Mahingga

Chapter 17: Yevan

Everything was spinning when Ako opened his eyes. He was vaguely aware of hands patting down his body. He made no effort to stop them as the hands located his toolset and took it away. His thoughts were still foggy, but he could see that he'd been dragged back onto the dock. The Palam was still wrapped around his arm; they'd have a hard time noticing it unless they knew what to look for.

"Clever kid," the man said again, tossing the toolset to a female officer with her dark brown hair in a tight ponytail. It was the same woman he'd seen talking into the rectangular device when he'd freed Kita. Almost freed, he corrected.

Once they'd been searched, they were hauled off towards a different building. Ako tested his restraints, but they were unyielding. Aside from that, he didn't even have his tools. There was no getting out of this one. Despite the low odds, Ako kept track of where they were going anyway. If an opportunity to get away became available, he would take it. But to Ako's surprise, Kita already hung her head low in resignation. But why? Was Ako missing something? Is there something she's not sharing?

Kita and Ako were escorted into an elevator that went up several floors. This building seemed different than the one they had been in before. Instead of looking like some dark, metal dungeon, there were actually a couple windows, and the overhead wiring was covered by a ceiling of squared, gray tiles. They were at last shoved into a room that even had a white tiled floor, and one of the walls was mostly glass, allowing a view of the blackness outside. Compared to Mahinggan architecture, the place would perhaps make a good dump.

"So, what now?" Ako asked the female officer. She seemed like the one that was directing things. He didn't know what it was that was emboldening him. Perhaps it was the idea that their odds were getting worse, leading him to more drastic measures.

"You wait," the woman hissed. Both he and Kita were thrust by hulking Pawids onto a couch. There was a fury burning behind the woman's narrow, gray eyes.

Again, Ako was surprised. For some reason, he just expected all the Pawids to have the same large, pale green eyes that Kita had. He gave Kita another worried look, but she didn't return it. Maybe Kita's the only Pawid that's actually beautif—he stopped short, unwilling to finish his thought.

The woman strode out of the room, a couple men at her back. There were still eight armed men in the room, and they didn't look at all happy to be near Ako. The each kept a careful finger readily over the levers on their weapons as they watched him with the same narrow-eyed expression. Ako had no doubt that if he made a run for it that they really would "blow his face off."

A few minutes passed, and Ako itched to look at his Palam. He hadn't had a moment to check it at all, but with his arms locked behind his back, there wasn't a chance.

Instead, he turned to Kita. "Are you alright?" he asked in Mahinggan.

She finally looked at Ako, but her green eyes frowned with regret. "I'm sorry, Ako. I didn't even think of running into one of—," she stopped speaking as the doors banged open.

The woman and her original entourage came striding back into the room, with one new exception: a man, perhaps in his forties, wearing some kind of cream-colored overcoat. His head was shaved, but there was a small patch of facial hair just below his lip. Beneath the overcoat, he wore all black, complete with black leather boots and gloves. In his hands, he held another kind of flat, rectangular device. His eyes remained fixed on it until he came and stood before Ako and Kita.

With a click, the device shrunk to a fraction of the size and he placed it in one of the many pockets of his overcoat. He rested his gray eyes on Ako. "So, I hear that you shot two of my men." His voice reminded Ako of the sound his shoes would make as they crunched against the gravel.