Nothing I Expected

Disclaimer: Manhattan productions are the sole owner and distributor of Totally Spies.

Disclaimer: Concept, ideas and OCs all belong to me, UID 140135

Chapter 3

"What do you mean you know where they are?" Alex asked. He looked at her for a second before glancing back to Sam, his eyes seemingly drawn to her hidden anger. He struggled to answer, she could see it his eyes, a fight of two storms.

"My family has a cottage in Scotland, near the Coigach peaks. It's been abandoned for the past four years. My Da situated his lab there. That's where we'll find them." Flabbergasted, the girls just stood frozen.

"Have ye got a jet in your WOOHP?"

SOMEWHERE IN THE AIR OVER SCOTLAND, 08:02 AM, THURSDAY 20 JULY

The ride to Scotland was silent. Gabriel had pointed out the route to the cottage on an aerial map and had then wrapped himself in his own silence. Sam, being the best pilot, had had no opportunity to coax more info from him, and Clover had, for once, acquiesced to her glare of silence.

What had got into him? She had only met him today, and she felt that already she could tell that this wasn't his normal behaviour. Morbid thoughts entered her mind. Was there something more than his anger to this story? She wondered…

And then they had arrived.

KING FAMILY COTTAGE, SCOTLAND, 08:27 AM, THURSDAY 20 JULY

"I'll go first this time." Sam looked at the determined, grim set of his face and barely nodded. The other two stayed behind her as Gabriel entered the cottage alone.

"Da! I'm here, just like ye wanted!" he called out. His voice was swallowed up by the silence. "Let ma go! Ye promised me that much!" there was a moment of stillness. The floor suddenly bucked beneath them and Sam heard Gabriel scream "Nooo!" She heard Clover and Alex scream behind her before someone grabbed her roughly around the middle and jerked her inside.

She tumbled to the floor, knocking her head against the wooden leg of a chair; through her dizziness she heard struggling and she cracked her eyelids open, seeing Gabriel holding off three men in armoured gear. She tried to get up but felt herself falling to the floor. The last thing she saw was Gabriel going down too, a solid hit to his temple. Then there were just the stars in the sky…

A man in his forties stepped out of the shadows, leading another man, chained, gagged and dressed in a woman's suit, with a gun to the head, towards the bodies of his son and friend.

"We got them, sir," one of the soldiers said, pointing to their prone figures. He nodded, a sombre smile on his lips. Without warning, he cracked the butt of the revolver across the bound man's head, toppling him soundlessly to the ground. Calmly, he put the gun back in his holster and nodded to the three live bodies.

"Gather them up. I want my son and the redhead in a separate cell from his mother," he told them as each man picked up a body and tossed them over their shoulder.

"Hughes," he called. The man so named turned from his comrades and came back to his leader.

"Yes sir?"

"A reversal is in order. Bring him to the lab."

"Yes sir." He turned to leave again but then heard his leader call him again.

"Sir?"

"I want him awake."

"I'll make sure of it, sir."

CELL, UNKNOWN TIME

Sam came to slowly, first hearing a muffled metallic clanging, and then light reached the back of her eyelids as she became conscious. Her head pounded from the knock on the chair. She opened her eyes just in time to see someone fall to the ground in defeat, hands still clinging to the bars of the cell door. She blinked hard, trying to dissipate the mist from her vision.

"Gabriel?" she whispered, her voice soft with the ache in her skull. The other captive's head rose and turned towards her. She could only make out the familiar sapphire-blue eyes. He was…afraid?

"Gabriel? What's wrong?" she asked, slowly pulling herself up in a sitting position against the flat wall. He sighed. It sounded so final. She watched as he scooted closer to her, the darkness around him fading very slightly as her eyes adjusted.

"Sam. Are ye alright?" he asked. She nodded, wincing as the movement caused the headache to spread down her neck. He reached out a hand, the back of his fingers touching her cheek. He pulled them away quickly, like he had been burned.

"My Da has changed my ma already. I dunnae know how badly she's been brainwashed, or if she even is. He's taken your friends, too. I dunnae what he'll do tae them," he told her in a low voice.

"What do you mean 'changed'?" he turned his body away from her, the light of his eyes taken away from the darkness surrounding them. She reached a hand out and gripped his shoulder. His back went ramrod straight before relaxing again.

"Sam, just listen, please? And then ye'll know."

"Okay," she whispered.

"My Da… he became sick, crazy, when I was nigh a wee child. I cannae even remember when it took him over. He was obsessed with the old ideals of the world. He started tae believe the world would be better with men back in control. My ma, she saw all this, but nay to such an extent it was. She divorced him when I was five, and that was when he disappeared. I was still young, I didnae understand the worry in her.

Because of her work, we moved around Europe quite a lot. I never lost my accent, quite tae her amazement." Sam grinned. Mothers were all so alike.

"When I was thirteen, we moved back tae Scotland. Back tae this very cottage. And then, and then… I dunnae want tae go on." He became silent. She felt the tension in his shoulder. She squeezed it to comfort him.

"Gabriel, you don't have to tell me anything if it hurts." He sighed.

"Sam? Do me a favour?" he pleaded quietly.

"What?"

"Close your eyes for a moment." She did, and there was a moment of complete stillness, like time had stopped for an instant.

And then his lips touched hers, caressing them like velvet across silk. She felt electricity running from them to her brain and across all her nerves. Her hands came up to touch his face, wanting more, but his hands gripped them before they reached their destination. He pressed harder against her lips, and then pulled away. Her heart thudded against her ribs.

"Keep your eyes closed till I finish, please." She let her hands be lowered by his.

"My Da had been developing a procedure tae let his twisted ideas enter the world. I was the one source of embarrassment in his life. He didnae want me as I was, so I became his first lab-rat.

He kidnapped me a week afore my fourteenth. He changed me halfway. I was what he wanted in physical form, but nigh mentally. My ma found me, but it was too late. She did all she could in Scotland, but had no knowledge as tae how tae change me back.

And now he's done it again." Her heart skipped a beat.

"Open your eyes." She did.

"And see the real me." He pulled her to the light shining through the bars and she swallowed a scream of despair.

To be continued…