Chapter 3

Echo stared at him with a small degree of criticism in her eyes, but only when he turned back around and silently commanded her to follow. He spoke to her like she hardly mattered as a human being. More than that, she could sense he was looking to her to give him any excuse to put a bullet in her head and wash his hands of the complication she’d become. Knowing that wasn’t a good feeling.

In the hallway, she half-expected to see people, but none appeared. In the pack parking lot, after agreeing to his terms, she again expected to see people. There were vehicles, but they were sparse, and sparser still were the people in this area of the city. The feeling of exposure was rattling enough that she was actually relieved to be inside the vehicle instead of outside in her birthday suit. Perhaps it was a grace that no one came within her view, for the temptation to run for help was definitely present. The moment she was sat in the backseat, knees tucked tight to her chest and ankles crossed, she felt a pang of regret for having not tried to run, and confused about her decision, one way or the other.

She knew she’d been told not to ask questions, but now that she was alone with the strange man in the SUV, repressing the urge to speak was an impossibility. “ ... were you there?”

Jason breathed a silent sigh of relief when she did as he ordered and quickly got into the vehicle. He adjust his rear view mirror to completely capture her reflection, he wasn’t worried about other cars this time of night. Just before he started the vehicle, she asked the question he wasn’t sure how he was going to answer yet. Given that he was right in the room and she could remember him at any time, he decided not to lie to her. After several long seconds he responded, “Yes.” His eyes locked onto hers in the mirror to see how she would take the news.

“I was hired to man the cameras, handle security, and ... dispose of ‘the body’.” He almost said ‘her body’. Though he decided to be honest with her, but he wasn’t going to tell her everything.

As he continued to speak, he glanced between the mirror and the road to further gauge her reaction. Something odd caught his attention each time the street lights illuminated her body. Now that he wasn’t in crisis mode, his mind was subconsciously adding up things that didn’t make logical sense. She should have more bruises.

‘Yes’.

Oh. Why did that make her feel worse than she already did? What did another pair of eyes on her during the worst moments of her life matter? She was letting him take her somewhere.

“Was there another girl there?” she turned her head toward the window as she asked, because she couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore. He’d watched those men do terrible things to her and hadn’t lifted a finger to stop any of it. In her eyes, that made him the same as the other two men who’d hurt her. She asked if there was another girl, because the comment about ‘the body’ confused her. Something didn’t add up. Echo wasn’t ‘the body’. She’d been badly hurt, but she hadn’t been killed. Just asleep for a while.

Sweet eyes glossed over as an emptiness replaced the modicum of hope she’d salvaged. She rubbed the back of her neck, and did the same to her throat, but gently, though she wasn’t sure why she needed to be gentle. She was intact. The worst of her aches and pains lay within her shoulder-blades. The dark-purple bruises along each one had darkened over the last hour, while the rest of her battle marks were increasingly superficial.

“No, it was just you.”

All of a sudden something clicked in his mind and he slammed on the brakes to stop the SUV in the middle of the road. He whirled around to look at her directly. From the dim light streaming through the windows there appeared to be less bruising than there should be. He needed more light. He scrambled to open his glove compartment to pull out his Maglite. Suddenly 1200 lumens of light bathed her body and partially blinded her at the sudden intensity. The bruises were still there, but faded. Faint enough that he needed the flashlight to see them clearly. Her neck should have had a thin dark purple and black band around it; instead it was just a spackle of light purple. Her cruelly tortured breasts were a mess of reds, purples, and blacks. Breasts that he had covered with her arms to preserve some of her dignity were now just a flush of red, like a sunburn, mixed with an occasional light purple streak.

“That’s impossible,” he whispered. Looking like he had seen a ghost, he whipped back around, tossed the flashlight on the passenger seat, and quickly started the SUV moving again. He began to push the vehicle over the speed limit as he felt an incredible sense of urgency to get back to his home and review the recordings. He had to know he wasn’t going crazy. He saw what they did to her and the damage they did.

Echo’s eyes captured the light and seemed to hold onto it. Those honey-ochre irises washed out, making the pits of her pupils seem so much darker - tunnels you might fall into if you look too close. Mortified that he’d pulled over just to pick her physique apart, she scooted backward to the other backseat, trying to hide herself, and trying not to panic. What did he want? Why was he looking at her like that?

Moments later, his driving was scaring her to the point that she wondered if she’d only survived an abduction and violent rape to die in a vehicle collision the next night. How unfair. Maybe his speeding would draw the police’s attention, though. She hoped he would get pulled over, so she kept her mouth shut and eyes peeled on the streets passing them by, praying to see red and blue light up the windows.

Being quiet when she had an entire universe of questions crouched on the tip of her tongue was no easy feat. Another one slipped out. “What’s your name?”

As he drove and mentally reviewed events that occurred just before the Spaniards left, he reflexively answered her, “Jason. What’s yours?”

Social interaction and speech were far from his focus and he was essentially on autopilot as the pieces started to fall into place in his mind. If the recordings confirmed what he already knew, then this girl could regenerate and recover from injuries on her body, lethal injuries. His breathing hitched as he was beginning to believe. Whether it was magic or some X-men shit, he didn’t care at the moment. All that mattered was that this was something unique. Something the world had never seen before and he had possession and control of it, control of her.

His mind worked furiously at the possibilities. This was a gold mine and a nuclear bomb wrapped in a slim feminine package. Labs around the world would kill to experiment on her. Key word being ‘kill’ and the implied target being ‘him’. Scratch that right the fuck off the list. While medical research might benefit humanity, he was more interested in his own survivability in conjunction with vast monetary compensation. Over and over he brainstormed as options were cast aside as soon as they popped up. Eventually he realized ‘why was he trying to fix something that wasn’t broken’. He’d stick with what he knew, what he was good at, and make more snuff films. This time he took a small bit of comfort in knowing the victims weren’t actually dying. No snatch teams to hire, no disposal teams, hell he could almost do it all himself. After his initial burst of enthusiasm died down, he reconsidered. He had intentionally stayed out of the camera’s eye for a reason. And no matter the monetary gain, he wasn’t about to start now. He’d have to change her appearance each time; cut her hair, do her makeup drastically different. It wouldn’t due for people to think she wasn’t actually dead; there would be a price on his head within weeks once they found out. While there was no honor among thieves, there was sure as fuck an expectation of delivering on the expected goods.