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With enough struggling and rubbing his face up against the wall, Warrick managed to dislodge the blindfold, although it made little difference. The room where he was being held was black enough to make it difficult to tell if his eyes were even open.
Warrick cataloged his other complaints: His shoulders ached from having his hands cuffed behind him for so long, his throat was so dry from dehydration it burned, and his head ached, most likely an after effect of whatever drug he’d been given. Any faint hope that this was an especially elaborate scene orchestrated by Toreth had long since faded, and the only comfort was in knowing that Toreth was certainly out there somewhere doing his utmost to find him.
The door to the room creaked open and the bright beam of a torch completely blinded him. Warrick instinctively flinched away from it, but then did his best to recover, sitting up as straight as he could manage and simply keeping his eyes gently closed rather than squeezing them shut.
When the torch-bearer finally spoke, Warrick was surprised to hear a woman’s voice.
“Doctor Warrick,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you and now, at last, the day has arrived that I get to meet the brilliant Doctor Keir Warrick after all this time.” The voice sounded like that of a relatively young woman, and the sarcasm intended with her stress on the adjective was evident.
Curiosity got the better of him, and Warrick tried to crack his eyes open only to have to squeeze them closed again. After that he tried to keep his expression still and his posture passive. The kidnapping protocols had been well drilled into his head, and he knew that he should say as little as possible to avoid antagonizing guards. The miserable conditions in which he was being held gave him hope that most likely these were run-of-the-mill kidnappers interested in a ransom and not a targeted corporate sab from a SimTech rival. In either case, he would be worth more to them whole and alive than maimed or dead, and his best move was to hold on long enough for Toreth and/or SimTech’s security team to find him, or pay the ransom, or do whatever they needed to do to get him out.
Even so, there was a point at which if they continued to hold him, he became a greater liability than an asset. The key was to do everything he could to remain an asset for as long as possible.
The speaker took a few steps closer and ran the light up and down his body slowly.
“But where are my manners? I haven’t even introduced myself yet. Or maybe I don’t need to. Perhaps you’ll recognize me on your own.” She turned the light beam toward herself, revealing a thin, oval face with a pointed nose, pale eyes and chin-length, light auburn hair. “I’m told I look very like my mother.” She appeared young, but her expression was arrogant and angry, far beyond her years.
Warrick scanned his memory but found he had no reference for anyone old enough to be this woman’s mother whom she resembled.
“No? You haven’t got it yet?” she asked. There was something ominous and not entirely sane about her expectant smile, and Warrick felt a cold dread prickling the back of his neck and making his shoulders tense.
Kidnapping protocols or no, Warrick didn’t think he ought to ignore a direct question. He made the futile attempt to moisten his cracked dry lips and said, “I’m afraid I’m not able to place it.” His voice came out a hoarse rasp.
He caught the second where her expression turned cruel and angry before she turned the beam back around into his eyes, blinding him and causing the pain in his temples to spike.
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me, that she meant so little to you, you can’t even recall her face. I’m Viatrix Tanit,” she said. “And I intend to kill you just as you killed my mother.”
Warrick’s heart sank in his chest. He had very little time indeed.
*
Whatever passion for revenge was motivating Viatrix, she was dispassionate enough in the methodical way in which she administered pain with her (obviously illegally obtained) nerve induction probe. Clearly she had also somehow gotten her hands on some sort of I&I traiing materials which she used both to her own advantage and to quote passages at Warrick to let him know that she knew what her mother had suffered there.
However, she was just unhinged enough, or just self-taught enough, that Warrick was able to get her talking about what had launched her revenge quest. Probing to see just how deep her knowledge of the circumstances of her mother’s death ran. She had enough details to make him truly uneasy--she had informed him early on that she would keep him and torture him for three days, just as had been done to her mother--but seemed mostly to ascribe fault to him for his failure to protect Tanit as the director of SimTech than for any actual deep knowledge of just how deep Warrick’s involvement had been.
She also let him know when the end of his second day was up. A flood of regrets both mundane and profound washed over him unbidden. He thought about the strides they’d made on the sim in the last few years and how every time he thought it couldn’t advance to another level that would surprise him, it did. He thought about how he had had plans for a visit with Valeria the following weekend, and how they’d talked about making cardamom shortbread cookies together. He thought a lot, of course, about the cabinet and never getting to experience those sensations again. Oddly, much of this pain was no more intense than what he felt in the cabinet, and yet the difference was profound when it was being inflicted with malice rather than . . . even in his heart of hearts Warrick hesitated to say the word. And yet, unexpectedly the regret that came to hi most persistently was that he might die never having told Toreth that he loved him.
The irony was not lost on Warrick that merely voicing that sentiment could prove fatal--or nearly so.
Warrick tried to move his mind off of regrets and think instead about how good it would feel when Toreth did rescue him and he got to leave this bloody prison with its persistent damp chill and odour of mold. For better or for worse Toreth was very good at his job, and he was sure to be putting everything he had into tracking Warrick down, if merely on the principle of not wanting other people to meddle with his possessions. Warrick dearly wished that he’d hurry it up.
*
Warrick woke with his face in a wet sticky patch of what could only be his own vomit. He’d passed out again from the pain of the neuro-induction. His execution could only be hours away now.
His faith in Toreth’s competence remained. He still had no doubt that Toreth would find him eventually, but he was beginning to fear that it would be his corpse.
He didn’t think it too presumptuous to feel concerned about the effect that might have on Toreth. Although hopefully Sara would manage to pull him out of whatever breakdown he had as she always seemed to.
It occurred to Warrick that Sara and Toreth might even end up together with him gone. If they did, hopefully, Toreth would put somewhat more effort into hiding his indiscretions from her than he ever had for Warrick, he thought charitably. Thank goodness Toreth and Dilly hated each other. He found he could not quite extend that level of generosity of spirit to hope that his partner would wind up with his sister. But as he always said, he knew Dilly and knew that he could trust her. Maybe with Warrick gone, they’d have less reason to hate each other, and even if she did try to fight the portion of SimTech left to Toreth, he knew it was ironclad.
And still, Warrick’s wandering thoughts returned to the absurd fact that he had never told Toreth that he loved him. Why should it matter? Would it have changed a single thing that passed between them? Only for the worse.
*
If Viatrix’s goal had been to inspire more empathy for her mother’s final moments, she had succeeded. As Warrick waited out his final few hours, he couldn’t help but wonder if she had also spent hers weak and in pain but fully expecting a savior who didn’t come.
Warrick was startled out of this semi-conscious reverie by the sound of what could only be gunshots over his head.
“Toreth,” he shouted with strength he didn’t know he still possessed. “Toreth! I’m in here!”
The door burst open in an explosion of splinters and at last Warrick looked up to see Toreth gun still drawn searching looking around the room until he spotted Warrick and then dropped the gun and dropped to his knees.”
“Warrick! What the fuck has she done to you?” Toreth’s hands roamed over his body, firm but gentle, checking him over.
Toreth’s beautiful face filled Warrick’s vision with a look of concern and fear like Warrick had never seen on him before.
“Knew you’d come,” Warrick said to him, and then, “Need to tell you something.”
“The medic will be here in two minutes, Warrick. Just try to stay still until then. You’re going to be all right.” Toreth said.
Warrick’s vision was blurry, making Torreth’s features soft and his hair appear almost to glow like a halo.
“‘Course I’m all right,” Warrick said. “You’re here.”
*
Warrick drifted in and out of consciousness for what felt like multiple days, but he later learned was only one. At some point when he was feeling better he’d have Toreth explain to him how he’d managed to get the SimTech security team to agree to treatment from a private nurse at home rather than a trip to the hospital, but for now he was too exhausted, and too supremely grateful to be in his own bed to ask many questions.
On his second day home he woke to late afternoon sunshine giving both his bedroom and Toreth, extremely incongruously carrying a tray with a cup of tea and what smelled like a banana and pepper sandwich on it, a warm glow.
For a moment, Warrick wondered if he had built himself some sort of simulation of heaven in the Sim and then forgotten about it, but the extreme protest put up by every muscle in his body when he shifted to try to sit up quickly reminded him that this was realty.
“Wait. I’ll help you,” Torreth said, when Warrick’s efforts at getting upright proved futile.
“Toreth,” Warrick asked as Toreth propped a pillow behind him, “did I say anything . . . unusual when you rescued me? Or afterward?”
“You were mainly talking about the Sim and some stuff about the cabinet when you were making any sense at all, so I’d say pretty damn usual.” The answer appeared to come easily and without any awkwardness. There was a chance he was lying-- there always was with Toreth--but Warrick didn’t think so. He felt relieved, but there was a twinge of regret.
“Is that a banana and pepper sandwich?” Warrick asked after a few beats of silence.
“Oh, yeah.” Toreth shifted the placement of the plate on the tray minutely. “I probably didn’t make it right. You don’t have to eat it, if it’s awful.”
Toreth looked so uncharacteristically sheepish that Warrick spoke before he could think better and said, “There was one thing I wanted to tell you, though. Afterward.”
Toreth turned to look at him. “Yeah? What was that?” he asked.
Warrick tried to summon the courage, but the words died in his throat. The silence stretched out awkwardly, long enough for him to watch Toreth’s expression shift from mild curiosity to wariness. Warick looked over at the tray with the sandwich and tea, and then to the curtains that concealed the cabinet, and then back at Toreth’s face that he had pictured every moment he was held captive until it finally appeared.
Warrick sighed. He couldn’t do it. Not now. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
“Yeah, don’t mention it,” Toreth said and gave Warrick a smile that was as close as Toreth could come to sweet. Warrick’s heart clenched in his chest, and then, when Toreth leaned in and kissed him, it soared.