An immense tide of water fell across the now drenched form of the police chief. She gasped from the sudden extortion of cold that awakened a shiver through her spent body. It took only a moment for her to remember the situation placed upon her as she then leaned forward only to find no result in her endeavor. Steel chains cinched her legs and arms to a chair making escape futile. The lack of strength frightened her mind as she had never experienced such a circumstance before. In the past there was always someone or something that she could rely on to squeeze through the day then survive until the night. Whether that be Emelie, her coworkers, or Charlie's grin, there was an inner resolve that furthered her attempt to move forward.
Yet here she was. Captured in her own home, unable to move as a dark figure perused the nest in which her child was still hiding within, or so she thought. Her head, unrestrained, threatened to pierce the man who had left her in this state, the same one who had just awakened her. However, her action was suffused by the unmistakable wounds that decorated the mug which accompanied this stare. It was blotted by black and blue eyes, with one swollen to a puffy state leaving her half-blind, while dried blood caked across her lips and chin. The only relief she was granted came from the lack of leakage which doused her neck. The intruder at least dressed the crack to her skull he had caused.
This time, with all her built-up power, Kandra threw herself at the chains trying to break the legs of the chair then crawl from the wreckage. One measure that Kage did not permit.
"That's enough." His tightened fist grasped her hair drawing her face to the neck of the chair gazing up at the ceiling. Or, it would have if not for the shimmer of a pointed tip to stare back at her one opened eye. She froze, unable to contemplate a second more of purpose to herself.
"Good. That's very good." Kage's hand lifted away from Kandra's hair, yet she dared not to move an inch, fearful of the proclaimed promise. "Let's begin…" Kage observed the micro expressions that dotted the woman's face. They were different from the beast he had slain the prior night. Genuine fear not for only herself laid out before her captor. Ever so slightly would her pupils dart about what she could of the room attempting to spy the subject of her worries. The child which Kage held in eyeshot. One who was made to remain silent unless further pain were to trouble them.
The idea made him sick to his core. Afterall, she was just vermin much like the other. Different forms taking different shapes to elude the masses but just the same.
He sifted the blade away from the woman's sight allowing her to relax a tad. "You're going to tell me about a child. Where he is exactly, you understand me?" Kandra's face still did not move from the spot, giving no answer to Kage's demand. The man's voice was monotone much unlike the gaze she had captured before she fell unconscious. She heard a similar form of speech in the past, it came from those either on the edge of death or ones accustomed to it. Those that delivered it onto the doorsteps of others.
Kage drew up another chair, this one plastered with drawings of dragons slew by vicious warriors bearing harrowing clubs. His feet remained parallel as his back leaned forward poking out with a single hand that demonstrated the blade of the knife. Kandra noticed the messy state of the person, his eyes were clung with dark bags much like her own, his hair lay a mess with no sense of rhyme nor reason for the curtains that draped over his face. A face that was although young bore countless scars that told of a differing wisdom, one premature but decided. She knew that he could be no older than sixteen, an idea that flooded her even more with horror.
"There was a boy who was kidnapped. An Evolved boy fourteen years of age that attends Petell Academy. Originally, he was taken by a gang that controlled the ports but was given to you to be housed somewhere. Where is he?" There was no response which echoed his question. Finally, she turned her stare onto him, eating at him dead in the eye. A hate much like his own which could produce snarls as the woman's brow furrowed making her wrinkles become all the more pronounced. In there did her answer lie. She would not speak and when she could Kage's blood would spill upon the floor as a new paint for her child to use.
Realizing this, Kage rose from the chair crossing the distance between each other in a single stride. At her foot did their stare compete against the other. A contest that would not cease even as Kage spoke, "I'm going to slice off a finger for every question you don't answer. Then, when I run out of fingers I will go to your toes. From there, if you still don't answer me." Kage stepped from her view, sliding the corner of her chair to face a specific corner of the kitchen, one in which Charlie stood bound just as she was. His tired eyes filled with his mother's worry as well as shame with a puddle formed underneath his bottom. "I'm going to do exactly the same to him. Even then, if you forsake me again. That child will be dead." Finally, Kage's promise rang true to Kandra as she understood what he had meant. "Understand?"
Kandra gave the affirmative as a nod of her head made Kage smirk, stealing her sight with their shining whites. "Answer the question."
She opened her mouth releasing an odor of terrible stench due to the priorly ingested alcohol having maintained their rummage through her gums while unconscious. Her crusted eye began to blur as she fought back the very idea of her child's dead form; a possibility which had never seemed to grace her mind until now. Someone now possessed the key to ending her dream of seeing Charlie grow into a proper adult, one that she never managed. "The boy. The Evolved. I don't know the specific one but if… it was one we took then he would be housed at the wharf."
"Which one?" The blade drew closer, wishing to steal a finger from her manicured hands.
Quickly she dragged out any memory that could aid in identifying the correct location. A process conducted in the manner of a dozen seconds. All the while the blade's sharpened edge touched down onto her index, popping a river of blood that warmed its stiffening cold. "Old Bay. He'll be at the thirteenth dock. I promise you he's there."
The blade left her finger leaving it to pass with a pulsating bruise soon to form. Yet, with the shudder of breath coming from their intruder, Kandra knew that the interrogation was far over. At least for her that was. They had played their part, but he knew they had seen his face, especially with how distinct it was, they could identify him at any point. All that stood for them was a persuasion, one that Kandra did not know how to make. The only saving grace she could think of was the camera plastered to a corner of the apartment. It stood hidden by a reflective glass that covered its presence, one hopefully the boy had not seen.
His hands clung to the strands of hair as they sifted through the mess on top of his head. Harsh seethes of breath barked out from his mouth. "Why? Why are you this way?"
Kage crouched low to the woman's face, studying her features. In them he basked in their decrepit deformity of a conscious tainted with mud. "Given child yet you still willingly delivered death to those in your protection? Does their suffering mean nothing to you?"
A nasty growl was all that would answer him.
"This ball of time we inhabit is not yours to demolish. You, and everyone that follows your damned command, taint what God has created, what countless people have sacrificed to tame." Kage's right eye began to twitch. "Then, you are persuaded by nothing! A child in your care and you find no remorse in your actions. When he grows there will be nothing left in his poisoned form but your corrupted ideas that will plunge our world into a hell not yet conceived."
His heavy breathing flooded her senses like a plague. It was unbearable, unwilling, unmeasurable. It was as if a personification of hate stood before her, contemplating the demise which would befall the sin decorating his eyes. In its gaze, she trembled without a response. A decision already made could not be curtailed; it was madness to do otherwise.
"YOU ARE VERMIN! The Devil's own pawn to suffuse this paradise into a dementedly twisted version of what could be true." The blade stood pronounced as it hung in the air ready to be swiped over the figure of this poor pawn like a brush upon a canvas. "No child, no one shall remember you as I, The Devil, plunge you to the abyss myself!"
Kandra closed her eyes, succumbing to the nature of death prepared for her. Not even the tearfully bulging eyes of Charlie could rouse a flickering hope in her chest. The tide had come. Her sins arrived bearing upon her shoulders as a great tide unable to be withstood. While in the mind of her executioner no sense was made of the scene. Severely the ropes which bound sanity hung limp as Kandra's actions broke every barrier, he manipulated to protect his befallen innocence.
Therefore, the drawn conclusion remained within him.
'Some people are just Evil. Some people just need to die.'
It was his thought, his only thought which allowed him to commit the coming atrocity. Anything else would shatter him into bits of disregarded matter unable to reform.
The dagger swung out of the dark, seeking refuge in the forehead of its victim…
Or so it would have if not for the crumbling whine of a small hand which stole the momentum. In the face of death, Charlie jumped to his mother's side, softening the blow of the blade with his own hand forcing it to cease its trajectory. In subsequent response, Kage relinquished control of the weapon, releasing the boy to flop on the boards below with a harrowing scream that ratcheted his sin.
His eyes shot at the child as he squirmed. Relenting from her acceptance, the mother fell to her son's side speaking in a soothing tone. The mother did not devolve to a fit of tears or begging replies, instead simply shielding her boy's body from the monster in their wake. Although blood leaked from her pulsating, swollen eye, she cared not for the pain as she moved to protect the object of her being. The last bastion which, in turn, made her whole.
Kage could not move as the image perplexed him. A mother wasn't supposed to do such a thing nor was a child able to do the same. They were to wait as the other died so the more suitable life could bloom. That was an undeniable reality he partook in, yet it became false within his purview.
'How? Why? Why do these vermin do such things? How could she? She led thousands to their deaths but won't allow the same for this boy?
Why did Mother do the same for me?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why! Why! Why! Why! Why!
WHY!'
Kage could not grasp the formulation of quandaries that wished to eat him alive. Awashed in its horrifying gape, he ran.
When Kandra returned to look for the intruder, he was gone with a solitary window open as a lasting reminder of his presence. It was as if the reaper himself had solely attended to test her resolve, a resolve that she, herself, now hated.
Kandra Talon fell asleep unable to withstand the pain that arrested her body of all energy. Until the morning she was strapped in that position leaving Charlie to do all he could to find help. It was only after midday broke had she come awake in a hospital room. Safe and sound just as her child remained in a room not far away.
Yet, a single sound persisted as she lay staring, with a single eye, at the white ceiling speckled with dots of weathered function. In her sleep she heard the faintest of laughter which reached her ears. The intruder that had threatened their lives cried to the stars above with a spittle flown laugh that echoed in the ears of all who could hear. It was crazed with a mixture of some madness as well as manically devious torture brought along.
Kandra Talon would never forget the evening that nearly brought an end to her child's life nor the laughter which followed.