Well, this place had definitely set her record for the fastest elevators in history. With her quick reflexes, all she had to say was, "You idiot," before doing a kick at him and getting him low enough to render him unconscious by location of the neck.
She stood there out of breath for a few seconds, bewildered at how quickly this whole thing was really unfolding. It was the strands of sound coming from the phone in her hand that shook her away. She never took the eyes off of the man.
"Jack," came her soft voice. "Jack, he tried to capture me,"
"What? Chase did?" he was quite confused about that.
Now the hot tears came. Her dad loved her enough to capture her violently. She nodded, forgetting for a second that that could only be interpreted as silence on the other end.
"Angela?" Now his voice was soft again. "I'll identify him for you. Text a picture to 555-5555 for me so I can confirm it's him. Go and check all of the rooms, and make sure you are alone in the apartment, and also, do whatever you need to for when he wakes up," he instructed in a leader-ly sort of way.
She slowly fished her old phone out of her bag, her hazel eyes still wide and wet at the unconscious body before her. She took a picture of him. Him, who left her and her mom. Him, who never thought to stop in and give a reason. Him, who thought that CTU was more important than his family.
Maybe it really does tear people apart…And so, the SIM card was put back in, the picture texted, the phone turned off, and the card removed once again. And she didn't talk to Jack. The silence, with his deep breathing held more comfort to her than actually talking. He said that he needed to do something for a minute, muttering an excuse, something to do with where he left his cell phone. They hung up, with a promise from him that the man right outside the door would be confirmed.
Suddenly, her surprise and sadness turned into anger. She couldn't look at him for another second. She grabbed him by the feet and flung him outside into the hallway, positioned as though in a deep sleep. She closed the door on him and secured the deadbolt, and began a search of the apartment.
Angela found that she was in a comfortable living room. It had a TV, a table, a couch…everything a normal living room should have. There was a remote for the TV and stereo system on the table, but other than that, nothing. Desperate for something, she felt in-between the couch cushions, but all she found were a couple of cinnamon candy wrappers, and what looked like an old, shriveled to the point of nothingness, grape. Men…
There was a doorway that led to a kitchen and dining area. Again, everything was completely…normal, and it didn't really look as though anyone had occupied the place. She had the fleeting impression that he ate and slept at the apartment, but never actually lived there. There was no real individuality about the place. Just an apartment. Dishes were loaded in the sink, towering towards the ceiling, and some toward the bottom were so moldy and smelly that it was a wonder he didn't just get it over with and load them into the dishwasher. In-between the two counters there was a pantry, of which was stacked high with potato chips, junk food, cereal, Ramen noodles, and some more of those cinnamon candies. On the counter there was a pile of opened mail, boring bills and reminders and such. She opened the door to what was apparently where he did his laundry, right behind the table.
"Right, so he does the laundry, but yet when it comes to the dishes, he just lets them dwell in the sink," she thought irritably.
He seemed to like t-shirts. She found jeans and went through the pockets, but was very disappointed to find only more cinnamon candy wrappers, and what looked like it was once a tissue.
She moved out of the kitchen, across the living room and into what looked like the only bedroom. There was a painting hung above the master bed of fire, splattered with red and orange, a little yellow, it was the only hint to Angela about his personality. He had very plain furniture, all of it light wood. The spread on his bed was a khaki-colored down blanket, and he put tons of pillows on for good measure.
Unbalanced as it seemed with such a big bed, there was only one nightstand, in which she found more of the cinnamon candies, and the only personal item of his yet: a picture of (Angela's heart skipped a beat) her mom holding her when she was very little. He was not in the picture…maybe he took it. They were in the park by her house, and her mother had a look that she'd never seen her wear. Her eyes, shone, her blonde hair seemed to blow happily in the breeze, and she had the first genuine smile she'd ever seen her mom wear. Oh, she was in love. Angela realized for the first time how much they all had missed out on so many happy times that Chase could've spent with them instead of at CTU.
In her sudden gratitude for her father, she sat down on the bed and smelled one of the pillows. She knew that smell. Sometimes it lingered in the air at home for split seconds at a time, and then it was gone, but it was always there, and she found it rather calming. It was his smell. A soft smile caressed her face. She carefully put the picture out on the nightstand so he could see it. Maybe then he could get a clue.
There was a desk with a laptop and a lot of jotted notes and more of those obsessive cinnamon candies scattered all over it. Looking in the drawers proved misleading, so she began to look at the notes. Some were passwords for CTU, others what looked to be usernames and passwords of different people that he'd probably needed at times, for whatever reasons.
She tried to boot the laptop up, but as it would take awhile, she began to prod some more in his room. She'd looked in the bathroom, but found this a waste of time. He barely owned more than to shave and brush his teeth, and maybe take a proper shower.
Angela was turning to the closet with the sliding doors as her phone rang.
"Hello?" she answered immediately.
"Angela," her grandfather's voice was on the other end. "That was not your dad,"
"Really?" A spurt of hope bubbled in the pit of her stomach. She sat down on the bed. "It's not?"
"No. I'm having Chloe investigate it right now." He seemed less depressed and more like he'd called her for a cheerful chat to see what she'd been doing lately.
She liked the sound of this. Sometimes, she would be over at one of her friend's houses and meet their grandparents, or they would talk on the phone to them, and their grandparents would want to know what they were doing in school and if they got in trouble... Finally she had the chance to be one of those kids, even though Jack hardly sounded like the sort to want to know how school had been going.
"That's great," Angela enthused.
She had gotten up to begin searching the closet. The color slowly seeped out of her happy face. Her breathing became hardly anything at all. The track of the sliding doors was trickling a slow stream of death-red blood.
"Jack," she breathed, barely audible.
She'd seen blood before. Blood was blood, a simple fact of life, but the fact that it was running in a stream, as though there was a whole lot, and the fact that it was coming out of the closet, as though the closet itself was bleeding, was quite repulsing to her.
"Yeah," he said. It seemed to be his favorite word. It was a good word, she decided, since you didn't have to face anything directly with it. It was just 'yeah'.
"Blood," she whispered. She could feel him tensing up.
With a surge of bravery that came from somewhere she didn't know, she took steps at a time towards the closet, each time her foot hit the ground felt like an hour gone by. She reached toward the door, expecting something to jump out at her at any minute, like at a haunted house of some sort, but nothing did. The trickle of blood just kept coming; her hand just kept moving closer to the door. She touched the cool surface, and slowly slid the door open.
Her eyes were closed. She didn't want to see what was being hidden in the closet.
She didn't want to know anymore, she felt sick. The wave of nausea passed as she collected her breath. Angela opened one hazel eye, and saw him. She didn't know how she knew, but she did. Perhaps it was the familiarity, or else the instinct only his blood daughter could have, either way, she knew the man splayed in the closet was him. It was the dad that she'd been waiting her whole life to see, to understand. The wound, to her great relief, was from a simple pocketknife, judging from the fact that the owner didn't bother to take it out. The wound was deep, but not something that couldn't be helped.
She opened her other eye and felt his pulse, just to make sure. Yes, she could feel the thud from his neck. Her first breath as a Girl with a Father escaped her in relief. She couldn't help him with him lying tucked away in a closet. Tenderly, she dragged him out from beneath a rack of low-hanging clothes.
Through the whole thing, she had become deaf at the noise coming from the cell phone.
Jack's deep, rugged voice had become something in another language to her. It took her a minute to translate.
"Found him," she told him so he would stop asking her so many questions and let her take care of her father. "In his own closet, pocket knife wound, alive, nothing serious, although unconscious for unknown reasons." She didn't feel like wasting her energy in complete sentences. He could understand, and that was all that seemed to matter at the moment.
Slowly, she pulled the knife out of his leg, careful to pull it at the exact angle that it was pushed, as not to inflict any damage to his leg.
She cleaned and bound his wound tightly and studied him carefully. He didn't have a hand, for some reason or another.
"Hand?" She questioned the phone.
"He had a…a type of crystalline virus bolted to him. I had to do it, he asked me to do it…" Jack vividly relived the moment in silence.
"Ah," She understood.
There was banging on the door of the apartment. Apparently someone had wakened up from his lovely nap. She closed the door to the bedroom and ignored it. She didn't really feel like dealing with him right at that moment.
"Jack, how can I…-" she began.
"Just wait, Angela, just wait," he soothed her.
Alright, well, I hope you liked that chapter…the main thing is I needed somewhere to stop, but there's a lot more where that came from…) Please R&R! (Have no idea what that means, but it seems to be that at least one of the R's is for review, so…)