The Test

Thirty

Aria
They do it to me again, over several hours. Or days. I don't know. I feel like I've been here a week.
"Luc," I whisper to him through the still air of the bright room. I'm standing in the middle, and this time, he crosses to me. "Don't let them do this," I whisper. "Please."
A knife-metaphorically, of course-goes through my stomach at the thought of him getting hurt. "Please, Luc." I clutch at him, holding on tight to his neck so they can't get to his face. I pull his forehead to mine, and he reaches up to trace the bruise on my cheek the guards gave me after the simulation when they asked me "a few questions". Namely, who perpetrated the gas attack. And where the compound was. I did not break. Even when they filtered images through my head that showed Luc as I'd left him in the simulation, bruised and broken on the whipping post. Even as I screamed for them to stop.
I will not let him endure that fate now.
"I love you," I whisper, pouring all my pain and sorrow into those three words.
"And I you," he whispers back, before he kisses me.
I lose myself in it, letting it carry me away to a time when I hadn't almost lost him and he wasn't dying in front of me. Where he wasn't ripped away before my very eyes.
But when he's dragged away to the whipping post, it's over too soon. I lose him too soon.
When I come back to the dingy, dark room, I have to reassure myself that everything is alright, it's alright, because he is safe and alive and not wounded.
It's alright. But it's a desperate kind of alright-ness, the kind that clings on to cliff edges long after you've started to fall. Or just after. Just when the world has started to right itself and then-
Down down down.
Into the abyss.
But everything is alright. The world has righted itself, and at its core everything is alright.
I'm finding it harder and harder to believe that at the moment. Especially now. This second. The second the guard looks at me and smiles. A sinister sort of smile. I don't like it. He turns to the guard next to him, who prepares to re-start the machine. Then the door opens-my heart leaps, then drops to my feet. A guard. A guard that says, "We've found the ones who did the gas attack. And we've brought them in for questioning."
~
Lucas
Shit, He thinks as the guards drag them through the hall. We got caught. His head fills with her name as they put them in separate cells, leave them to bang on the doors and him to scream her name, regardless of who hears. These cells are soundproof anyway, as he soon finds out after four hours of screaming. Or what feels like four hours, but is actually only four minutes, as he sees on the PortPiece on the guard's wrist who comes to question him. "Who planned the gas attack?" he says, striking Luc across the sternum. Lucas thinks for a second, wondering how to play this. There is the hiss of static in his ear, unheard, luckily, by the guard. His comms unit, shoved into his ear by Knox as they were leaving in the Jeeps they would station outside the warehouse to pick up Aria, Bianca and hopefully, Viola. "Put this in your ear and keep it on at all times," Knox had said. Luc hisses now in not entirely manufactured pain to cover the sound of the static. Then Knox's voice in his ear. "Montero. Can you read me? This is Knox. What's the situation?"
Luc grunts at another punch as the question is asked again. He wonders where Knox was ten seconds ago, when he was alone and not being punched in the gut.
"I didn't do it," he says to the guard, simultaneously telling Knox that he hasn't yet managed to break them out. "I got caught." Punch. "For the wrong crime." he manages. Of course, he knows very well it was exactly the right crime, but the one he's about to commit-breaking three girls out of what is essentially a high-security prison-is much worse.
Knox swears. "Well, where are you? In a cell? In the warehouse?"
"So who did plan it?" the guard asks. Luc uses the grunt that escapes from another punch to affirm Knox's guess. "You?"
"Where are the others?' Knox asks. "Did they get caught too?"
"I don't know!" Luc yells, at the guard, who continues to hit him, and at Knox, just to get him to shut up and stop asking questions Luc can't answer. He can't keep up with all the questions, both in his ear and directly from the guard. The newest punch sings across his jaw. "Will you STOP PUNCHING ME?!" Lucas cries, struggling against the rope binding his wrists.
Knox laughs. "Whoa, no need to shout." he pauses for a second. "So. You're being held at the warehouse, in a cell, I assume. When we found the warehouse on recon they said they had cells there. And, apparently,  you're being punched."
"I couldn't tell you," Luc says to the guard, ignoring Knox completely. There is no way to answer him.
"You mean you can't, or you won't?' The guard asks.
"I can't," Lucas says firmly. "Because I don't know."
~
When the guard is gone a few minutes later, seemingly seeing that the task is fruitless, Luc answers Knox. "Sorry about that, boss. I was a little tied up." Lucas laughs mirthlessly.
"That's alright, Montero. Now, tell me straight. Are they in different cells. The boys."
"Yes."
"How did the decoy plan go down?"
"Nicely. They won't expect our plan to include a third, and there was a grate nearby when we talked about it, so someone will be sure to have been listening."
"Good. Now. How are you going to get out?" he laughs drily. "I assume this part of the plan wasn't anticipated/"
"You could say that."
"I'll figure something out," he says tiredly. All he'd wanted was to get Anya and her fiends and go home. Looks like that isn't going to happen now.
"You'd better," the other man says. "Knox out."
~
He looks around for something he can use to cut the bindings from his wrists, but there is nothing. Thankfully, they didn't think to bind his feet, so he's able to shuffle over to the door. It's one of the old fashioned ones with bars on the window-this must be an old warehouse, then, prior to the new technology that keeps all rooms sealed bunker-tight in case of a nuclear attack. Good. This will work in his favour. He detects a flap near the bottom of the door, but with his hands bound this is of no use. He feels suffocated, trapped, as every minute-every second-lost is one he could have used to save Anya. He remembers the knife in his boot then- the hired muscle who took them down wouldn't have thought to heck there. He curses several times in the effort to reach it, and then wonders if they hadn't seen his knife and left it there to torment him, knowing he wouldn't be able to get to it. Clever. Too clever.
He'd underestimated them.
Finally he wrests the knife from its sheath, hastily sawing at the binding. His wrists are sore and chafed when they are released. he rubs them as he smashes the lock on the door with his heel. He bursts into the hallway, easily procuring a gun from a passing guard, then dragging him into the corner to hide the unconscious body. he shoots the lock on both Frex and Callum's doors, and checks for more bullets. There are enough.
They run down the hallway, the other two boys finding guns easily enough. "Plan?" Frex calls.
"Do what Knox said," Luc says. "Get them to the Jeeps. Callum, you take Bianca. I'll take Aria. Frex, you know what to do."
Frex grins, a feral, wild sort of grin. "I sure do."
~
Lucas
He shoots the lock off the door again. The sound reverberates round the small room like-well, a gunshot.
"Don't. Touch. Her," Luc says, his voice like steel. He raises the gun in his hand. The guards surrounding her don't flinch. "Who are you?" one asks. Luc doesn't blink. He went over this with Frex and Callum before they left for the warehouse. "I'm from HQ. The boss wants to see her." he jerks his head towards the dormant girl, still slumped in the chair, black band on her wrist that seems to make her stare unseeingly beyond him. "NO!" A scream rips from her throat, unnerving for a girl who clearly can't see him. Even more unsettling when he wonders what she could be seeing, and that he wants nothing more than to take her in his arms and carry her away, to the place where no-one will ever hurt her again.
The guard nods to the other one. The second guard steps forward. Lucas hears a click, only registering the sound of a gun safety being removed when the gun is at his head. "Who. Are. You." The first guard says, his voice menacingly quiet. Luc didn't even have time to raise his gun.
"I told you, I'm from HQ-" Lucas swears inside his head. This plan isn't going as well as he'd hoped.
The guard with the gun laughs humourlessly. "This is HQ. Now, answer me this. Who. Are You. What do you want with us? Or I should say, what do you want with her?" The guard motions to Anya with a thumb.
Lucas has ten seconds, less, to make a decision. A plan. Anything. he looks at Anya despairingly, pleading with his eyes for her to wake up, do something.
He steps on the foot of the guard holding the gun. Oldest trick in the book, but it still works. The guard grunts with pain, falling into the guard behind him. The gun goes off, the bullet embedding itself into the wall. The first guard turns on the second, railing at his stupidity, and isn't the boss going to be happy...
Lucas snatches the gun from the floor, fallen from the second guard's hand when the first grabbed him, and smashes it onto each guard's temple before either can blink. Knox taught me something useful, at least, Luc thinks wryly. He bends to untie her restraints, resorting to smashing the shackles off with the butt of his gun before shoving one into his belt. He then notices the black band on her wrist, putting a deep crack in it with the same method using his other gun, then tugging it free, since the plastic is almost flat, not moulded to her wrist.
She is still almost unresponsive, until the band comes off. Then she jumps bolt upright, eyes wide, alert and searching the room. "What's going on?" she asks. Luc hates to remain so stoic, but he can't risk the fact that there may be cameras, and they will have seen what he just did. He needs to get her out-now. "We're going to see your parents," he says in a flat voice, hoping the ski mask stolen from a guard will hide his face. She merely nods, still apparently half lost in whatever world the band has shown her.
She lets him help her up from the chair, apparently not noticing that he's gentler with her than her guards would have been. "Let's go, l-" he just barely stops himself calling her love, the name he calls her when they're alone.
She struggles when they get to the door, asking, "Where is he? What have you done to him?" for which he has no explanation. He merely does not answer, both because he has no idea what to say, and because a guard in his place would have done the same.
Luc guides her down the hallway, a hand on her arm. She struggles violently, and Luc has to dodge several punches to the jaw from her unbound hands. He pushes her into an alcove down the hall and shoves the ski mask from his face. He exhales, then smiles faintly at her shocked expression. "Anya," he says, needlessly."It's me."
_
Viola
They drag her back to the room she was in before the gas attack. They tie her down, chain her to the floor. She is in the middle again. "Stay there," the guard says. Then he leaves. Runs to the commotion outside in the corridor, along with most of the other guards. She hears a small popping sound, like gunshots. An attack. She curls smaller, arms over her head. All around her, the other girls are doing the same. All but three of the guards are gone, and those are being overpowered by a man coming in through the door. He is wearing a ski-mask, but she can still see the recognition in his eyes when they light on Bianca across the room. He shoots away the chains binding her, but then his eyes travel across to her. He crosses to her, and she recognises him. Callum. Alina's brother. She lets him remove the chains and stumbles to her feet. The other girls start clamouring and screaming to be released, and Callum starts to panic. "What do we do?" he asks Bianca. She shrugs. "Don't know."
"We can't just leave them here!" Callum cries. "Who knows what will happen to them!"
Vi doesn't offer an opinion. She hasn't spoken in several days, not since they brought her here.
"We'll come back for them. I promise, Callum." Bianca says firmly. "For now, we get out of here."
Callum hustles them from the room, past the three unconscious guards and the scores of beaten girls. They will come back for them, Vi vows. They will return, and free every last one.
But how?
~
Aria
"Lucas," I whisper. "Luc."
"It's me," he whispers again, eyes bright and hands cupping my face. 'It's me, love. I'm here. I promise. I'm right here." He pushes me against the wall and kisses me hard, his fingers, chilled from holding the gun that now clatters to the floor, cupping my face. I lose myself in the kiss, finally able to convince myself that he's real, he's here, and that he's not dead or being whipped to a pulp in a simulation. "You're here," I say, voice thick with tears, when he pulls away. He nods, expression full of wonder at seeing me before him. He doesn't speak, just pulls me to him again.
"Hey, lovebirds!" Frex yells. "Stop smooching and help us get out of here! You'll have plenty of time for that later!"
Luc pulls away reluctantly, still grinning. "Right. yeah." he stoops to pick the gun off the floor. "We should go, before the guards wake up."
I nod. "Where are we going?" I ask, as he pulls me to the end of the hallway. He smiles. "You'll see."
When we burst through the doors at the end of the hall, the sun is bright and glorious on my face. I widen my eyes and take it all in, not having seen the sun in who knows how long. Poor Bianca, who has been here for at least four months. She too, is smiling faintly when I look over at her. Vi is there too, but she looks troubled. Frex runs a hand down her arm as if he can't stop touching her, and looks worried for her. "How are we going to get the others out?" Callum says, as Luc and Frex start hurrying us forward. "We'll think of something," Frex says, trying to be reassuring. I don't miss the look that passes between the two, though. It doesn't look good. I also don't know why Callum cares. Has he changed so greatly in the time I've been away? A month and a half, counting the time with my parents?
We clamber into the Jeeps waiting for us, and I can't stop myself collapsing onto Luc the second we sit down, the questions flying from my mind in favour of sleep. "Sleep, love," he whispers in my ear as the engine roars to life. "We're going home."
~