They had taken time to bind her hands and feet together before forcibly dragging her into a compound. Lin was more aware of what was going on around her, but bending or any excessive movement was still beyond her capabilities. She guessed that they had forgone the last injection so that she could be interrogated properly.
Her captors wasted no time bringing her to someone in charge. As she was dragged down hallways, she noticed that most of the occupants of the compound wore no uniform or standard dress. There was clothing typical of the Earth and Fire Kingdoms as well as the metropolis of Republic City. The walls were bare; no posters of propaganda or indications of a cultured society.
The room they brought her to could function as a throne room of sorts. More likely a meeting space. There was a dozen or so people waiting for her, but as soon as they entered, Lin knew who was in charge. A man with white hair and a long, braided beard stood in the center of the room. He was probably closer to Lin's mother's age than her own. He was covered in multicolored robes that would be out of style in any culture these days. He was making a statement that he didn't belong to any nation.
Her guards forced Lin to her knees in the middle of the room. There was a light murmur of voices from the outskirts of the room. The bearded man approached her with a smile and light voice. "I apologize for how long it took to bring us together."
"Can't say I cared to much for the escort." Speaking came with a rush of nausea and she swallowed away the thought. It was hard to keep kneeling when her body barely had the strength to hold itself up.
The man gave a chuckle and responded, "Bumpy ride? I'm sorry, but we had to get you out of the City. Didn't want any prying eyes."
"You're wasting your time. You can ask your cronies, I'm in no mood to talk."
"I knew you wouldn't give in easily. That's why we've gone to such lengths to get you out here. But no one else needs to die, Chief Beifong, not if you give us the information we seek." His pleasant smile didn't match his agenda, thought Lin. Then another thought struck her: no one else needs to die. The sick feeling returned, and she could feel the pain in her heart this time.
"No one else," she rasped. Her officers…how many had died that night? She honestly hadn't given much thought to any of them being dead. She had assumed the entire attack had been orchestrated to kidnap her. But her officers…she couldn't bear to think of them dead in her place.
"I assume they'll be having a grand funeral in the next few days. Such a tragedy…all those police officers. And the Chief of Police. Dead. No leads." This time she did feel like the air had been taken from her lungs. They thought she was dead. There was no one looking for her. Oh, spirits, Kya thought she was dead. The man knelt down in front of her as she tried to process what he told her. "How about we start with introductions. You can call me The Architect."
"Pass." Lin brought her eyes up to look at him directly. If she was in this alone, she wasn't going to play their games. Kya and Su and everyone else already thought she was dead. They weren't going to have to mourn her twice.
"I heard you could be difficult. And that you had problems with authority."
"Helps when you are the authority."
Pain-in-her-ass, as she decided to call him because The Architect was a ridiculously stupid name, reached out to hold her shoulder. Lin gritted her teeth at the contact. He gave his dazzling smile and said, "I believe that if you would hear what we have to say, you may want to help us."
"You've read up on me? Investigated my life?" asked Lin as she glared back at him.
"Of course," he responded easily.
"Name one thing I've ever done that would make you think I would be helpful."
Pain-in-her-ass let out a long sigh and stood up. He walked over to a few younger people and asked one of them for a baton that was hanging from around their waist. Lin took a deep breath and steeled herself for physical retaliation to her uncooperative responses. Pain-in-her-ass walked behind her and struck with more force than she had thought the old man had been capable of.
Dust and dirt gathered in her mouth as she fell face first into the floor. Lin's upper back stung from the strike, but she pulled her lips into a gritty smile. Torture she could handle; physical pain, she could deal with. Kya already thought she was dead. This son of a bitch didn't know who he was dealing with.
Strike after strike, Lin took the pain without sound. The drugs helped mute the lingering effects of the onslaught. At some point, someone else had taken over the abuse. Pain-in-her-ass finally knelt in front of her heaving and tired body. He rolled her onto her back so Lin was forced to stare up at him. This time, there was no eccentric smile. "You will tell me what I want to know. No one is coming to save you. We have the rest of your life."
Lin spat at him and the blood in her mouth left a mark on his cloak. Something collided with her skull in response and she welcomed the black once again.
Lin woke to small room and three silent captors. She didn't recognize them from her journey, so they must have already been at the compound. A waterbender had splashed cold water on her face to bring her round to consciousness. Then came the unpleasant feeling of the mash of liquid sustenance being forced down her throat.
Lin guessed that this was going to be the routine from now on. Torture, questions, force-feeding, and then drugs. A rough looking woman waited for another man to finish feeding her, she loaded a syringe with the serum keeping Lin docile. Lin closed her eyes, waiting for the injection. When it came, she let go of reality.
When she woke, she was met with the familiar prick of the syringe and then it was back to Pain-in-her-ass. This time, he didn't even bother to ask any questions. Just started in with a baton in a ruthless attempt to wear her down. Lin didn't bother to keep track of how long they tortured her for. It didn't matter at this point.
When they brought her back, Lin could barely move. She was restrained to a table again. Her body ached from the position and the beating she had just received. Lin estimated that she had a few broken bones, but it would take further investigation to figure out just how bad the damage was. As her captors prepared to feed and drug her again, Lin took a few deep breathes, trying to connect to the earth for a minute or two before they drugged her again.
That's when she felt the smallest hint of metal. Lin concentrated harder and finally found the source: the needle of the syringe. She almost smirked at their stupidity. The syringe they had used on the journey here had been some sort of synthetic or very pure metal alloy. This was the real deal. She couldn't bend it from the three meters of space that separated the needle and her, but she had a feeling that when it contacted her skin, she would be able to.
Lin calculated that she had less than a minute to come up with a plan. If she closed the needle, the liquid would jam in the syringe and they would certainly notice she didn't receive the injection. Using the needle to stab the woman administering the drugs wasn't the best option either. There were two other people in the room and at least one of them was a water bender. However, the metal needle was her one shot of escaping this place.
The woman brought the needle closer, aiming for the neck. Lin closed her eyes and concentrated. The connection of metal to skin made her feel alive and in the milliseconds before the woman began the injection, Lin pulled at the metal just above her skin, creating a small hole. The liquid was clear and at this angle, the drug would slip down her neck unnoticed.
Slowing her breathing, Lin let her body go limp as it would have if the injection had worked. The woman and the others didn't linger long. Lin laid as still as possible for several minutes to make sure no one would come back. Once she thought it was safe, she opened her eyes to assess the situation.
Step one would be to get out of the leather restraints. Step two would be figuring out how bad her injuries were. Step three would be exploring how hindered her bending was. Step one was proving to be much more difficult than Lin anticipated. Step two wasn't looking great. And step one would be a lot easier if step three had better results.
It ended up taking an hour for her to loosen her restraints enough to slip her wrists out. After three attempts to sit up without the room spinning, she was able to unhook her feet as well. Lin swung her legs off the table and knew the moment her feet made contact with the ground, she had made a mistake. Her knees hit the ground next and she barely had the focus to stretch out her arms to catch herself from face planting.
"Get it together, Chief," she grumbled to herself as she let the tremors of pain work themselves out of her body. On her hands and knees, she took several deep breaths. She had to do this. The only way to get back to Kya was to escape this mad house and she was on her own.
Her left knee was not cooperating. Every time she tried to push herself into a standing position, it gave out. Lin tried to use the table to pull herself up, but she couldn't lift her arms above her head without getting dizzy from the pain. Broken collarbone, probably, in addition to a concussion and a few broken ribs.
Lin wasn't sure how much time she had left. At some point they would be coming back to feed and inject her. Pain-in-her-ass may even make an appearance. She needed to get up. Closing her eyes, she tried to concentrate on the concrete beneath her. Her fingers dug into the hard surface, making small dents.
Not much, but something. Just like the needle, she could feel a connection. Another inhale, and with an exhale, she dug in deeper. Lin had never been a patient woman by nature, but over the years, she had learned that some things required patience, even if it was forced. So after a few deep breaths, she tried to move the concrete in the other direction.
After two tries, she had lifted the ground beneath her palms a few inches. Each time she reached out to the earth, she felt it respond a little stronger. Lin adjusted her weight to her right leg and as if doing a push up, launched herself into the air, the concrete under her hands following. Two narrow pillars stood on either side of her, but Lin was successfully standing on one leg.
The room wasn't large, so the door wasn't far away. It was wooden, but the latch was metal. For a group that supposedly had researched her, they hadn't prepared for a metal bending prisoner very well. Maybe they thought the drugs would be enough to suppress her. Or had they expected her to give up the location of Neo so easily that they wouldn't need to hold her for long.
Either way, Lin was capable of opening the door and possessed a small weapon once she dislodged the small piece of metal from the door. Now came the question of what waited for her on the other side of the door. Normally, she would use her seismic sense to map the area, but she only had one functional leg. However, she could probably get a feel for any guards that were just outside the door.
It took all her willpower not to scream in pain when she slammed her damaged leg into the ground, but Lin managed to send out a small wave. One guard stood outside her door. There was the risk that there were more people along the hallway, but at this point, Lin had nothing to lose. Silently, she moved the latch out of the lock position and the door started to open.
As a police officer, Lin chose to use nonlethal force as often as she could. But she knew she was in no position to fight the man on the other side of the door in hand to hand combat. So as the door opened, Lin pulled the metal latch out of the wood and imbedded it in the back of the guard's neck. He fell with a thud and Lin stumbled out into the hallway, using the wall to keep herself from falling.
Maybe luck was on her side; the hallway was empty. This left Lin with two options: go left or right. She had been unconscious when they brought her to this room, so she didn't have any idea where in the compound she was. Looking to her left, it appeared that the hallway she was currently in curved around the corner. At the end of a much longer distance to her right was a door.
The curve in the hallway indicated it led somewhere. The door was either an entry or exit to this part of the compound. The door was her best bet. The hallway probably led back to the main part of the compound including the main room she had been tortured in a couple of hours ago. The door was probably locked, which meant it let to somewhere she wasn't supposed to go.
It took her five minutes to shuffle down the hallway to the door. Her breathing was labored and every muscle was burning when she finally reached it. Lin slowly moved the lock and pushed the door open. She found herself in another long hallway. Gritting her teeth, she cursed her luck. She had gone right the first time, so this time she went left. The further she got down the hallway, she could hear echoing noises and voices from up ahead.
Slowly pushing open another door, she found out where the sounds were coming from. Lin found herself in a garage of sorts. Equipment, vehicles, and weaponry lined the large area. Crates and boxes lined the walls not too far away and she scurried awkwardly to get behind them. Peering out of her hiding spot, she was relieved to see that no one had seemed to notice her.
"Hey!" Someone had seen her. Lin cursed internally and tried to steady herself for a fight. She wasn't going to spend another day in this place. Whirling around she faced a slender young man who had raised his hands, fire beginning to spit from his fists. "The prisoner is escaping!"
Lin focused and pulled at the ground beneath a stack of crates behind him, distracting him enough to hobble away as he tried to avoid the falling debris. She didn't get far before a stream of water slammed into her side, sending her tumbling onto the ground. Just in time, Lin blocked the next stream with earth from the ground beside her. Every part of her was screaming in pain, but the adrenaline of a fight was beginning to set in.
"She's got nowhere to go!" snapped a woman. "She'll tire out and then you can catch her."
"Or we could have some fun," laughed another man.
Pushing herself halfway to her feet, Lin propelled herself forward, stumbling toward the sunlight streaming in the other side of the garage. She managed to throw a few stones in the direction of the gathering crowd, but another earthbender began easily redirecting her aim. She felt around for metal in the room, calling a long slender piece of a shelf to her. The metal rod made walking easier and she skillfully, but painfully, dodged a few errant rocks.
A burst of fire stopped her in her tracks and momentarily distracted her from another waterbender. Lin hit the ground hard. She didn't want to die like this. But then again, if Kya and Su already thought she was dead, maybe this was the only option. To die here, instead of giving them false hope of her survival, only to be killed later.
But if she died now, the Order would go after Izumi. Lin couldn't let that happen. She had dedicated her life to protecting people; and now she dedicated it to protecting spirits. Spitting blood onto the ground beneath her, Lin pushed herself up once more. Either she would escape and be able to see Kya again, or she was going to keep fighting to buy Izumi more time.
She shoved the rod into the ground and sprang up. Her knee gave out and she wavered. But she blinked through the sweat and kept pushing forward. Lin didn't even bother to attack the people around her now, she was completely defensive. But there were to many of them and by the time she reached the other end of the garage, she was completely surrounded.
"I see the White Lotus chose their protectors well." It was that damn Pain-In-Her-Ass again. His voice made her nauseated. "There are no options left, Chief Beifong."
Lin lost her balance trying to dodge another blast of fire and ended up on her back in the dirt. At least she could see the sun. The fresh air filled her lungs after the days spend in the compound. Breathing hard and trying not to cry out in pain at every heave of her lungs, Lin stared at the blue sky. A cloud moved through her line of sight.
Although, it was moving too quickly to be a cloud. Why was it moving to quickly? A red blur sped down from the cloud, joined soon by another. Two more red blurs fell towards her. As the red sped closer, Lin let out a manic laugh. The Order underestimated the levels that Kya, Su, and the rest of Lin's family would go to get her back. Believe her dead? Never.
Lin was still laughing as Korra's feet hit the ground in front of her.