Chapter 12
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As she spoke the words, Sasha broke down in sobs. Sad. Sad. So sad. Look at me. I don't want to live like this. This isn't me.
"I'm going to kill you."
Sasha's body sagged, and John picked her up and carried her down the hallway with an easier stance.
"Besides. You're a crybaby."
John walked into the dining room, pulled up a chair with his foot, and sat her down. Sasha put her head down and continued to cry.
"Stop it."
"Hic......"
"Eat something, you'd rather pass out biting bubbles."
Sasha threw her plate at him. It was a really mean thing to say. John deftly dodged it and spread the napkin in his lap with a graceful motion. The plate flew past him, hit the wall, and shattered with a loud clatter.
"You killed my parents."
John wordlessly picked up a steak and placed it in front of him.
"You killed my brother."
"I know. You were orphaned, and you crossed the border with your brother, and then you needed citizenship, and your brother went to the army, and you lived on the dole, and then General Jared got you into the hospital, and now your brother has been missing for ten years, and what was his name again, Jim? No, Jean? Jean-Laurent?"
"It's John!"
Sasha shouted back. John sliced his steak.
"That's right, John. John Laurent. You've been blowing Dieter's mind. You could write a book on how thick that report is."
This time the glass flew. John craned his neck lightly to the other side. The cup clattered against the wall again.
"I was a nurse working in a hospital until the day before I crossed the border! I wasn't a trained agent or a soldier, I was just an ordinary person who didn't know anything, and you tortured me mercilessly. You stabbed me, you pulled out my nails, you beat me, you tortured me!"
Then Sasha threw what she could get her hands on at him. It clattered against John's forehead, then landed innocently on the plate in front of him.
"No matter how many times I told them I didn't know anything, they didn't believe me! You treated me horribly, and you still do! You keep me in this filthy prison, and you feed me poison every day, and you enjoy me foaming bubbles at the mouth and turning my eyes upside down, ahhh ...... ahhhh!"
John picked up the bread that flew onto his plate and took a big bite, then glared at Sasha. She's such an emotional woman, angry and then crying. If she hadn't been so emotional in the first place, she wouldn't have crossed the border so unprotected. He shoved the bread into his mouth, jaw clenched, and chewed voraciously. He watched Sasha sob unwillingly.
"It takes three years to train an agent, maybe ten."
"Hic......"
"And they're all connected. Like the lights on a Christmas tree."
Sasha wiped her tears and looked up at him.
"Intelligence agencies never lose contact with their agents. They don't drop them off alone. They make sure they have enough helpers around them, that they can always be reached. So the point is, you've been abandoned, Sasha Laurent."
"You're like a rat with a bomb in his stomach. They throw it wherever you want and wait for it to go off."
"That's not true!"
Sasha exclaimed, her voice rising.
"It's just, it's just that I didn't have time. They wanted someone who was fluent in the northern hemisphere languages and knew Nerea well, and I was the only one, the only one, the only one......"
"If I drop you in the city center here, you'll be a lost child. This place has changed, and they know it. I'm sure there are UN moles all over the country, keeping track of where all the major buildings are, and you know this isn't the Nerea you knew."
"Language and homeland. You're too naive for your own good, Sasha Laurent."
"So, do you want me to fall on my face and thank you, cry that I'm overwhelmed with gratitude that I now know? Do you want me to cling to you, to slander the Alliance, to go on a rampage to kill them with my own hands?"
John shrugged and picked at a grape.
"No. I'm just letting you know that you've been used and abandoned. Sick to the bone."
"No matter what they do, I don’t hate them as much as I hate you."
Sasha gritted her teeth and glared at him. John basked in her stare with an impassive expression, then finally smiled. The hatred was so familiar it was like air flowing through him, something that felt as good as the most comfortable, best-fitting clothes.
John continued to eat. Slowly, savoring each morsel of food as if he were calling Sasha, who sat as stiff as a board, honey. Gracefully and nobly, while her expression swung from anger to pain, from pain to sorrow, and back to anger again, alternating with feelings of repression.
"Eat, Sasha.
"I said I won't eat."
"You're hungry."
"It's none of your business!"
"Get your head out of your ass, idiot. I don't eat what you eat, and I would never recommend what I eat to you."
Sasha struggled to remember the food he'd taken to her plate. Steak, bread, grapes.
"It's impossible to overcome a human's need to live, especially a fragile woman like you."
"I'm not fragile!"
"Okay. Let's say you're not fragile. Eat."
The slack drained from his face, his jet-black eyes tightening.
"Eat before I open your mouth and shove it in."
His voice and mood were cruel. Enough to make her shudder, enough to bring her to her senses, enough to make her surging anger dissipate. After a moment, she picked up her fork and knife, then stopped.
Sasha glared at John for a moment, then held out her own fork and knife to him.
"Switch."
"Swap what?"
"Fork and knife."
"...... I was eating."
"So. Switch."
John glared at her and slowly wiped the fork and gravy-stained knife that had just been in his mouth with a napkin. Sasha, meanwhile, quickly shoveled whatever food she could into her own plate. When John handed her his fork and knife, she held out another plate piled high with food.
"Switch."
John rolled a strawberry slowly in his mouth, weighing his options. Sasha's eyes were fierce and challenging.
"What, are you afraid you'll gag and pass out like I did? That's kind of ugly, isn't it?"
John handed her his plate, which was still covered with the remnants of food, and took hers.
"I'd be happy to."
Sasha snatched the plate away from him and shoveled the rest of John's food into her mouth with her fork. It made him thirsty to watch, so John poured water from a carefully crafted goblet down his throat. Then, very slowly, he ate the food Sasha had piled like a tower, one by one.
Sasha picked at each bite and put it on her plate and chewed. John smiled. Like he was watching a lover on a date. In a very pleasant and curious way, watching a woman with a mouth full of food and picking at the meat like an animal.
That day, for the first time, Sasha didn't cough up foam and collapse. Instead, she suddenly shoved so much food in her stomach that she got an upset stomach. After rolling around on her bed all night with stomach aches and vomiting, she fainted in the early morning hours. Nothing had changed. She was still hungry, still in the same bed, still staring at the same ceiling, still in blinding sunlight.
As soon as she woke up, she heard sobbing in the hallway. It was a creepy, frightening sound, like a ghost singing. Sasha blinked and pulled the covers over her eyes. What kind of nightmare was this in broad daylight? At first she thought it was an illusion, but as her mind cleared, the sounds became clearer and clearer.
He remembered John's words from yesterday.
"Tomorrow I'll put in a pretty doll for you to play with.”
"What the......"
Sasha couldn't help but wonder what the hell he'd put in it. Grabbing the nightstand, just in case, she opened the door.
The hallway was a little dimmer than the bedroom. It would probably stay that way until late afternoon, when the sun would set in the other direction. The crying was more pronounced. Sasha gripped the nightstand with both hands like she was holding a baseball bat, then peeked out just enough to see the other side of the hallway.
"Ah......"
A silhouette loomed in the distance. Sasha's eyes narrowed even further. Messy tangled blonde hair, white, skinny body.
It was a woman. A small, skinny woman, barely big enough to be a child and still young enough to be an adult. Sasha set down her stand and walked over. The long Arabian carpet on the marble muffled her footsteps. Instead, her long, unclasped dress squeaked against her flesh. She was almost there when the woman noticed Sasha's presence and raised her eyes.
"Tomorrow I'll put in a pretty doll for you to play with.”
It's not a doll, it's a person, you psycho.
Sasha didn't know what to say to her, so she just blurted it out.
"Hi."
The woman's eyes rolled at the casual greeting.
"He......here......so, I......"
She had very bright, blue eyes. Her white face was covered with freckles, giving her an overall sickly, innocent look. She leapt at Sasha. She clung to her like a dangling rope, shaking and begging.
"Help me, help me, help me!"
****
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