The Tomorrow Solution

The Tomorrow Solution_Part 6

Settling into his chair, his feet on the desk, and a cigarette dangling from his lips, Isaiah—Thomas Miles—silently considered the woman—Emily Grier—standing in front of him. She possessed a steely defiance and eyes of the bluest blue and an attractiveness that the ugly dim overhead lights could not diminished. She would deliver the intelligence on Nietzsche she claimed to have. One way or another. Torture was a distasteful practice, but he'd have what he wanted even if it meant taking it by force. How obstinate would she be once he bruised her cheek, split her lip, and sent her sprawling to the basement floor? Once she smelt the blood, sweat, urine, and feces dried in the basement from past prisoners, heard the screams, and witnessed his men drag the naked emaciated corpses through the halls to be disposed in Lake Ontario, she'd cooperate. Or she would learn to. He'd keep her alive until he could verify her story, and if it happened to be true, he'd kill Nietzsche and return as hero, become a god. Or Nietzsche would kill him, and he'd settle for martyrdom.

"Tell me how to gain access to him." He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, and from his desk drawer, Isaiah took a dusty glass. He used his shirt to wipe the inside of the glass and filled it a quarter of the way with the clear alcohol from the bottle of vodka on his desk. In one large gulp, he drained his glass and filled it again, keeping the bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. "You know I can take anything I want from you." He snarled, his pointed features serpent-like as he swallowed the vodka and slammed the bottle onto his desk. "The information. Now."

Moving too quickly for anyone else in the room to react, Nira kicked her foot left into the guard's knee, causing an audible pop. It occurred though she had not willed it. As he fell forwards, she swung her knee up, making contact with his face, the bones of his nose and jaw crunching. The guard to her right drew his weapon, and she twisted it from his grasp; with her free hand, she threw him to the floor, wrenching his arm back until it snapped. He screamed in agony, rolling on the floor, crying as his partner attempted to rise, and with a single punch falling from high above as her body pivoted and twisted towards the floor, she rendered him unconscious.

She wanted to stop. She commanded her limbs to cease their attack, deciding her body wouldn't commit any further violence, and yet succeeded only in shattering the bones of the guard to her right, and spilling the blood from his veins. When she straightened to her full stature, covered in sticky warm blood, and her fingers curled around the cold black metal of the handgun at her side. She was frightened of her actions, more afraid of her inability to stop them. She leveled the gun at Isaiah as he cowered behind his desk. Stepping forwards, slow and patient steps, her face an emotionless mask, a psychopathic current pulsing through her, unfamiliar since her escape from Nietzsche's Rocky Mountain facility.

When she stood above him, the handgun pressed to Isaiah's head. She wouldn't pull the trigger. She wouldn't. The gun shook in her hand.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I wanted to help you. I wanted—
Will you stand and die like a man or on your knees like a coward?"

"Please. Don't." He whimpered, tears streaking his fear-cracked mask. "Don't kill me. Please." Isaiah folded in on himself, curling his legs up, his back hunched, his head hanging so that enormous fat tears dripped from his chin, leaving spots on the dusty floor.

"There's nothing I can do."

The shot rang in the office, deafening as it echoed off the walls, and when the reverberation ceased, screams and shouting of panic filling the main room, there existed a moment's sick silence when Thomas Miles' body slumped and fell back, his bloodied head cracking against the floor.

When the rebels barged through the office door, they found two incapacitated men and the dead body of their leader. But they did not find his murderer.