Note: Oh dear...

This was fun to write, in a sort of horrible way.

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Two Years Prior

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Once he had returned to the Library, it hadn't taken Finch long at all to crack into the security cameras at Landis. Several minutes after establishing contact with the digital CCTV system, he had identified Tara Dodson leading Elizabeth Ruben through a service corridor towards the loading docks at the back of the building.

But the rooftop camera covering the rear exterior of the building had been disconnected early that morning.

"Damnit," said Reese.

Finch said, "She must have taken another vehicle; her GPS tracker hasn't moved. I'll check the parking lot camera footage," Finch raised four more windows on top of the others. He played back the video at double speed, focusing on cars passing in and out of the parking lot. The seconds ticked by on the timestamp in the lower-right hand corner of each feed.

"Wait!" Reese tapped the spacebar to pause the videos. He pointed at a white van leaving the parking lot. "Fandango Transportation. Isn't that the name of the company Dodson's parents own?"

"This can't be a coincidence, Mr. Reese."

"Can you get a license plate?"

"I'll try. I'll also see if the company runs a GPS system I can hack. We may be able to track her that way, if we're lucky."

"I hope so. We need to know where she's taking Elizabeth."

Finch's fingers flew over the keyboard like a pianist playing at top speed.

"None of these cameras have sufficient resolution for a license plate," he said, "but one of the surrounding businesses might have a better surveillance system. I'll have to hack them one at a time."

"I'll call Carter, have her check the traffic cameras near there. And get me an address for Fandango Transportation. I think it's time Detective Stills paid them a visit."

#####

For an eternity, I floated in a dark, dark void. Fragmented memories and scattered thoughts darted in and out of the nothingness like fireflies in the night; there one moment, gone the next. Disjointed, nonsensical thoughts: why didn't robins swim? How come Mama had bought me white roller skates instead of blue ones? Batman should be bulletproof and explosion-proof. Aliens were real, they were just invisible. How come we couldn't see farts? You could breath fire, if only you really believed it. Bobby Tam played guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Tires tasted like lemons. Why did my head hurt so much? What had I been doing down in the crypts?

I moaned. Tried opening my eyes. It took a few attempts. They fluttered open, but all I could see was a mottled, fuzzy patchwork of light and dark. I raised my hands to rub my eyes and heard something go clink. My hands stopped moving midway to my face.

Blinking, I stared down at my blurry hands and noticed they were handcuffed together. I didn't know why. Had I broken the law? Maybe I'd been drinking. That must've been it. I'd been arrested for driving under the influence, or maybe just partying too hard.

But you don't drink, whispered a tiny voice in the back of my head. And the last time you went to a party was when your little brother turned fourteen.

Well, it obviously was a misunderstanding. A breathalyzer test would clear all that up, wouldn't it?

Right about then, that's when I remembered what had happened at Landis. The shock was like ice water down my back. Blinking madly to clear my vision, I stared down at my hands. Yep, those were handcuffs. I yanked on them, but they were locked tight and chained to my waist for good measure.

I tried to stand and found that I was bound to a heavy chair with thick, scratchy nylon rope. My shoulders, waist, and chest were tied to the chair back. My legs had been spread; my knees and ankles were each bound to one of the chair legs. I struggled, but whoever had tied the knots had done so very well. I could barely move. Only my hands had any freedom, and they were chained to my waist, allowing maybe eight inches of movement.

Don't panic, I thought, panicking. Whatever you do, don't panic.

Gasping, I looked around my prison. It was a storage room, I guessed, lit by a pair of dusty florescent light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. It was cold. There was a single metal door. Cinder block walls, plastic floor.

Plastic? That was ominous. Why is the floor covered in black plastic?

The metal shelves were empty. There was a small crate about a foot away from my left knee. The only other object of interest was a camera on a tripod. A little antenna stuck out of the back and a red light glowed on the front, just above the lens.

Someone was watching.

"H-hello?" I said, swallowing back fear. Despite my best efforts, my voice wavered and shook. "Tara? What's going on?"

There was no response. I peered into the camera lens.

"Tara? Are you there?"

Nothing, again. I was alone. And tied up. And about ten seconds away from a serious panic attack.

Come on, Elizabeth, stay calm. Losing it isn't going to help you. Just stay calm. What would Mama do here?

That one was easy: she'd try to escape.

Gritting my teeth, I pulled on the cuffs, trying to get my hands in a position where I could reach any of the knots that bound my knees to the chair. The chain between the cuffs and my waist was too short. No matter what angle I tried, there was no way I could reach any of the ropes. Could I tip the chair, I wondered? Rocking back and forth, I figured I probably could—but how would that help? It felt solid. It probably wouldn't break. It wouldn't do any good. I strained my legs, trying to break the ropes or loosen the knots, but they held solid. I was well and truly stuck. There was nothing I could do to free myself. I kept struggling anyhow, even though I knew it was pointless.

It beat sitting still.

#####

Reese sat down next to Finch at the Library computer desk, crossing his legs. Finch gave no indication that he was aware of his presence.

"Harold," said Reese, "you should get some rest."

"Mr. Reese, we still don't have any leads on the whereabouts of Elizabeth Ruben."

"Carter put an APB out on the van. We have its license plate. We'll find it again. Look, Finch, you've been sitting in this chair for thirteen hours."

"If only Fandango Transportation had invested in a better GPS system for its vehicle fleet..." Finch muttered. He peered at a grainy traffic camera feed, a single frame recorded nine hours ago. "Where did Tara Dodson go? The van travels east, passes this rural gas station, and then...vanishes."

"A back road, maybe? What's out there?"

"Not much. An industrial park, mostly abandoned."

"Anything owned by Fandango?"

"No. The nearest property owned by the business is thirty miles away."

"I'll visit the park first thing in the morning. You should really get some rest, Finch. I know you feel guilty about Elizabeth, but—"

"Mr. Reese, Elizabeth Ruben's life is in danger. We must find her before it's too late." Like a petulant little child, he added, "I can sleep here at my desk, if need be."

Reese considered this. He walked away and returned a minute later with one of Finch's laptops. He set it on the desk with care, booted the laptop, and loaded up a map of the area around the gas station.

"Go sleep, Harold," he said. "I'll watch the farm. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day..."

"Technically, it's today, Mr. Reese." But Finch acquiesced. He stood—not without a wince of pain, Reese noticed—and shuffled off.

#####

I was exhausted. My muscles trembled. Despite my squirming, the ropes that held me to the chair were just as tight as they had been when I had regained consciousness. After awhile—a half-hour, maybe less—I gave up. I wasn't going anywhere. Much as I wanted to strain against the ropes in defiance, I realized that there was no point in wasting what little energy I had.

My legs and ankles were chafed from the loops of rough rope. My butt was sore. My ear itched. My wrists tingled. And I couldn't do anything about any of it.

Couldn't do anything about anything, really.

The metal door handle clicked, turned. I looked up just in time to see Tara Dodson walk into the room. Her suit and heels had been replaced by faded running sneakers, gray sweat pants, and a black sweater. There were deep, deep circles beneath her eyes and her hair looked more like a bird's nest than anything else. She held a large plastic box. I struggled to see what was inside, but at this distance, she could've had a bunch of bunnies in there and I wouldn't have been able to tell.

"What the hell, Tara?" I said.

"Sorry about the wait," she said. She set the box on the floor and sat herself down on the crate in front of me. "Kinda hard to get the dosage right. I meant to knock you out for an hour or two. It figures you'd wake up at one in the morning, you moron."

"What do you want, Tara?" I just couldn't get rid of that tremble in my voice.

"Right to the point. See, that's the problem with you, Lizzy. You're too focused. You see a problem, you get all intense trying to figure it out. You never stop to think about any other solution, or what you're going to do once you find one."

"Just tell me what you want."

"You know, I'm sick of you being a bossy little entitled shit. You get away with so much crap at Landis, and you're not even a full-time employee. You need to show a little respect."

"Tell me what you want, please?"

She sighed. "Mmm, better. Well, I have to tell you eventually. Fine. I want your algorithm."

I blinked, confused. "My—algorithm? What algorithm? Oww!"

The blow came out of nowhere. Tara's fist struck my cheek.

"The elliptic-curve encryption algorithm you've been working on for the past six months," Tara said, raising her voice to a harsh shout. Spittle landed on my neck.

"You tazed me, drugged me, and tied me up just so you could get an algorithm?"

I saw her fist coming this time, but with my hands bound, I had no way to defend my face. A few seconds later, Tara reached into the plastic box and pulled out a hard-cover notebook and a pen. She balanced the notebook on my thigh and set the pen on top of it.

"It's in your head. I know it's in your head. You're going to write it down."

I glanced down at the notebook, suddenly feeling sick. I could tell already that this wasn't going to end well, not at all.

"You think I have a photographic memory?" I said.

"You've been working on it for six months. It's all you talk about at work. Blah blah blah, curves, blah blah, better than RSA, blah blah blah performance blah security blah blah. I know it's in your head." She grabbed my cuffed hands and forced them down on top of the notebook. "Write. NOW."

"Why do you want it so badly?" I asked.

Tara rolled her eyes. "You're sitting on one of the biggest advancements in cryptography in a decade, Lizzy. And what do you want to do with it? Write a paper on it. Release it into the public domain. Write an open-source implementation."

"But then everyone can use it—oww! Stop it!"

"Shut up," she said, pointing at my face. "You just don't see, do you? It's just another one of your damn problems to be solved. Do you really not get how valuable your algorithm is?"

"It's valuable if it's available for everybody. Look at how RSA—"

"You know what? I don't care. I don't want to hear it. Write it. Damn you, Lizzy, write it."

"But—it's not—"

"Write it!"

"I can't!"

"Yes, you can. You just need a little persuasion." A macabre, sickening smile had plastered itself to her face. Reaching into the box again, Tara pulled out a small pair of rusted garden shears, the kind with a wicked-looking curved blade about three inches long. As soon as I saw it, the dread swelled in my stomach.

"You're right handed," Tara said. She reached out and grabbed my left wrist, holding it like a vice. Before I could react, she had placed my pinky finger between the blades and squeezed ever so slightly.

I gasped. "No! Nononono—" I used my left hand for typing all the time! I could type faster with my left than with my right. Losing a finger would be even worse than losing a foot or a leg.

Tara squeezed tighter, pinching my finger near the hand. I didn't want to struggle, because I knew that if I did, the finger would be a goner. My hand shook.

"You only need one hand to write," Tara said, still with the horrible grin on her face. "I have five perfectly good fingers to go through before I start with your other hand."

"Please, d-don't—"

"It's up to you, Lizzy. Write it down. The whole thing. Or you can kiss your pinky goodbye."

"But it—"

"Last chance."

"It doesn't work!" I cried. "The algorithm doesn't fucking work!"

The smile remained on Tara's face, but now a cold fire burned behind her eyes. The shears trembled. I winced.

"What do you mean, it doesn't work?" she whispered. Her voice was somewhere around absolute zero.

"It doesn't work. I—it just—I can't figure it out." Tears began to leak from my eyes. "I'm missing some little piece and it's throwing everything off. I've been trying to figure it out for four months."

"It doesn't work." Tara said. Her smile slipped, fell. She dropped the garden shears and stood up. Rubbed her forehead. Paced in front of me.

"It just spits out garbage," I said. "I don't know what's wrong with it."

"Well. I guess that means you're useless to me then." Tara reached into the box again, and this time, she pulled out a gun. I was pretty sure my heart stopped when she pointed the barrel right at my head. I couldn't find my voice.

She said, "Either you start writing right now or I'm putting a bullet through your brain."

"I—I—"

Tara cocked the gun.

"P-please," I whispered. "We used to be friends."

"Yeah, well, a little late for that, isn't it?"

"You're not a killer, Tara," I said, desperate.

"Oh, really? Why don't you put that problem-solving brain of yours to use and figure out what all this plastic is for, huh?" She stomped twice on the black plastic covering the floor, and I realized: it was to catch my blood. She had planned to kill me all along, one way or another.

"It'll be a lot less irritating at Landis without you," Tara said.

I squeezed my eyes shut—I couldn't watch. I didn't want to see Tara pull the trigger. I didn't want to think about her pulling the trigger. If I was going to die, I wanted to die thinking about something happy—Mama taking me to visit Moscow when I was a little girl, maybe, or the day I had gotten the acceptance letter from the University.

I waited to die, but the seconds ticked on and nothing happened. Until—

"Damn you, Lizzy," Tara said. I risked opening my eyes. She had lowered the gun, but the look on her face was only slightly less deadly than the firearm. I was so focused on her glare, I didn't see her raise the gun again until the barrel struck me on the forehead. This time, the darkness took me instantly.

#####

The bright light shining in my eyes didn't do much to ease the headache. Neither did the steady thrumming noise. I moaned and squinted.

"Good, you're conscious," came Tara's voice. She stepped between me and the spotlights from hell. Squatted down in front of me. "I wanted you to be awake for this."

"For what?" I slurred. My wrists stung like hell and for some reason they were up above my head. Tilting my head back, I saw that they had been handcuffed to a long horizontal metal bar about a foot up. "Where am I?"

"You'll figure it out," said Tara. "Use that big brain, Lizzy."

I looked down and was horrified to see that I was naked as the day I'd been born.

"Oh my god!" I yelled, squirming. "Where are my clothes?"

"You don't need them anymore."

I was sitting up against a wall. It was cold against my back, like ice, and when I moved my legs to try to shield myself from view, I realized that the floor was pretty damn cold too. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—they were all corrugated metal, painted a dull red. I was in a shipping container. Judging by the noise outside, there was a running car parked there with its headlights shining inside.

Tara stood, letting the light shine in my eyes again. I winced.

"You were right, Lizzy," she said, backing towards the open end of the cargo container. "I'm not a killer." She patted one of the metal walls. "This container will do the dirty work for me. I was gonna dump your body here, anyway."

It took a second to process what she had said, and when I did, I wished I hadn't. I began to stutter. "You—you're not going to—look, I'll keep working on the algorithm! I'll figure it out, I'll do whatever you want! Just don't—"

"Bye, Lizzy." Tara grabbed one of the heavy metal doors and swung it shut with a harsh metal clank.

"Wait" I yelled. Tara paused with the other door halfway closed. I wasn't sure what to say. I just knew that I needed to say something, anything, to keep her from closing that door. Anything to keep her talking.

"How come you took my clothes?" I said. It was the first thing that had popped into my mind.

Tara, silhouetted by the headlights, shrugged and said, "I had it all planned out. I was gonna get rich. I was gonna buy a house in Florida, run that newsletter business I've always wanted. But here you've gone and screwed up those plans. So you know what, Lizzy? Fuck you. Fuck you sideways. I took your clothes because I'm pissed off and I don't want you to die comfortable. Plus, I need to put them somewhere far away, make it look like someone else kidnapped you. Bye now."

"Wait, wait, WAIT!"

The door slammed, cutting off the light and leaving me in complete darkness.

"Tara?" I cried, yanking on the handcuffs. They wouldn't give. I struggled to stand. "Tara! Let me out!"

The sound of the car engine swelled. Tires crunched on gravel. The sound faded.

"TARA!" I screamed. It was a desperate, inhuman sound, and it reverberated off the metal walls. I screamed again, and again, until I thought my vocal cords were going to rip, but there was no one to hear it.

I collapsed onto the floor and began to sob.

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