ELBINA 3

Chapter 2

BANG!
"I need to see Gerald Truemen." My hands plant on the desk, people start accumulating around me. Now that they can see the blood stains on my neck.
But I don't look at them, I'm leaning forward staring her out across the desk.
"Sir-"
"I need to see him!" I shout, and god... I'm shaking.
I'm shaking so much thinking about how long it took to get here and what I've done to get here.
"Step away from the desk sir," My head flits to the side, a security guard coming towards me with a hand out. As if I'm some lunatic.
Why won't they listen!?
"No! Get me Gerald Truemen now!" I can't let everything we've been through go to waste. For it to fall apart, I last saw them seven hours ago. I don't want to imagine what's happened in that timeframe.
What if they hadn't gotten out of the house in time? What if they'd already been taken?
"Don't come near me! Please... just call him."
"He's not here." My head shakes, he has to be. She looks at me with a grimace, side glancing at the security guard as he keeps pacing forwards.
I've lost my mind now. I'm so incredibly desperate to do something, something useful and if these people weren't getting how serious I was. Then I'd make them.
"What are you doing!?" He shouts at me, my hand pulling the gun from out under my stained jacket. The gun itself already covered in the metallic coating, and I shudder thinking of why.
"Call him NOW!"
"Do you realise how stupid you are right now? Doing this here?" He backs off partly at me lifting the gun and pointing it half-way, aiming at his knee caps.
I know that! I want to shout at him, except I'm too desperate to care.
If they call him, I can tell him. I can tell him everything and they'll be safe.
I gulp instead, fighting against the wobble in my throat and I make direct eye contact with him. So he knows I mean it. "I'm not putting this down and I'm not leaving until I have him on the phone."
The staring contest goes on forever, my nostrils flare trying to take in enough air to settle my racing heart. Slamming relentlessly into my chest and altering my position on the gun and raising it ever so slightly. It's something I know he can see as his eyes flicker down to it.
Thankfully, everyone else keeps back. They probably think I'm unhinged, and that's not far from the truth. But they didn't understand.
No one understands my situation right now.
Finally, keeping his eyes on me, he speaks to the woman. "Sammy, call him."
She pauses for a second before responding in a choked gasped. "What?"
"Call him." It looks as if she's considering arguing with him, and I slam a fist on the desk which only makes her jump into action.
I didn't have time for any of this shit.
I'd wasted enough.
And we wait, the sounds of her dialling the number is disjointed in the silence of the room.
My hands quiver in the waiting, and the pins and needles start all over again when the injuries make themselves more aware to me. Stinging and burning away under the cover of my clothes.
Even if they bled for a long time at the beginning, it had mostly ceased by now. And it's the stains coming through the trouser and jacket material that he's looking at, analysing it all whilst we wait.
He's sizing me up, I'm sure of it.
But I'd had Fallen do the same for the past two weeks, this man was not in the least bit intimidating in comparison. I also had a gun this time, but I'd like to think that it isn't the only thing that makes me have the upper hand right now.
"Sir-" She's cut off, her body twisting into the phone.
"Yes I understand but-" A second later, it sounds like she jumps over his words as she speaks quicker and with a little more force then before.
"There's someone here for you." Her eyes flicker upwards, eyeing me carefully and slipping her gaze to the bloodied gun in my hands. "He's got a gun."
Then after nodding to something he says, she stands up slowly, placing the phone on the desk between us. She doesn't say anything, but she takes a step back away from me as a signal.
I pause for a second, now that I'm nervous, now that everyone is looking at me. I'm scared what he'll say; whether he'll even believe me.
I'm also scared I'm too late and that leaving them did nothing and I only made it worse by being found.
I'm scared of a lot of things.
But I pick up the phone and bring it up to my ear.
"Gerald?"
There's a fumble over the phone and I can hear too much coming through the speaker. But his voice crackles through with the poor connection and I want to know where he is. "Who is this?"
"Lucas Diremen." He lets out a sound of recognition before responding.
"And what are you doing in London, Lucas?" He speaks like he's bored with me. Sighing into the phone which only has me grinding my teeth at his attitude.
"I have what you need." I didn't know whether to say the exact words out loud, I certainly couldn't trust the people around me.
"What I need? Which is?" He says with derision.
"Elbina's parents, what they made. I have here, with me." I can feel the backpack sitting heavy on my shoulders, knowing it's tucked inside.
"You have the hard drive?"
"You know?" My voice struggles to hide the shock.
"Of course I know. Lucas, I've- the police... we've all been looking for them."
I sense the guard moving closer, my expression turning into a scowl as I bring my hand up a little further. Threatening him again to stay back, and he does.
"Okay. Well... I have it." My words seem stupid cause I don't know what else to say.
"How about, I tell them to let you up into my office. And you can wait there." I shake my head at his words.
"Where are you? Ella and Fallen. They need help."
"And we're helping them." His words seem odd, and I bring my head up to look around the reception. Not making eye contact with anybody whilst I think.
"How!? How are you helping them? I need to know how; I need to know you're doing something to stop them being killed!"
"We know about them, and it's under control." I shake my head to myself hearing him.
"That doesn't tell me anything!" I shout.
"That's all I can say, and I'll try my best to keep them safe." God, I want to throw this stupid phone hearing him say that.
"Promise me! Promise me they'll be safe!"
"I can't promise you anything Lucas. But we're doing everything we can to make sure that'll be the case, is that good enough for you?"
I don't answer.
Because it's not.
But it's all I'm going to get.
And so I hand back the phone to Sammy, letting her take it from me before lifting the phone to her ear and speaking in a hushed tone.
"You're sure?" She says, and I swallow against the hard tension in my throat.
Knowing that at least, if anything, someone knows about them.
And that way, at least someone with more power than me, that they're doing something to help them.
"Mr. Trueman wants him in his office." The guard doesn't look all too pleased with Sammy. His eyebrows scrunching into a frown.
Then she turns to me, "But you don't need the gun Lucas." My hand on it tightens.
"I'm not going anywhere without this." It's my safety net, the only thing I have that'll protect me.
and if that's gone, then what else do I have?
"I'll put it away but I'm not letting any of you take it from me." Sammy, I thought, would be nervous. Who wouldn't be when a blood stained man comes in with a gun, I probably looked deranged.
Except she only sighs in annoyance at me, sucking in a cheek as she regards me until she decides that it's enough.
"Fine." She utters out and for a moment, I'm not even sure if I want to put it away anymore.
Except they're all waiting for me and if I look over my shoulder, I can see scared eyes staring right back at me from the edges of the reception room.
I wasn't crazy.
None of them understood.
They don't understand!
I let out a shudder of a breath, putting on the safety before securing it under my jacket again. my hand stained all over with red when I brought my hand out from under the material.
I was weak. I knew that, and now that we'd reached the climax of everything today.
Well...It was hard to walk through the wobble in my knees as the guard gestured for me to follow him to the elevator.
He keeps looking back at me, as if he expects me to have pulled the gun out and to aim it at him.
but I'm too busy trying to get rid of the nausea in my stomach by breathing slowly and deep through it.
He didn't know.
No one knew.
He weaves us through the hallways, it's endless and my breathing gets harder from the long drawn out bareness of the entire building. Until he stops at the door at the end, swiping over a card causing the small LED light beside the pad to elicit a bright green colour. The door clicks and he pushes it open, holding it out for me and gesturing for me to enter with a flick of his head.
He refuses to move, refuses to allow me more space to bypass him so I'm forced to skulk past him with difficulty. By the way he watches me, it was a tactical move on his part, a sign of dominance. That he could move me any which way he saw fit, and I hate myself a little more for having unwittingly allowed it.
The office is fairly large, the desk sat at the far end of the room opposite the door, a table and chairs sits before it. Everything neatly arranged, presumably regularly cleaned by someone.
As he is about to leave, the door handle in one hand, his eyes flick down to the blood.
"I'm going to ring an ambulance."
I shake my head, "No. I don't need one, I can't until I know-" But I'm left talking to nothing as he shuts the door, the lock sounding as he leaves.
I can't, not until I know they're safe.
If I knew that I was being cared for, when they were being- whatever was happening... then I'd never forgive myself.
It would be wrong.
Now that I'm sitting here in the quiet calmness of the room, I'm starting to think me leaving was even worse of an idea...
I slump to the floor, my head lolling back against the table behind me.
Which is when my eyes notice the shelf lining the wall by the door.
The sweat sheening on my skin and making my body cold, hands shaking, I try and plant my hand onto the ground. To keep myself up and to readjust myself to see through the blurriness.
And gradually, I can see it.
It sits on the shelf like nothing, just something nice in the blandness and professional atmosphere of the room.
I know better.
I know what it is.
I know-

"Lucas." There's a sigh before the words become more irritated when he speaks again.
"Are you even listening?" This time, I look up.
With that day seeping out of my head. Rodgers sits across from me, his eyes widened as he continues to say my name.
"Erm... Yeah." I say distantly.
"It's important that you do." He says, a series of pages dropped onto the table in front of me.
"So?" He says, sitting down heavily in the seat before me. Slouching across from me with his arms crossed.
I look back at him in confusion.
"So what?"
His groans of frustration are not hidden well, rolling his eyes at me.
"What's your take on it all? What do you think happened?"
I shrug in response.
"How should I know?"
"You were with her for nearly three weeks on the run. You know... better than anyone... how she acts under this sort of pressure."
I shake my head on instinct, rolling my palm along the table edge, feeling the metal indent into the skin and creating an almost painful pressure.
"Just because I was with her... doesn't mean I know shit about what was going on in her head." I say quietly, "Otherwise I wouldn't have been as surprised by her decision to stay away from me. And why does it matter what I think?" I scoff, "You're the experts, you're the ones who should be finding her, not me."
"Well, do you think she would team up with Nero?" He pushes forward a photo closer to me, of a man, dirty blonde haired and strongly built. I shrug.
"Do you think she would have left of her own free will?" He pushes forward another photo to me, of her room. Blood staining the pillow and half the room trashed from a fight, it certainly didn't look like she went easy.
But I shake my head, through the sudden spike of pain in my throat at seeing the blood. That knowing she was sleeping in that bed and that she was attacked on that bed. I shouldn't feel this worried for her, I shouldn't.
Not after the way she left me, if anything it proved I loved her more than she loved me.
Because it shouldn't have been that easy for her to break connections with me, if she truly loved me like she said she did.
"You think Nero took her?" He says again.
No.
But I don't say that, even though I know, if someone were trying to take her, then the entire room would be ruined from the fight she'd put up.
Except that's speculation, isn't it?
Because what did I really know of her now?
After how she'd handled this situation, leaving me in the dark and leaving me alone.
Did I ever really know her? Or is this just something that happens when you experience as much trauma as the both of us had.
Does it change you so much that you become someone you don't recognise, and I don't want to answer that one.
I don't want to answer it because I know I won't like the answer.
My hands are shaking, but it's not from anything but the lack of alcohol in my system right now.
So, I settle for innocence.
"I don't know." I say quietly-
I really didn't know anymore.