Trapped
I signed. I didn't know what else to do.
In that basement since Thursday. No abuse, no torture or rape, nothing like that. They just . . . kept me. Watched me. That Nathan guy-
And now he's mine. My bodyguard and minder. My death, I suppose, if I do the wrong thing. Say or write it. Let anyone know.
Who can I tell? Cops, Feds - they have procedures for this, right? Information drops and safehouses. I've seen it on TV. In movies.
I'm in TV and movies now. Through the looking glass. Alice, damn Alice. Stupid, weak little girl. Pass the hookah, fat Caterpillar, and give me a toke. I could really use it.
My family. My family, oh, God, oh, God. Brianna. My brother. Sister. The kids. My friends. Rossi. Oh, God.
I signed. I didn't know what else to do.
10/3/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A basement, much as many can be found across New York City and beyond. Also, Leah Canto's temporary home. The bed is fitted with thick woolen blankets, the wooden chairs tucked under the simple desk. A desk that originally contained a copy of everything published by Leah Canto that Raymond Hubbard's resources can lay hands on. The flap on the door flicks open after the sound of a pair of bolts being released. "Got a visitor," comes the gruff voice of Nathan from without, "an' you'd best be feelin' polite, Miss Canto, 'cause he's important."
Leah looks up from the bed, where she sits with head, until a second ago, in hands. She's still dressed in last Thursday's outfit: cranberry suit jacket (scuffed and one sleeve torn) and skirt (dirt-smeared), beige blouse (missing a button just above her navel, collar twisted), and one low pump (solo but proud in it, defiantly so). She's no longer angry, however, or afraid, but ... stretched out, scraped out, by the taut expression she turns to Nathan's voice. Doesn't answer. Doesn't move after that first head-lift and turn.
"Good." Nathan says, wide lips pulling into something akin to a fond smile before the flap flips closed, two bolts shot in, and two larger ones pulled out. The door is opened, slowly, to be filled by the diminuitive form of Tom, clad in dark jeans, a darker hooded top and the ever-present balaclava disguising all but eyes and mouth. Pure white eyes, save for the malevolent pits he calls pupils. A single step in, and the door closes behind him. The sports bag clutched in one leather-covered hand thuds to the floor, and the slightly high-pitched voice makes its presence felt. "Hello, Leah."
Leah says nothing. She sits and watches this new presence, and folds her hands together on her knees.
Slouched, but cat-like, Tom creeps over to the desk, pulling a chair out and placing himself upon it, hands falling to rest inside the hoodie's pockets. "I hope Nathan and the boys have been treating you well enough? There's clothes, shoes and some toiletries in the bag, if you want them. Feel free to speak, my dear, it's why I'm here."
Still nothing. Leah just stares at him. A muscle is twitching visibly up one naked, bruised calf.
"Well now," Tom says with regret, the ghost of a smile flickering onto thin lips. "You were chosen for your oratory, not your ability to stay quiet." He pauses, long enough to draw a heavy, blackened pistol from within one of those pockets and lean backwards, chair tilting on hind legs to afford him the opportunity to splay arms across across the cheap wood of the desk, absently tapping a gun-barrel tattoo against it. "Please, tell me why you said no."
The twitching intensifies as if in sympathy with the gun's chattering. Leah does not chatter. She does deign to glare at him and ask, "Are you gonna let me go if I do?"
The glare is met by a blandly amused smile. "I'd love to let you run free, Leah. I'm not a monster. Let's talk, about the Friends of Humanity, and what makes you think you're not suitable for the position you were offered." Tom pushes shoulders off the desk, leaving the pistol to clatter to the wood, and sits forward, elbows on knees and focusing an intensely interested look on the woman.
"Fuck off," Leah says automatically, though she eyes the gun. "It's not a monster who kidnaps and holds innocent civilians like this? Fuck /off./ You guys are fucking terrorists, just like I told that Bancroft bitch."
"That Bancroft bitch happens to be one of my closest associates." Tom remarks mildly, flashing another amused smile in Leah's direction. Vicious amusement, at that. "We act to protect and preserve humanity from the dangerous mutants that are trying to /kill/ us, Leah. Victor Creed. Erik Lenscherr. Two examples. You were taken to try and persuade you that this job was /made/ for you."
Shivers move up Leah's arms from clenched hands to hunched shoulders. "Let me go," she invites sweetly, though with a coarse edge like arsenic's delayed bite, "and I'll show you what kind of things I'm made for. I can't wait to write about this shit. Can't wait."
"Have you not been treated well?" Tom asks, sitting up to splay arms wide, gesturing to the room. "Apart from the incarceration, of course." Another pause, to tip head to the side, a flash of malevolent anger twisting lips into a cruel sneer. "You also seem to misunderstand me. This job /was/ made for you. You, Leah Canto -- conservative writer, partially distasteful of the mutants, and vocal about it."
Leah grits out, "/I'm/ not a terrorist. Find someone else to carry your water. I won't, since the bitch was nice enough to ask first. Telling you the same thing here -- who /are/ you?" The grit becomes a smile as hard as her fingers' grip on each other. "So I get it right for my story."
"Oh, remiss of me." The black-clad man tips his head into the mockery of a seated bow. "Call me Tom. You should also be aware that your job will not entail any form of physical action, merely a voice." Steel-etched voice waxes more smug. "And such a fine voice it is. You would, of course, be rewarded. Fame, money, notoriety. Even popularity amongst the masses."
Leah stills. "Bribes," she says flatly. "Yeah, great. Lovely. Just what a journalist wants while she sells out a whole fucking species to slaughter. You do want the streets to run red with blood at some point, right? And you'll give me a megaphone to describe the action as it happens."
"You've got me wrong." Tom says, the rough hints of a growl tugging at his voice. "Dangerous mutants are the only ones to be destroyed, rather than get locked up, only to be let free by the incompetents like those at Tarantino." He drips scorn of them, then waves a dismissive hand. "The rest? I don't give a fuck about them."
"Right," Leah retorts sarcastically. "The safe mutants and the normal humans of the world will live happily side by side as brothers and sisters, and you'll be there to cull the dangerous ones? Who decides what 'dangerous' means? You? Congress? The cops?"
Tom lifts an eyebrow, balaclava twitched slightly out of position. A single word is uttered, filled with dark respect. "Prime." Then, he allows another amused smile. "If I am forced to take up arms to combat each dangerous mutant that runs through the world, for the rest of my life, I will do so, and with gusto, because I am acting to /protect/, to /preserve/."
Leah snaps irritably, "What the fuck is Prime? You guys all got code names or something? Like goddamned superheroes--" She shakes her head and sits back on the bed, hugging crossed arms under her breasts. "Protect. Preserve." She tries for mockery, but a flicker of uncertainty undermines it. "This isn't a war. You aren't a soldier."
Tom rings a warning in his voice, "Not what. /Who/. He leads us in this city." The smile returns, though, for a moment, before he shakes his head. "Not a war. Not yet, and not if I can help it. Magneto and his merry band of cut-throats want a war, they want to spark it. I'm a casualty, jaded by what I'm forced to do behind the scenes, vilified because of the bleeding hearts, hunted because of the incompetents." He stands, pacing, moving, never still. He rides the wave of fervence with sharp gestures. "All I want is a /voice/, Leah. Someone to stand up and shout out that we're /not/ evil, we're trying to protect those who hunt us. We just want to get rid of the dangerous mutants, the ones who kill and maim for no good reason."
Leah's eyes narrow at the warning; her mouth goes flat and tight. When he's done, when he's /quite/ done, she drawls, "I'm all torn up, Tom. Really. My heart bleeds for you. Poor man, beset by the vagaries of genetics and the time in which he lives -- /oh,/ boo-hoo. Those goons out there able to play the violin for you? Let's get a little weepy background music going for this shit you're spewing. Maybe it'll make it easier to swallow, who knows?"
"Just quite who the /fuck/ do you think you are, Leah?" Tom snaps, voice rising and textured by grit. "Think you can shout me down? Think you're so fucking great? Let's see you face up to Magneto, to that wolf monster in the park, to Victor fucking Creed!" He stops, dead, and glares at her, violence promised in the fire of his anger.
Leah might be shaking -- quietly, very quietly -- but she stares right back, into the heart of violence, and all but yawns at it. "Not trying to shout you down. Gosh. Just trying to get the hell out of here before I lose my mind to all the crazy talk." Her smile curves sharp, and her alto all but purrs. "You got me /so/ excited. I'm all moist. I weep for you -- on the inside, mind -- and I ache and tremble. Oh, so manly. So very manly of you." And she actually fans a hand at her face, whooshing out a dramatic breath. "Magneto and Victor Creed! Goodness. Take me now, Tom! Take me now!"
Breathing slower, slower, almost stopping, Tom allows the malevolence to flex knuckles, fists, hands, fists again. "Tell me, Leah," A deadly murmur, as he turns towards the desk, moving to his gun. "How is Faith? Brianna? And their parents? David and Hannah are such busy bees, aren't they?" Vicious mockery, shot through with a promise.
The shaking stops with a jolt, and so does Leah's dark and rabid mockery. "What--" She swallows, tries again more loudly, though the whisper's still cracked, like her anguished expression as she sits forward again. "What are you talking about? You wouldn't..."
Slowly, surely, Tom's hand reaches down for the pistol, laying his hand over it. "I would hate to see them hurt, darling Leah." he says, as he takes it up. "Especially if it was the fault of your pitiful attempts to mock me." And he begins to turn, arms rising straight out, barrel drawing a thin line around the walls.
"Son of a bitch," but the epithet lacks true bite, and most of its bark, too. Leah hugs herself harder, staring at him. "You leave them /alone./ This has nothing to do with 'em. Jesus Christ. Jesus H. fucking Christ. You -- dammit! Leave them out of it!"
"Brianna, such a pretty girl, with much promise for the future." Tom muses, "It's a pleasure to see her enjoying school so much. I will not even contact them, Leah." he assures, sweet veneer showing only a few cracks. "/If/, and only if, you become my voice."
Leah swallows again. "Or else."
The pistol continues on its journey, flicking up and down to aim at imperfections in the wall, until it begins to approach Leah, though pointing, for now, a little over her head. "Or else? Does that not sound a little over-dramatic?"
Leah's chin jerks up. "You're one to talk," she says softly. Trembling. Wet-eyed. She licks her lips and forces a shrug. "This whole thing is dramatic. If you intended it to make your point, consider it made. I hear you. I get you. I promise. Just don't--" her voice breaks again "--/don't/ hurt my family."
"Leah." An admonition, regretfully made. "Here I was hoping to shoot /just/ above your head to illustrate my point." Tom suddenly releases the grip of the pistol, letting it fall to pointing ceiling-wards. "Then we have a deal?"
"No," Leah whispers, but can't meet his eyes. She stares fiercely, wetly, at the door instead. "I can't do that. I just ... I can't. I can't say those things if I don't mean them! I'm not an actress, for God's sake."
"Your choice, Leah. Just be glad I'm letting you fight for the right team." Tom notes lightly, lifting shoulders into the tiniest of shrugs as he turns towards the door. "Are there any more questions before I give you your time to decide? Or anything else I can arrange for you to get hold of?" Friendly, now, the slightly high pitch of his voice releasing nothing but good vibes.
And it hits her harder than warning of voice or threat of violence, for Leah hunches over as if gut-shot by words and tone alone. "Let me go," she begs, not even bothering with bravado now. "Don't touch my family -- don't hurt -- let me out. I need to warn them, or ... or start making my lies. Making them work." She says it as if around a bitter pill she can't swallow, but can't spit out, either, and she's crying. "Don't /do/ this to me. To them. My family, all those mutants, all those people -- don't, /don't./ Please," she whispers, breaking. Broken.
Tom turns again, puzzled in the white of his eyes. "You don't understand, do you? When you take this job, if you mention /any/ of this to anyone, then you, and your /entire/ family will die." He shrugs again, noting "Especially Detective Rossi. There'll be a piece of paper in here later, detailing your duties and the image you will project. You will be paid handsomely."
"I said I'd lie!" Leah lashes back. She scrubs her hands over her face; behind that barricade, she sounds tired. Broken /and/ beaten. "--I know. Death to everyone I know. Better than just killing me. I know how it works. If you could write the shit yourself-- /Are/ you writing it for me? Do I get talking points to work with? You gonna dictate while I take notes?"
"And it matters not if I lose people, because retribution is paramount." Tom finishes, with a blandly broad smile. His tone takes on that of the concerned boss. "I'll set you up with some sort of outline, and details are yours. I'm no writer. I'll feed you information, you spin it."
Leah mutters, "Fine. Whatever." She sits in exhausted silence. Then: "When do I get to leave?"
"Within an hour, once you're all set up with the proof of my assertions." Tom says, with a nod of approval. "Now, want a drink of celebration?" He leans over the bag, withdrawing a bottle of that amber liquid.
Nausea rolls through Leah's expression. "No. I don't. Just get me out of here. Let me go home."
"I'll drink it then." Tom shrugs. "Get a change of clothes; Nathan will drop the paperwork through, and once you've read and signed, he'll drop you at home." And he walks towards the door, rapping on it sharply, before turning back to look at the woman again.
With quiet, wooden obedience, Leah climbs off the bed and goes to the bag. As she pulls out the clothing, she studies each piece with dull curiosity and then places it on the bed in tidy order, even straightening out one of the shirt's sleeves so that it lies properly flat. She doesn't look again at Tom, not even when she shrugs one arm at a time out of her jacket, drops it on the floor, and begins to undo the buttons of her blouse.
The door opens, Tom looking away demurely from the undressing woman. "Oh, Nathan will be your bodyguard and minder from now on. I do hope you get along well. See you soon, Leah." And he steps out, the wooden portal moving to slam closed behind him, ready for its bolts.
When he's gone, when she's alone, Leah sways, a hand clutched at her naked throat above the open blouse. Then she gags, then she drops heavily to her knees, then she vomits thin and acrid on the trailing edge of her jacket. Then she hunches in another arms-folded embrace, and then she begins to sob, shaking with it. /Shaking/ with it, beyond hope or help.
[Log ends.]
In that basement since Thursday. No abuse, no torture or rape, nothing like that. They just . . . kept me. Watched me. That Nathan guy-
And now he's mine. My bodyguard and minder. My death, I suppose, if I do the wrong thing. Say or write it. Let anyone know.
Who can I tell? Cops, Feds - they have procedures for this, right? Information drops and safehouses. I've seen it on TV. In movies.
I'm in TV and movies now. Through the looking glass. Alice, damn Alice. Stupid, weak little girl. Pass the hookah, fat Caterpillar, and give me a toke. I could really use it.
My family. My family, oh, God, oh, God. Brianna. My brother. Sister. The kids. My friends. Rossi. Oh, God.
I signed. I didn't know what else to do.
10/3/2005
Logfile from Leah.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A basement, much as many can be found across New York City and beyond. Also, Leah Canto's temporary home. The bed is fitted with thick woolen blankets, the wooden chairs tucked under the simple desk. A desk that originally contained a copy of everything published by Leah Canto that Raymond Hubbard's resources can lay hands on. The flap on the door flicks open after the sound of a pair of bolts being released. "Got a visitor," comes the gruff voice of Nathan from without, "an' you'd best be feelin' polite, Miss Canto, 'cause he's important."
Leah looks up from the bed, where she sits with head, until a second ago, in hands. She's still dressed in last Thursday's outfit: cranberry suit jacket (scuffed and one sleeve torn) and skirt (dirt-smeared), beige blouse (missing a button just above her navel, collar twisted), and one low pump (solo but proud in it, defiantly so). She's no longer angry, however, or afraid, but ... stretched out, scraped out, by the taut expression she turns to Nathan's voice. Doesn't answer. Doesn't move after that first head-lift and turn.
"Good." Nathan says, wide lips pulling into something akin to a fond smile before the flap flips closed, two bolts shot in, and two larger ones pulled out. The door is opened, slowly, to be filled by the diminuitive form of Tom, clad in dark jeans, a darker hooded top and the ever-present balaclava disguising all but eyes and mouth. Pure white eyes, save for the malevolent pits he calls pupils. A single step in, and the door closes behind him. The sports bag clutched in one leather-covered hand thuds to the floor, and the slightly high-pitched voice makes its presence felt. "Hello, Leah."
Leah says nothing. She sits and watches this new presence, and folds her hands together on her knees.
Slouched, but cat-like, Tom creeps over to the desk, pulling a chair out and placing himself upon it, hands falling to rest inside the hoodie's pockets. "I hope Nathan and the boys have been treating you well enough? There's clothes, shoes and some toiletries in the bag, if you want them. Feel free to speak, my dear, it's why I'm here."
Still nothing. Leah just stares at him. A muscle is twitching visibly up one naked, bruised calf.
"Well now," Tom says with regret, the ghost of a smile flickering onto thin lips. "You were chosen for your oratory, not your ability to stay quiet." He pauses, long enough to draw a heavy, blackened pistol from within one of those pockets and lean backwards, chair tilting on hind legs to afford him the opportunity to splay arms across across the cheap wood of the desk, absently tapping a gun-barrel tattoo against it. "Please, tell me why you said no."
The twitching intensifies as if in sympathy with the gun's chattering. Leah does not chatter. She does deign to glare at him and ask, "Are you gonna let me go if I do?"
The glare is met by a blandly amused smile. "I'd love to let you run free, Leah. I'm not a monster. Let's talk, about the Friends of Humanity, and what makes you think you're not suitable for the position you were offered." Tom pushes shoulders off the desk, leaving the pistol to clatter to the wood, and sits forward, elbows on knees and focusing an intensely interested look on the woman.
"Fuck off," Leah says automatically, though she eyes the gun. "It's not a monster who kidnaps and holds innocent civilians like this? Fuck /off./ You guys are fucking terrorists, just like I told that Bancroft bitch."
"That Bancroft bitch happens to be one of my closest associates." Tom remarks mildly, flashing another amused smile in Leah's direction. Vicious amusement, at that. "We act to protect and preserve humanity from the dangerous mutants that are trying to /kill/ us, Leah. Victor Creed. Erik Lenscherr. Two examples. You were taken to try and persuade you that this job was /made/ for you."
Shivers move up Leah's arms from clenched hands to hunched shoulders. "Let me go," she invites sweetly, though with a coarse edge like arsenic's delayed bite, "and I'll show you what kind of things I'm made for. I can't wait to write about this shit. Can't wait."
"Have you not been treated well?" Tom asks, sitting up to splay arms wide, gesturing to the room. "Apart from the incarceration, of course." Another pause, to tip head to the side, a flash of malevolent anger twisting lips into a cruel sneer. "You also seem to misunderstand me. This job /was/ made for you. You, Leah Canto -- conservative writer, partially distasteful of the mutants, and vocal about it."
Leah grits out, "/I'm/ not a terrorist. Find someone else to carry your water. I won't, since the bitch was nice enough to ask first. Telling you the same thing here -- who /are/ you?" The grit becomes a smile as hard as her fingers' grip on each other. "So I get it right for my story."
"Oh, remiss of me." The black-clad man tips his head into the mockery of a seated bow. "Call me Tom. You should also be aware that your job will not entail any form of physical action, merely a voice." Steel-etched voice waxes more smug. "And such a fine voice it is. You would, of course, be rewarded. Fame, money, notoriety. Even popularity amongst the masses."
Leah stills. "Bribes," she says flatly. "Yeah, great. Lovely. Just what a journalist wants while she sells out a whole fucking species to slaughter. You do want the streets to run red with blood at some point, right? And you'll give me a megaphone to describe the action as it happens."
"You've got me wrong." Tom says, the rough hints of a growl tugging at his voice. "Dangerous mutants are the only ones to be destroyed, rather than get locked up, only to be let free by the incompetents like those at Tarantino." He drips scorn of them, then waves a dismissive hand. "The rest? I don't give a fuck about them."
"Right," Leah retorts sarcastically. "The safe mutants and the normal humans of the world will live happily side by side as brothers and sisters, and you'll be there to cull the dangerous ones? Who decides what 'dangerous' means? You? Congress? The cops?"
Tom lifts an eyebrow, balaclava twitched slightly out of position. A single word is uttered, filled with dark respect. "Prime." Then, he allows another amused smile. "If I am forced to take up arms to combat each dangerous mutant that runs through the world, for the rest of my life, I will do so, and with gusto, because I am acting to /protect/, to /preserve/."
Leah snaps irritably, "What the fuck is Prime? You guys all got code names or something? Like goddamned superheroes--" She shakes her head and sits back on the bed, hugging crossed arms under her breasts. "Protect. Preserve." She tries for mockery, but a flicker of uncertainty undermines it. "This isn't a war. You aren't a soldier."
Tom rings a warning in his voice, "Not what. /Who/. He leads us in this city." The smile returns, though, for a moment, before he shakes his head. "Not a war. Not yet, and not if I can help it. Magneto and his merry band of cut-throats want a war, they want to spark it. I'm a casualty, jaded by what I'm forced to do behind the scenes, vilified because of the bleeding hearts, hunted because of the incompetents." He stands, pacing, moving, never still. He rides the wave of fervence with sharp gestures. "All I want is a /voice/, Leah. Someone to stand up and shout out that we're /not/ evil, we're trying to protect those who hunt us. We just want to get rid of the dangerous mutants, the ones who kill and maim for no good reason."
Leah's eyes narrow at the warning; her mouth goes flat and tight. When he's done, when he's /quite/ done, she drawls, "I'm all torn up, Tom. Really. My heart bleeds for you. Poor man, beset by the vagaries of genetics and the time in which he lives -- /oh,/ boo-hoo. Those goons out there able to play the violin for you? Let's get a little weepy background music going for this shit you're spewing. Maybe it'll make it easier to swallow, who knows?"
"Just quite who the /fuck/ do you think you are, Leah?" Tom snaps, voice rising and textured by grit. "Think you can shout me down? Think you're so fucking great? Let's see you face up to Magneto, to that wolf monster in the park, to Victor fucking Creed!" He stops, dead, and glares at her, violence promised in the fire of his anger.
Leah might be shaking -- quietly, very quietly -- but she stares right back, into the heart of violence, and all but yawns at it. "Not trying to shout you down. Gosh. Just trying to get the hell out of here before I lose my mind to all the crazy talk." Her smile curves sharp, and her alto all but purrs. "You got me /so/ excited. I'm all moist. I weep for you -- on the inside, mind -- and I ache and tremble. Oh, so manly. So very manly of you." And she actually fans a hand at her face, whooshing out a dramatic breath. "Magneto and Victor Creed! Goodness. Take me now, Tom! Take me now!"
Breathing slower, slower, almost stopping, Tom allows the malevolence to flex knuckles, fists, hands, fists again. "Tell me, Leah," A deadly murmur, as he turns towards the desk, moving to his gun. "How is Faith? Brianna? And their parents? David and Hannah are such busy bees, aren't they?" Vicious mockery, shot through with a promise.
The shaking stops with a jolt, and so does Leah's dark and rabid mockery. "What--" She swallows, tries again more loudly, though the whisper's still cracked, like her anguished expression as she sits forward again. "What are you talking about? You wouldn't..."
Slowly, surely, Tom's hand reaches down for the pistol, laying his hand over it. "I would hate to see them hurt, darling Leah." he says, as he takes it up. "Especially if it was the fault of your pitiful attempts to mock me." And he begins to turn, arms rising straight out, barrel drawing a thin line around the walls.
"Son of a bitch," but the epithet lacks true bite, and most of its bark, too. Leah hugs herself harder, staring at him. "You leave them /alone./ This has nothing to do with 'em. Jesus Christ. Jesus H. fucking Christ. You -- dammit! Leave them out of it!"
"Brianna, such a pretty girl, with much promise for the future." Tom muses, "It's a pleasure to see her enjoying school so much. I will not even contact them, Leah." he assures, sweet veneer showing only a few cracks. "/If/, and only if, you become my voice."
Leah swallows again. "Or else."
The pistol continues on its journey, flicking up and down to aim at imperfections in the wall, until it begins to approach Leah, though pointing, for now, a little over her head. "Or else? Does that not sound a little over-dramatic?"
Leah's chin jerks up. "You're one to talk," she says softly. Trembling. Wet-eyed. She licks her lips and forces a shrug. "This whole thing is dramatic. If you intended it to make your point, consider it made. I hear you. I get you. I promise. Just don't--" her voice breaks again "--/don't/ hurt my family."
"Leah." An admonition, regretfully made. "Here I was hoping to shoot /just/ above your head to illustrate my point." Tom suddenly releases the grip of the pistol, letting it fall to pointing ceiling-wards. "Then we have a deal?"
"No," Leah whispers, but can't meet his eyes. She stares fiercely, wetly, at the door instead. "I can't do that. I just ... I can't. I can't say those things if I don't mean them! I'm not an actress, for God's sake."
"Your choice, Leah. Just be glad I'm letting you fight for the right team." Tom notes lightly, lifting shoulders into the tiniest of shrugs as he turns towards the door. "Are there any more questions before I give you your time to decide? Or anything else I can arrange for you to get hold of?" Friendly, now, the slightly high pitch of his voice releasing nothing but good vibes.
And it hits her harder than warning of voice or threat of violence, for Leah hunches over as if gut-shot by words and tone alone. "Let me go," she begs, not even bothering with bravado now. "Don't touch my family -- don't hurt -- let me out. I need to warn them, or ... or start making my lies. Making them work." She says it as if around a bitter pill she can't swallow, but can't spit out, either, and she's crying. "Don't /do/ this to me. To them. My family, all those mutants, all those people -- don't, /don't./ Please," she whispers, breaking. Broken.
Tom turns again, puzzled in the white of his eyes. "You don't understand, do you? When you take this job, if you mention /any/ of this to anyone, then you, and your /entire/ family will die." He shrugs again, noting "Especially Detective Rossi. There'll be a piece of paper in here later, detailing your duties and the image you will project. You will be paid handsomely."
"I said I'd lie!" Leah lashes back. She scrubs her hands over her face; behind that barricade, she sounds tired. Broken /and/ beaten. "--I know. Death to everyone I know. Better than just killing me. I know how it works. If you could write the shit yourself-- /Are/ you writing it for me? Do I get talking points to work with? You gonna dictate while I take notes?"
"And it matters not if I lose people, because retribution is paramount." Tom finishes, with a blandly broad smile. His tone takes on that of the concerned boss. "I'll set you up with some sort of outline, and details are yours. I'm no writer. I'll feed you information, you spin it."
Leah mutters, "Fine. Whatever." She sits in exhausted silence. Then: "When do I get to leave?"
"Within an hour, once you're all set up with the proof of my assertions." Tom says, with a nod of approval. "Now, want a drink of celebration?" He leans over the bag, withdrawing a bottle of that amber liquid.
Nausea rolls through Leah's expression. "No. I don't. Just get me out of here. Let me go home."
"I'll drink it then." Tom shrugs. "Get a change of clothes; Nathan will drop the paperwork through, and once you've read and signed, he'll drop you at home." And he walks towards the door, rapping on it sharply, before turning back to look at the woman again.
With quiet, wooden obedience, Leah climbs off the bed and goes to the bag. As she pulls out the clothing, she studies each piece with dull curiosity and then places it on the bed in tidy order, even straightening out one of the shirt's sleeves so that it lies properly flat. She doesn't look again at Tom, not even when she shrugs one arm at a time out of her jacket, drops it on the floor, and begins to undo the buttons of her blouse.
The door opens, Tom looking away demurely from the undressing woman. "Oh, Nathan will be your bodyguard and minder from now on. I do hope you get along well. See you soon, Leah." And he steps out, the wooden portal moving to slam closed behind him, ready for its bolts.
When he's gone, when she's alone, Leah sways, a hand clutched at her naked throat above the open blouse. Then she gags, then she drops heavily to her knees, then she vomits thin and acrid on the trailing edge of her jacket. Then she hunches in another arms-folded embrace, and then she begins to sob, shaking with it. /Shaking/ with it, beyond hope or help.
[Log ends.]