I Won't Let You Die Angel (6 page)

“No, I don’t think matter
can be created from nothing.” I said, taking a sip of my cappuccino. We were discussing
the Big Bang theory and everything related to the origin of life.

“So it means you are not
a believer?”

“That’s not exactly true.”

“Have you read
‘Angels
and Demons’?
It debates these theories in a real dramatic way.”

“Yeah, and I like the ‘antimatter’
theory. If you give it a thought, it really makes sense. Every particle has its
counterpart. It’s the prime rule of nature.”

“And it’s
my
damn
rule that you two will now shut up with your theories or I’ll commit suicide due
to madness,” shouted Neil slamming his latte on the table. And so we gave ourselves
a little pause.

Later that evening, I put
on the strapless crimson dress that the salesgirl so adamantly chose for me. My
turquoise pendant did not go with it at all, but I hadn’t the heart to take it off
my neck. So I chose to let it be. I let my long black hair down and applied
some make-up that, again, that salesgirl made me purchase.

Applying make-up
brought back glimpses of the hundred times that Nicole made me do it. Her name
gave me a mental punch. How could I be so insensitive and naïve? How could
I forget about her, about Prof. Collins? How could I enjoy myself this much with
people who are practically ready to hand me over for few checks? How could I be
excited about going out when I should be trying harder to escape from this fatality?
How could I?

I stood there, in front
of the mirror, but not seeing myself. This was not me; the girl in the mirror was
just a mirage, a virtual image. Or maybe it was me. Maybe, that’s who I am. Two
days with Neil did not give me any pain, just adventure. I never enjoyed life as
much as I had enjoyed it in the last two days. Neil had kidnapped me, but never
tried consciously to inflict harm. With Carl, I enjoyed being myself. The two
of them taunted me, scolded me, blindfolded me; but never took any advantage of
me. Maybe to them, I was just an assignment, a burden, but as for me…

No, I have to stop my train
of thought here. I need to filter my thoughts through a priority encoder. Nicole
needs me, Prof. Collins needs me, and my parents need to know about my whereabouts.
I can’t be selfish.

I clutched my pendant and
made a promise to myself. I won’t be selfish. No matter how much being with Neil
feels good, no matter how excited I might be seeing new aspects of life apart from
science, no matter how adventurous it might be touring different places, in the
end I was just a pawn in the big picture.

Neil and Carl might not
be as bad as I thought as criminals. They might be good with me, and ultimately,
they will let me go. They will walk away and I will be trapped, Prof. Collins will
be trapped.

Yesterday, I told Neil that
I take care of my own responsibilities, and I would. I was in this alone, but I
would come out of it no matter what. I was not weak. I was Janet, my father’s daughter,
who never gives up on anything.

I glanced again in the mirror,
and this time it was me, not some virtual image. And this time, there was not just
one image; there were two.

Neil was standing behind
me, staring at me with those ocean blue eyes that bore into mine steadily through
the mirror. I felt a rush of emotion through me that I couldn’t understand. His
eyes had the power to hold me immobilized--no need of Etorphine Hydrochloride
here. Unable to hold that power gaze, I blinked my eyelids downward.

He didn’t say anything,
didn’t do anything, just stood there looking at me. I felt like I’d melt under his
gaze.

At that precise moment,
Carl entered to my reprieve. “Ready to go?”

I composed myself. “Actually,
I’m not feeling well. You guys carry on. I’ll just stay here and take a nap.” I
blurted out to my relief without faltering.

Neil came over to me and
touched my cheek. Warmth spread through me. “What happened? Are you cold?”

I was incapable of speech
just then. “
Angel
?” Asked Neil, concern clearly in his voice.

“I…No, I mean, yes, I feel
a little nauseous, maybe the side-effects of Etorphine.” I managed to speak.

He retrieved his hand hesitatingly.
“I’ll stay with you.”

“No!!” I replied immediately.
“I mean, Carl’s dying to see the show.”

Carl looked like he wanted
to be somewhere else, anywhere but here. “I knew I should have brought a date.”
Neil glanced at Carl apologetically. “Go on, stay here, I’ll find a date. But you
owe me one, my friend.” With that, he stormed out of the suite.

“There was no need to sadden
him. You should go with him.”

“If you don’t leave, how
will I formulate my escape plan number God knows what part 2? Leave, Neil, I don’t
want to harm you.”

But of course, he was not
a fool. He must have observed something fishy in my voice and behavior. And he himself
had said that he will curb my every chance. Then I had no choice except this. I’ve
got to do this. I took a deep breath.

“He’ll be fine. I hate those
shows anyway.” He took my hand, sat me on the couch, and made himself comfortable
beside me. I shifted uncomfortably.

I scanned the room and found
what I’d been looking for, fifteen feet from me, ten feet north and five feet diagonally.

“So, you’re gonna hand me
over tomorrow. Right?” I asked.

“
Angel
…..” Neil started,
staring at me intently.

“Don’t, don’t call me that.
Don’t you dare? And please don’t pretend like you care.” Un huh, that rhymed. I
shot up. “I’m just an assignment for you, not a person. I get it ok. Just stop that.”
I cried.

He straightened, “Stop what?”

Unable to say more, I hurried
away from him. “Stop that thing you do with your eyes.” He was suddenly behind me.
“What do I do with my eyes,
Angel
?” His breath tickled my ear. My own breath
became ragged. “Your eyes speak, Neil. I don’t know if I hear the right note or
not, but it creates an illusion that drives me away. But I don’t want to drift away,
Neil, because there’s nothing but a dead end there.”

He slowly turned me to face
him, his hands touching my bare arms, creating sensations that were all alien to
me. “How could you do this? You’re not a monster, Neil. Then why? Why are you doing
this to me? I don’t wanna die, Neil. Please, I don’t wanna die. Don’t do this. I
want to live.” A lone tear escaped my eye and my voice cracked.

He hesitatingly wiped
away my tears, his palm lingering more than necessary on my cheek. “You won’t die,
Angel
. I promise that. You have to trust me. I’ll do whatever……. Huh…”

He staggered backwards.
“What??”

“I’m sorry, Neil, but you
have to understand why I have to do this.” I dumped the Etorphine syringe that I
had pilfered from Carl’s jacket and ran for my life.

The dress made it difficult
to sprint, so I chose the lift over the stairs. Also, it would save some quality
time. The lift was one floor down. That meant twelve seconds. I fidgeted with nervousness.
What if it were something else? What if it were some sort of poison? What if I’d
hurt Neil beyond any recovery measure?

The lift door opened and
to my huge relief, it was empty. It took exactly one minute and sixteen seconds
to reach the ground floor. I hurried past the tourists and was about to thank God
when He crushed the thanks in a million pieces.

Carl stood there, a knowing
smirk spreading over his lips like he had anticipated everything. I turned back
towards the lift and almost fainted. Neil was there, leaning against the lift wall.
I desperately searched for another exit, but there were too many people. I ran randomly,
hoping they would lose my trail in the crowd.

I ran past a bunch of German
tourists, oh yeah. I know German too, and almost collided with a toddler. His mother
gave me a threatening look and resumed scrolling on her phone. I zigzagged past
another herd of teenagers and smacked straight into Carl. “Well, Neil was damn right.
Aren’t you an intelligent little thing?”

“You can say that. Of course,
I love my life and will do anything to savor it,” I exclaimed, looking past him
for any loophole. He came closer, the lethal syringe in his hand. I let him come
close enough, and just in time I ducked, gripped his wrist and twisted it away.
The syringe flew away from his reach. I quickly kicked him in the guts and elbowed
him down.

I turned 90 degrees and
aimed for the now open elevator. I caught it just in time and so did someone else.
And to add to my hard luck, there was no one except me and Neil in the elevator.
He slammed me towards the back wall and pressed the stop button.

“You got the wrong jacket,
Angel
.”

I punched his shoulder,
but he now knew me way too well. He recovered fast and again pushed me towards the
wall, this time restraining me with his entire body pressing against mine.

“Why,
Angel…. Why
?”
The color of his eyes matched the color of my pendant in the dim light. Breathing
became difficult and it was not entirely due to my claustrophobic senses. Each and
every body part was hypersensitive to the proximity between us. I tried prying my
wrists away, but his grip was stone. I fidgeted in vain.

“Why? You’re asking me why?
I told you, I want to live. Leave me, Neil. Let go of me.”

“And I told you, I won’t
let you die. Which part of our conversation didn’t register in your mind?” He literally
whispered in my ear, his lips almost touching my earlobe. “There’s a way to do things
properly,
Angel.
You’ll have to trust me.”

I was losing it like a parabolic
curve. “Trust you? How? Why? You abducted me, Neil. Maybe I can trust that you won’t
harm me, but your employer will. I’m a fighter, Neil, I don’t give up.”

He looked me in the eye.
“Sometimes, you have to understand when to give up, damn it. They just want something
you have, Janet; they won’t need you afterwards. If you keep running from them,
they’ll keep coming after you. You can escape me,
Angel
, but I bet you won’t
be able to escape her. The best way to escape evil is to face it,
Angel
.
Believe me.”

Every nerve in my homo sapiens
system was screeching to believe him. His sincere tone was appealing to me to give
in, but Nicole, Prof. Collins, and my parents kept swirling in my sub-conscious
mind.

“I don’t believe you.” I
said, barely controlling the overflow of emotion.

He scooped me closer as
if we were not already inches apart. I couldn’t look into his eyes and think straight.
I pulled away from him, only to be pulled back even closer, and this time not by
Neil, my pendant being the culprit. It got stuck in his shirt’s collar, shining
as brightly as his eyes.

“Then you leave me no choice,
Angel
.” And he executed my own technique on me and traces of unconsciousness
rushed through my blood. The last thing I felt was detachment from my pendant, the
one thing that was mine; and I had lost it, too.

There should be a new continuity
theorem made on me for waking up from unconsciousness a third day consecutively.
But today the parameters were slightly edgy; I mean I woke up in the backseat of
a car rather than on the couch.

I had on the same crimson
dress and a jacket to cover the exposed part. That, too, was Neil’s jacket. Lady
Gaga was shouting her throat out on the stereo, a disaster to my pounding head.
“Shut that off.” I shouted.

Two pairs of eyes glared
at me lividly. “Oh! Welcome back to the world of consciousness, sugar”, grinned
Carl shamelessly. I grimaced angrily and opened my mouth to retort back.

“Save it. You’ll need all
of your leftover energy. We’re almost there.” The last sentence was addressed to
Neil, who was driving.

I took a peek at Neil: he
looked capricious. I recalled yesterday’s events and reached for my pendant, nothing.
I had failed. I had failed in my attempts to save myself and Prof. Collins. After
my daring endeavor last night, even these two wouldn’t commiserate. I fought the
battle and lost. Tears started brimming and I was seconds away from whimpering when
the car stopped.

Neil got out and yanked
me from the back. Carl faced us, “This is as far as I go.”

Neil grimaced, “Why? You
don’t wanna meet your ally?”

Carl shrugged, “Two parallel
lines can never intersect, my friend. Similarly, me and Storm… Huh.”

He took the car and pulled
over. That left the two of us with a magnificent ranch house looming ahead. The
property was spread over several acres, the house itself was huge. Three gardens
with different kinds of flowers were arranged in a triangular sort of pattern. In
the far west beyond the woods were several hills and the sound of running water
chimed along with the cooing of birds. I was awestruck by the natural scenery here.
For a moment, I just got lost in the beauty and forgot all about the fateful situation
closing in.

Several men in black were
marching towards us and they stripped Neil of all his arms. There was nothing on
me that could be stripped, well except for my clothes, which with their mercy I
could keep. Four men led us towards the entrance and four fell back in step behind
us. We dawdled past the entrance and several rooms to reach an apartment-size hall.