Unknotted

Hostage and Interrogators

Georgie

Peth exploded from her hiding spot beside the dumpster and slammed into Stones. He caught air and crashed into the wall. She was on him the next moment, trapping his head between her massive arms in a headlock. Stones howled in fury, his hands clawing at her hold.

I tugged a cloth from my belt, upturned a clear potion onto it, and stuffed it over Stones’s mouth and nose. His heavy breathing drew in the potion’s fumes, and his efforts to fight Peth slowed.

“We’re going to have a little chat, you and me.” I pulled the cloth away from his face as his eyelids fell closed.

“Stop playing with him and get out of there,” Jik screamed across the line.

A roar bellowed from the end of the alley. Whiskers stood in the light of the road, his hands hovering above the gun on his belt like an outlaw ready for a showdown. “Let him go.”

I hooked my thumbs in the front of my own belt and tilted my head to the side, as if considering doing as he asked. But let’s be real, that wasn’t my style. “Mmm… I don’t think I will.”

He stepped closer. “I said—”

I broke into song. “Three little hybrids blasting through a portal.” I drummed my foot on the ground in time with the beat. “One watched the cameras and then there were two.”

He froze, hand resting on his holstered gun. “What are you—”

“Two little hybrids blasting through the portal.” I put myself between him and Peth and our prisoner. The heel of my boot rhythmically pounded the unpaved ground. “One cornered the wrong prey, then there was one.” I jerked a hammer free from my belt—my favorite hammer.

Whiskers drew his weapon, leveling the handgun at me. “Don’t move!”

I drove the hammer’s claw several inches into the ground. I placed my hands to either side of it and continued the drumming. “One little hybrid blasting through the portal…”

“Put your hands behind your head!”

“He didn’t know when to quit. Then—”

The hammer was sucked into the earth. A hole opened beneath me.

Whiskers proved to be unskilled at the quick draw. Before he could decide whether or not to shoot, I fell into darkness and Peth, dragging Stones along, hopped in after. Whiskers’s feet pounded closer, but the Duster—a large mole-like elemental—that I had lured to my aid with a song and a treasure stuffed earth over the tunnel’s opening before he could follow.

I smiled, quite pleased with myself, and finished the song. “Then there was none.”

***

I climbed from the tunnel the Duster had dug from the alley to the corner restaurant I had passed earlier, the one by the intersection with the security cameras. I turned back to help Peth haul Stones out of the tunnel. Though I was thoroughly coated in dirt by this point, Stones’s trip had left him even filthier. He had red streaks across his face, and his suit… There wasn’t much hope he would ever remove the red clay stains from it.

“Tides, he’s heavy,” Peth groaned as she lifted him up. I hooked my hands under his pits and dug my heels into the floor. “Are you even pulling, Georgie?”

“Trying.” I pushed with my legs and pulled with my upper body, dropping my butt toward the ground. Stones was rightly named; he felt like a sack of rocks. With one final pull, we shoved him over the lip of the hole. His weight fell on me. My rump hit the earth, my legs trapped beneath the unconscious Stones.

As Peth crawled out, I pushed him off and peeked into the hole. The oversized mole, about the size of an eight-year-old hybrid, lifted its strange nose toward me. Wiggly appendages created a starburst shape, like a moist, fleshy urchin, at the tip of its shovel-like snout. The Duster blinked his beady eyes and cringed from the brightness of the dim restaurant.

“Thanks again.” I scratched behind his ear holes.

He flipped my beloved hammer in his hands, because this mole had thumbs, and grinned around his buck teeth before departing into the darkness again.

“Tides, I should have asked him to patch up the floor.” I glared at it behind the counter, concerned that whoever worked in the morning was going to have a nasty fall.

“We have other things to worry about.” Peth brushed the clay from her coat, frowning as that only smeared the grime. “How are we going to do this? Interrogations aren’t exactly our forte.”

I rubbed my arms, thoughtfully staring at our prisoner. Usually on missions, I was more focused on escaping than on containing. “We’ll have to think like a captor. That should be easy enough. Help me bind his hands and feet.”

We made quick work of it with the wire I kept in my belt. Soon enough, we had Stones fastened to a chair near the middle of the restaurant. I waved some smelling salts under his nose and, just like they always showed in the movies, he gasped, eyes going comically wide.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Peth mumbled behind me.

I shushed her. Stones’s head bobbled on his neck like one of those toys people stuck to the dashboards of their cars. I pinched his chin between thumb and finger to help stabilize him a little. “Morning, or rather, evening, Sunshine. Welcome to your interrogation.”

“Really? That’s the angle you’re going with.” Peth pulled out her book, another R.F. Letcher, and thumbed through it.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

Peth waved the opened book at me as if it should be obvious. “Research. There’s a pretty intense interview between Daisha and—”

“Not now.”

“Are you hens done clucking?” Stones grumbled. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Pretty sure that’s from either the lack of oxygen from the headlock, the hit from the tackle, or maybe from the potion I forced you to inhale. Possibly a combination of the three,” I said.

His eyes—scratch that. His eye—as in singular—focused on me. “You.” He said the word as though it was some sort of accusation.

I narrowed my eyes, and hissed back, “Me. But we aren’t here to talk about me.”

“Who are you?”

I jutted a hip out and plopped my hand on it. “I don’t think you understand the dynamic of our relationship right now.” I pulled out a knife. It was more of a utility knife than a stabby-stabby knife, but it was still big and sharp. A good tool for intimidation, I thought. “See, I’m the captor and you’re the hostage. I ask the questions and you answer them. M’kay?”

“I’m not telling you anything.”

I tested the tip of the knife with my finger. “I thought you might say that. That’s why my friend has brought some potions to help loosen your tongue.”

His lips pressed tightly together.

“Look—” I pointed the knife at him, but he seemed hardly impressed with it. I made a mental note to purchase a “scary” knife to add to my utility belt. “I’m trying to help you out. Believe it or not.”

“I think not.”

I sighed, pacing around him. “Fine. I have to warn you, my friend brewed these potions. So, while I think I’ll be giving you a Spill-All potion, I can’t guarantee that’s actually what it is.” I propped my elbow on his shoulder and dropped my voice to a loud whisper. “See, my friend had to take Potions, like, three times before she finally passed. Between you and me, I think the teacher fudged her scores just to get her out of his class. One too many mishaps in the lab, if you catch my drift.”

Stones looked rather bored with my explanation.

“You’re not the smiling sort, are you?”

Answer: another frown.

I whipped the blade around and pressed it to his neck. “We could skip the potions and go straight to disfigurement. What’s another scar on a face like yours?”

Finally, a spark of emotion lit in his eye.

“Tell me about the shipment,” I spoke in a low, firm whisper.

“What ship—”

I pressed the blade to his neck hard, steel entering my voice. I was growing really tired of having to toy with the three chums. Every encounter with them was precious time I should be using to save the hybrids about to be put on the bidding block. “Let’s skip the playing dumb phase, shall we? I know Harhort Lewisfur is expecting a large shipment of hybrids. I know he was planning to meet with a member of the Keadanian ultras’ inner circle last night at Chubby Burger. I also know he was on the dynamists’ ship and that one hybrid boarded it for a private meeting.” I circled in front of Stones and leveled the blade’s tip with his nose. “That hybrid was you. Tell me what you know about the shipment.”

He looked a little sick after my explanation. His face paled, and beads of sweat mixed with the dirt on his face. He was welcomed to have a fever, but I swore on the Core, if he barfed on me…

“What difference would it make if I told you anything?” His voice was sharp, but I was fairly certain his voice was always sharp.

“What difference?” I rested my hands, knife still clasped in one, on his knees so I was eye level with him. “It would make all the difference to the few dozen hybrids who won’t be butchered for parts. Sure, you’ll have to give up what I’m sure is a hefty payday, but isn’t a few lives worth that?”

His eyes widened. “You really think you could save all these hybrids alone?”

Peth threw up her hands. “She has me.”

“The two of you.” His eyes shifted between me and Peth. “And that gremlin. You three believe you can save these hybrids?”

I straightened. “If I must, I’ll call in backup.”

“You have that? Backup? More help?” The doubt in his voice was honestly insulting. Hadn’t I proven how awesome my crew and I were?

“For being the hostage, you’re awfully curious.” I thought over my next words carefully. Since I didn’t plan to kill Stones—causing bodily harm was something I saved for moments of desperation—I couldn’t risk revealing too much. “I’ll put it this way: If I fail or if, by some miracle you or your psycho companion finishes what he started last night, there will be more to take my place. When others mourn the loss of the tide, we sound our battle cry against the unseen war.”

I crossed my arms, quite proud of myself. How was that for creepy cryptic?