Falling Hard Ch. 05

Virta sat up in the small, cold cell. She let her eyes adjust to the dim light and exhaled a hopeless sigh. She was still not in her soft bed in her small apartment. Nothing had changed since the last time she looked around. It was all exactly, TERRIBLY, the same.

She was on a cot. Nearby, a chair was bolted to the floor. Her eyes raised to the video camera mounted high on the ceiling; it was spying down on her with its mechanical eye. A large TV screen hung just under the camera. There was no light unless someone turned it on from outside her room.

The last thing her eyes went to were the shackles attached to the wall: Manacles that were used to lock her into place, flush against the cold, rough concrete.

She had no idea how long she'd been trapped in there. The only way she marked the passage of time was when They came for her: her torturers.

One of them was a tall, thin angel in horn-rimmed glasses. He had greasy, dark hair and soulless eyes. Virta couldn't help but think how much he looked like the skinny, quiet guy who'd sat in the back of her very first orientation. That boy had a habit of frequently pushing his glasses up his nose. She also remembered that he hadn't been much of a talker with the other students.

This agent of her suffering didn't speak a lot either. He did smile frequently, to her chagrin. When he smiled, it was just the thin line of his lips pulled up at the corners. There was a deranged glint in his eye. It was a perverse smile that told her he got off on her suffering.

He carried a briefcase with syringes, vials, and implements of torture. For some reason, she thought of him as the 'Medic', even though he never did anything to help her feel better. No, he hurt her with the things in his briefcase; he hurt her a lot.

There was another angel who came in to help torture her. He was not the same guy she remembered from her first encounter with Medic. This one was a uniformed security guard. He was big, about as tall as Athan, and muscular. He didn't have a lot of hair on the top of his head, but he was hairy everywhere else that she could see.

His job seemed to be to physically manipulate her and keep her in obedience to the Medic. He didn't have a name badge, and she didn't particularly want to know his name. She took to calling him 'Brawny' in her mind.

They never answered any of her questions. In fact, when she tried to ask anything, her only answer was more punishing pain. She quickly learned to keep her mouth shut.

They seemed to visit her often, just when she was managing to fall into an exhausted sleep.

She still bore the scars of their first visits:

The door to her cell slid open. She raised her head in panic, whimpered, and uselessly pressed herself into the wall by the cot. A flashlight shined into her eyes. Someone flipped her room light on, blinding her even more.

Brawny grabbed her and dragged her kicking and screaming over to the shackles on the wall. She was helplessly locked there by her wrists and ankles.

Medic prepared his instruments while Brawny pulled off the rough Government-issue gown she wore. She was forced to stand naked against the wall, shivering in front of the two men.

Then, Medic went to work on her.

At first, he'd seemed obsessed with the tattoos on her chest. He was dead set on removing them. He burned; he cut. Through her tears and delirium, she watched him at his work. She saw the joy lighting up his angelic face as he carved her up. She smelled her own skin burning.

The next time she looked down, her cats were gone. There was just smoking, mutilated flesh in their place.

She didn't stop screaming.

She actually could not stop the screams until Brawny cuffed her on the side of the head. Then she sobbed as quietly as she could manage. Her felines were gone; Medic's first mission was accomplished.

The next time her visitors came, Medic told her he wanted to remove her other tattoo as well. She'd seen herself looking back, terrified, in the reflection of his glasses.

Brawny held her pinned to the floor for the crude operation. He pressed all of his weight down on her body, then held her legs apart while Medic burned and cut the dog right out of her calf.

No anesthesia was used. They did, however, offer her a stick to bite down on, shoving it between her teeth before the physical torment began.

Clutching her body in anguish after the sessions, she saw and felt the evidence of Medic's handiwork on her once-perfect skin.

Her visitors didn't just work on her body. They seemed to want her mind even more.

After the first two sessions that removed her tats, Medic's torture of her began to follow a pattern:

He opened his briefcase and set it down on the cot. It was clearly visible from where she stood. Virta kept her eyes off of it since the second session. It seemed to make it all the harder on her - waiting while he picked up a tool and examined it thoughtfully, before putting it away and choosing another.

Medic called them his "motivational tools," and with them, he claimed he was going to cleanse her of her rebellion.

She knew all too well now what his motivational tools were: Pliers, scalpels, a small handsaw, tweezers, an awl, a small torch and clamps, for starters. But she knew that he preferred his special tool to all others. It was one that he'd designed himself.

He picked up an implement and turned to her, sporting that villainous smile. He said, "Athan is one demon in a legion, aligned against Heaven and Earth. Athan is your enemy."

Then, with seemingly great relish, he tortured her body.

When he needed a break, Medic took off his glasses and casually cleaned spatters of her blood from the lenses. He put the glasses back on and gave them a push up his nose. Then, he looked her in the face again.

"Virta, you are a bad angel," he said. "You deserve to be banished from Heaven. You should go into the pit of Hell. You are guilty of sin."

The first couple times he'd said that to her, she had talked back.

"So you're Mr. Innocent?" she spat at him. "What about this -- this torture? You know, what you're doing to me right now, you son of a devil!"

As if on cue, Brawny stepped up and hit her in the mouth.

Her head wrenched back with the force of the blow, and then hung limply at her chest. She tasted her own blood and tried to spit it out. Her lips were torn open. Her teeth felt loose.

Medic gave his little smile and said calmly, "I'm just following orders." He pulled out a vial and began to fill a syringe as he continued talking.

"I do what I'm told, Virta." His voice had the same tone one would use with a disobedient child. "Following orders isn't sin. It's obedience. Something you still need to learn."

He jabbed the syringe into her neck, and she cried out as the liquid burned like wildfire through her veins.

No, she had learned not to say anything back to the Medic.

"Sin... rebellion," Medic repeated each time he tortured her. "You're such a naughty little angel. So much sin. I can SMELL it inside you, Virta. Did you know that? You stink. Oh yes, Virta, you smell foul indeed." That evil, demented smile again. "There's just so much sin to purge..."

Virta trembled as she watched him reach into his case and pull out his favorite tool. He always saved the best for last. It gleamed in the overhead light, matching the perverse gleam in his ice blue eyes.

Virta's head rolled back and she began to cry and plead. She knew what was coming next.

Her mind began to wander on its own, back to when she'd opened her eyes in this cell for the very first time. Then, at least, someone had done something nice for her. Someone had tried to take away her pain, not add to it:

The eyes were cat-like, and amber. Virta knew she'd never seen eyes quite like those before. Besides her unusual eyes, the angel leaning over her had hair the color of cinnamon, and a spattering of freckles across her nose and well-defined arms.

"My name's Geneva," the angel said in a firm but gentle voice. "I'm in Housekeeping. Normally, I just clean this place after the day shift goes home. But, they asked me to come in here tonight and clean you up instead." She smiled.

Geneva dabbed at Virta's brow with a warm, wet cloth.

"I told 'em its not in my job description to be no nurse aid. But, I couldn't turn it down when they said it was you back here."

Virta stammered in surprise. "M-me?"

"Yeah, YOU, silly. You should hear the stories going 'round. They'll probably interview you on God TV or something."

Then, Geneva's perfect face turned angry as she looked Virta's body up and down. "Look what the bastard did to you. Everyone's talking about it. That Hellion roughed you up pretty good, didn't he?"

"I don't know what you mean, ma'am," said Virta.

Geneva frowned down at her. "There'll be none of this ma'am stuff. I said my name is Geneva."

She helped Virta sit up, and began to wash the wounds on her back.

"Where am I... Geneva?" Virta asked through chattering teeth.

"You're at U-Sec," Geneva answered. "Not the best accommodations I've seen, though." Her golden eyes took in the sparse room. "But, I guess they had to make do until today."

"Today? What is today? How long have I been in here?" Virta's voice began to rise with panic.

"Honey, it's Monday. It looks like they just tossed you in here Friday night and left you 'til now. Some way to treat a hero, huh?"

"Hero?"

"I'm talking about you, honey. You saved a lot of angels." Geneva's voice went dreamy. "I can just imagine the fabulous set of wings they're gonna give you."

Virta put fingers to her forehead and closed her eyes, trying to think. "I don't remember coming here," she said.

The angry look returned to Geneva's face. "I can't believe they just let you lie here like this all weekend - bloodied and bruised."

Virta flinched when Geneva touched her skin with the cloth again. She glanced down her naked body and let out a gasp when she saw the wounds.

"Here, here, honey. It's OK. Let me get those cleaned up. Then, I'll apply the healing balm, and your angel skin will be flawless again before you know it."

Virta couldn't deny the gentleness in the woman's eyes and voice. She relaxed and let the kind lady tend to her wounds. Geneva finished cleaning her up, then applied the balm to her body from head to toe. It warmed Virta's skin and felt soothing and comforting.

"He about tore your little dress to shreds didn't he, the bastard." Geneva held up the tattered wisp of fabric, shaking her head. "He's an animal."

"Who?" Virta asked.

"Don't you remember what happened? Geneva wrinkled her brow as she peered into Virta's face. "You're probably still in shock from facing down that big, bad son-of-a devil."

Virta's thoughts began racing as it all came back to her:

Athan had absorbed the energy of the bomb and defused it.

She cringed when she thought of his condition afterwards. It just wasn't right for something so beautiful and so powerful to be so broken down.

She remembered vaguely how the Agents swooped in, surrounding her. Though she was weakened, they still used handcuffs on her. Then, she was thrown onto a stretcher and taken away from the scene. That was as far as her memory went up until Geneva awakened her.

Athan was gone. Had U-Sec taken him? No. He'd simply disappeared.

After I made him, she thought sadly.

She'd been so scared and confused. Her pain had been beyond anything she'd ever known.

And, she was still afraid of Falling, whether by Banishment or of her own free will. She had not been ready in those few short minutes to make the kind of decision that would affect her eternal fate.

True, she detested the Heavenly system, but for two thousand years, her heart had been set on getting an Earth assignment. Falling would just ensure a life on the run and then what? Eternal punishment?

There had to be some explanation, some reason why U-Sec left her to die. She knew she wasn't a favorite in the Cosmos by any means. But she couldn't wrap her mind around Heaven just using her, or wanting her dead.

She also couldn't bear to lose her best friend, Mick. He would think of her as the enemy if she Fell.

Her head spun when she thought of Athan: Man of Contradictions. She shivered at remembrance of the power in his eyes... and in his kiss.

He didn't kill or even hurt her though he could have done so very easily; he didn't seem to want her to be afraid of him; he'd even saved thousands of angels and herself at high personal cost.

This was not the beast of Demons Dot Com, nor what two thousand years of Heavenly conditioning had told her.

She ran her fingers through her hair. It was so hard to sort it all out after all she'd been through.

"I saw the tape, and all I know is, you're lucky to be alive," Geneva said, helping Virta into a plain gown.

"What was on the tape?"

"You poor thing, I don't blame you if you don't want to watch it yourself. It could bring back all sorts of trauma." She began to pack her things away in a bag as she spoke.

"I don't think I wanna watch it. I was just wondering what it showed."

"Well, it showed that bastard catching you by surprise under the tree. He grabbed you and yelled threats at you." Geneva's hand flew to her face. "Oh my god, he was probably gonna kill you, then rape you, honey!"

Geneva leaned down and stroked Virta's messy black hair. The amber eyes were full of fear.

"It was hard to watch. I think they even edited out a lot of the worst stuff. I hear it was too terrible to show the public."

Virta raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing while Geneva continued:

"Then, the monster grabbed your phone; smashed it on the street. He grabbed you; it looked like you put a knee in his groin. He went down on the ground and the agents showed up. He just disappeared before they could cuff him."

Geneva's voice was full of excitement. "Oh, but you should have seen yourself, girl! I don't think he's gonna forget this brave little angel anytime too soon." Geneva playfully tapped Virta's cheek.

"So, they don't know where Athan went?"

"A- who? Girl, I thought you weren't supposed to say a demon's name out loud. Didn't you learn anything in all those classes you Office people take? Even I know that much."

Virta cleared her throat. "I think that's a myth," she said. "I mean, if you say it in lust, maybe..." Her voice trailed off and she felt a blush creeping over her cheeks.

Geneva just stared at her for a moment, then shook her head.

"You must have had some mighty angel watching over you that night, Virta," she said. "I mean, that demon could have done a thousand terrible things to your body and soul. You know... there are things worse than death."

A visible shudder went down Geneva's body.

Virta frowned. "That's just it. He didn't do anything to me. He saved me, in fact. He saved the whole damn town!"

Geneva drew back and stared down at her. "Virta," she said. "Don't you know angels like him can implant false memories in your brain?"

Virta sat staring in shock. She knew her mouth was hanging open.

"Don't look so surprised, girl," Virta said, picking up her bag. "He could make you think you were in love with him if he wanted. Remember this if nothing else: You can never trust a demon."

Virta wanted to ask more, but she felt anxiety rising.

She didn't know who she could trust. It occurred to her that Geneva was a spy, sent in to gain her trust and get her to talk. She couldn't trust anyone anymore. Well, except Mick.

"I've gotta talk to my friend, Mick," Virta said, twisting her hair around a finger. "He must be worried sick."

Geneva stood up. "I've gotta go now, Virta," she said. "It's been real nice talking to ya. Can't wait to see how they reward you for all you did."

The door slid open and a guard appeared to lead Geneva out.

Virta didn't have to wait two minutes until the door opened and shut again. She looked up to see Mick striding in, two guards in tow.

"Mick! Oh my God, I'm so happy to see you!" she squealed, flying into his arms. He held her, smoothing her hair.

"I'm so glad you're OK," he said, holding her tightly.

"I saw all the commotion in the street Friday, but couldn't see what was going on. Then I heard someone shouting at everyone to leave, and so we did. I'm not sure why, looking back on it. But at the time, I just felt compelled to get miles away from there."

He looked at Virta. When she didn't respond, he continued: "I asked someone across town what had happened. They told me that one of the Fallen Ones had actually shown up on my street! God, I was so worried about you. I knew you were coming that way."

Mick held her hand. "I called you, but just got your voice mail."

"I've been unconscious all weekend."

Mick frowned. "I looked for you at your place, and all the hangouts. Nobody here would tell me anything. I worried until I got to work this morning."

"I'm fine."

Mick looked relieved.

"Everyone in the Department is talking about you, Virta. How you escaped capture by the Evil One."

"What? Why is everyone talking like I'm a big hero?"

"Because you ARE a big hero, Virta. The word came down from here at U-Sec." he said.

She sighed, running her fingers through her hair before looking up at him. "Mick," she said, "don't you think it's really strange that I could fight off someone like that? I mean, let's be honest here. I'm pretty weak for an angel. Put me up against one of those really powerful ones, and I'd be toast."

Mick's face took on a scowl as his eyes searched up and down her face and body. "From the official report, it sounds like he roughed you up really badly."

"That's not how it happened. He didn't hurt me."

Mick grabbed her arm and pulled up the sleeve of her gown, exposing cuts and bruises. "Then how do you explain these?"

She shook her head.

Mick went on: "There were eye witnesses - must have been hundreds of angels on the street. Everyone who was interviewed said virtually the same thing." He stroked her cheek gently. "I'm glad Agents got there when they did."

"Somebody's lying," Virta said angrily.

Mick shrugged. "All the reports say that Athan attacked you. He threw your cell phone down so you couldn't call for help, he grabbed you, there was a struggle. He ended up on the ground."

Mick's eyes widened in awe. "Good going, Virta, you must have got a good shot into the groin or something." He smiled.

"I don't understand. That's nothing like what happened. Athan, he saved me, he saved the whole town -"

"Virta, you don't have to worry, he's gone. He can't hurt you anymore."

"Mick, listen to me. You're not listening."

"Ssh, don't try to talk too much. You're confused. You've been through a lot." Mick said, still stroking her cheek.

Virta pulled back.

"Look, my manager had to pull some strings to get me in here to see you. I only have a minute," Mick said. "I just wanted to see with my own eyes that you were OK."

"If there's no problem, they why do they have me in a cell?"

"It's just temporary. They wanted to keep an eye on you, assess your condition. I don't know why they'd put you in one of these isolation cells though. Guess it's all they had over the weekend."

Mick's face brightened again. "Anyway, they'll debrief you, and then you'll go to training for however long it takes, getting you ready for an upcoming assignment."

"Assignment? What are you talking about?"

Mick smiled. "I'm not supposed to say anything. Just trust me when I say that the next time I see you, you're going to be so happy." He ruffled her hair. "I'm sure gonna miss you. But, I'm so happy for you."

"Why? What's going on?"

He just smiled.

"Mick, she said, "What's going to happen to me? I'm in a lot of trouble, aren't I?"