Maira had just gotten her first job, was getting ready to go to university, and was hoping for a bright future with a good job and a few kids. All of that crashed to a halt on the day her shop came under fire, and she was kidnapped to be tortured for months by a serial killer.
Getting free of him was her first true accomplishment as a hero, and she nearly had to kill herself to save other lives. She survived, they survived, and she was given accelerated healing, which activated a gift that no one in her family had ever carried before.
Listening to anyone, anywhere was a skill that got boring quickly. Talking into her target’s limbic system and having it reply to her was far more interesting. The mind couldn’t lie, and she used it to her advantage.
All you will hear is my voice. All you will see is my face, and all you will feel is my touch.
She twitched her arm as the effect of his voice wore off. He had captured and discarded two other girls while he had her, and both had simply disappeared when he got bored with them. Maira was, sadly, a toy that he didn’t tire of.
She twitched again and flexed her fingers, lifting the hand that was finally moving under her own control.
She could see the instrument on the tray nearby. She lifted her arm and flopped it over to the tray, carefully gripping the small pointed cylinder after several tries.
She pulled it to her and breathed rapidly as she got up the nerve before she could talk herself out of it, and he could appear, she stabbed the probe into her ear until she screamed from the pain.
She breathed in and out fast, pulled it out, and did the same on her left side.
The roaring sound of the equipment was gone. The silence was her tool. Her body came back rapidly, but she had spent weeks prone and held by clamps in an upright position. Now, it was time to call for help.
She didn’t know where she was. That was an issue. She knew that the com unit was a few rooms away, and she moved slowly, holding the wall, as she walked to where she remembered him holding her on his lap while he communicated with other villains of perverse nature.
She kept her head moving, looking around for him and not finding him, she went to the com unit and contacted the team alert number, as she had been taught to in school.
My name is Maira Ada Lefs. I am being held by Arcon Moring, I don’t know where I am. I need help. PS, I have deafened myself. I don’t know how much time I have.
She sent the message and hoped that there was someone on dispatch to answer her.
Maira Ada Lefs? Where did you disappear from?
Cabric Coffee, just after ten in the morning, during some kind of bombing or marauder attack. He was in the sho—
She felt a hand on her shoulder, spinning her around. She hit the enter key a moment before she was struck across the face. She slid her arm across the keyboard and closed the file as she went.
When she slumped, he carried her back to the gel gurney that was her home.
His lips were moving, but she couldn’t hear him. She wanted to laugh in triumph, but it was too early. If she exposed herself now, she was as good as dead. She simply let him arrange her, as he always did, and then, he left her to do something else, possibly to retrieve a new girl from wherever he had set her.
He had another girl, and he set her on the other gurney, whispering to her and stroking her hair. It hurt Maira to have to wait, but thankfully, she didn’t wait long.
She sat up when the team came through the door, and she gestured to the ears of the members as one ran toward Arcon and fell to the floor.
The second hero fell, and Maira couldn’t stand it. She sprinted forward and grabbed the weapon of one of the downed team, and she fired three stun shots into the centre of her tormentor’s body. He fell back, away from his victim.
She sat on the floor and cried. A hand touched her shoulder and shook her roughly. The person was speaking, but she couldn’t hear anything.
She gestured to her ear and made a stabbing motion. The woman looked aghast. A quick com conversation and she was being wrapped in a sheet, as was the other woman, and they were being removed from the house of horrors that she had survived, mostly intact.
