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Two days passed. She felt ill with worry, barely eating and tried to avoid people. She had her next therapy session scheduled for later that day and was apprehensive about what Olivia would say. She knocked at the office door, waiting to be let in. General Marsh walked up, his badges gleaming under the bright lights. "Ah Faeilr, a word please?" He unlocked the door to Olivia's office which had, to her surprise, been stripped of the personal effects. "Please, take a seat Faeilr." He gestured to the comfortable leather chair and nonplussed, she did so. "I am afraid I have some bad news, I was unsure of how to talk to you about it. I know this will come as a shock, but Olivia was found dead in her home this morning." Anna gaped at him. "It seems she was electrocuted due catastrophic to equipment failure, although the autopsy report cannot rule anything out yet. I am so sorry." Her vision tunnelled, her breath seemed to have stopped, time was moving like treacle, she was underwater, suffocating. "No, no no!"
Anna ran out of the room, ignoring General Marsh's feet pattering after her, she headed for the exit. She had to get out of the Spire. Now. Before it was too late!
Bam! She slammed into a burly figure positioned by the door leading to the nearest exist. She gasped, "you!" Blackburn looked grim, he had dark shadows under his eyes.
"Faeilr stop!" General Marsh's panicked shouts made her look back.
"It's alright General" Blackburn said, "I'll take it from here." He half dragged her round the corner, away from the General, towards his laboratory. Two of his soldiers were waiting, out of the General's line of sight. They received startled stares from other plebes but no one questioned it as she was marched through the Spire towards the laboratory. Tom's friend Vik stood to watch as Blackburn and two of his soldiers took her through. She started shouting, her brain was barely functioning. She was in panic mode, struggling but Blackburn had his soldiers tighten their hold. "She needs to be restrained, she is getting hysterical. I knew the General should have made provisions before telling her about the counsellor – she is unstable!" Blackburn causally acted everything out. He hit the right pitch, the correct tone of urgency needed to convince the soldiers she needed to be strapped down, her arms pinned. To ensure they wouldn't listen to any of her garbled words. She was after all, crazy.
The soldiers left the laboratory at Blackburn's command. "I'll talk to her, I've been there. Let me calm her down and tell General Marsh to come by later. I don't want to be disturbed, I know what this is like, this madness. You can't have people interrupting." Despite her protests, the soldiers left and Blackburn carefully locked the door. He turned to her, his mask slipping. "What did you do Faeilr?" his voice was almost deadpan but betrayed anger. "You told her everything. Everything! You signed her death warrant girl!" This was a nightmare, it had to be a nightmare. She struggled against the restraints. "Let me go! You murderer! You killed her!"
He looked down at her. He remained silent against her rants. "You can't do this! They'll know if you hurt me! Let me go! You killed her! You killed her!" But she wasn't going to quieten down or run out steam as he hoped. She would keep at it. Eventually he rolled his eyes and pushed his hand down on her mouth, silencing her. "You want to know how I know?" his quiet tone was dangerous. "I knew you couldn't be trusted. I knew it was risky to let you go to a counselling session, with the people who will prise any valued information from your mind. So I planted bugs and a video camera in her office. Well it was all fine and dandy until two days ago when you decided to spill the beans." Anna tried to bite him but his hand was too broad. "You just couldn't stay quiet could you girl? You couldn't keep that overly large mouth shut. Well I warned you what would happen. I'm afraid Olivia had a nasty accident with her toaster this morning. It was very easy, she had poor security. Any investigation will show a freak accident: a completely non-suspicious albeit rare and unpreventable event. Such a shame, she was about to file papers on that meeting too, papers that have now been burned. Please don't think anyone is going to come here and rescue you. You have been branded as mad, mentally ill and believe me, I know how people view so called 'crazies'. I'm sorry you didn't listen to me. I'm sorry that this is necessary." He looked at her, his eyes filled with something like regret as he lifted his keyboard to send a catastrophic virus to her processor.
But he was stopped by her firewall. It was good, more than good it was excellent. Anna wasn't stupid. She had spent months absorbing every nugget of information in programming and elsewhere and focussed much of her energy building a firewall good enough to withstand him. She'd guessed this day would come and had prepared. But she had not counted on what he did next. He bit his lip as it failed and reached to his draw for a metal ball. She didn't know what it was but could bet it was not good news. There was a flash like a grenade and Anna felt a sharp pain sear through her skull, shaking her body into a fit. She blacked out for a few moments and when she came to she noticed that Blackburn too seemed to have fallen over. He dusted himself off. Something was different, she was too shaken to put her finger on it but something was very wrong. "That machine just disabled your neural processor for up to four hours. And mine. I can't have you tipping anyone off via netsend. I couldn't rely on simply being able to trigger a neurological meltdown in your processor, so I kept this gadget, just in case. Nothing's ever easy." Anna cringed as he echoed the exact words he had uttered just before killing Heather.
"What did you plan to do?"" she sneered, her voice hard as ice but like fire in its devastation. "You have just taken me down here, in full view of everyone. If I suddenly turned up dead you would be under immediate investigation. Then they would put you under the census machine!" He furrowed his brow. "You really think I didn't think of that Anna? You think I hadn't prepared for this eventuality? That I hadn't exhausted every possible option when I found out what you had said to the counsellor two days ago?" Her hope was fading, replaced by desperation. "I had you declared mentally unfit two days ago. I suggested to General Marsh that nothing should be said yet, that it would be best to let Olivia talk to you before an intervention could be carried out. It is not without the bounds of possibility that some of your instability has come as a result of a fault in your processor, which is what the autopsy would have shown had my programme penetrated your firewall. I am impressed by the way, did you have help? I was unaware you could be this competent at programming."
"So you were going to kill me? What a surprise. And now what? Now. What?" she tugged at the restraints and tried to kick out at him but he just sidestepped the blow and came closer towards her head. "Now I have to go to Plan B. Without a functioning processor this will be more difficult. An electrocution won't do it, not with the counsellor gone the same way. The best thing then would be an anonymous attack from a machine, inexplicable, but it would be far too suspicious and there isn't time to reprogramme any drones." To her surprise he undid her straps, freeing her. She leapt to her feet, knowing it would be pointless to try the door and backed away from him. "So. That just leaves self-defence. Crude but effective." She didn't understand, what on Earth did he mean? He was going to kill her and pretend it was self-defence? She circled him, keeping two metres away. "They won't buy it Blackburn! You are a solider, there are a million ways to incapacitate someone without killing them." He barked a harsh laugh.
"Oh but in this case Anna I'm afraid I had no choice!" He pulled out a small device from his pocket. "You had a trigger hidden on you, one that would blow out all neuroprocessers in the building! No one could guess your reasons but you have been very secretive lately, very odd. You'd been working on it for some time in secret and the news of the counseller's death meant you decided to use it!" He held out a small piece of equipment. "Plan B. I had to stop you, I didn't have time to try a non-lethal method. And they won't notice, you were not so useful to them anyway. They can pass on your processor to a new recruit after you are dead. I am too valuable to the Spire to warrant a full investigation. It's over Miss Faeilr." With that he launched himself at her, tackling her to the ground. She tried to kick him but he shoved his legs between her's so she couldn't. With one hand he pinned her arms together above her head and with the other he reached for her throat. He squeezed slowly but hard so as not to make it look like he'd purposefully killed her, more like an accident having gone too far.
Anna's vision blackened at the edges, spots appearing in front of her eyes as her air was cut off. She tried to tighten her muscles in her neck to stop her windpipe being crushed but it wasn't terribly effective. She was struggling with all her might but getting weaker with every passing second, staring into those terrible black eyes. In her half addled mind she decided to pretend to be unconscious hoping he would let go, but hard as that was, he was aiming for death, a more permanent state, so he brushed his fingers round her neck slightly, feeling for a pulse. As that ploy had not worked Anna went back to fighting, trying to wriggle out from under him, to head-butt him, anything. This was it. It was happening. She would not survive this. His face screwed up in exertion, his eyes looking pitilessly down at her was the last thing she saw.
She awoke, to her utter amazement, to someone kissing her. Not kissing, pressing their lips to her and breathing hot air into her. Groggily she opened her eyes and found to her astonishment that it was Blackburn. Her head felt like it had been split in two and her throat felt so strangled she was sure there would be hand-like bruises there. She took a shuddering breath, coughing and sat up, as he got off her. Distantly she heard him say "see, she's alive" to someone unknown but as her vision cleared she could see more. The remains of their fight were evident but it seemed there had been more destruction than she had realised. A chair was broken as if it had been bashed on someone's back, she didn't remember doing that. Then she realised the door was unlocked and slightly ajar, and Tom Raines stood, panting in the corner, hatred in his eyes. His knuckles were smeared with blood and he looked like he'd come off worse in the fight although Blackburn did have a tear in his otherwise immaculate uniform and a cut on his face where Tom's fist had struck him. "You alright Anna?" Tom called, not taking his eyes off Blackburn for a second.
She coughed. "Yeah, yeah I think so. What's happening, what's going on?"
Her mind was fuzzy and she wasn't thinking clearly but she obeyed as Blackburn reached for a stool and told her to sit. Tom started to speak. "I knew there was a lot of weird stuff going on between you two. When Vik mentioned you'd been taken down by soldiers to his lab I knew something was going down." He spat. "I didn't realise he was gonna try and kill you! I bypassed the lock on the door and got him off you, told him if he didn't resuscitate you I was gonna leave right now, go to Vengerov and send a message via netsend telling everyone what he'd done. He can't stop me, his processor's disabled." Anna was utterly confused. Why hadn't Blackburn just got him too? She asked "how did you bypass the locks?" Tom and Blackburn exchanged significant, hostile glances and Tom continued. "So you see, you touch her, you do anything to her and I am outta here Blackburn. And don't you dare try and erase this from my memory! You can't touch me now or I'll netsend for help and as soon as I'm out of this room I'm going to plant a memory reversal virus into a file you'll never find, and it will automatically download into my processor unless I type in a code. And you know I could do it too!" Anna had never seen the boy look so fierce, so strong. He said every word as if he meant it, telling them it was no bluff.
Blackburn rubbed his hand over his face, calculating. After a long moment he came close to Anna who darted back, but he caught her waist and tilted so she was in front of him. "Alright Raines, you got me. But just remember, you do as I say or I will gut her bow to stern." The two men glared at each other. Then he seemed to remember she was in fact present. He turned to her. "And you! You just keep it at the forefront of your mind that if I ever suspect anything of you again, I'll go through with it. He won't be able to save you if that happens." Anna gulped and nodded. Horror and relief were simultaneously flooding her body. She had survived, she was okay. It was incredible, a possibility that could not have been entertained an hour ago. On shaking legs, she made her way to the door. Tom went to support her but Blackburn called him back and they began talking in low voices, hostility crackling in the air between them. It wasn't until later when she had collapsed on her bunk that she realised what her situation was. Before it had been her actions that could get her killed, now it was Tom Raines'. She was a hostage.