Chapter 54
The sound of running feet startled Lacus out of her thoughts. The footsteps sounded lithe but frantic, and the commotion echoed around like she was hearing it through a hollow tunnel. She sat up straight and her cramped back protested with a flare of agony, but she ignored the ache. What was happening? For a second, shefelt a nugget of hope. Was it Athrun?The patter of feet paused outside. The clinking of keys and the rattle of the key in the lock, then the wooden door of her holding cell flew open.
There was no familiar mop of deep-blue hair, no searching emerald green eyes.
It wasn't Athrun.
It was him – the man who had kidnapped her, cared for her, fed her, protected her, then pointed a gun at her. The man whom she had thought to be her childhood friend. The heartless murderer who killed for the thrill. The man who had given her hope, only to dash it, then cruelly revive it again.
He stood there in the doorway, chest rising and falling with each wheezing breath. His face was covered by the black cloth and mask, his sharp eyes scanning the room quickly before his gaze fell on her. Lacus found herself burrowing into the corner between two walls, shrinking back instinctively from this incomprehensible man.
A glint, and she noticed with horror that there was a knife in his hand.
"No," she whispered, feeling the fear grip her in a chokehold again. Just like the time he had pointed his gun at her. But he hadn't shot her then, and he was back now to finish the job.
He started towards her, juggling the blade in his hand to get a better grip. She wriggled backwards, bound hands pressing into her back, her feet scuffing against the dirt-covered floor. No, no, no… She squeezed her eyes shut as a hand stretched out towards her. What was he going to do? Slit her throat? Stab her? Oh god…
Something ice-cold slid between her ankles and she would have freaked had it not been for the abrupt pull of the ropes as they went taut, then a rustle as they slithered to the ground, freeing her ankles.
Lacus' eyes flew open in astonishment as the man hauled her to her feet, and with a quick plunge of the blade, sliced through the ropes around her bound wrists.
She wet her parched lips with her tongue, and tried to get her voice to work. "What's hap-"
He silenced her by stooping and sweeping the jacket he had lent her off the ground and thrusting it roughly into her arms. Then he began to bundle her towards the exit. "What's happening?" Lacus repeated, but he only answered with a curt nod towards the door as he headed for it. Lacus followed obediently, mind racing.
Then all of a sudden, he paused and turned. There was a kind of thoughtfulness in his stance, as if he was pondering if they had left anything behind. Lacus followed his glance, but saw nothing except dust and muck on the floor. She watched curiously and warily as he trotted back towards the corner she had been crouched in.
And she saw the flash as the fluorescent lights overhead glinted off the blade.
Blood splattered across the wall.
"Oh god," Lacus gasped, a hand flying up to her mouth in horror. She watched dumbly as the blood flowed from his wound. He had sliced the blade across his left forearm, and dark-red blood had streaked through the air and stained the walls along with the sweeping arc of his blade. He let the blood flow for a moment, dripping into a puddle on the filthy ground.
Then, before Lacus could clear her befuddled thoughts, he turned suddenly and grasped her hand, and began to haul her out of the room. "Wait-" She suddenly felt a tinge of fear as he dragged her beyond the doorway. Where was he taking her? She began to resist, trying to wrench her hand out of his vice-like grip.
He turned and glanced at her over his shoulder. His eyes, hidden behind the tinted glass of the mask, looked, suddenly and frightfully, familiar. Not the eyes of a murderer, or a madman. There was something else altogether – a kind of vulnerability and fear mixed ironically with reassurance and tenderness.
And she found herself giving in to this stranger, this complicated, impenetrable man.
So when he said, "Trust me", and began to run, Lacus did, and she ran on after him, her warm hand clutched between his icy-cold fingers.
The tires squealed as Athrun stamped his foot into the brakes, and peered out of the windshield at the row of dinghy warehouses.
"Which one is it?" he asked.
There was no reply as Cagalli studied the solemn-looking brick buildings with a frown. Then she muttered, "I'm not sure, I can't remember what was written in the file."
The said file had been left behind in Athrun's convertible, which by now was riddled with bullet holes and probably on its way to the junkyard or something. The file, left behind on the front passenger seat, had probably been ripped by the onslaught of gunfire into tiny, irretraceable little bits, drifting in the air like ashes. No way they could get it back. And getting another copy from Meyrin was impossible, because their cell phones were probably sitting in a ditch somewhere, or crushed on the road under the wheels of another vehicle.
No way of getting another copy.
No way of telling which of these warehouses was the hideout, or if they were lucky, was where Lacus was being held.
Athrun released the brake and depressed the accelerator, speeding through an alleyway between the brick walls of two warehouses. "We'll just have to do it the long way then," he said, spinning the wheel.
They perused the warehouses closely, one after another. All with their stained brick walls and rusty shutters. Some rose to several stories high, others were single-storied buildings that resembled garages. Each warehouse stood separated from its neighbor by a narrow passageway of gravel drive. There was no one about, no other vehicles in sight. The pale-green sedan they were in zigzagged through the maze of alleyways, fishtailing dangerously whenever Athrun spun the wheel, its rubber tires kicking up the gravel.
After fifteen long minutes, it jolted to an abrupt halt suddenly, in front of a warehouse situated close to the side of the chain-link fence with its barbed wire top. The unexpected jerk threw Cagalli forward, her seatbelt strangling her, until she bounced back into the upholstery. "What in the world?" She murmured, casting a bemused glance at Athrun who flung open his door and spilled out onto the drive.
Hurriedly, she unbuckled her seatbelt and stumbled out of the idling car after him. "What is it? Is this the one?"
Athrun was squatting in front of the warehouse, staring at the gravel on the ground. The gravel was loosely scattered across a dirt ground, and while the gravel in front of the other warehouses looked evenly spread, the gravel here looked all mussed up and patches of the dirt ground were showing through the gravel. A sign that the road here had been largely used, perhaps recently.
He glanced up at the warehouse.
It was a four-storey building and, just like the rest, was built out of reddish-brown bricks, now stained and cracked. A rusted metal shutter covered its main entrance, which was large enough for a truck to pass through, and on its right, there was a narrow wooden door. Athrun could see no other entrances or exits, so he strolled up to the wooden door and examined its hinges.
"What is it?" He heard Cagalli repeat again. He turned around and saw her watching him curiously. "Is this the one?" She said again, stepping up towards him.
"Look at this," Athrun said, working a finger through the folds of the door hinges. His finger came away stained with a black, oily streak. "Grease," he explained, "Someone's been using this door recently."
Which was unusual, because the rest of the industrial area had been abandoned and out of use.
Cagalli stared at him with a mixture of bewilderment, excitement and fear. "Are you sure this is it?"
Athrun shrugged, straightening to his full height. "There's only one way to find out," he said. He tested the door knob first (because there was nothing more stupid than kicking his way in, when the door was unlocked). Unfortunately, the knob didn't give.
Well, he had his lock-picking tools in his pocket. Of course, there was also another, quicker way of entering.
He put an arm out and motioned Cagalli backwards. When she was a safe distance away, Athrun retreated, then took several running steps and swung his right foot high, striking the lock with his heel. The wood around the knob splintered and the lock mechanism fell to the ground in pieces, shattered.
"Old buildings never have good security systems," he muttered as he gave the door a shove with his shoulder. The door swung inwards to reveal a vast, dimly-lit area seated behind the metal shutter. A loading bay. It was empty except for a couple of moth-eaten cardboard boxes lying on their sides.
Up ahead, on the other end of the loading bay, was an elevator shaft.
There were no stairs, at least not in sight.
Great, Athrun thought to himself sourly. The worst way of infiltrating an enemy's territory was to ride the elevator. Still, he had no other choice. Sliding his gun from his jacket pocket surreptitiously, he took a tentative step into the warehouse. It was deathly silent.
"Wait in the car," he muttered over his shoulder to Cagalli, "If anyone comes at you, you duck down and hit the car horn. I'll come running. But no matter what you hear, don't come after me."
"No."
"I'm serious."
"Me too. It's time you got it into your head, Athrun Zala." Cagalli's warm breath was in his ear as she peered into the warehouse over his shoulder. Athrun glared back at her, emerald eyes narrowing dangerously. Many people had faltered under his gaze before – criminals and police officers alike – but Cagalli Yamato didn't. She gave him an equally furious glare in return.
"Stay close," Athrun snapped out in a harsh whisper.
They entered the warehouse together, Athrun a step ahead of Cagalli and his gun poised by his side, ready. As they crossed the loading bay, shoes silent on the concrete, Cagalli nudged Athrun gently and pointed at the dust-covered floor. The thick layer of grey dust was broken by a column of overlapping footsteps heading from the wooden door up to the elevator shaft. There were several sets of prints, but it was impossible to distinguish them. Whoever had been using the warehouse had been very, very busy. There were footsteps going in and out of the warehouse. Large strides and small strides. It was an utter confusion of footprints.
But one thing was clear. There had been people in the warehouse recently.
Athrun and Cagalli shared a knowing glance and continued on their way. At the lift, Athrun found two buttons, one 'up' and the other 'down'. He pondered for a moment. If Lacus was being held hostage in here, she was likely to be held in the basement. So he depressed the 'down' button with the heel of his hand to avoid leaving fingerprints behind.
The lift was a noisy thing. It moaned and groaned and grinded to a halt with a loud clunk that infuriated Athrun. The bastards could still be hiding in there, and the commotion caused by the lift could have warned them. He flicked the safety lever of his gun and held it out at arm's length, nice and easy, pointed at the elevator doors. With his left arm, he propelled Cagalli backwards, behind him, so that if the doors open and gunfire came spilling out, he could turn and shield her.
But when the doors grated open with a terrible groan, there was nothing inside. Nobody. Empty.
All clear.
Athrun bundled Cagalli into it hastily and stabbed the large bulky plastic knob that had a faded "B1" imprinted on it, rubbed away by multiple years of use. The lift doors grinded shut again and with a long moan, began its descent. It seemed ridiculous, but Athrun could have sworn that the lift's descent stretched on for ages. They didn't talk but the tension between them sparked like electricity and the adrenalin pulsed through their blood like a drug.
Finally, the lift grounded and a long moment passed before the heavy steel doors parted. Athrun swept his gun quickly through the space, left, then right, ready to shoot. An empty, gaping corridor yawned back at him. They waited for a minute or so, Athrun's palm pressed against the elevator door to prevent it from shutting, until they were sure that no one would charge at them suddenly. Then Athrun stepped out, followed by Cagalli.
The corridor was lit by flickering fluorescent lights encased in steel cages overhead. On either side of the corridor were stained wooden doors with burnished knobs. Gesturing for Cagalli to check the doors on the left, Athrun himself took the row of doors on the right. He pressed his ear to the first and heard absolute silence on the other end. Gripping the knob with his jacket as a made-shift glove, he flung open the door, and saw only an empty room the size of a closet.
Turning, he met Cagalli's perplexed gaze. She had turned up empty-handed too.
They made their way down the corridor, the silence broken only by the creaking of door hinges, the clicks of shutting doors and the soft tread of their feet. Ten minutes later, they had come to the end of the corridor and still found no sign of either the kidnappers or Lacus. There was one last door that remained un-open at the far end. Standing in front of it, Athrun and Cagalli shared a glance.
A similar question was running through their minds. Was this it?
Kira had the van going as fast as he dared, without arousing the suspicion of onlookers, or worst still, police officers.
He was still bleeding heavily, but he had his left forearm cradled in his lap, so that the blood would soak his trousers rather than drip all over the footwell and the driver's seat.
It had been a last-minute decision – wounding himself and leaving the blood stains behind. There had to be some way he could slow down the police investigation and he figured he could try to set up the scene to look like someone had been murdered in the room. Bloodstains often got detectives all riled up. They brought in crime scene techs and blood splatter analysts and sent blood samples back to the labs. All that took time, sufficient time for him to get Lacus to a safe spot away from prying eyes.
Yet, Kira was aware too that he had made a mistake which could very well come back and haunt him.
He had left his DNA behind.
Kira hadn't been in jail, or hospitals, and he was sure that even if the police had deciphered his DNA, they wouldn't be able to find a match in their database. But it was only a matter of time before the cops figured out that the amount of blood left behind on the floor was too little for that of a murder victim and the search would go on again.
Still, in all his missions, he had never once left behind something that clued in on his identity. Not once, not ever. And he had broken the rule in the case of Lacus. The best way of setting up the scene, would have been to leave Lacus' blood behind. But he couldn't imagine sliding the knife under her skin. He couldn't do it.
So he had left his own blood behind, hoping it would at least throw off some of the cops, or buy them some time. Perhaps, the shock of seeing blood that could potentially belong to Lacus would throw Athrun Zala into a panic, he thought to himself as he gunned the engine.
They were on the highway now, cruising smoothly amidst heavy traffic. Kira glanced up into the rearview mirror and spied Lacus behind the cargo barrier separating the front seats from the back of the van. Through the mesh, he could see Lacus curled up, legs tucked close to her chest, her pink hair streaming over her face like a curtain.
And was it even possible? Lacus Clyne was actually asleep.
Bemused, he turned his attention back to the road ahead and reviewed his options. He didn't have many. His goal was to keep Lacus Clyne alive. Returning her to Athrun Zala wasn't going to do so because she would just go back to her lifestyle, which was so under the spotlight that Rau would have assassins coming after her again in less than a day. He needed to send her somewhere else, someplace away from the spotlight.
But where?
He could take her to his apartment, but someone from headquarters could easily access it, someone like his 'housekeeper'. He couldn't think of where else he could send her, or whom he could trust.
Except, maybe... Was it possible? Could she be trusted?
Kira didn't seem to have a choice, so he made up his mind and eased the van onto his intended route, hoping he wouldn't get a chance to regret his decision.
Author's note: There! Another chapter! I live for cliffhangers, but I think everyone's going to kill me the moment they get their hands on me. Well, what do you think? Who can Kira trust? OMG, I'm excited! And of course, as usual, to all my readers, a BIG BIG BIG thank you for everything! I get so excited whenever I read your reviews! So, pretty please, make me excited again – don't forget to review, review, review! Till next time!