Rose Red: Model 85001
Chapter 17
Hitomi sat in the dark on her aching bottom and convulsed. All her memories came back. They came back when she remembered Folken's voice. All the time she had been Allen's property, she had loved him. And he hadn't loved her back. He had just used her to do every little nit-picky pathetic chore he could think of and then eventually dangerous things too.
"Go with Folken to pick up Marlene."
"Bring me a drink."
"Give me a massage."
"Just do it! I'm too drunk!"
The worst one of all was, "Go with Folken to pick up the energists."
Folken had known about his father's work and known exactly where to find his prototypes. Exactly when she had stolen the energists? What had been going on in Van's life? Was his father still alive? Was his mother still alive? Hitomi did the math the best she could and figured out that she was here after Van's mother had died and around the time his father died. It was iffy exactly when. Once she worked that out, she realized that nothing she did could have caused either of his parents to be infected with M.T.N. Both of them already had it before she arrived on the scene. Realizing that helped her to calm down and she began to breath more normally.
But now she remembered Folken. If he wasn't the definition of a hollow man then she didn't know what was. He was like a zombie, moving to do his master's bidding with the lanky animation of a corpse. Hitomi always felt sorry for him and feared that one day, he would turn his considerable talents towards her, because he always did what he was told … and the outcome wouldn't be good.
That was how her memory was wiped. Folken had hypnotized her and when Hitomi remembered the events that transpired before it was done she trembled with fear until she lay scrunched up on the floor like an egg. She couldn't stop the memories from flooding her head.
During the months Allen owned her, she did everything he asked and when the time expired he turned her loose. Hitomi got an apartment in a posh part of town and lived quietly for a few months, but even though Allen had given her plenty of money, her life seemed empty and cold. Her father and brother were totally disgusted with her for selling herself and she had been disowned. He had even quit working for the Schezars and had moved away to an unknown location. After that, there was no family to go home to and wherever else she went, her reputation always preceded her. During those months the only contact she had from the outside world were from agencies like Sleeping Beauty Inc. or personal requests for her services from individual men. Hitomi couldn't stand the idea of accepting. The men thought she had to be a good lay if Allen had owned her and the agencies were just in it for their cut. After living like that for a while, it felt like there was no place in the world where she could go.
She called Allen.
When he wouldn't take her call, she shouldn't have been surprised, but she was. After the initial shock wore off, she tried to call him again with the same result. That didn't work either, so she contacted the secretary who took over for her when her time with Allen ended and tried to get a job working for him. Allen cut her off at the gate. He didn't want anything to do with her.
Hitomi hated herself as she rocked back and forth on the cement floor. She held her hand over her nose and tried to ignore the vomit a few feet away from her face. It was making her gag, but that matched perfectly with her memory of phoning Allen – begging him to answer her.
It was the ignorance she displayed next in front of Allen that made her stomach lurch painfully. Back then, she was so lonely. She missed life with him so much … even though he wasn't kind to her. She truly had nowhere else to go. In the end, she did the unthinkable. She threatened him. She followed him to his place in the Cies Islands. There she told him that if he didn't buy her again, she would go to the media and tell them all about the energists. Well, it wasn't exactly like that. She fired that bombshell at the secretary over the phone. Within two hours, she Allen agreed to meet her on a cliff face overlooking the water.
She remembered that moment vividly. The sky was orange and the wind was hot and full of dirt.
He was shaking his head, saying he couldn't give her what she wanted and in the very next second, he pushed her over the edge.
In those half seconds she had to think before she hit the water, she knew that he meant to kill her and as far as she knew she would die.
But she didn't die.
She came out of the water and there was Folken, running to her air and mumbling something about how it was a joke of Allen's.
"That's a lie!" Hitomi screeched. "That maniac was trying to kill me. I'm going to the reporters."
Hitomi remembered Folken putting his bony arm around her and saying, "Come into the house for a minute. I'm sure Allen wants to apologize to you. I'm sure you could use some more travelling money and … he's very sorry."
Hitomi didn't even suspect Folken of anything, but as soon as they were inside the house, he handcuffed her to bar in a shelving unit that was built into the wall. She had no hope of breaking out.
And lucky her! She got to hear all of their discussion before they disposed of her. Allen just wanted to kill her, while Folken insisted they go a different route.
"Think about it," Folken said persuasively. "You bought her for thirteen million dollars. Certainly she hasn't spent it. We should get her to transfer all that money to us. We need it and getting it from her is much faster than the usual way. We could take out her overdraft too, wipe her memory and sell her again."
Allen nodded in agreement. "I have a place we could dump her that won't ask us any questions and will give us a good price. My uncle has a great reputation with them for keeping his word. They'll even break their confidentiality clauses and tell us who buys her."
"Perfect."
"But can you really erase her memory?"
"I'm not a professional," Folken conceded. "But I can make it so that the hypnosis won't unravel without me – my voice."
"Do it!"
And that was how it happened. Allen pointed a gun to her head while she signed all her money over to him, took out loans, and finally wrote the note for herself to find after she woke up with her memory wiped. That was the note she found that told her that the time with Allen hadn't gone well and it was just better to move on without knowing what happened. He hadn't needed to point the gun at her. By that point, she already agreed with all that.
Now she forced herself to raise her head in Van's father's lab. Again, she read the sign on the wall: "Perfecting M.T.N. Energist technology one day at a time." She was such a ditz; she didn't even wonder what those words could mean when she ransacked this place under Allen's orders. After all this time, she had no idea what they did with those energists. She didn't know whether they had sold them, or used them themselves, or studied them. She had no idea.
The room was lined with shelving units and clear glass boxes. They were still relatively free of dust. This room must have been somewhat preserved in the time that it had sat dormant. Each box had a round reddish ball inside that looked like a cross between a gem stone and a human heart.
She hugged her legs and thought about the virus M.T.N. She had been here before and hadn't contracted it, but this time she felt as good as dead. That was why she couldn't bring herself to step away from the vomit on the floor. She was scared of moving, just in case she got too close to anything.
The virus attacked a person's body in strange patterns. Sometimes the first thing a person would lose would be their sight. On another person, their legs might become so jittery that they'd be unable to walk. Some people couldn't flex their hands. By the end of the disease's term, they'd have lost it all. She could just imagine herself lying in the local hospital that Van's mother had died in, with the nurses keeping Van at bay.
And she still owed him twenty thousand dollars! She moaned into the light over her head.
Van had no idea where she was.
The wind rose higher and Van decided to drive his truck into the hanger to keep the carpet from flying right out of the back. As he pulled in beside his helicopter, he saw that the floor panel that exposed Escaflowne was open. At first glance he didn't believe it. He had to get out of the cab and stare down into the hole before it became real to him. He had no idea why it could be open and for a split second, he was terrified that someone had taken his treasure away. He calmed down once he saw the chopper's sleek silver paint job, but that still left the question as to why it was open in the first place.
Putting his head down to the opening, he yelled, "Hitomi."
"Van!" he heard her yelp too far down for him to see. She sounded hysterical.
"Where are you?"
"I'm in your father's lab. You can't come down here. He was experimenting with the M.T.N. virus. If you come down here you might get it. You have to call the hospital and have the paramedics come get me out safely."
Van didn't know what the heck she was talking about and lowered himself down onto the level that Escaflowne was on. "Where are you?"
"Go away, Van. I don't want you to catch this!" she cried.
Van was still skeptical. It seemed too ridiculous to say that his dad had been doing experiments with M.T.N. … or was it?
Within half a minute of following her voice he found the hole in the floor that she had fallen through. Van hid his shock at seeing her there with throw-up splattered across the floor beside her. Instead, he remembered everything the nurses had told him about M.T.N. at the hospital and asked her, "Did you touch anything?"
"No," she said, looking up at him through watery eyes.
"Was anything spilled on the floor? Any test tubes or anything like that?"
"I don't think so," she said feeling the ground with her hands and then jumping up on her feet.
"Then you're fine. M.T.N. isn't air born. Besides," he said grabbing the trap door and showing her how it fit into the floor up above. "This door isn't air tight. If I was going to get it via whatever is down there, I would have got it already. Hang on. I'll get you out of there."
Van lowered another rope ladder. It was actually one that was part of Escaflowne's flight gear and hauled her up. He tried to hug her once she was on his level, but she evaded him.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I want to go to the hospital and get checked."
Van frowned. Then he took out his pocket watch and typed in a few buttons. "Do you have any itchy spots on your body – like in your knees? Does your body suddenly feel like your clothes are wearing you raw?"
"No," she answered, but then almost immediately, she began scratching her thigh. "Ack! Van, I'm ichy. What do I do?" she screamed.
Van scowled at her. "Wait a second," he said calmly. "Be honest. Did you start getting itchy after I mentioned it or were you itchy when you were down there?"
"I don't know," she bawled, scratching the back of her head. "Before, I guess."
He grabbed her by the shoulders and forced her to look in his eyes steadily. "Was it before, really?"
She feebly tried to push his hand away. "Don't touch me. You'll get it."
"Answer me. Was it before or not until I mentioned it? Take two deep breathes and then tell me."
Hitomi did as she was told. When she was calm she said, "I guess it wasn't until you mentioned it."
"Okay." He let go of her and looked at his pocket watch. "The next test is one where you test the ph balance of your saliva." He went and got a first aid kit off the wall. He was still fumbling with the clasp when Hitomi fell in a heap on the floor. "You shouldn't be fainting, even if you got it."
"I just had to sit down," she huffed, wiping sweaty tears off her cheeks with her hands.
Van extracted a little slip of plastic and put it in her open mouth. "Keep that in there for at least thirty seconds and then I'll read it for you." Van sat down on the floor next to her and let her look at his watch to measure the time.
Thirty seconds later, he pulled it out of her mouth and read it. "It's within the normal range. You're fine."
Then she fell in his lap and started crying even harder than before. "Van, I'm so sorry. I stole energists from your dad's lab when I worked for Allen. I'm sorry."
Van put a hand on her head and stroked her short hair. He listened to what she said, but he felt numb.
She said more things, but Van wasn't paying attention. His mind was a-jumble of everything he'd never been told. The puzzle pieces were sliding together to form a picture, but it was foggy until Hitomi brought him out of it by asking, "Van, how did your mom contract M.T.N.?"
Absently, he reached over and pulled the trap door shut. "I don't know," he said quietly. "If she somehow contracted it from the energists, then that makes the most sense." Then he shook his head like he was shaking off the problem. "Let's go into the house, Hitomi. The storm is picking up." He helped her to her feet and helped her up the rope ladder onto the main floor.
Hitomi started walking to the door by herself.
"Stop," Van said. He pressed the buttons to close the trap door. "Wait for me. We'll go together."
Author's Notes: Okay, my laptop is fixed now for all of you who wondered why I wasn't updating. I put it on my profile page, but some of you may not have seen it. My laptop got stomped on by someone cute and fuzzy and the screen broke and it took some time to get it fixed and I had nowhere to write. Drama. Drama. Drama. Hopefully, I'm back on course now. So, thanks to all who review. I like reviews. Really. And I'm sorry that this chapter isn't romantic. This is quite an important chapter and I couldn't do romance and foil the mystery in the same chapter when I've still got so much to write.