Ninja Girl

Slowly, inch by painful inch, the darkness gave way to a lighter one, and the pain grew into a stronger one. Unwittingly he winced and tried to pry open his eyes. They opened bare millimeters, groggily refusing to obey his commands before slamming shut once again. His head bobbed up and then down, right and then left, and settled back on his chest.

Something gripped him by the hair and raised his head up. He attempted to open his eyes again, but only managed to make out lights that were far too bright and a figure that was far too dark.

From somewhere deep out in the void came the surreal echo of a voice saying, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Wha?” Came Nick’s garbled response. “Where?”

“’Where is… not so important right now,” the voice answered in an amused tone.

“Who?” Nick managed to squeak before his head dropped back to resting on his chest.

The figure before him reached out and grabbed him by the hair again. She lifted him up to face her once more. “This really is quite pathetic. You’ve been out for a very long time. Can’t you wake up already?”

Suddenly it occurred to Nick where he had heard the voice before. It was the woman from the rooftop, the one who had knocked him out. He came fully awake, head snapping straight up on his shoulders, eyes wide. He looked around at the room he found himself in now. It was a great big open area – some sort of warehouse, possibly. He was sitting in a chair surrounded by armed guards. Before him and to his left was a table with some computer equipment on it, including his laptop, which was currently open. On the opposite side was a large TV screen on a stand. Actually, on looking at it for a moment longer, Nick thought it looked more like a giant computer monitor. Above him there were three levels of catwalks, each containing a handful more of armed men patrolling up and down.

The woman from the rooftop was standing before him, hands on her hips, watching him with the amused expression of someone who enjoyed their job just a little too much.

“What?” Nick asked again and tried to rise, only to realize that the pain in his arms and wrists came from the fact that they had tied him down to the chair. “What the hell? What is going on here? Who the hell are you people?”

“Oh, I think you know exactly who we are,” the woman said, motioning to the area around her. “Which is also exactly why you’re here. As for who I am, my name is Holly. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Finally? What, you’ve known about me for a while?”

“Well, it seems we missed you at your apartment. I was so very, very disappointed about that.”

Nick did his best not to react, but could not help a tightening in his jaw and a small tug on his restraints. Holly smiled wider.

“Let me make this real easy on you, Nick. Tell us where the girl is and we can let you get back to your life.”

Nick blinked, letting the surprise over the sudden change in topics wash over his face, hopefully covering up any traces of other emotions. “Girl? What girl?”

“Don’t waste my time. You know what girl. The one you’ve been working with. The one who helped you break into Teller Communications.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really? Than how do you explain this?” Holly stepped over to the table and spun Nick’s laptop around so that he could see it.

The image on the screen was his desktop wallpaper and an open file. The wallpaper was him dressed up as Chain, the main character from the Legends of Lysandra video game series. He had been rather proud of that costume, as most of it he had put together himself when he had failed to find appropriate materials. He had even painted the shield, including the iconic floral crescent that served as the royal crest of the series.

The document that was open was one Nick didn’t really recognize. It seemed to be a PDF of some work order that meant nothing to him.

“Ah,” he said, in a defeated tone. “That… that I can explain. It was Halloween… all my friends wanted to go as fantasy characters… I… I really like video games, okay?”

Holly blinked, confused. She took another look at the screen to make sure she had shown him what she meant to, and then finally saw what he was talking about. She slammed the laptop closed. “You know what I mean,” she growled in annoyance. “Not the picture, the document. All of the documents. For some reason, all the documents you chose to download were documents regarding Ryerson.

“Now, if you were just a normal hacker, I would expect you to go after financial records, or personnel data, or even company emails. You went for research data. Now that’s weird. It’s quite obvious you don’t work for a competitor, or else you would have gotten your hands on some Teller Com documents as well. No, you went strictly for Ryerson documents. And that can only mean one thing.”

“I don’t know how to read?” Nick offered.

“It means you know where the girl is,” Holly snapped, leaning in close to him. “And you’re going to tell me.”

“All right, I’ll admit, I stole the documents. But I didn’t know what I was stealing. And I wasn’t working with anyone. Obviously, or you’d have them here, too.”

Holly sighed and turned away from Nick. She lifted a remote from the table and clicked it. The screen to his right came to life. On it was an image that had clearly come from a surveillance camera. It was of him and Anya standing outside the I.T. room at Teller Communications, talking. “You’re telling me you don’t know this woman?” Holly tapped the remote on the image of Anya to be absolutely clear.

“Oh, her.” Nick said, as if everything was suddenly clear. “She’s just some lady I ran into. We had a discussion about the Land Sharks. They’re doing really good this year, you know.”

Holly turned back to Nick and crossed her arms, her doubt written clearly across her features. “It is not baseball season.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “The Land Sharks are a soccer team.”

“Oh,” said Holly, cheeks glowing a little red in embarrassment. She cleared her throat and straightened up, regaining her composure. She clicked the remote and the image became a video. There was no audio, but Nick’s speech was heavily emphasized by his movements and motions. “Seems like a pretty intense discussion to be about sports,” she commented.

“What? So I talk with my hands a lot when I get excited. I talk with my hands a lot in general. I’d be doing it right now but, you know,” Nick strained against the ropes for emphasis. He continued, “I was just excited to meet someone else with an interest in soccer. That never happens around here. I mean, you’re British. You should know how rare that is in this country.”

“I don’t really follow sports.”

“Oh.” Nick’s shoulders drooped in defeat.

“Look, Nick, I get it,” Holly purred. She moved over to him, dropping down to her knees so she could rest one arm on his legs and look him in the eyes. “She’s young. She’s pretty. Very pretty. She’s able to listen to more than five words from you without trying to kill you. She’s definitely something special. You want to protect her. I get it. I do.”

She raised her other arm and placed her hand on his cheek, guiding his face so they were looking directly at each other. “But face it, Nick, she abandoned you. First chance she got, she vanished into the night and left you to get captured by the enemy. She doesn’t care about you. She doesn’t want you. She’s not interested in you. Just… tell me where she is and…” she began tracing little patterns out on Nick’s leg with her forefinger, “…you might find out just how grateful I can be.”

Nick tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry. His mind raced to find something to distract him from the sight before him. Anything. Soccer, baseball, car wrecks, bowling balls, giant scary cockroaches.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” he heard himself saying, though he didn’t feel like it was him talking.

Holly frowned, very deeply. She hardly seemed like the type who was used to being rejected. She pushed away from him, hard enough to hurt, and stood back up. “Love,” she sighed. “It makes men so stupid.”

She stepped over to the table and lifted an object off of it. “Do you know what this is?” she asked, holding it up for Nick to see. It was a shiny white object with an ovular shape. It had rubber hand grips and two small metallic spikes sticking out of the top that looked like stingers.

“Some kind of weird, kinky sex thing?” Nick supposed.

Holly’s eyes went a little wide for a second, and then she seemed to consider the idea and her expression changed to one of mild curiosity. “Well, that wasn’t what it was designed for, but work with me here and maybe we could test out that theory together.”

“Uh, wow. So much for romancing.”

“Please. You’re a male. Like you haven’t already judged me based solely on the size of my breasts and the curve of my hips.”

“Well, they are nice curves. I mean, I’m not saying you’re right, but it would definitely be hard not to notice.”

“Aw, thank you,” Holly said, her voice saccharine sweet. Then she jammed the device into Nick’s stomach.

Nick’s world exploded in violent pain. He cried out in agony without even intending to or realizing that he was doing it. A burning sensation like fire ran through his entire body from center mass straight out to the tips of his fingers.

Holly pulled the device away and smiled. “What do you think? Are you turned on?”

Nick sputtered, barely able to control his own body movements. “Y-y-you’re cray-z-z-zy,” he stuttered. “What the h-hell was that f-for?”

Holly’s voice dropped in pitch, all playfulness from earlier having gone out of it. “For wasting my time. Now, tell me where she is.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Pity.” She hit him with the device again, in the same spot. She held it for probably only a second or two longer than the previous time, but to Nick it could have been an extra eternity or two.

“Does that help clarify things?”

Nick was crying now. He didn’t remember starting to cry, but the tears were streaming out of his eyes and saliva pouring out of the sides of his mouth. “What the hell, lady? What the hell? You’re psychotic! One minute you’re seducing me, the next you’re torturing me?”

Holly shrugged. “Some might say it’s one and the same.”

“Who would say that?”

Holly’s only response was to drive the device back towards Nick’s stomach.

“Nooooo!” he shouted, desperately. “No no no no no! Wait! Okay, okay. Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait.”

Holly held the device millimeters from Nick’s stomach, watching him, one eyebrow raised, waiting intently.

“Okay, okay,” Nick continued. “Okay. You’re right. You’re right, I lied. I lied. I do know her.”

Holly withdrew the torture device and smiled. “Well?” she prompted.

“Okay. Her name is Anya. She’s a ninja. From Japan. She just randomly appeared in my room. I never met her before yesterday. Wait, two days ago? Wait, what time is it? How long was I out?”

Holly squatted down before Nick. She waived the device through the air mockingly, as though she were a mother trying to trick a particularly stubborn toddler to eat his vegetables by pretending the spoon was, in fact, an airplane.

“I’m waiting to hear something I don’t already know,” she teased in a sickly sweet sing-song tone.

“Okay! Okay! Hold up. I… we… we never really set a location to meet. We hadn’t been separated since we met. I guess we didn’t expect we would be separated, so we never really decided on a place to meet. I… we spent most of the day across the street. On the rooftop of an apartment building. And in one of the apartments on the top floor. I don’t know which one. The door handle is gone because the wood rotted off. She might be there.”

Holly sighed. “Once again, these are all things we already know. We have already checked that building. She wasn’t there.”

“What?” Nick feigned shock. “Well, that’s all I’ve got. I don’t know anywhere else she could be.”

Holly pouted her lower lip. “Well now, that’s too bad, isn’t it? That means either you’re lying, or you’re useless to me. Either way, I guess I’ll just keep shocking you until I find out.”

“Wait, what?”

Holly jammed the device into Nick’s stomach a third time. Nick roared in agony. He had never in his life felt pain so intense. He was pretty certain that his insides were literally melting.

When Holly finally removed the device from his stomach he all but collapsed against his restraints. His head drooped uncontrollably, lolling side to side. Though he couldn’t be absolutely sure, he was fairly convinced he could see smoke rising from his body.

“Okay,” he muttered, barely audibly. He hardly had the strength left to speak or move his jaw. Every part of his body felt like it was on fire. “Okay. You win. I lied. I know where she is.”

Holly smiled like a Cheshire cat. “Do tell,” she prompted giddily.

Nick mumbled something incoherent, even to him.

“You’re going to have to speak up, boy.”

“I said, you’re not gonna like it.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because,” Nick said, pausing to swallow. He lifted his head just enough to meet her gaze. “Because she’s right behind you.”

Holly scoffed. “Right. Like I’m going to…” her voice cut off and her body stiffened. Maybe she sensed the presence in the room. Maybe she had heard the cat-like whisper of Anya’s footfalls as the ninja had begun running towards her. She spun around to face her assailant, but was in time only to catch a flying kick to the side of the head.

Holly spun out in circles past Nick’s chair and then collapsed to the ground. Anya let her momentum from the kick keep her moving. She finished the spin so that she faced the guard standing watch from the other side of the table. He was training his gun on her, but before he ever got the chance to use it she had vaulted up to the table and then up on him. She wrapped her legs around his shoulders and neck and used her weight and momentum to get him off-balanced, sending him spinning around to collapse face first on the ground, Anya on top of him knocking all the air out of him as he hit dirt.

The ninja woman rose and kicked the man upside the head, and he stopped struggling. A moment later she was back over the table.

As all this was going on, Holly attempted to push herself back to her feet. She was only still rising as Anya reached her. This time she managed to put up a slightly more capable defense, but it was still pretty meager. Anya was too fast and too strong for the blond woman, easily getting past her defenses to land some solid blows.

Eventually, it ended as it inevitably would have. Anya sent Holly tumbling over a table. The British woman clambered to her hands and knees on the other side, but Anya delivered a solid kick straight to her temple and her opponent collapsed, her struggles ceasing at last.

“That. Was. Awesome!” Nick exclaimed. “Holy crap. That was like, the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Seriously. I wish I’d had some popcorn. And, you know, my hands free so that I could eat said popcorn.” He stopped talking as he realized Anya was standing there waiting for him to finish, arms crossed, watching him with her usual annoyed expression.

A smile spread across Nick’s lips. “You came to rescue me,” he teased.

“Actually, I came for this,” Anya replied, stepping over to the table and lifting up the laptop. “You just happened to be here at the same time.”

Nick looked crestfallen. “Oh,” he managed meekly. Anya turned and started walking away. “Wait! Come on! You’re not just gonna leave me here like this, are you? They’ll kill me.”

Anya turned back. “You were getting ready to sell me out to Ryerson.”

“I was not! Come on! I was just tortured! I did that to protect you! I was buying time while you took out the guards.” At this statement, Anya’s eyebrows shot straight up. “Yeah, that’s right. I knew you were here the whole time.”

Anya’s expression turned doubtful. “I guess I’m not as good of a ninja as I thought.”

“I didn’t see you at any point or anything,” Nick clarified, “but it didn’t take long to notice that the guards seemed to be disappearing one by one.”

“The woman didn’t seem to notice,” Anya said, motioning to Holly’s prone form.

“Yeah, that’s ’cuz I kept her distracted,” Nick declared triumphantly. The doubt did not diminish one iota from Anya’s expression. “Oh come on,” he whined. “At the least you’ll need someone to use the laptop for you.”

“I know how to use a computer,” Anya said, giving him a funny look. “Just because I’m a ninja doesn’t mean I’m from the past.”

“Oh, right,” Nick said, looking sheepish. “Well, just because you can doesn’t mean you’ll want to. I mean, how are you going to do your katas and vertical sit-ups and whatever else you do to stay in great shape while pouring through the mounds of data on the computer?”

Anya looked like she was thinking about it now, but still did not seem convinced.

“Come on, please? I promise to be less annoying.”

This got her attention. She returned her gaze to him and asked in a completely solemn tone: “How much less annoying?”

“Anya!” he whined.

“All right, fine,” she sighed, exasperated. “But you better mean it about the annoying part.” She stepped over and with one of her kunai she sliced through the ropes.

Moments later he was free. He tried to stand, but quickly regretted the decision. Most of his body was stiff and sore from being held in the same position for so long, but beyond that the movement reignited the pain from the torture device throughout his body. Nick cried out in agony and stumbled. To his surprise, Anya was there immediately. She pulled his arm over her shoulder, grabbed him around the waist, and helped navigate him out of the room.

“You really knew I was here the whole time?” she asked.

“Not the whole time,” he admitted. “But I figured it out pretty early on.”

“So when she told you I wasn’t coming for you, you already knew better?”

“You said you didn’t come for me.”

“You already thought you knew better, then?”

“Well, yeah. I guess. Why?”

“So when you told them to look for me at those apartments, you already knew I wasn’t there?”

“Of course,” Nick replied. “No way in hell was I giving you up. If I had thought that was where you were, I would have told them somewhere else.”

“So you could have given me up at any time. Or, at the least, given them a fake address so they would stop torturing you.”

“Yeah, but then they might have just killed me. Besides, I figured the more distracted they were, the easier it would be for you to do your ninja thing.”

She shook her head and stared at him with a strange expression on her face.

“What?” Nick asked.

“You’re crazy,” Anya replied simply.

“I like to think of myself more as… unique.”

“Whatever helps you.”