Lupo

Part 2. "Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend."

(C)CopyrightSJCCLEWIS2022

Hello all! It's been a while! This chapter is a long one, so hoping i'll be forgiven. As always, this is a first draft - rushed and unedited - so don't judge too harshly!

Chapter Twenty-Two: Begin again

" Tea or Coffee?"

Darcie, who had been staring blankly at her scraped and scabbed palms, turned to face Kiza, blinking stupidly.

"Errr...coffee, please." Her voice was barely a croak.

Kiza - who was now clean of blood and dressed in joggers and an old t-shirt- smiled and retreated into the little kitchen, leaving Darcie to continue contemplating her situation in silence. 

The room in which she sat - four walls of polished, windowless concrete - was vast, and almost indecently illuminated by the bright, electric lights set into the ceiling. These cast a bluish glare over the many rows of folding chairs lining the walls and were reflected in the dull, silver metal of the safe-like door. This door stood ajar, revealing a corridor beyond of the same polished concrete, which Darcie well knew sloped gently upwards to ground level. 

She picked anxiously at the scabs on her hands as she recalled the slow descent that she and Kiza had made from Nikolai's house to this room - the 'briefing room'. Obviously soundproof, the fact that it would provide the perfect place within which to imprison someone was not lost on her. In spite of the roaring void within her, which had not at all diminished during the past few hours of restless sleep, she felt a little thrill of fear. 

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry...

Willing her panic to subside, Darcie abandoned her scabs and instead turned her attention to the wall in front of her. Across the entire expanse hung dozens and dozens of cctv screens, each flickering with a live picture of various locations across Nikolai's estate. Among footage of a vast garage, the driveway, and several shots of patios and mature gardens, there were what looked to be some sort of dirt bike arena, a large gym, and endless pictures of wooded clearings. As Kiza re-entered the room and set two mugs of steaming coffee on the table beside her, Darcie's gaze settled on a screen showing a large, windowless room, lined with rows upon rows of machine guns. 

She shuddered and looked away. "Thanks." she muttered, wrapping her hands around a mug and pulling it towards her. The raw flesh of her scraped palms, now exposed after her relentless picking, stung against the sudden heat. She winced.

Kiza, who looked almost as exhausted as Darcie felt, sat down heavily in the chair next to her. "Welcome." she sighed, stifling a yawn before taking a large gulp of coffee. "Did you manage to get any sleep?"

Darcie shrugged and took a sip of her own coffee, burning her mouth. "I did, actually," she murmured, hunching herself around her mug in an attempt to imbue herself with its warmth. "I didn't think I'd be able to but...I...um...well I did in the end. Thanks, err...for letting me crash at yours."

Kiza waved a hand in airy dismissal and yawned again. "No problem at all. Stay as long as you need."

They had arrived in Surrey just before five o'clock that morning. Darcie had quietly balked at the initial suggestion of sleeping in one of Nikolai or Bash's spare rooms; The idea of being alone made terror rise so violently and suddenly that she'd momentarily struggled to respond to Nikolai's kindly inquiries. Then Kiza, who must have read something in her face, had suggested that Darcie should stay with her. Feeling teary, but too tired and hollow to feel very awkward, Darcie had gratefully accepted and had fallen quickly asleep next to Kiza in her flat just across from the main house. Her warm presence next to her in the bed had been reassuring, though it wasn't enough to prevent her from jolting awake periodically, panting with terror at fading dreams of obsidian eyes.