Page 18 of Not With the Eyes

Scones had escaped. There was hope that Oberon would get free. There were only so many places the G.O.D. could take her right now, which was reassuring and not. The others would know where to find her… and the G.O.D. would know they'd try and take additional precautions.

Well, not her problem to work out. She'd done her part. Now all she had to do was endure whatever the G.O.D. did to her between now and when she was rescued. Hell, maybe there'd be a chance for her to get what she was after. All she needed was one good opening to shift and slip away. Nobody would be able to pin her down after that.

One step at a time, though. For now, the next step was strapping herself in, so she didn't turn into a ping-pong ball.

They headed out just seconds after she'd done so, and Oberon used the opportunity to grab what sleep she could, because she was going to need to have her shit together when she finally came face to face with Lachapelle. Which she would. Lachapelle hated her just as much as she hated Lachapelle.

When the truck finally came to a halt hours later, Oberon was sore, still tired, and in desperate need of a piss. They hauled her out of the cage and dragged her into a building that looked like a defunct gas station but was far more than that inside.

She'd helped level more than a few of these waystations in her time, mostly in Europe and Asia. By the time she'd come stateside, she was on to higher level ops.

One of the guards dragged her across an almost painfully shiny linoleum floor and into a room barely bigger than a school locker, where she fumbled around briefly before finally being able to take a piss. Maybe she should have stuck with a dick. Well, too late now.

She'd barely finished when the door opened, and she was hauled off like a sack of laundry again. "Fuck all of you."

They laughed meanly as they all but tossed her back into the cage

Another couple of hours, give or take, and they drove into the dark, dank depths of an underground parking facility. Oberon wasn't surprised when the elevator she was hauled into took them down instead of up. All of the G.O.D.'s dirtiest secrets were underground. Probably an entire essay's worth of symbolism in that, but she was a spy and murderer, not a scholar.

Given the starting point, the travel time…

She was right where the Anti-Heroes had wanted to be all along anyway: the International Records and Archives Hall. Made sense, though. Anywhere else they could have taken her was rubble or compromised. Her comrades might be a bunch of do-good dumbasses, but they did the job and did it well.

Hopefully that held true when it came to rescuing her.

Down, down, down they went, until it took everything Oberon had not to hunch her shoulders in a futile attempt to get away from the crushing weight of being trapped. At least when going up, there was always multiple ways to go out or down.

Here… here she could only go up, and there wouldn't be many ways to do that. Two, if she was really fucking lucky, and she highly doubted it.

Eventually, they stepped out into a dark, dull hall, nothing along it but red-light sconces and doors that blended in almost seamlessly.

They dragged her down to the end of the hall, where two guards had to present retinal and voice scans before the door opened. Should Oberon be flattered or offended?

Inside, the cell was as unremarkable as she'd expected: a depressing bunk, a toilet and sink, and a tiny shelf above it for supplies she didn't have and nobody would be stupid enough to give her. Probably wouldn't even give her a toothbrush and soap.

Sighing, Oberon stretched out on the bunk, stiff and cool, the threadbare blanket next to useless. Not that she thought she'd be doing much sleeping, or in any condition to notice, let alone complain, when she was given a chance.

No, the only thing in her future was some tense conversation, poking and prodding, and a whole lot of pain.

Turning on her side, folding up the pathetic pillow beneath her to make it halfway decent, she stared at the wall and let her mind roam.

To think if this all went as south as it possibly could, the last thing she'd ever done was kiss Scones. Where was he now? Probably hiking his way back to base until he could commandeer a car or contact backup. Who knew how many caches the wily little bastard had stashed around the country.

Byron was never going to let them hear the end of this, even though it should have been a stupid retrieval mission. Well, whatever. The Anti-Heroes were still going on their precious mission, if with a minor alteration in the plan. Alright, major alteration in the plan. Rescues ops were always the most difficult ops.

She flinched as a sharp ring filled the small cell and sat up as a voice said, "Go to the door, stand with your back turned, hands behind your head.

"Yeah, yeah," Oberon muttered. Rolling out of the shitty bed, she did as told and let them once more cuff her wrists and ankles.

They escorted her out, nearly dragging her along when her shuffling steps finally wore out their patience, and into a different elevator than the one they'd taken before.

This one went up—and up, all the way to the top, because of course the G.O.D wanted to be as close to the sky as they could get without giving up their mortal comforts.

As the elevator finally chimed, Oberon tensed. Setting her shoulders, she walked as well as she was able out of the elevator, only barely tolerating the guards still holding her arms. This was not how she'd wanted this eventual meeting to go, but this was better than finding out on the news that Scones had been 'shot while resisting arrest'.

The hallway between the elevator and the double doors at the other end was unnecessarily long and so over the top ostentatious that Oberon was offended on behalf of interior designers everywhere. Glitzy. Shiny. Golden. Scarlet. All of it slammed into her eyes like a digital billboard right outside her bedroom window.

At the end were double doors emblazoned with the seal of the G.O.D. and their stupid fucking motto about helping all humanity. Grand Order of Defenders, her ass.

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