The Warehouse

Something was nagging at me, dragging me into state of pained consciousness. I would have much rather stayed sleeping, but that was not an option. A sharp pain pushed me over the edge and into full awareness. The pain was coming from my wrists, they were scraped raw and bleeding a little. I shook the cobwebs from my head and noticed a gentle swaying motion. I quickly realized that I was hanging by my wrists from a pulley. This wasn’t good.

I took the chance to look around, the prospects looked as grim as the light that snuck past the filthy windows. The space was rather large, looked like an abandoned warehouse. Piles of junk, crates, and pallets littered the areas along the walls leaving the majority of the space free. The crates and pallets were starting to rot in places, releasing a thick musty smell.

Water was dripping from the ceiling because of the recent rains and pooling in the shallow areas on the concrete. Many places the water had become stale from sitting for so long, these pools had earned a thin rim of slime.

Cobwebs were in all the corners, the floor was caked in dust. Save for a few sets of foot prints and one set of drag marks, the place looked undisturbed. Lucky me, that meant there would be no help. Whatever mess I was in, I’d have to figure my own way out of... again.

The sound of a bay door sliding up made me go limp again. Best to try and gain as much intel as I could about whoever hung me out to dry. I could hear two sets of feet, one heavy one light. That told me I had a large man and a woman or a smaller man. The large man had a slight limp, while the light foot sounded like he walked with a grace. I wasn’t allowed more than that. I sharp shove came from behind causing me to cry out slightly and swing painfully to and fro.

 “Looks like our guest is awake,” the voice was smooth and cultured with an English accent.

“Some hospitality, you b*****d,” I spat.

His lightly tanned face broke into a grin, a very unpleasant one. His green eyes flared as he heard the insult. He nodded to his large companion, his chestnut hair never moving. The companion --a large man of over six feet with black eyes, dark olive skin and a shaved head-- took a quick step at me and swung his fist right at me. With no change to dodge, I felt the full brunt of it, like a brick to the head. This guy could hit. I groaned and spat blood from my lip.

“Please speak with honesty and with respect to your betters. I am going to ask you a few questions,” he asked with a polite smile.

I scoffed, “Show me my betters and I’ll be respectful.” This comment earned me another hit from the Bull.
“What do you want with me, Limey.” I growled, still swaying.

“Please, call me Mr. Walker. We just have a few questions,” the grin never left his arrogant face.

“Mr. Wanker? Got it. What the hell do you want?! What questions?”

His polite grin faded to a pursed lip smile. He didn’t like to be called a wanker. Oh well, I didn’t care. I wasn’t too hot on being strung up, so we were even on the “things I don’t like” scale.

“You, my dear, have information I would like to have,” he took a clover cigarette from a golden case and lit it from a matching lighter.

“What kind of information?” I asked, being curious.

Walker started to pace in front of me, his black Samford-style dress shoes clicking softly on the dusty concrete. He slowed to a stop and took a long drag of his smoke. He pulled something from the inside pocket of his grey, tailored suit.

“Do you know what this is?”

I shook my head, but I had a good idea. And I was right, this wasn’t going well.

“This is a disc. Specifically, it holds sensitive information regarding a corporation that I work for. Information that you had to be stupid enough to stumble upon. I know you read it, I want to know how much you remember.”

Oh bad! Bad, bad!! So that’s what had happened. Some one had tracked my hack, now I was hanging out in a disgusting warehouse paying for being curious. What happened to that cat again?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Walker.” I said this as cooly as I could, the effect didn’t go over as well as I would have hoped.

“Jack,” Walker said to the other. This was his one word order to hit me again.

At this rate, I was getting to be good friends with Jack’s fist. Once I came to a slow sway again, Walker asked the question again.

“Not much. A hound attacked before I got too far,” I groaned, remembering the program that was sent to attack my computer. Hounds track then destroy, rather effective little beggars.

“But we know you saved something. What happened to that information?” his voice was still cool, calm, and collected.
I dropped my head, “It didn’t save properly. I got nothing, all that effort and work for nothing. So this little exercise is pointless.”

“My dear child, We have your computer and files, all your discs and transcripts. You saved every keystroke. Thank you for that, we’ve updated our security because of you and your labor.”

This was beyond bad. This was getting into the s**t hitting the fan stage.

“Now, please stop playing. What do you know?”

“Why? You’re going to kill me any way. Why should I say anything? Doesn’t matter anymore, now does it?”

“My dear, I don’t want to kill you. Or at least, I didn’t but when I heard about how much you actually found out I realized you had to be silenced.”

“Then why make the attempt to interrogate me? You just said that you had to kill me.” Right, I’m there, just dangling and I’m analyzing my doom. That’s me, lineal thinking all the way.

He took a long drag off his smoke as it neared the filter. Walker looked at it thoughtfully, as if contemplating what to do with it next.

“Talking is getting us no where, Jack. Please hold her steady for me,” his voice remained cool, but the look in his green eyes was pure evil.

I tried to twist from the touch, I wanted to get away but there was no way Jack the Bull was going to let me loose. There was little warning and no chance to prepare myself for it. With the fluid movements of a cat, Walker had the smoldering cigarette pressed into my left arm. I didn’t scream, but i did clench my jaw till I thought my teeth would break. Tears slid down my cheeks, pain flared from my arm.

“How many copies did you make?”

“Piss off!” I growled.

“How many copies?!” his voice more stern.   

I shook my head. I’d die before I told him how many copies I’d made and where they were hidden. Too many other people would get hurt and I won’t have that on my conscience. Without me, Walker would never find those copies.

“You can go to hell, wanker,” I snarled through clenched teeth.

Jack landed a fist in the back of my head, causing me to pitch forward and swing. I’d never been sea sick before, but I’m guessing this was pretty close. The trauma from the blow to my head made me loopy, I felt like I was going to vomit.

“Young lady, that was very rude. It’s why Jack here had to discipline you. Now please, my dear, cooperate. How many copies did you make?” I could an edge starting to grow in his tone.

I shook my head again, partly to clear my groggy head, partly to deny the charge.

“Very well. Jack, if you would be so kind?”  he gestured to the large man.

Jack threw a bucket of cold water on me, making my black hair stick to my face and neck. Behind me, I heard the crackle of electricity. Jack came round to my face and grinned darkly. In his large hands were jumper cables, each with a wet sponge clamped in it. I’d seen a set up like this before, the cables ran to a car battery. Since I was not grounded and soaking wet, I made the perfect conductor.

“Bloody hell,” I whimpered. This was way beyond bad.

“We can avoid this if only you answer me, my dear. How many copies?”

I refused to answer, knowing full well what was coming at me. With a slight bob of the head, Walker silently told Jack to let me have it. I have never felt pain like that. The best way I can describe it is feeling as if you’re being cooked form the inside out, only there are two red burns on my abdomen. All the fists and the cigarette burn from earlier I was able to handle. Not that, electrocution is not something most people can take. I’m among the majority in that. I screamed. Louder and with more pained force then I’d ever felt before. What only lasted a few moments stretched into decades.

“Jack,” Walker stopped the torture, “Now will you answer me? I can make this stop, you know. “

It didn’t matter. If I talked or not I was dead, we both knew that. My mind was on fire, I couldn’t think well enough to come up with a plausible excuse. Jack let me have the shocks several more times, till I was on the verge of begging for death itself.

“All right, all right!!!” I cried. “Okay...” I was gasping for breath.

Walker was smiling, rubbing his hands together greedily.

“Walker, I did make copies of your projects. All the science experiments, all the DNA splicing, all the deaths, all the everything! I have transcripts of all the voiced step by step protocols your quack doctors followed. I know everything.” I said weakly.

“You know everything?” he asked, almost as if he was scared.

“Everything. You and your cooperation have been screwing with human DNA! You’ve spliced it with that of various animals to make the next great warrior for the military. Only you screwed up, your fail safe doesn’t work. And you can’t figure out why. Your little pets have run rampant through out the world, people in various countries are seeing ancient monsters from legends past come out to terrorize again.

“You’ve tried your pet project on adults, but they aren’t viable enough and soon die. So you moved on, to teens. Though more viable, their survival rate isn’t much better. Infants lasted the longest, but then you found the cash cow you’d been waiting for. You fertilize human eggs with your animal DNA, let nature do the work itself. Little monsters and abominations, all of them!”

He paced again, walking back and forth in my field of vision. Walker was carefully listening to every word I said. His neck was starting to turn red, whether in anger or frustration I wasn't sure.

“So you did read it. And you understood it, all of it? Amazing.” Walker was grinning as if he had just heard the greatest news ever. “With your knowledge and cognitive abilities, you’ll be a marvelous research assistant. Who knows, maybe we could have you run a lab?” he was musing by then.

“I will not help you make a world of creatures like that. You might as well kill me, Wanker!”

“Oh now, you’re much more useful alive now. You’re brain is amazing. I’ve been looking for a child like you.  Besides, I’d like to keep a close eye on you. Make sure you don’t run off and tell the world of our discoveries till they are perfected.”

I grinned slyly then started to laugh. Neither he nor Jack could figure out why. I felt obligated to tell them.
 
“I had more copies of the transcripts, photos, coroners’ reports, video links, even the hacks on how I found out in the first place then you’ll ever find in a lifetime. Every major hacker in the world has access to the whole shebang. Not to mention the half dozen web sites I started and then these all the forums I posted on. I left specific instructions to all major Elite hacks what to do if I don’t contact them regularly. They’ll have your a*s in a sling before you can say ‘Holy S**t!’ Oh, by the way, in about an hour, this entire place will be swarming with every hacker and computer geek in a ten mile radius. You lost.”

“Hit her again!” Walker shouted. I’d seriously pissed him off and he meant business.
The jolts were shaking me uncontrollably. I was screaming in pain, nearly begging him to stop, not like that would have changed anything. Before the pain got too horrible to cope with, I was thrust head first into blissful black oblivion.



When I came to, everything was clean. The air smelled clean, the floor was clean, the light was clean, even the sheets were blessedly clean. Sheets? Hospital. I woke up in a hospital with an IV drip in my arm and pain in my head and abdomen. Being electrocuted sucks a*s.

Thankfully, my GPS tracker worked faster then I thought. While I was hanging, I clicked the heals of my boots together three times. “No place like home.” It set off the tracker I’d put in in my shoes. As soon as I woke up in the warehouse, I started the tracer.

Walker and Jack were arrested for attempted murder but managed to escape before anything could be done. They disappeared without a trace. The FDA, CDC. and any other organization you can think of swarmed over the cooperation like flies on... well you get the idea. I kept the copies I’d made and started the worldwide sharing of that information.

Is it wrong to hack? Yes and no. I mean, yeah, it’s illegal, but if I hadn’t then these insane people would still be playing spin the bottle with the human genome. You decide then. Would you rather I just sit here and not do anything? Or stop a major threat to humanity?

Your choice.

Reviews

[The Elder]

Very nice. An enjoyable read thay holds the reader's interest throughout.
The details are great and add to the feeling of helplessness for your heroine.
Nicely conceived and very well delivered.
I only noticed one misspelling and and no grammar problems.
Superb job.