VANISHING ACT
"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." -Leonardo Da Vinci
Baltimore, MD (Elysium)
He's all alone now.
Mitch Hayes sits on the folding chair set up in between the two rooms the hostages are being kept in, holding on to the iPad that displays the cameras in split-screen that are in the hostage rooms. Irina Derevko's purple yoga mat remains unrolled to his left on the floor.
There is no sign of Arvin Sloane or Elena Derevko. After Irina left, so did they with little explanation.
Mitch showed back up to the former Charleston Restaurant in Baltimore early this morning, before even Irina knew, so he, Sloane, and Elena could enter together as a show of unity. After he was dismissed last night, he placed a call to Sloane to let him know of Irina's doings during the hostage process.
And he let Sloane know everything: Irina's yelling and pushing of him in the van, her anger at Mitch for following Sloane's orders and not hers, the great efforts she made to find dinner that the hostages requested, and the long chat she had with Julieta Romero last night.
Irina's hostility towards him and extreme care for the hostages is alarming to Mitch. Before the hostages were taken, Irina could be a little cantankerous to Mitch at times, but for the most part Irina was helpful and supportive.
The personality shift in Irina has been extreme the past 18 hours or so, and Mitch knows something is amiss with her. He just can't figure out Irina anymore, and that's why he enlisted Sloane's help.
"Excuse me?"
Mitch ignores the plea coming from Julieta Romero's room and goes back to pondering.
But not even Sloane nor Elena could really figure out Irina just a little while ago, either. She didn't give them a chance. Irina's defense was offense on Sloane's peculiar actions, and she even got Elena to soften her stance on her as well and cast the uncertain shadow that was on her back onto Sloane, something that Mitch wasn't expecting at all given the history of the Derevko sisters.
But the bottom line is this: Mitch knows there's something going on with Irina. But Irina's not letting anyone besides herself know what it is.
"EXCUSE ME!" BAM! BAM! BAM!
Julieta has started banging on the door now to get Mitch's attention. It's successful.
"What do you want, lady?"
"It's been almost two hours since Irina left! I'm hungry and I'm sure the kids are too!"
"They'll be fed and so will you! Now shut the hell up and leave me alone!"
"Don't yell at Julieta!"
That last yell came from the kids room. It was a young girl's voice, meaning that it was Maria Falk's. Mitch looks back at his iPad and sees Emilio and Maria have huddled at the door themselves.
Mitch turns to that door and yells "I'll yell at who I want to, you little brat!"
"Hey! Don't yell at Maria like that!"
Mitch twists his head right quickly at Julieta's door, the source of the last message. He's getting more and more angry now. "I told you to SHUT UP!" Mitch turns left at the kids door. "AND YOU SHUT UP TOO!"
"Make me!"
"Maria, don't make him angry!"
Mitch shoots up to his feet quickly. Maria was the one that said the first message, followed by a concerned Emilio Ortega telling her to not make Mitch angry.
The problem, though, is that Mitch has gone beyond angry. With Irina's antics and now the hostages getting pissy, Mitch has decided this whole situation sucks for him and he's had enough playing along with Irina's desire to not mistreat them. There was a time in his life when he would have more patience in situations like this. But Hell hasn't been kind to him, and what patience he brought with him over the portal from Hell has expired.
He walks over to the kids door and starts to unlock it, causing the kids inside to scream in fear.
But from the other room, he hears Julieta plead "If you want to take your frustrations out on someone, take it out on me! Leave the kids alone!"
Mitch stops with the kids' door and looks back over to Julieta's door. He storms over there and unlocks it and flings it open out of anger.
The door barely misses Julieta, who has jumped back and now is looking a little alarmed at the sight of an angry Mitch standing in the doorway.
Mitch, gnashing through his teeth, says "You listen to me, lady. It's 9 o'clock in the morning, I slept like shit last night, I'm also hungry like you and quite frankly, I'd also rather be elsewhere right now. But you need to shut the hell up, and the kids need to start being quiet as well! I'm not going to take any of your shit!"
Instead of cowering in fear like he hoped, Julieta instead forms a cocky smirk. "You sound like every other worthless excuse of a man before they would screw me. You don't scare me."
"Is that so? I overheard part of your conversation with Irina last night. I know you're just a worthless street whore."
"I'm not a whore anymore. I'm an orphan mother. Kids are my life now."
"No...no...you can paint yourself however you want, but the memories are still there. Your actions are still there. Your attitude...it's still there."
"My past life means nothing to me now. But my experiences did teach me to spot the difference between a hard man and a soft one."
"Are you questioning my libido now?"
"Would you like me to?"
"See? Once a whore, always a whore."
"And once a wimp, always a wimp."
Mitch doesn't respond to that part. Instead, he walks up to an alarmingly confident Julieta and gets in her face.
Julieta doesn't break her smirk, but she does contort her face in a defiant, angry scowl to go along with the smirk.
Mitch chuckles and says "I don't like hitting women, but I will if I have to."
"I'm counting on it."
"Bullshit."
"I've been hit enough. You can't hurt me."
"Don't tempt me."
"A hard man doesn't need tempting. That's why you're soft."
SLAP!
He did it. With his right hand, Mitch gives Julieta an open palmed slap to the face. Julieta staggers to the right a little, holds her face, and looks back up at Mitch...still angrily smirking.
A suddenly confident Mitch says "That's a warning shot. Don't instigate me again."
"Or what? You gonna throw me around? Beat me until I'm senseless? Like I said, you won't do anything to me that hasn't already been done before."
"You really don't want to know what I'll do to you if you keep this up."
"You couldn't go through with it if you wanted. You still take orders from a woman, and if Irina sees that I've been beaten, I'd hate to see what she'd do to you. Irina knows you're weak, that's why she's got you wrapped around her little finger."
"Shut up."
"No. I'm not. I know you can't teleport, you have to manually open my door. I know you don't have a gun, you gave yours to Irina after we were kidnapped. Oh yes, she's leading you along like a little puppy on a leash."
"SHUT UP!"
"Get over here and make me."
Mitch quickly walks over to Julieta and goes to grab her shoulders. But he was in for a surprise, because Julieta was counting on that.
The moment Mitch's hands touch skin, Julieta suddenly nails Mitch in the crotch with her right knee. Mitch doubles over in pain and he starts groaning in agony.
Julieta then takes the opportunity to nail Mitch in the back of his head with her elbow. Mitch faceplants to the floor with a thud. It doesn't knock him out, but her elbows have always been bony and she caught him pretty flush. Still, Julieta knows that Nadia, with all her training, would have had him seeing birds now.
The plan all along for Julieta was to provoke Mitch to get close to her. Maria helped out a little by keeping the yelling going, but she wasn't part of the plan. No, what Julieta wanted was to get Mitch's crotch close enough for her knee to disable him long enough so she can get to the other room and escape with the children. She could have tried to seduce him, but from what she could tell about him, it would be much easier to agitate him than arouse him.
Now, the next part of her courageous plan is staring her right in the face. She immediately unhooks the keys that were hooked on Mitch's belt loop on his jeans.
Julieta grabs the keys and makes for the door, yelling to the kids "GET TO THE DOOR, I'M GETTING US OUT OF HERE!"
She exits and runs over to the other hostage door. She frantically searches for a key that would open the door.
She finds it, but it's here where she makes a critical mistake.
Her hands are shaking out of excitement, and because of that, she drops the keys on the floor.
Julieta lets out a loud groan as she kneels over and scoops the keys back up. Now she's got to start from scratch again.
She frantically searches until she gets to the key again...
CLICK!
Julieta looks to her left, hearing the sound of a gun engaging and holding the keys in her frozen hand. She doesn't see Mitch standing just outside of her room's doorway. She only sees a gun barrel pointing at her instead. She can't even protest before it goes off.
POW!
Mitch fires a shot that goes right between Julieta's eyes. She lets out a life-ending groan and starts to sink. Blood splatters from the back of Julieta's head and her eyes start to roll to the back of her head. Her face goes lifeless as she drops back-first to the floor.
Mitch lowers the gun and observes what he just done. He just shot Julieta Romero dead. She had no idea he even had a gun.
"Julieta? JULIETA?" BANG! BANG! BANG!
The bangs and screams come from inside the room Emilio and Maria are being held in. The frightened screams come from kids who were expecting Julieta to come in and save them. But now, they probably sense that something horrible has just happened.
Julieta's body disappears after a few seconds, as all deceased bodies in Elysium do, leaving blood splattered on the door and frame and blood pooled on the floor from the back of Julieta's head. The blood would be a grim remnant of the crime that just took place.
"JULIETAAAA! JULIETAAAAAAAAA!"
Mitch focuses his attention to the screaming kids now. There's a major problem here. Julieta is dead. She's not coming back. The kids are freaking out now. They'll be a pain in the ass from here on out. He needs to solve this problem.
Mitch fishes the keys from one of Julieta's blood puddles and grabs the one that opens the kids room. He unlocks the door and steps in and faces two very frightened young children.
Mitch slowly walks towards the trembling kids, causing them to back up slowly. They both don't know what Mitch is going to do to them now, but it's probably going to be bad.
A frightened and somber Emilio asks "What did you to do Julieta?"
Mitch says nothing, just creepily keeps walking towards them while holding the sore part of the back of his head where Julieta cracked him with an elbow. He looks like he's trying to figure out just what he's going to do here.
Eventually, he backs them up all the way to the back wall and bathroom door. He stops when they do, gun still held in his right hand, and a very demented look on his face.
Now, Maria this time asks worriedly "Where's Julieta?"
Mitch lets out a demented chuckle and says "She had to go. You don't insult a man, hit him where you're not supposed to, and then disobey him further and expect to get away with it."
"You hurt her!"
"No, I killed her."
A now-tearful Emilio screams "NOOOOO! NOT JULIETA!"
But Maria doesn't buy it. "That's not true! You can't die, that's a fairy tale!"
Mitch laughs and says "Who the hell told you that?"
"My Mommy and Daddy!"
"Your Mommy and Daddy? Well, let me tell you a little something about Daddy. I HATE your daddy! I'm the one that taught him, I'm the one that trained him, I was the one that he looked up to when we worked together! But your daddy is such an asshole, he took the first opportunity he could to pass me up the first moment I made a mistake, and then had the audacity to make me his sidekick later on. HIS SIDEKICK! It was a slap in the face, watching him make mistakes I wouldn't have made! But that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes all the horrible things your daddy did."
"He's not a bad man! He's a good daddy!"
"Ha! Your dad was the most evil...the most wretched man in Mexico for a time. They say when he was spotted in a town for the first time, cartel members knew there would be death. The only question is which cartel would be targeted and how many cartel members would be slaughtered by him or his actions. Do you know how many people your daddy killed?"
"No one because it's not true!"
"Oh yes it is. Actually, I can't tell you how many people your daddy killed because I honestly lost count at around 50. Your dad ruined many lives, including destroying the lives of his own team with his stupidity. I'm sure you know Chris Cooper, Eddie Alvarez, Charlie O'Doyle, Jerome Thompson, Jacob Jackson, and Luke Winter."
"My uncles!"
"Your WHAT?"
"Those are my uncles!"
"Well your daddy killed your so-called uncles! He's why they're here! Your daddy is a murderer!"
"NO HE ISN'T!"
Mitch points the gun at Maria, which causes her to cower out of fear. But he has no intentions of shooting Maria yet. He's just toying with her.
He lowers the gun and says "What's the matter? I thought you couldn't die here?"
"You'll hurt me..."
"Maybe. Your father killed me with a knife, and he made it hurt for me. Gunshots...I hear you don't feel any pain before you die if you do it right. I'm sure those rules still apply here, where you can also die."
"You're lying!"
"Julieta had to die at some point to get here. Your little friend here had to die to get here. I had to die to get here. Your Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa, everyone you know and love...they all had to die! EVERYONE IN THIS PLACE HAD TO DIE AT SOME POINT! So guess what? YOU'RE DEAD, TOO!"
Maria starts crying and buries her head in Emilio's shoulder. She can't take it anymore. Her 5 year old mind can only handle so much truth and abuse. All she can muster is a meek "I don't understand..."
Mitch sighs and points the gun back at Maria's head. "I guess I won't get to see the face of Daddy's Little Girl when I kill her. Oh well, good enough for me."
Emilio's fear and sadness over Julieta is suddenly replaced with the desire to protect his best friend. Courage fills his body as he yells "Don't hurt her!"
Mitch keeps the gun pointed at Maria and says "I wouldn't if your orphan mother hadn't gone and done something stupid earlier."
Emilio reaches for the gun, but Mitch pulls it away and up in the air high enough so Emilio can't reach. Mitch gives Emilio a sick smile like he's enjoying being the big bully. He tries to casually shove Emilio away.
That's when Emilio gives him a HARD kick in his left shin, hard enough for Mitch to yell out "OWWW!"
But unlike Julieta, Emilio had no plans beyond the shin kick. Kids his and Maria's age can't teleport because they haven't been taught and probably lack the mental capacity to do such a thing in the first place. At least, that's what the experts say anyway since accidental teleportations among untaught children are almost non-existent.
An infuriated Mitch grabs Emilio by his shirt and throws him to the ground HARD. Emilio lands on his left arm and lets out a yelp as his arm scrapes on the concrete ground.
Maria, extremely worried for her friend, bends over Emilio and sees his forearm is scraped up pretty bad. Emilio's face is trembling, but he's not crying. No, he's decided that he wants to be strong for his best friend and hide the pain. He never really wept for Julieta a minute ago, but he did get teary-eyed. But now with his arm hurting, he may be trembling a bit, but he refuses to cry in front of Maria. Chivalry still exists even in the young.
Mitch clicks the gun into firing position and points it at Maria's head again. "Alright, no more heroism. It'll be my pleasure to kill the daughter of the man that destroyed my life. Time to die again, toots."
Maria looks up at the gun barrel and gets that feeling that people get when they realize their life has come to an end.
Memories flood her mind. Memories of all the good times she had growing up. All the times she played with her family or the orphans. All the wonderful meals that Tom and Nadia would cook for her. All the love that Tom and Nadia gave her. All the fun times, the happy times, the loving times. All the vacations she went.
She recalls one of those vacations right now as the seconds count down on her Elysium life...
Isle of Skye, Scotland (Elysium) (Flashback)
She immediately can't believe her eyes.
Tom, Nadia, and a 3 year old Maria appear inside the large underground cavern. And almost immediately, Maria is completely in awe of what she's seeing.
The tall cavern stretching as high as the eye can see. Columns of rock shooting up from a beautiful and calm blue lake, with some of the columns featuring gems and crystals that give off a bright and beautiful appearance.
It's the most amazing thing that Maria Falk has ever seen up to that point.
Maria wrestles her hand away from her father and runs towards the lake.
Nadia, holding a blanket in her left arm, thrusts out her right arm and tries to catch her, but to no avail. She then yells to Maria "Don't jump in the lake!"
Maria, giggling as she runs, says "I won't!" Her vocabulary isn't as developed as it is nowadays, but she still can speak pretty clearly for a girl her age. She's very intelligent...a trait that Tom swears she got from her mother.
What Maria didn't notice was all of the stand-up lights that were set up around them to light up the usually dark cavern. It's a different appearance from what the first person to step foot in the cavern in hundreds of years saw around four years ago.
Sydney Bristow was tasked with finding Tom Falk's secret weapon for completing his Project Nadia conquest: The Tonic, a drink that would give Tom immortality for 20 minutes, but would kill him in the end when his heart exploded from producing adrenaline that the drink triggered. She only had one large white halogen flashlight on her to see things up until she got to the small room The Tonic was hidden in. Now, it's completely illuminated thanks to the lights.
By the time of Maria's first visit to the cavern (that she can remember anyway), the Elysian Council had decided to make the cavern a safe room of sorts, should the unthinkable happen. The unthinkable would happen about a year later after this visit, when Arvin Sloane and the rest of The Nine invaded the council chambers.
But for Maria, none of that history or future matters. Right now, she wants to check out the lake in the present.
She stares into the clear blue water for a while, trying to find any fish. Discouraged, she asks in typical 3-year old grammar "Where the fish?"
Her question would be answered when a medium-sized fish jumped out of the water on the far end of the lake. Maria laughs and claps her hands out of excitement as the fish splashes back into the water.
Tom, who's helping Nadia set up the picnic area, also noticed the fish and says "Wow, I've never seen that happen before at this lake, have you?"
Nadia shakes her head and says "No! I knew there were fish there, but that's amazing!"
Maria runs away from the lake towards her parents and shouts "Did you see it? Did you see it?"
Tom and Nadia both laugh and Tom tells his daughter "That's what we were just talking about, yes! We've never seen fish jump out of that lake before!"
"Did the fish jump for me?"
Tom and Nadia both look at each other with a smile. Nadia then looks back at Maria and says "I think so! I guess we'll have to bring you here more often!"
Maria jumps up and down and happily shouts "Yay!"
She would remember this day for the rest of her life. The fish, the picnic, the cavern...it was her favorite memory, her day in the hidden cavern in Scotland.
Baltimore, MD (Elysium)
But back to the matter at hand, Maria is still looking down the gun barrel of a man she's convinced has gone insane.
Maria quickly hugs a wounded Emilio and closes her eyes. She wants to hold on to her friend one last time before the bad thing happens to her.
She thinks about that cavern some more. She'd really like to be there...with its tall walls, columns of rock, the gems and crystals, the clear blue water, the fish...she wants to be standing right on the edge of the water, waiting for a fish to jump out.
She wants to be there so bad...she thinks hard and tries to place herself there.
Her eyes close tighter, she clutches on to Emilio tighter, she imagines herself standing in the cavern...
POW!
Mitch's gun goes off...
...but it would hit nothing except the bathroom door. That's because there was nothing there for it to hit before it hit the door.
Maria and Emilio disappeared just as Mitch fired the gun.
Mitch notices immediately that his shot hit nothing. He drops the gun out of shock and shrieks out a disbelieving "WHAT?"
Just seconds ago, two fearful young children were huddled in front of him in full acceptance of their fate. And then they vanished...just like that.
Mitch knows that children can't teleport at their age. They couldn't have. It's impossible!
He hears the door open in the distance and the sound of footsteps running towards him. But he's frozen out of both shock and fear to do anything about it.
The kids teleported. Julieta is dead. And now, he surely was screwed.
The Dennys bags hit the ground, the cell phone is crammed into a jeans pocket, and Irina bolts for the door upon hearing the gunshot. She had just missed the first gunshot that felled Julieta, but she was most certainly there for the one that nearly killed little Maria.
She flings the door open and runs inside the restaurant. She sprints down the hallway and stops before Julieta's room. She looks in the open door and sees nothing there.
Then, Irina turns right to the kids door and sees blood all over the place near the doorway. Julieta's blood. But at this point, Irina doesn't know it's hers yet. For all she knows, it could be Mitch's or the kids' blood as well.
Something horrible has happened. She knows that whatever she discovers next will mean the complete and utter failure of what she had planned for the hostages.
Irina scrambles for the doorway and looks inside and sees Mitch staring at the ground with his back turned. No sign of the kids. No sign of Julieta. No sign of Sloane or Elena. Just Mitch and the blood at the door.
She yells out "Mitch, what happened?"
Mitch doesn't respond except for a small flinch when Irina yells at him.
Irina steps into the room and asks again "What happened here? Whose blood is this by the door?"
"They're gone..."
Irina stops in her tracks and observes Mitch in stunned silence. "Who's gone? All of them?"
Mitch doesn't immediately respond, but eventually squeaks out "All of them..."
Irina walks closer to Mitch and it's finally at that point when she discovers the dropped gun in front of Mitch. How did he get a gun? She didn't give it to him. In fact, she still has her gun tucked in the back of her jeans. The blood, the gun...it's starting to become a little less hazy as to what happened here. Mitch snapped.
Irina walks to Mitch's front left and looks at him staring at the ground almost catatonic.
She sternly asks "Mitch, I need you to tell me what happened. I need you to tell me right now."
Mitch looks at Irina briefly, and then goes back to staring at the ground.
Actually, he's not staring at the ground at all. Irina looks down at what Mitch is looking at and sees the hole a couple inches off the ground in the bathroom door. Irina immediately surmises that it was an errant shot of some sort from a gun...his mystery gun.
Finally, Mitch speaks. "The woman...Julieta...she provoked me."
"How did she provoke you?"
"I was sitting outside and the hostages started making a racket. They were upset and pestering me and I went to silence the kids and that's when Julieta told me to take out my frustrations on her."
"What the hell, Mitch!"
"I just wanted to put her in her place...but she attacked me."
"With what?"
"Her right knee into my crotch! She cracked me in the back of the head and tried to rescue the kids! That's when..."
Mitch stops at that point and looks at the gun on the ground.
Irina looks at the gun as well and asks "Whose gun is that?"
Mitch says nothing.
"WHOSE GUN IS THAT, MITCH?"
"I...can't say."
Suddenly, it becomes clear for Irina. Three guns were stolen from the weapons cache at the Elysian Council headquarters. Elena's gun is actually in Kelly Peyton's possession to protect herself from Francisco's petulant army in Campeche. Irina still has her gun. That leaves only one gun...
Sloane's gun.
Sloane gave Mitch his gun. Once again, Sloane called an audible without Irina's knowledge. He armed Mitch...but why? Did he really want to spite Irina that bad? Did he feel that Irina was getting too close to the hostages and decided to kill them instead? Was this part of some power play to curry favor from Mitch? Why on Earth would Sloane give an unstable man a gun? Maybe Sloane didn't see Mitch the way she does. Maybe Mitch twisted his arm. Maybe...who knows what the hell happened. Irina's going to find that one out later when she sees Sloane again. That's the only sure thing.
Irina turns back to Mitch and says "You shot Julieta."
"I did. She was about to escape."
"She wouldn't have been about to escape if you had just sat down and shut up! Where are the kids?"
"Gone."
"What do you mean 'gone'? Where did they go?"
"Teleported."
"What did you just say?"
"They teleported. I came in with a gun...Maria held on to Emilio...and teleported. I have no idea where they are now."
"That's impossible, kids her age can't teleport."
"It happened...why else is there a hole in the bathroom door? Why isn't there any blood around here?"
"You were going to kill them?"
"One hostage was dead...when Tom and Nadia saw that, they would have..."
Irina cups her free hand around Mitch's mouth and says "Don't say another damn word to me! You hear me? I don't want to hear you try to explain yourself because everything that will come out of your mouth will be total bullshit! I told you that your decision making abilities were revoked. And you still find a way to completely ruin this operation! I gave Julieta my word that she would live through this! I gave the kids my word that they would live through this!"
"So what? Why do you..."
Mitch shuts his mouth tight when Irina removes her hand from his mouth, pulls out her gun from the back of her jeans, and points it at his temple. "I said not another damn word. One more noun, verb, adjective, number, consonant, or vowel out of your mouth and I will kill you."
At this point, Mitch is really confused. He wants to protest and remind Irina that they're in this together. But at this point, it seems that Irina has completely turned on him over this. He realizes what he just did came as a result of a short fuse and perhaps momentary insanity, but he also realizes when Irina said she gave the hostages her word that maybe Irina does have a different agenda than Sloane. And now, she's pointing a gun at him like he's the enemy.
Irina continues. "You asked me a question yesterday that I've given some thought to. You asked me if you were the hostage here or if they were. I'm going to give you a chance to ask me that question again right now."
Mitch doesn't respond, but looks back at Irina fearfully.
Irina, in an eerily calm tone, says "I'm giving you permission to speak, as long as you ask the question that I've asked you to ask."
Mitch smacks his lips and timidly says "Am I the hostage here or are they?"
Irina quickly lowers her gun and points it at Mitch's left thigh.
POW!
Mitch howls in pain after the bullet plunges into his thigh and immediately hits the ground. He grabs his leg and squirms and screams as the piercing pain from the entrenched bullet starts to throb.
Irina casually walks over and picks Sloane's gun off the ground. When she stands up, she walks over to Mitch and blankly observes Mitch writhing in pain.
Then, she squats over Mitch and, still showing an eerie calm, says "Here's the answer to that question. Yes, you are my hostage now. Obviously, I can't say Julieta and the kids are the hostages because they're not here, are they? So that leaves one useless malcontent left. I don't know what all went down with you and Sloane, I don't know what his plans were with you and the hostages, but none of that matters now."
Irina points her gun at Mitch's right kneecap now. Mitch stops squirming and freezes, eeking out a very desperate and very pained "Please...please don't..."
Irina smirks at Mitch and says "Why shouldn't I? Actually, believe it or not, I do want you to eventually be able to walk again. That's why I shot you in the fleshy part of your leg. However, that's as far as my courtesy goes. I'm not going to treat you like I treated Julieta and the kids. I wasn't going to be cruel to them, but now I'll be cruel to you because you screwed me over. Your breakfast is sitting in the parking lot outside. But I'm not going to let you have any. It's going in the garbage. In fact, as long as you're my hostage, you're not going to eat. If you want a drink, drink out of the toilet, because I'm disabling the sink. If you want to sleep...well, you'll sleep alright."
At this point, Irina takes her gun and CRACKS it on the side of Mitch's skull. His body goes limp and his world goes dark as blood starts to trickle out of a gash on his scalp.
"No, as long as you're my hostage, I'm going to knock you out. When you wake up again, I'll knock you out again. And when you wake up after that, I'm going to knock you out once again. Your head's going to hurt an awful lot in the brief moments you'll be conscious. Consider this payback for completely ruining what I had planned."
Irina then scoots over closer to an unconscious Mitch and intently says "Sloane probably gave you a gun because he thought I had a different agenda than the rest of you. He was right. I do have a different agenda. I've had a different agenda all along. I've had a different agenda since I thought it up years ago when the far-fetched idea of escaping Hell was even brought up. Gordon, Francisco, Cesar, and that weasel Sark have all died to this point, and that's just fine by me. You're next on the list. For my agenda to work...all of you will have to die."
END OF CHAPTER