Chapter 5

"I should have known you wouldn't do what you were told," an eerily familiar voice said from behind her.

Frankie turned away from the painting slowly and walked back to bed on quaking legs. Clutching the nightstand for support, she flicked on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in soft light. Her visitor stayed where he was in the doorway, shrouded in shadows.

"Who...," she started in a quavering voice, then stopped. She took a slow breath, let go of the table and stood up straight. She didn't have rules, per se, but she did have a few guiding principles. Never showing others your weakness was one of them.

"Who are you?" she asked in a more steady voice.

"Never show weakness," he chuckled softly.

Frankie's heart nearly stopped. How did he know what she was thinking?

She stepped away from the bed and approached him cautiously. When she was within arms' reach, she pushed the door open completely and peered into the gloom. He was taller than her by nearly a foot and she had to crane her neck to look up at his face in the dim light filtering in from outside.

"Who are you?"

"You know, you just don't want to say it," he answered cryptically.

She had enough of this game, though, and darted over to flip the light switch by the door, flooding the room with harsh fluorescent light. Squinting at the sudden brightness, she studied the face of the man in front of her.

His face was tanned by the sun, with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard covering the lower half. A scar stretched from his forehead, splitting his left eyebrow, skipping his eye, then continuing down his cheek to his jaw. Light green eyes watched her intently from under heavy brows. She would know those eyes anywhere, on any face.

"Rory?" she asked in disbelief, shaking her head. "This is impossible. I must be dreaming about you again."

He shook his head, "I'm not a dream, Frankie. I'm real."

Her brain refused to form coherent thoughts as she opened and closed her mouth several times, but nothing came out.

One corner of Rory's mouth quirked up, "this is a first. I don't think I've ever seen you speechless."

His voice was deeper than she remembered, with a rough edge to it, but it was still Rory's voice. With a squeal of delight, Frankie flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around him in a hug.

"Oh my God! It's really you." Tears pricked behind her eyelids and she didn't fight them as they escaped and trickled down her cheeks. "I thought you were dead." She buried her face in his chest, overwhelmed by emotions.

Rory stood stock still, as if in shock, then slowly raised his arms and returned her hug. He rested his chin on the top of her head and held her as she shook. Too soon, though, the relief of discovering him alive changed into something more familiar to Frankie.

Pushing away from him, she glared up through tear soaked lashes, "I thought you were dead," she ground out. She punched him in the chest then spun away from him to stalk across the room.

"Five years! You let me believe you were dead for five years," she accused.

Rory made no move towards her, he just stood still in the doorway and letting the tempest roll over him.

"You couldn't have found me? Sent me a letter or, hell, even a fucking post card? Something to let me know you were still alive? I've been mourning you all this time."

She collapsed into a chair and looked at him in anguish, "I attacked and tried to kill Him for what he did to you."

This statement made Rory move finally. He strode into the room and dropped down in front of Frankie and took her hands in his.

"I know," he looked her in the eyes. "He deserved it. I almost did die that day. I was buried under the rubble for hours waiting to die."

"I looked for you. I tried to find you, to reach you." She shut her eyes against the pain of the memory. "But they told me that it might be days before they could recover your body. They said the dogs couldn't find you, so you were gone."

"I wasn't," something cold and dark flickered in his eyes.

She swallowed, "I'm so sorry."

He abruptly stood and made a dismissive gesture with his hand, "it's over and in the past. It's time to move forward."

"Come," he held out a hand to her and smiled, whatever she thought she had seen in his expression gone, "Let me give you the tour."

What she had imagined outside her door was nothing like what greeted her as Rory led her from the room. Instead of the sterile beige-walled corridors of a hospital, she was greeted by rough concrete arching overhead and extending into the shadows in either direction. Another door was directly opposite the one they just exited and Frankie could see at least two other pairs in both directions. Only the area immediately around them was illuminated by lights recessed into the concrete at shoulder height.

Without a word, Rory turned right and started walking and she hurried after him.

"What is this place? It's not a hospital."

They walked by two sets of doors, the lights coming on as they neared each and the ones behind them dimming as they walked away, before Rory answered her question.

"This is the medical wing, but, no, this is not a hospital. It is a base of operations for the organization I work for."

Rounding a corner, another rough corridor stretched away from them. This one was brightly lit it's entire length, possibly because at least half a dozen people traversed it. Frankie could see that other corridors branched off from it, some of the people turning down them, others going through doors. One person, a middle-aged man wearing a white lab coat, hurried towards them.

"Commander," he dropped into stride beside Rory, ignoring Frankie, "I need your authorization to use the mass spectrometer. Dr. Munro's team has been monopolizing it for the last week and..."

He trailed off as Rory stopped and raised his hand, "Dr. DeGorge, you must have forgotten that the Dr. Monro's research is our priority at this time."

Dr. DeGorge stood up straighter and huffed, "Munro is a second rate hack and his research is based on dubious science at best. What my team and I are doing will revolutionize robotics for years to come."

Frankie watched the exchange with interest, Rory's body language suggested he was an authority figure and the doctor had called him 'commander'. Commander of what? Was Rory in the military? Neither of them had been fans of the armed forces when they were living together; both of them agreed that the vast amounts of money spent on the military could be put to far better use within the country.

Rory leaned closer to the doctor, dwarfing the smaller man, and lowered his voice, "perhaps you would like to take your complaint to Ms Jones in the D-wing?"

Though his voice held no threat that Frankie could discern, the doctor blanched and took a quick step backwards.

"No, Commander," he swallowed and adjusted the glasses resting on his nose, "that won't be necessary. I'm sure I can work with Dr. Munro and arrange to use the equipment when his team isn't using it."

Rory nodded, "good thinking, Doctor. Was there anything else I could do for you?"

"Um, no... No, Commander. My apologies for interrupting you this evening."

The doctor waiting for Rory to dismiss him before practically running down the corridor and disappearing down around a corner.

Rory turned back towards Frankie, "shall we continue?"

"Commander?"

He nodded his head briefly.

"Commander of what?"

He looked down at her, "you'll see in a moment."

"You know I don't like surprises, Rory."

Again with the half-hearted smile, "I know."

When he said nothing else, Frankie decided to bide her time. After all, it had been five years since they last spoke. Obviously, he had built a new life for himself since them. A new life where he was a commander in whatever this was. Frankie felt an unfamiliar pang of something. Regret? Jealousy? Maybe a little of both. She almost hated herself for going on with her life as if he had never existed. She had never let anyone into her life until Rory had come along. There had been something about the boy she unexpectedly found foraging in her favorite dumpster all those years ago. Something that held promise in his big green eyes as he looked up at her, expecting her to steal what tidbit he had just discovered and send him on his way to search some other dumpster. Instead, she took him under her wing and taught him the ways of the streets and, together, they had thrived.

She had not let anyone else into her life since his death. No, she reminded herself, since she left him to die.

Rory's hand pulled her to a stop and he looked down at her expectantly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't here that."

"This is a lot for you to take in, isn't it, Frankie?" His brown furrowed and his eyes held real concern.

She nodded, "I still can't get over how you are still alive. Can you at least tell me how that happened. The rescue team was sure you were, you know...,"

"Dead?" his lips compressed into a straight line. "Come."

With a grip on her arm, he pulled her into the room they had stopped in front of. Dropping her arm once the door shut behind them, he strode across to a large metal desk and took the chair behind it, beckoning her to take the chair across from him. The room was mostly bare, holding just the desk, four chairs including the ones they occupied, and a long table pushed up against the right wall. The entire left wall was covered by vertical blinds, whatever lay beyond it hidden from view.

"You aren't going to let it go until I tell you, are you?"

She shrugged a shoulder, "you know me."

"Yes, I do."

He looked over at the left wall, then at Frankie sitting in the chair with her feet tucked under her waiting for his explanation.

"Like I told you, I was trapped in the rubble for hours. I couldn't hear anything at all. I thought I had been abandoned."

You had, Frankie thought with a sick feeling in her gut.

"I had given up and about to drift off. Anything to end the pain. But worse than the pain was the cold. I was so cold, Frankie. Remember the winter when the city was hit with that blizzard and it got so fucking cold?"

She nodded. Of course she remember. They had huddled together in an abandoned car with only a few dirty blankets to ward off the cold. Rory had shivered so hard that he cracked one of his teeth. The next night she found an derelict building occupied by other homeless individuals she knew and they had spent the rest of the week waiting out the bitter cold huddled around a burning barrel.

"It was like that," he continued, "only you weren't there to keep my mind occupied."

She started to tell him she was sorry again, but he held up his hand to forestall her.

"Right as I was fading, I heard something. The rubble shifting. A clang of the scaffolding. I thought finally someone was there to rescue me. I started yelling again. My voice was raw from the cold and from yelling for help hours before, but I wasn't giving up after all. My will to live prevailed. Then I could hear voices calling to me, telling me they were coming."

He paused and looked down at his hands grasped together on the desk in front of him. "When the chunk of concrete over me was lifted, the light from their flashlights was like light from heaven. They pulled me from the wreckage and took me to a facility similar to this one. My face was pretty messed up and required surgery. Now I have this scar," he indicated his face.

"They took care of me until I was healed, then they made me one of them. I found out I was a natural for this kind of work, so I excelled."

He leaned back in his chair, looking pleased and confident, "now I'm in charge."

His explanation only answered some of Frankie's questions, and created even more. Her eyes darted back to the blinds on the left then back to Rory.

"Who are they? And what is this? Where the hell are we?"

He chuckled at the barrage of questions. "It's killing you, I know. Go ahead. Go look." He nodded at the blinds.

Frankie looked at him for a moment, trying to decide, but he was right. There was something in her that despised secrets. Uncurling from the chair, she pushed herself up and walked towards the wall of blinds. As she approached, Rory pushed a button on a panel mounted on his desk and the blinds pulled back, sliding out of her way.

She stopped in shock at the scene that spread out below her.

It was a vast underground hanger. More than two dozen people scurried about performing their duties: loading ammunition, working on engines, fueling up vehicles. Electric carts darted back and forth, carrying people and equipment. In neat rows down the middle were jets and helicopters of various sizes. Surrounding them were cars, trucks, vans, and motorcycles. In the far back of the hanger, Frankie could make out what looked like tanks.

Everyone of them had a red circle painted on the side with a black skull and six tentacles.

"Welcome to Hydra, Frankie," Rory said from behind her.