The Guardian Demon [A Taron Egerton FanFiction]

23: The Inevitable Farewell

The tinted glass of the car window gave the outside world a brown-ish hue as Mallory watched with evident detachment the scenery changing in front of her eyes from vast, empty fields to small, scattered houses to crowded, modern roads with high buildings on each side.

Nine days, they told her. She had been in Boris' custody for Nine days, she laughed when she heard it, but then her laugh turned into a choked sob in a matter of seconds. It didn't feel like just a few days, it felt like long months, an entire year, even, an eternity.

The car she was in swerved into a narrow, almost deserted street and entered a dim, underground garage where it slowly parked. Mallory's curiosity elevated as she watched two men, clad in black just like Taron, opening the door and accompanying her into a small elevator, she noticed as the metal doors of the elevator closed shut that one of them pulled a small keyboard out of nowhere and punched a code onto it, sending the elevator up.

Mallory's heartbeat fastened as she the elevator rang its arrival to the destined floor, once the doors opened, she found herself in a brightly-lit corridor with symmetrical, closed doors on both sides.

She almost jumped as one of the guards, whom she belatedly recognized as a female, put a hand on her shoulder in a gesture for her to move forward. Doing so, Mallory walked with tentative steps along the narrow corridor until the trio reached the end of it where a half-open door was waiting for them.

"Welcome to the Headquarter, Miss Cox," the female guard formally said as she ushered Mallory inside the room and left, closing the door behind her.

Standing awkwardly in the middle of the vast room, Mallory took a sweeping look around her. It was clearly an office, the ceiling-high window gave a wide view of the sky outside, in front of it sat a modern-looking office with a swiveling chair behind it, a leather sofa was situated on the opposite side with a large coffee table before it. The table held what appeared to be a thermal container, a bottle of water and a plate full of some kind of pastries. She was hungry, but she couldn't stand even the mere thought of food.

The previous events kept replaying in her mind. Everything went by in a haze, yet it still was so intense, burning brightly behind her eyelids and sending a shock to her fitful heart.

Taron was alive, he was there, she saw him with her own eyes, touched him with her hands, it certainly wasn't a dream, she was fully coherent, it was real.

But the question was: where was he? Why didn't he come to her rescue the moment she was taken? Why did he leave her to suffer all that time although she, somehow, managed to get herself out of the Russians' claws? The image of Masha crossed her thinking, she idly wondered if she would be alright.

A clicking noise cut her chain of thoughts. Involuntary spinning toward the source of the sound, her breath caught in her lungs as she saw the person who was standing beside the open door.