A Man of His Time
By NFalc
15
Retribution
Where's Antoine? He's supposed to push me away from the foot because otherwise it will crush me, and I will feel my bones crack and my organs explode and my skin turn to mush. Did that happen? It feels like it, everything hurts stabbing pain in my arms in my legs in my skull. Broken bones and bruises and cuts and scrapes. Steel clamping into my wrists. Feet hanging in air, ankles bound by chains. Don't move.
Deep breath. Your thoughts are wandering. First things first. Where are you and how did you get here?
Open your eyes. No ground beneath you, no it's hundreds of feet away. I'm going to fall and die. No, the chains, the chains are keeping you up. Deep breath. Deep breaths damnit.
They help. In a few minutes I'm thinking clearly again, and I have my answers. Where am I? The walls are dirty cement and there's a single light hanging in the room. I'm in a torture chamber. How did I get here? I was captured by the Establishment.
I still don't know where Antoine is, but as a door at the end of the room opens, I get a bad feeling that I'm about to find out.
I've almost grown used to seeing familiar faces in strange situations. But it still knocks the wind out of me when Sable enters the room. She's wearing a tight black shirt and shorts, and black leather boots below that. For a second, I wonder if she's the one that caught me, then quickly dismiss that thought. There's a look of hatred in her eyes which tells me she would have stamped me out of existence then and there.
As she approaches, I realize that I'm strung up on level with the neckline of her shirt. Far enough below eye level to be humiliating, but high enough above the ground to be frightening. They have their methods worked out well, and I wonder how many others they've used them on.
Sable stops right in front of me, close enough that I can see the stitches in the top of her shirt. Then she stoops over until I'm gazing right into those dark eyes, each the size of my head. I wonder why she looks so angry.
"I know who you are." she says. "You're the same one who entered my house. You humiliated me in front of Cheryl. You made me look incompetent. You see, it's my job to catch little jerks like you, so you can be kept safe from yourselves. If you could have known how worried I was that I was going to lose my job..."
"Is that all? Is that the only reason that you're angry at me?" I ask.
"No," she says softly. "No, that's only the surface."
I follow her hand as she reaches down to her waist, and pulls out something that glints in the harsh light. She holds it up before me, dividing my vision in half. A long, thin blade of metal. A knife.
"I'm angry at you for taking Kyra away from me," she whispers as she brings the blade towards me.
I close my eyes, and prepare for the pain.
Cold fire dissolves into a small ball of light before me, lighting a field that I'm standing in. It looks eerily familiar. I turn to my left to see Kyra before me, my size once more. "You love me, don't you?" she asks.
"Don't be silly, he loves me," Mary says to my left. She too is standing at my scale.
"We were together first, Adam," Kyra says, and when I turn to her she's suddenly two feet taller than me.
"But I'm so much more interesting," says Mary, and now I'm only as high as her chest.
"Think of those moments we've shared," Kyra says, and she's truly beginning to loom over me.
"I'd do anything for you," Mary says, spurting upwards until I'm level with her thighs.
They argue back and forth, each one growing larger with every sentence, until suddenly they're truly gigantic, even larger than they are normally, to the point where even their toes tower over me.
Kyra takes a huge, earth-shaking step, her left foot slamming into the ground a hundred feet away from me. "He's mine," she says.
I jump and wave my arms around, trying to show them that I'm still there, right between them, but I'm too small for them to notice me.
"No, he's mine," Mary replies, stepping forward with her right, her foot landing a hundred feet to the other side.
Then Kyra lifts her right foot and Mary her left, and they each bring them down on top of me...
And I'm awake again, my entire body aching, my hands and feet asleep. My chest burns, but it doesn't feel wet. The blood must have dried. I wonder how long I've been out for.
The door opens again, and in walks the last person I want to see. Cheryl walks up to me, cool, controlled, business-like. I don't have the strength to lift my head, but I do it anyway. I meet her stare. All I have left to work with is my rage.
"You're awake, I see," she says.
"Kill me, you bitch," I spit back.
"Now, why would I want to go and do a thing like that?"
"You're going to do it anyway. You have no reason to keep me alive. You don't need to torture me, I have no information that you haven't already gotten from Mary."
She stifles a laugh, long red fingernails over her lips. "You think she was working for us? No, she was quite unaware that we were following her. Such a simple trick, making her think you were dead. She led us straight to you."
I take a moment to absorb all this. I had assumed from the moment I was captured that Mary was probably their spy. The fact that she wasn't gave me some grim satisfaction. I quickly turned back to the argument. Talking was the only way to prevent her from acting. "You'd still be able to get the information from others. You have no reason to keep me alive. And you have no reason to torture me."
"The torture is merely proactive punishment," Cheryl says with a wave of her hand. She leans in closer. "You need to know, deep in your bones, that you cannot go after me. That it will be foolish to try again. What you don't understand is, by torturing you I'm saving your life. Because now you won't try to attack me, which means I won't have to kill you."
"You can punish me as much as you please," I reply, struggling to remain calm. Think of Jot. He's good at remaining calm in situations like this. "I will not rest until I see you defeated."
Cheryl suddenly looks very tired. She runs a hand through her scarlet hair and sighs. "Have you ever thought about why you're doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Your little mission of revenge. On what grounds are you fighting me?"
"It should be obvious," I reply, astonished at her. How dare she question me, after all she's done?
"Is it your city? You hardly remember it. Your friend that I squashed? You barely knew him. It could be out of pure selfishness, but you're too self-righteous for that. So tell me, why?"
She's trying to trick you. You need an answer, one that she can't twist to her own ends. "I'm doing it for my father," I say. "I'm doing it to avenge his death."
She gives me a look of disbelief, coupled with a truly frightening smile, a combination of hatred, bloodlust and anger pressed into an expression usually meant to show happiness. "Your father? You're trying to get revenge for your father?"
"What's wrong with that?" I challenge her. "How are you going to twist my words now?"
"You don't know, do you?" she asks, shaking her head slightly. "I suppose you must have been young at the time."
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "What do you mean?"
"No," she says, "I think I'll spare you that. Just as I'm sparing your life."
As she walks away, I twist and turn in my chains, screaming after her. I can feel the wound in my chest tearing open as I move, coming unstuck from my shirt. I grit my teeth and try to fight off the pain, but it floods through me, wiping away all thought.
I see my father before me, hands on my shoulders, and I know exactly where we are. We're in the basement again, right before he runs off to die. "Promise me you won't leave," he says.
But this time I don't nod soundlessly. The people around me are always dying, and I'm never able to say anything, never able to do anything before they go. "What did you do, Dad? How does she know you?" I ask.
"The sins of the father," he answers. "Do not pass on..."
"Pass on to what?" I demand. "What are you talking about? What do you mean?"
"I think I'll spare you that," says Raymond, before he shudders and dies.
Suddenly, the entire window is filled with Cheryl's face. "As long as you keep fighting, the people you love will continue to die," she says, her voice shaking the walls. The front door blows off of its hinges, and I suddenly realize I have to escape. I begin to run towards the door, but my feet move in slow motion, trapped in time.
I feel the ground move beneath me as she wrenches the entire house out of the ground, lifting it up to her face, which is now growing, she's growing, bigger and bigger until her face alone is the size of a small city. I can see every tiny detail as she lifts the house between two fingers, positioning it directly above her mouth, which opens wide. Her tongue sticks out, a massive pink monster the size of a whale. Her teeth shimmer with her saliva. I can see down her throat, leading down hundreds of feet before fading into darkness.
Her fingers part, and the entire house, with me frozen in its doorway, begins to tumble end over end down into her mouth...
Once again, I wake to hear the door opening. I realize that I've been lowered further to the ground, and wonder what they have planned for me now.
Next in the line of horrors from my past is Toni. She has a plain white tank top on, and nothing on her bottom. Her blond bush is exposed to the world, and I can see that it is moist. The oversexed bitch. What will she do to me?
"Hello little guy," she coos. "So nice to see you again."
I keep my mouth shut. I can't reason with Toni. Anything I say will just egg her on to do worse.
"Mom said I should come in here, and show you something," she says, stepping up to me, and I realize now that I've been lowered so that I'm exactly level with her womanhood.
"You know your little friend, the one we found you with? The one that hurt Mom?" She asks, and doesn't wait for me to answer. "Guess where he is."
She wiggles her hips, her blond hair moving back and forth in front of me. It slowly dawns on me what she means. No, no they couldn't have.
"If you put your little head in there an hour ago, you would have heard him screaming. He moved around like nothing else." Her voice becomes sultry as she thinks about it. "He hit all the good spots, although I'm not sure that's what he had in mind. But a little while ago, he stopped moving." She pouts.
Let him be unconscious. Let him be playing dead. I can't have it happen again...
"Soon enough, I'll get Mom to be serious about you," she says. "When the time comes to get rid of you, they'll come back to me. And then you'll follow your friend down here." She says, pointing to herself and giggling.
Then suddenly she stops laughing, and slaps at her neck. She frowns, then cries out in pain. Toni drops to the ground, shaking the walls slightly as she lands, then begins to squirm on the ground, crying and yelling in agony.
I'm so busy watching her that I don't even notice Dustin glide down from the ceiling until he's right in front of me, strapped into a harness and holding a huge harpoon gun. "You okay?" he asks.
"No," I say. "And let's leave it at that. Is that a tranquilizer gun?"
He shakes his head and grins. "We've busted out the big guns. Each of these harpoons is lined with some kind of poison - I think they called it a neurotoxin or something. You hit one of them with it, anywhere on their body, and they go down, completely out of their heads with pain."
Toni seizes twice, then lies still. "Is she dead?" I ask.
Dustin looks down at her. "Probably."
I can't say I feel sorry for her, no matter how weak she looks sprawled across the cement floor. She was a cruel, heartless girl who had killed several of my kind, and I'm not sure if she deserved to die, but I'll be damned if I feel sorry for her.
Dustin takes the gun and straps it to his back, then pulls out a large pair of clamps. He talks as he works through the chains holding my legs. "You know, we all thought you were dead. Kyra, she was devastated. So was that other girl - the one with the dark hair. The Truthseekers thought she was the one that caused the attack, and they've got her in cuffs somewhere around here. I don't think she did it though. She looked too upset to have done that to us."
He finishes with the leg chains, then proceeds to my right hand. "Right after the Establishment retreated, and we were finished sorting out the injured and dead, word got to us that the newspapers with the pictures were on the stands. It's working out just like they thought it would. People are rebelling. Rioting in the streets. So Ash figured it was the perfect time for a counterattack. She's brilliant, as well as lovely," he says, and I notice a dreamy look come into his eyes.
"So, when's the counterattack?" I ask, trying to get his attention back before he accidentally clamps off my hand.
He smiles and shakes his head. "You don't get it? We're doing it right now. Me and Earl, we were sent in to scope out the place, figure out where guards were placed and the like. We saw you in here, and figured we might as well come to the rescue."
"Will yeh hurry it up?" I hear Earl call down. "My arms are killin' me!"
I suddenly realize that I'm hanging by just two chains, one from each arm. The chains could snap, and I'd fall and die. I'm completely terrified.
"Take my hand with your left," Dustin says firmly. I do as he says, and he takes the clamps and cuts the chain on my left arm. The right one snaps from the weight, leaving me dangling by my left hand. I cry out, and Dustin quickly grabs my other hand, then looks up at Earl. We rise up into the air, and I shut my eyes.
It's only when I'm on the solid ground of the ceiling that I feel ready to open them. It's one thing to be safely dangling from a harness and cord, and another to be held by two unstable chains so much higher above the ground, much less holding on to someone else as you're pulled up.
But now we're inside the ceiling of the room, and I can open my eyes. "How long was I there for?" I ask.
"Three days," Dustin answers. He looks over at Earl. "You have any medical supplies on you?"
Earl rummages about in a sack next to him, then produces a small white case. "Some basics in 'ere. Alcohol, bandages, and so on."
"Toss me a bandage," I say, then begin gingerly peeling the shirt away from the wound. It stings badly, but I pull through. As I finish applying the bandage, the muted sounds of battle begin to filter through the floor.
"Bloody hell," Earl mutters. "They went and started without us."
"We've got to find Cheryl," I say, tying up the bandage and wincing at the pain. "If we bring her down, the entire Establishment will go down with her."
"Are you ready to move?" Dustin asks.
"No," I say. I just remembered. "Antoine is down there. Inside Toni. We have to get him out."
"Did you hear what she said, lad?" Earl asks, his face set into a solemn frown.
"He'd been in her for an hour," Dustin says. "And she was wet, you saw it. He must have drowned."
"But there has to be some chance..." I say, and they sadly shake their heads. I put a hand to my forehead. I can't think about this now. Damn her and damn them all for putting me through this.
"We don't have time," Earl murmurs. "To be mournin' him now."
"Take a gun," Dustin says, tossing me one of the harpoon launchers. It's heavy in my hands. "Don't shoot unless you're sure you're shooting at the Establishment. Those things can kill with one hit."
I nod. "Let's move."
We travel as far as we can through the vent shafts of the Establishment building, huge tunnels of steel that extend far beyond the range of our flashlights. Finally, we come to a drop straight down. Earl wordlessly takes out a long length of rope, and drives a spike into the edge of the floor. Then he ties the rope onto the spike. Dustin hands me a harness, and we tie on, then begin climbing down the rope towards the bottom.
I can here the sounds of battle outside before we even hit the floor. Guns firing, women shouting. Some are screaming. I hope they're not on our side.
Once Earl manages to climb down after us and retrieve the rope, we squeeze through the bars in the vent grille, to emerge out into a corridor. I look left and right - no one there, the coast is clear. Distantly, I hear the sounds of pounding footsteps.
"Shit," Earl says. "Someone's heading this way."
"Hide!" Dustin shouts, and the two of them clamber up into the vent grille. I try to follow, but I'm too weak, and as I scramble to get over the edge, I feel the cut across my chest tearing open again. I can't help it. I let go, and fall back onto the floor.
"He's not gonna make it," Earl says to Dustin.
"Take this," Dustin calls down. He tosses a grappling gun through the bars, and I manage to catch it. "You can hide on the ceiling."
I quickly get a grip on the gun, then fire upwards. The hook lodges in the ceiling tiles, and pulls me upwards. I hook the line into my harness, and hang there, praying that the women on their way are on my side.
It's just one woman, I see as she rounds the corner, and my heart sinks to see that she's wearing an Establishment uniform. But then she pulls off the gas mask, and it's Kyra underneath. She looks around, then up, her eyes falling directly on me.
"Adam! You're alive!" She says. "I really thought you were gone. I'm so happy to see you -"
"Why are you wearing that uniform?" I ask. Is she a traitor?
"I'm undercover, genius," She says, looking a little hurt. "They sent me in here with one of the uniforms they found on the bodies, and had me deactivate security before they came in -"
The sound of a giant running comes down the hall.
"That must be one of them," Kyra says. "They'll notice you easily up there, you won't have time to shoot. You've got to let me hide you." She holds out her hand beneath me.
I hesitate. Can I believe that she's still on my side? Can I give up my independence to her? I remember leaving her before, and I remember my speech to the Underground, and I can't be a hypocrite any longer. I toggle the grappling gun, and drop gently into her palm, which quickly folds around me. Her hand closes around me, surrounding me with warmth and closing off the light as she lowers me to her side, pulling the gas mask down.
"Did you see anyone come through here?" A woman's voice asks.
"No," I hear Kyra say.
"Okay, we've got to get back to the battle," The woman responds. "Follow me."
"I don't think so," Kyra says, and I hear two muted gunshots.
"Good shot," I hear another voice say, as quiet footsteps cross the floor. "I taught you well."
Kyra lifts the hand with me in it, quickly depositing me on her shoulder before tearing her mask off. It's just as I feared - Sable is right across from us.
She looks slightly shocked seeing me on Kyra's shoulder. "You got him out, huh? Now do the smart thing and hand him over."
Kyra shakes her head, causing her shoulder beneath me to wobble slightly. I drop into a crouch to keep my balance, lightly clutching her shoulder. "Not on your life, sis."
Sable frowns. "First you join the Truthseekers, then you stand between me and my job. God, Kyra, I was training you to follow in my footsteps. Can't you stop this idiocy and come to your senses?"
"If you love me, really love me," Kyra says, "You'll let this go. You can go back to the Establishment, I don't care. But don't stand between me and Adam."
"Give him to me," Sable says simply, holding out her hand. For a second, I'm afraid Kyra will actually do it. But I'm going to be trusting, I have to learn to be more trusting.
"Come and take him." It isn't a challenge, it's a promise: she will not let her have me.
Sable responds by swinging a fist straight at Kyra's cheek. It connects, and as she falls backwards I tumble off of her shoulder, falling out into open air, just catching myself on a buckle of the uniform.
Kyra glances downwards and sees me hanging, giving Sable enough time to aim another blow with her other hand, throwing her in the opposite direction. It also throws me off the buckle, and I find myself skidding wildly down her leg, trying to stop myself from falling straight to the ground.
Sable then kicks out straight at Kyra's chest, slamming her backwards into the wall behind us. I jump down off of her, skidding into a landing on the concrete floor, the roughness of the surface tearing up my hands.
Kyra slides down the wall behind me, dazed from the hits she's taken. I can't shake the feeling that it's my fault - if she hadn't been worrying about me, she could have dealt with her sister.
I watch, stunned, as Sable begins to pound mercilessly at her sister, punch after punch. "How could you leave me like that?" She yells. "To run off to the fucking Truthseekers, for God's sake! I'm your sister!"
Kyra has her hands up to protect her face, but her sister is mostly beating her around the chest and neck. She shakes with each blow. I don't know what to do. I'm deadly afraid that Sable is killing her.
Sable stops for a moment, breathing heavily. Kyra tries to get up, and Sable knocks her back down. "You're not going to quit," she says. "I can't let you have him. It's my job." She reaches down into her belt, and pulls out a pistol.
I don't even think, I just raise the gun and fire. The harpoon sails through the air, lodging itself firmly in Sable's thigh.
The effect happens instantly - Sable stumbles backwards, twitching and shaking. She begins to collapse directly above me, and I run out of the way, just making it out of the way before she falls with an earth-shaking boom.
She twitches for a few minutes more before going slack. All this time, Kyra has remained where she was, sitting against the wall, perfectly still. Everything is silent.
Kyra slowly stands up off the wall, and walks over to her sister's body. She stands there, staring silently. Her face shows nothing, but I can see that her hands are trembling.
She stands that way for a long time.
Giantess World
