Eve In Utopia

Chapter Thirteen

When Eve woke up, she found that she was still in the same small storage room in the subbasement of the event center, but when she tried to move, she found her legs bound together at the ankles and her hands tied behind her back. Monty was sitting on a crate playing with her tablet and looked up when he saw she was awake.

"How the hell do you call up that app you were using?" he demanded, waving the tablet around in frustration. All I can find are a few crappy games and your Discworld books. In my opinion Pratchett was badly overrated by the way."

"Trashing my favourite author isn't likely to get me to help you," pointed out Eve as she tested the ropes binding her wrists. They gave a little and given enough time, she thought she could get out of them, but she was starting to get low on time. "As for the app you are talking about, I don't have a clue what you are going on about. What you see there is what you get."

"Fine, I will figure it out for myself," snapped Monty. "I just thought you might have been grateful enough to cooperate."

"And just what should I feel grateful for after you tasered me and tied me up?" asked Eve.

"Hey, you do the Spock eyebrow thing pretty good," said Monty with a brief grin. "Well, you still have all your clothes on and I didn't take advantage of you while you were out."

"You expect me to be grateful for you just doing the right thing?" asked Eve in the same tone many parents have replied to requests from teens who thought they should get paid for cleaning their rooms and taking out the garbage.

"Yeah, well if I was really a bad guy, I would have done something," scowled Monty. "I still could you know, but I'm not a bad guy."

"Oh, of course not," replied Eve, "good guys are known the world over for doing nothing while waiting for bombs to kill thousands of people."

"I didn't place the bombs," protested Monty.

"But you aren't doing anything to defuse them either," pointed out Eve.

"Look around lady," yelled Monty. "The world is a fucking mess and getting rid of the idiots at the top running things can't possibly make it any worse."

"And just who do you think is planning to fill that void at the top?" demanded Eve. "Jefferson Washburn will be safely clear of the blast zone when he sets off the bombs, you can bet on that. You can also bet he has some plan to take advantage of the power vacuum. He's the one who killed your father or had him killed and now you are just going to sit back and wave goodbye to the world while he takes over? Where is the sense in that?"

Monty's mouth gaped open like a fish stranded on a beach trying to suck in water that wasn't there and then he shut it. "Damn, I didn't think that part through," he muttered.

"Then cut me loose, so I can stop him," said Eve.

"No," replied Monty as he put down the tablet and began to pace back and forth across the small room. "This place needs to go and so do those bastards who run everything, Washburn was right about that much anyway. I guess, I will just have to go make sure he stays around for the big bang."

"That doesn't make any more sense," Eve yelled, but Monty was already leaving the room and done listening to anything she said.

For reasons that baffled her, Eve's employers had wanted her to watch all the movies about a British spy named James Bond which she had done to humour them. Eve hadn't been able to see the value of the movies. The man was always drinking martinis which Eve thought were god awful, gambling against ridiculous odds that he couldn't possibly win and bedding every woman who was remotely good looking. As for being a secret agent, the moron kept introducing himself to everyone he met. Eve had tried to imagine doing the same thing back in her training facility and only then realized she didn't have a last name, so that didn't work at all. For this mission, her employers had given her a last name, but it wasn't really hers and they had declined to answer when she asked about her real last name. "It isn't necessary," they had said and that was that. The only thing useful that Eve had taken away from the Bond movies were the gadgets that the spy used. Most of them were totally impractical, if not impossible, but nevertheless Eve had worked out a few simple gadgets that she had hoped would come in handy. The garroting wire hidden under her blonde hair hadn't been needed yet, but another gadget was hidden in her watch. With a little straining, Eve managed to press the crown in a specific timed sequence which popped out a small knife blade. The angle was awkward, but Eve quickly set to work sawing at the ropes on her wrists. She didn't need to cut all the way through and at about the halfway point, she flexed all her strength which was significantly more than she seemed capable of by visual inspection only and the ropes gave way. It was a couple of seconds work to free her legs and then Eve paused to decide what to do next. Monty had presumably gone off to try and find Washburn and that would mean venturing into the guest towers which were probably crawling with Secret Service and RCMP officers looking for her. Peachy.