The Usual Disclaimer Notice: Cowboy Bebop isn't mine, it belongs to Bandai/Sunrise. Damn!
Author's Note: Yes, there is a torture that involves goats, and no, and you probably don't want to know what it entails. Human beings have been quite inventive when it comes to hurting others. "Vip" is V.I.P. pronounced, it's a linguistic shift that I probably should have made clear earlier. In this chapter, Spike hangs around for a while. My beta reader, Ckrisz, wanted co-author credit for this chapter...heh! He's lucky that I mention him at all. ^___^ But just to make him happy: anyone who hasn't done so yet, go read and review his story "Dragon Head Dance." I like it anyway. (While y'all are doing that, I'll be busy typing the next chapter and waiting by my mailbox for the check)…
OTHER CHOICES (Part 9)
The Vip was toying with him, Spike thought in one of his more coherent moments of the night. All things considered, there weren't very many rational thoughts in his head other than 'Please, hurry Mao,' and 'Someone's betrayed me,' so this particular thought stood out: the Vip was toying with him. The first drop hadn't actually dislocated his shoulders; it was the second drop that had done that. The Vip had signed off soon after the third drop, the first in which weights were added to Spike's feet, saying something about goats; Spike hadn't really been listening at the time; he had been too busy biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from screaming again. Frankly, it wasn't working. 'Goats?' the thought skittered briefly through his mind, quickly forgotten, replaced by pain.
The hired men then pulled him only a foot or so above the floor, letting him hang for what seemed like hours; his dislocated shoulders now allowing his arms to rise straight above his head, the weights pulling him inexorably downward. Someone would jerk on the rope every once in a while, sending waves of agony down his arms, through his shoulders and back. It was strange, but Spike became acutely aware of every pain in his body: the rope burns on his wrists, the headache from clinching his teeth and nicotine withdrawal, his tongue and cheeks where he had bitten them, the bruises from being punched, his lungs from having to pant, his arms and shoulders…
"So, are we just supposed to sit here and watch him for the rest of the night?" someone groused. Spike gathered his pain-scattered wits, forcing himself to listen to his tormentors.
"It's what we're being paid to do," someone else, probably the leader, answered, the shrug obvious in his voice. "Besides, the boss didn't say anything against us having a little fun of our own with him," there was another jerk on the rope, causing Spike to groan in surprise. "After what the little bastard did to Hickman, he deserves whatever we can think of." Spike tried to laugh. It came out as an agonized, hoarse cough. "Oh, you think that's funny, do you, Stickboy?"
"You think you'll live to spend that money?" Spike managed to rasp with another laugh. Someone smacked him hard, forcing the rope to swing more, and Spike's laughter became a hiss of pain as the rope sent more misery down his arms.
"He may have a point," someone with a French accent said after as the rope came to a standstill. "We may know too much about Red Dragon politics now to be safe."
"So what do we do?" the original grousing guy whined. Spike could have told them that there really wasn't anything to do: they were already dead men, but he'd had enough of them yanking on the rope for a while and decided against it.
"We could take the money and run," said the fourth thug. "That Vip bastard will be too busy in Tharsis trying to take over the Red Dragon to actually be bothered with us." There seemed to be murmurs of agreement between the thugs. Spike quickly turned the giggle that tried to escape into a weak cough. He almost felt sorry for them; they were obviously less informed about who they were dealing with than he was if they thought getting away would be that easy.
"What about him?" Frenchy asked. Even blindfolded, Spike could feel four pairs of eyes bore into him.
"I say we kill him and dump his body in one of the minor canali," whiny guy said.
"No, I've got a better idea," the leader said. "He's supposed to be some sort of Dragon royalty, right? Why don't we just sell him to the Tigers? I'm sure that they can think of something to do with him. And I'm sure they'd pay a good price for him. Imagine being paid by both the Dragons and Tigers for the same guy." There was laughter and more murmurs of agreement, and Spike had to admit that, coming from them, it was a clever, but damn inconvenient, idea. They were going to fuck up his plans, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do to stop them in the condition he was in. He had a brief but satisfying fantasy of beating the shit out of all four of them; and then he was tempted to laugh at himself for indulging in wishful thinking, but it just hurt too much, so he didn't. Please hurry Mao, he thought again; and as if in answer to his prayer, there came a concussive explosion that shook the building, sending a shiver through the rope that made Spike gasp. The ever-present, but little noticed hum of electricity was silenced. Spike smiled at the sounds of consternation coming from his captors.
"What the hell? Wilhelm, Thomas, go see what that was," the leader barked. Spike could have told them; the strategy was obvious to him: divert, divide, and destroy. Divert the enemy's attention, divide his forces and destroy him. It seemed that the gods were listening to prayers after all.
"What if it's somebody coming to get him?" asked the whiny guy. Spike briefly wondered how the hell this guy got into any gang at all. The leader seemed to be wondering the same thing.
"Wilhelm, no one knows we're here, remember?" he asked with a voice that said his patience was growing thin. "A squirrel probably hit a transformer or something. But just to be on the safe side, get your ass out there and look around!" Spike heard the warehouse door opening and briefly felt the cold night air before the door closed again. Now the waiting game began. Spike listened to the two remaining men pacing the rapidly cooling room.
"Merde! Antonio, where the hell are they?" Frenchy asked after what seemed to be about 10 minutes, a slight note of hysteria in his voice. "It doesn't take that long to circle the building, they should be back by now. Do you think someone is trying to rescue him?"
"Calm down, Louis, if the Dragons were trying to rescue him, they would've burst in by now, don't you think? Thomas and Wilhelm probably just ran into a security guard or something." Amateurs, Spike mentally smirked. "I'll go look for them. Though if I'm not back in five minutes, kill him." The warehouse door opened and closed once again, leaving Spike alone with French Guy.
"It would be really stupid of you to kill me," Spike croaked as soon as the door was closed all the way, the sound of pain in his voice making him cringe.
"You're just trying to save your life. It's not going to work," Louis said, his accent making his contempt more noticeable.
"Of course, I'm trying to save my life," Spike gasped out, "but it doesn't change the fact that killing me is stupid." He stopped talking to catch his breath. "If you kill me, and someone is trying to rescue me, you've killed your only bargaining chip."
"Fermée la bouche!" Louis yelled in French, forgetting himself. "Shut the fuck up!" He shook the rope hard, causing Spike to nearly bite through his tongue. Blood, hot and salty, filled Spike's mouth, and he said nothing else. The door opened again, and Louis must not have liked what he saw, because Spike felt the cold muzzle of a gun against his temple. "Whoever the hell you are, stay back or he gets it!" That elicited a low chuckle from the vicinity of the door.
"So, Fluffy, we've been looking all over for you," came Vicious' river gravel voice, "and here we find you 'playing possum' with the local amateur hour." The gun against his temple trembled.
"Fluffy?" Ansari's raucous laugh echoed through the warehouse.
"That was his code name when he was younger," Vicious said. He was definitely going to pay for letting that tidbit of information out, Spike thought.
"I mean it! I'll kill him! Stay back!" Louis screamed.
"You seem to think we care, awwww how sweet. Go right ahead," Ansari said brightly, the laughter still in her voice. "You'll save us some ammunition." Spike sighed, and steeled himself for what came next. "No?" she asked as Louis balked at pulling the trigger. "Let me show you how it's done, then." The shot echoed through the largely empty warehouse, and the bullet ripped a hot path through Spike's already abused right shoulder, causing the rope to jerk violently once again. Spike screamed, as he let himself go limp, playing dead for all it was worth. Vicious' subtle emphasis on the code words 'playing possum,' had given Spike an unwelcome glimpse of what his rescuers intended. There was a legend that claimed a man could get away from a rampaging bear by playing dead; that playing dead could save your life. Opossums were the masters of this trick. Of course, he'd recently found out the hard way that sometimes it was impossible to play dead.
"Mon Dieu…" was the only thing that Louis had time to say before a second shot from a different gun took him.
"Vicious, cut him down. Lin, I need a quick assessment of his injuries. Roshi, go signal Julia," Ansari ordered. There was only the barest pause before the shning of something sharp and metallic leaving its sheath reached Spike's ears, but in that fraction of a second, Spike imagined that Vicious had given Ansari one of his narrow, evil looks, and that Ansari had returned his look with one just as cold. Spike smiled to himself; he knew his friends too well: Vicious hated taking orders from Ansari, but did so out of habit, because she had been the CO of his battalion on Titan. Vicious was his best friend, but Ansari was second in command of the cohort and that tension between the two of them made for an interesting group dynamic. Spike stopped smiling as he realized that maybe he didn't know anyone as well as he thought he did. Someone close to him had betrayed him. Did he dare trust anyone, even his closest friends, now?
"Wait a minute," Spike managed to croak as Vicious cut the rope. His arms flopped down behind his back as his feet hit the floor, causing him to swallow back a cry. Lin caught him and helped him to sit on the ground. "Weren't you all scattered?" Lin untied the blindfold, and Spike could just barely make out his three friends in the red emergency lights. "Ansari, I don't believe you shot at me in this light." Lin grinned as he started slowly waving an ultrasound scanner around him.
"Spike, I'm wounded to the heart," she laughed, pulling the unfortunate Louis to a corner of the warehouse. "You know I could've hit you in a totally dark room with my eyes closed. Don't you trust me?" Spike made a noncommittal sound in his throat as she laughed again.
"Mao called us back together for a special job two days ago," Vicious said, answering Spike's first question as he cut the bindings from Spike's wrists. "When you didn't show up, we figured that it involved you somehow." Spike took his first deep breath in hours as the blood flow returned to his hands in a painful rush of burning needles. His arms, however, refused the simple command to move. "So, do you want to tell us why you are hanging out in Utopia?"
"I'm investigating something," Spike mumbled around his swollen tongue. Vicious raised an eyebrow, but the screech of car brakes, and the warehouse door opening interrupted whatever he had been about to say. Julia backed into the room, dragging a man none too gently by his feet. Roshi followed her, carrying his own guy. They dumped the bodies in the corner with Louis, and Roshi went out to bring in the last guy. Julia came over and knelt between Lin and Vicious, a worried frown wrinkling her beautiful features, most of her gold hair hidden under a black cap.
"Are they dead?" Spike asked. Julia shook her head, reaching out to touch him. Spike flinched as she touched his arm. She drew her hand away as if scalded.
"We used the tranquilizer bullets," she said. "Mao said that we weren't to kill anyone." Spike nodded in understanding. The order made sense since they were operating covertly in Tiger territory. It seemed that Jet would be getting a bounty out of this after all. Lin finished his scan, and caught Ansari's eye.
"Both of his shoulders are dislocated, his right wrist is broken, various cuts and bruises, and a ligament in his left hip is torn from the weights," he said grimly, "and of course, a gunshot wound."
"That doesn't sound too bad, Lin. Why the long face?"
"The bruise inside his right elbow points to the fact that he's been drugged. If I had to guess, I'd say Anastazorphyline; and if that's true, we won't be able to get him back to Tharsis in the shape he's in."
"I think that's what he said, 'Anasta-something-line,' " Spike said as helpfully as he could. Lin, who was the cohort's authority on drugs, nodded, his expertise validated. The others looked confused.
"Anastazorphyline is very big on the BDSM scene; among other things, it allows the victim to feel extreme pain, but cuts off the brain's typical responses to that pain. Which is why Spike is awake at this moment. It's probably the only thing keeping him from going into shock. If it wore off while we were on our way back to Tharsis…"
"Shit, Lin, that's not what I wanted to hear." Ansari pursed her lips in thought. "I guess it's time for plan B, then. Julia, how far is the second farthest hospital within a fifty kilometer radius of this place?" Ansari asked.
"Forty-three point four kilometers south-south west," Julia said as Roshi came back in and dumped the last unconscious man in the corner. He walked over to the rest of them.
"Why the second farthest hospital?" Roshi asked.
"Because it is the last place that anyone trying to track us would look," Vicious answered before Ansari could, as he picked Spike up. "We should probably go now," he said, "someone is bound to notice that this place is off the grid soon." Ansari raised an eyebrow but said nothing as the others agreed.
***
Spike lay stretched out under Vicious' coat, on the third seat of the rented maglev car, looking at the ceiling. It was a good way to get motion sickness on top of everything else, he thought, closing his eyes. Roshi had long since given up trying to talk to him, since he was only giving one-word answers. He was trying to keep absolutely still; trying to escape the pain that any movement caused him. He wished that he could escape his thoughts as easily.
He was only halfway listening to Julia cursing slow drivers. In a small way, it felt good to know that certain things would always remain the same; like the fact that the only time Julia ever really raised her voice was to curse people in her way on the road. It was a running joke among them that Julia was the most likely to be involved in a car chase unrelated to work; she was bound to cut off the wrong person one day. "Geezer! Who the fuck told you to get in the fast lane in front of me?" she growled as she swerved the car into the next lane. But mostly Spike was locked in his own head, thinking thoughts that hurt him worse than his shoulders. 'Spike, Vicious knows what you are planning…. He knows you better than anyone," Julia had said in the cemetery. 'I told you once not to trust her; someone who could be manipulated into betraying the leader of her own cohort. She has no honor,' Vicious had said. What would he do if it had been one of them who betrayed him? The car swerved again.
"Jeezus mercy and Buddha, Julia! You almost ran over that girl!" Lin yelled, breaking into Spike's thoughts. He opened his eyes. "We should stop to see if she's all right."
"She just threw her shoe at us," Julia said, watching the rearview mirror. "She's fine. Anyway, no one told her to jog down the center of an expressway in the middle of the night, Lin. I didn't see any bumper on her ass. If we stopped, are you going to be the one to explain about Spike?"
"I think you've just earned us some bad karma," Lin mumbled. Julia snorted.
"The hospital is just up ahead, I'm sure if she's hurt, she'll have enough sense to crawl there."
"Extremely bad karma," Lin said, shaking his head. Roshi laughed, and Spike almost smirked, but he didn't. He wasn't exactly sure that he believed in karma or fate, but sometimes…
"As much as I hate to admit it, the IceWoman has a point, Lin," Vicious pointed out, using a nickname that he knew annoyed Julia. "We don't want to have to explain ourselves to more people than necessary."
"Lin, if you are really worried about it, we'll send someone back to see about her as soon as we get to the hospital, I promise," Ansari said soothingly, as the car turned off the main road.
Spike sighed and closed his eyes again, returning to his thoughts. 'No, Spike, I'm not misinformed;' the Vip had said, 'but I wouldn't be surprised if Mao hasn't told you yet. He does like to keep secrets…' Mao never told everything he knew, everyone knew that. It made no sense at all that he would be the betrayer. Maybe Annie, or Doohan? Spike's head hurt just thinking about it. Maybe the person hadn't meant to betray him; maybe it was inadvertent?
He had been rescued, as planned. Had Mao been able to trace the bounty and catch the traitorous elder? If so, then maybe the identity of his betrayer didn't really matter anymore. 'Don't you trust me?' Ansari had laughed earlier after she had shot him.
No, Ansari, Spike thought as the car stopped in front of the hospital, I don't trust anyone anymore.