Page 82 of Marked by the Demigod

He's definitely scared shitless. Terrified, and scraping by keeping it together.

Aimes nods at him, and his face breaks, like he's going to crumble, like he's going to cry, before he visibly gathers himself back together.

"Vanya killed the librarian in Pasadena, his traces were everywhere there," he says, voice rough. "He was tortured for information."

"He also had a payment from them dated two days before," Katya says, brisk.

"I don't know why," Iakov says, desperate, then with a sideways look at Aimes, he clears his throat. "Regardless, I have to borrow Aimes here, and --" With a squeeze of his hand, they're all of a sudden not in Flasks anymore.

She stumbles, and he catches her, his eyes wide. "Don't leave," he says, his voice rough, then he disappears.

Her heart pounding, she sits down -hard- on the tile floor.

She's...in some sort of windowless room. No door, nothing leading outside, just...a room.

The tile is old, off-orange and brown, like the linoleum you'd find in 1970s houses. The walls are red brick, and there's a small cot tucked along one side, and an ancient fridge against the other. Despite it not being plugged into anywhere, it hums with electricity.

The lights are recessed into the ceiling, and they're old, so old they buzz, as if they have been running since the 1980s.

Her hand shaking, she pushes herself up to her feet, her actions making no noise. "What the fuck," she whispers, and the words sort of stop without making too much noise. Obviously, she can hear them, but they're not clear.

There's a single sink that's not hooked up to any plumbing, but water runs clear and cold from it. She runs her hand behind it and anything holding it to the wall...no pipes. Same with the frankly ancient looking toilet in the opposite corner.

A single cabinet holds packet after packet, all in Russian, more Soviet era than anything else. It rattles -- some sort of foodstuff.

The hair on the back of her arms starts to rise. How long is he leaving her here for?

She yanks open the handle on the fridge, it's full of fruit and beer, rows of apples and rows of a beer with Russian lettering on it. It's so verging on ridiculous that she sits hard on the tile again, the door open in front of her.

"What the fuck."

* * *

She spendsthree hours -at least, according to her dying phone with zero signal- pressing into all the bricks she can reach. None of them shift or move at all.

So instead, working up quite a sweat despite the chilled air, she sits in the middle, staring up at the ceiling.

It's roughly 15 feet by 15 feet, and, from the chill and the sounds, either in a place that's winter now or underground and completely impossible of getting into or out of unless it's by the weird teleportation thing that Iakov does.

His brothers probably can do it, too. If they share abilities at all or anything, which for all she knows they might not.

And he's left her in this hole. For who knows how long, and who knows why.

Tears bubble up in her eyes, and she buries her head in her arms, feeling like she's about to hyperventilate, her chest rising and falling.

She had been so happy, so happy when he had shown up, for that brief moment of seeing him again, and it was pathetic. The moment he needed something, he put her in this room and...and...and left.

The emotions of the last week crash down on her, with Dave's death and the brothers finding her and not being able to tell Trixie anything, and she cries, tears burning down her cheeks and salting her mouth. She grabs the pillow off of the cot, and it smells exactly like the odd cologne that Iakov wears and that starts a new round of tears.

Full of restless energy, she crosses to the fridge, and throwing her hip into it she manages to move it away from the wall. Still no plug in, despite it running perfectly.

Because she is willing to wage actual money that this all runs on Iakov's power. Somehow. If he can do that from however far away he is. She would also bet actual money that, based on the Russian beer and Russian food and Russian everything, she's not in the U.S. anymore.

She struggles with one of the food packets, and once she rips it open beef jerky falls out.

She gnaws on it tentatively, and it's fresh, or as fresh as beef jerky can be. Not rancid, in any case, and it calms the bubble of hysteria in the back of her throat.

Suddenly exhausted, she takes the packet of beef jerky and lays on the small cot, staring up at the brick ceiling. It's not the most uncomfortable cot she's slept in, and she somehow drifts off to sleep with the bag of jerky resting against her chest like a comfort blanket.

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