Enlightenment

Part 10

I walked straight up to the main door as coolly as I could, fighting against every instinct to prowl, stalk, or attack. I wanted them to see me coming; hopefully they would all be focused on me, giving the others a chance.

            Stopping at the main door I considered then knocked loudly. There was a camera pointing straight at me so I gave them a nice smile, masking my doubts. I had a strong feeling this was going to be extremely painful for me.

            There were a lot of people in there, I could here them, there was too many for me to pick out Anna yet. Arguments were breaking out in what were probably people assigned to guard the door, some of them didn't want to open it, they knew how dangerous I am. Others wanted to open it and shoot me straight away. I hoped that wasn't the case, I needed to distract them longer than that. 

            Minutes passed, I was getting impatient, when I heard a new voice, and this one seemed to be important as he was giving orders to the others. 

"Open the door! Be ready to shoot, but only if it makes any sudden moves, we want to question her first, go on, go!"

            I heard one of the men reluctantly coming forward to open the door; he swung it open quickly, stepping out of the way at once. Slowly raising my hands above my head I grinned at the twenty or so men and women crowded into the smaller entrance room, all pointing crossbows at me, some with silver knives stuck in easy to reach places.

"Good evening, Ladies, Gentlemen, its lovely to see you too," 

The man who must have been the leader scrolled. "Make no sudden movements, step into the building slowly, keep your hands above your head." 

I nodded keeping a calm expression on my face. "Of course."

"If you have any weapons drop them now."

"I have none, I am fully ready to cooperate" I had left my dagger at home. 

 He nodded to a hard faced woman on my left who briskly patted me down before backing away quickly, she shook her head to the man.

"Walk forwards slowly, stop when you get in the next room." 

As soon as I moved, people went behind me so I was surrounded; I knew they would have weapons pointed at my back. We moved in this fashion until we got to the main space in the building, I stopped myself from gasping at the amount of humans waiting there; easily over a hundred faces stared at me with mixtures of hatred and fear. Among them I spotted the man who had lead the last group to attack me, his eyes were cold and angry, and his weapon was pointing directly at my heart.

            I sniffed, detecting faint hints of Anna's scent under the many layers of scared human. My suspicions were confirmed when the crowd parted down the middle to reveal her tied to a heavy metal chair and gagged at the back of the room, two of the men had guns pointed directly at her head.

            The man who had led me in addressed me. He had a short, military style haircut, dark eyes and tanned skin, the kind you get from being outside a lot in all weathers."Try anything and you both die."

If I hadn't already lived through so much I may have been shocked, but I was merely repulsed. "She is human! You would murder your own kind?"

"She is with you, that's almost as bad."

"What do you want? You have me, now you can let her go, she's innocent."

"We want to know where the others are, you have two others living with you, and we want the names and addresses of any others you know about, now!"