Chapter Two
Lisa awoke with a jerk and grimaced as a sharp pain shot through her head. She knew she should try to prevent herself from dozing as she most likely had a concussion - especially with the memory loss symptom.
She saw the shadow of someone pass the door and Lisa felt her breath hitch. The person kept walking. Lisa frantically resumed feeling the edges of the room - looking for a crack, a hole, a weapon - anything.
After what felt like hours, Lisa was ready to give up. The room couldn't have been bigger than the size of an average bedroom, but in the near pitch dark, it felt massive. She decided to stand, and although she was shaky at first, she found she felt stronger than she thought she would. She walked slowly to the door to assess. She felt for a doorknob but found nothing - it must lock from the outside. She pushed her body against it, feeling nothing budge. Solid steel.
"Great." She muttered under her breath. Suddenly, she heard a sound. A voice - a female voice. She was walking down the hall talking in even tones. Lisa was certain this voice was one she'd heard before.
Jane.
The memory of Jane rushed back. Jane worked for the embassy. Over the past few months of this deployment, Lisa had spent time with her consistently. She was quiet and small and efficient at her job. She was so quiet that Lisa often had no idea Jane was standing beside her. Lisa told her she needed to wear a bell and Jane had smiled shyly.
Jane's English was superior to any of the other workers at the embassy. Davis had noticed how she would slip in to work in the morning and slip out after everyone else like a ghost. It seemed like she never communicated with her coworkers and that the only person she really talked to was Davis herself. Lisa had written it off as debilitating shyness, and honestly, she hadn't minded because she liked the extra set of hands. Jane couldn't help with confidential business but Lisa liked picking her brain for information about the region and local crime organizations.
Was she okay? Lisa listened closer - it didn't sound like she was under duress. In fact, her voice sounded more self assured and steady than she'd ever heard it before. Lisa cursed the steel door and wished she could catch more than a few words.
"No access….Davis…why…Bravo…" Lisa picked up random words from the conversation but couldn't string them together. She blamed her head wound, but knew that was unfair because the information was truly lacking.
Lisa jumped as someone banged on the door.
"Move to the back corner. Put your hands in the air and put your back on the wall." The thick, Eastern European accent ordered rapidly.
Lisa did as she was told. She needed more information and if that meant playing along for the time being, she would do it.
The man slid a window open on the large steel door that Lisa hadn't noticed before and suddenly, the room was better lit. Two small eyes hiding under two very large eyebrows gazed into the room. Satisfied that Lisa had followed instructions, the door opened and light flooded in. A man and Jane stepped into the room. They didn't bother to shut the door and Lisa couldn't say that she terribly minded the insult.
Lisa looked wearily at her new guests. Jane appeared oddly at ease with this man with the large caterpillar eyebrows - not at all acting like someone who had been kidnapped.
"How long?" Lisa asked, pointedly ignoring the man and directing her question towards Jane. Jane's direct gaze did not waver as she answered Lisa, "The entire time."
Jane didn't try to justify her actions or provide explanation for her betrayal. None of this made sense to Lisa - she didn't know Jane well, just the few months during this deployment, but Lisa was ashamed to say she hadn't seen any of this coming. She had underestimated Jane just like they were underestimating Davis now.
Lisa's thoughts must have been easy to read; she never had been good at hiding her feelings on her face. Jane stepped forward again, five feet from Lisa. She clasped her hands in front of her and tilted her head, a soft look on her face.
"This is my brother, Sergei." She nodded to the man but he continued to stare at his hands, where he was now using a pocket knife to clean underneath his nails.
Lisa shook her head. She was so confused - what did her sketchy looking brother have to do with anything?
"Jane - you're telling me that you're from a family of mobsters? And your embassy wasn't aware?"
Jane tilted her head, a perplexed look upon her face. "Lisa, what was the last thing you remember?" Her brother impatiently shuffled from foot to foot and Jane glared at him, causing him to stop abruptly.
She must have given something away, Lisa thought. How else could she tell that Lisa was having trouble with her short term memory? Lisa stayed silent and Jane took another step forward.
"You don't remember anything from the past few days, do you?" Jane said quietly. Lisa continued to glare at her, not saying a word.
"What use is she to us if she does not remember the password?" Jane's companion said gruffly.
"Ensign Davis is privy to more information than I am, Sergei. I certainly haven't been provided the password or we wouldn't have needed to stage this entire ambush." She said sharply. Lisa noticed that he cowed slightly, and wondered about the dynamic of this family. Jane turned back to Lisa.
"Lisa, don't play stupid. Even if you did have some kind of memory loss from that tap on the head you experienced, you have to remember on some level how to access the systems."
Lisa stepped forward slowly, mildly impressed that Jane did not waver. In her peripheral, Sergei straightened as he watched her.
"Jane. Even if I could remember, which I can't, I would never give you access to ISR or our systems. You'd have to know that. The Navy is protected from situations like this - they would never entrust to me that magnitude of information."
For the first time, Jane looked unsure. "Your team stole the information from the compound in Kevslovia. You were supposed to decrypt it once they returned it in order to find the locations of the weapons. You were in charge of that Lisa, so you know the codes."
Lisa took another step forward as she clasped her hands together, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.
"Maybe pre-TBI Lisa knew it, but after you motherfuckers clocked me, you also rattled out that memory." Lisa said sweetly.
A chilling look passed over Jane's face, wiping it of any emotion.
She tilted her head and said coldly, "Lisa, I suggest you figure out a way to extract that memory or the only way your team will see you again is in pieces, shipped back in boxes." Her accent was stronger now, more clipped and throaty. Lisa was shocked at the Jekyll and Hyde change of someone she thought she knew.
Lisa thought of her team which Jane had just mentioned and laughed abruptly, catching Jane and her brother off guard.
"The funniest part of what you just said is mentioning my team. If you knew what you had gotten yourself into, you never would have been dumb enough to initiate this plan. But maybe you are dumb," She said, "Because if you were smart, you never would have needed me."
Lisa felt a sharp slap as Jane hit her. Lisa touched her lip, pulling her hand away with a smudge of blood on her fingertips. Lisa smiled and reared back, decking Jane in the right side of her face with as much force as she could muster. She'd have to thank Jason later for the boxing lessons. Jane fell immediately to the ground as Sergei lunged at Lisa.
Lisa was too fast - what she lacked in size or velocity she made up for in speed. She dodged Sergei as he lunged clumsily towards her, knife in his right hand. He was momentarily caught off guard as she leaped towards the door. She flew out and slammed the door shut, immediately dropping the steel bar to lock it. She looked from side to side, seeing a surprisingly empty hall and began to sprint as fast as she could to her left.
She didn't turn around as she heard the angry yelling and pounding on the door she had just shut. She needed to figure out her location immediately and find a way to flag down Bravo. She turned sharply and continued to sprint down an identical hallway. No windows anywhere with flickering industrial lights overhead reminded Lisa of an old medical facility.
She heard shouts and heavy footsteps behind her as she rounded another corner. She was feeling very winded and she knew that if she stopped, she would feel too dizzy to continue. She cursed her concussion and took another left. She hoped she was navigating the facility in a way that put her as far away from her dungeon as possible, but in reality she had no way of knowing. Without windows or discernible markers, she could have been doing circles. She took a right and was stunned as she finally reached something different.
"Stairs!" She muttered, clumsily taking them two at a time. She was now on the first floor of a building - no longer in the basement. Windows surrounded her. Luckily Lisa had spent countless hours reviewing ISR of this town before the mission. She saw abandoned buildings and a smokestack for a nuclear power plant - the only one in the small country. She looked ahead and began to run, hoping to find a door outside.
Suddenly three men rounded the corner up ahead, stopping Lisa in her tracks. She immediately began to back up and return the way she came but realized Jane and her brother were standing at the other end of the hallway, furious looks on their faces.
Lisa was trapped.
"Little Janie, you seemed to have underestimated this one here. She was able to fool you and Serg in no time at all." The man in the middle spoke, and Lisa judged his overall demeanor and authority in his voice as someone who was in charge. Lisa didn't respond, her mind working a mile a minute.
Lisa felt a sudden shock on the back of her neck, causing her to fall to her knees. Another jolt from the taser put Lisa on the floor. She stared up at Sergei who twirled the cattle prod in his hand.
"Little girl, we will be more careful this time." The last thing Lisa saw was Sergei smile before he jolted her into unconsciousness.