, passing her right arm around his neck and locking it in place with her other one. He was bigger than her, that was a given, but the strength and technique behind the hold gave the man little to no chance and barely after a minute and a half, the man was lying unconscious at her feet. Very well, one down, three to go.
She picked the needle the guy had been about to use and filled it with the drug she herself had chosen from the cabinet. She figured half of it would put down a grown man, so she could use the full vial to knock out two. She was going to have to figure out a way to deal with the other one. She needed access to those computers.
Eventualy she told the team to stand down and that nothing had happened, that she was on her way to gather the needed information, and so she crept her way up the stairs of the basement and prepared to go out again.
The junkie man turned out to be the pacing one from the living room, and the one from the kitchen was about to finish his food. Annabeth was trying to decide the best way to take him out when the man suddenly produced a pack of cigarrets from his pocket and headed towards the front door. He even passed right by her peeking through the barely opened basement door, but he didn't even notice. He reached the door and stepped outside, lighting his first cigarret before leaving the house completely.
Annabeth smiled, surely she couldn't be that lucky.
She opened the door the rest of the way and crept towards the two men sleeping on the couch. One was snoring softly and the other one was almost falling to the floor from the uncomfortable position. She decided to strike that one first and quickly inserted the needle into his exposed neck, pressing down with her finger until half the liquid was gone. She had put her free hand on top of his mouth to keep him from making any sound, and tried to still his movements with her legs because he had stirred for a moment when feeling the pain from the needle. A few seconds later though, the man was out like a lamp and the other one hadn't stirred in his sleep.
She repeated the process with the second man, amazed at how he never even mumbled from the touch of the needle and pleased that she now had the coast toally cleared to go check the information on the computers. She only needed to keep an eye out for the man smoking outside, but she hoped he would smoke at least a couple of cigarrets before coming back inside.
Reaching the first computer, she turned it on and waited until she could get access to the files, suddenly wishing with all her might that the thing wasn't protected with a password. She really hadn't thought of that possibility but now it was too late to think of another plan. She only had so much time before one of the man figured out what had happened, whether it was the one from the basement waking up from the choke hold, or the one smoking the cigarrets outside, she needed to act quickly and find that information.
If they raided this house without confirmation of the existence of other locations, they faced the risk of word getting on the wind that Five-0 had discovered this place and they would lose the chance of maybe getting to the center of the whole organization. This information was crucial and it depended on her getting her hands into it.
No pressure. She thought.
The light on the screen turned on and focused her eyes on the small rectangle in the middle of it.
Like I said… not my finest work :(
I know you guys must be missing the rest of the team from the last couple of chapters but I needed to narrate the way Annabet was going to get her way around the house… don't worry… the main theme of this story is still the fact that Annabeth and Steve are related and how will they deal with it. This case is just the way Annabeth proves herself worthy to the team.
So, keep expecting some Steve angst later on… that never disappoints!
I hope to read reviews! Pretty, pretty please!