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Click. Click. Click.
The metal grill of the walkway echoed as Kayo took her quick steps. It creaked and bowed below each footfall and, at one point, she was fairly certain a section was about to entirely snap from under her. A fall from five storeys to an early grave was a sobering thought.
But she didn’t stall and she didn’t allow her mind to linger on such a devastating distraction. She had to get to the meeting point, and she had to get there fast.
Time was ticking by perilously. From the rectangular factory windows above her, Kayo could see the sky was slowly shifting from shades of indigo to lighter shades of peach; dawn was fast approaching. Her deadline was nipping at her heels. She picked up her pace, the walkway beneath her groaning at her increased speed.
When news of his disappearance had reached her, Kayo had joined the search immediately. They had been searching for him for three days and three nights. The GDF had given her full rein of the mission from day one. She had enlisted Penelope’s help on day two. Parker had secured her a solid lead by the morning of the third day, and Kayo had managed to get in contact with the abductor by the evening. Now, on the cusp of the dawn of the fourth day, Kayo would end this.
The end of the walkway ended with a set of double doors. Kayo pushed them open slowly, revealing another flight of concrete stairs. If the schematics had been correct, it would lead her up to the sixth and final floor; the old foreman offices. It was her last hope. It was where she’d been led up to this point. She had to have faith that the meeting point was at the end.
Kayo took two steps at a time. The sooner this was over, the better.
The staircase led to another set of doors, this time already open, with a long corridor beyond. All the way down the hall there were various doorways. Some still had the doors attached, though the rooms were all locked up tight behind them. Where there was no longer a door, planks had been nailed into the walls, boarding up the entrances. It was a reminder that the former GDF weapons factory had been abandoned for a long time.
She tried each door that was still on their hinges. None of them opened.
Racing along, it didn’t take her long to reach the end of the corridor. Or at least, that part of the corridor. It turned to the right, continuing down the for another two-hundred feet or so, identical to the last. And again Kayo tried every door she passed, all of them the same as the previous hallway. She marched faster, growing more and more frustrated with every door handle that rattled but refused to open.
Until one eventually did.
Hesitantly Kayo crossed the threshold. Her eyes darted to the left and to the right, looking for any signs of traps or triggers. If she was caught out now, wounded or potentially worse, then everything would have been in vain.
Lanterns lit the way forward from here, trailing like breadcrumbs across the room. The large windows had been partly shattered in places, causing the wind to whistle through. It was the only sound in the vicinity and it was unnerving to say the least. Still, Kayo pressed forward. She followed the lanterns and stepped over the discarded papers which littered the floor, around the broken desk and across the piles of rubble that had fallen from the caved-in ceiling. They led her to another door, closed again this time, but this one clearly connected to the room next door. When she tried the handle, it opened.
The room beyond was the same as the first. So was the next one. And the next. And the next. The lanterns kept leading her to the doors that connected like a chain to the offices down the corridor. They were taking her back the way she’d come. Clearly the rooms had been locked from being accessed from the outside to conceal this little game.
Kayo buried the irritation that was rising up. How far back would this trail lead her? Would she run out of time before she got to the end? It fuelled her to move faster, the frustration lending itself to her desire to finally finish the job.
Continuing through the rooms with speed, she also continued to remain mindful to watch for any possible traps, until finally the last room ended, not with another door, but a gaping hole in the floor.
It only went down one level thankfully. She calculated the angle and then carefully dropped herself down.
Slow clapping pierced the gentle humming of the generator in front of her. Kayo slowly turned on her heels.
“It’s over, Corporal Dennis. Surrender now and—”
Kayo ceased talking when she saw the scene before her, her next words completely lost from the shock. Corporal Dennis, the supposed abductor, was sprawled unconscious on the floor before her. Dead.
Her heart dropped. “No, that— That isn’t—”
A familiar figure emerged from behind a large piece of machinery, a wry smile taunting her as he stepped into the light. He still wore his GDF uniform, though it was clear at this point that he no longer had any allegiance to the organisation.
“Rigby?” Kayo breathed out, not wanting to come to terms with the scene. “What are you doing? It was Dennis who—”
He tilted his head, mockingly. “Was it Dennis? Did you even read the notes I sent, Kayo?”
“But why?”
“You were two minutes too late.” Rigby lifted his wrist to check his watch. “Well, one minute-fifty. But who cares about the details, right? You certainly didn’t.”
Her head was spinning. This wasn’t right. It had been Rigby who was supposed to have been taken hostage by Dennis. It was some sort of weird ransom situation over a GDF special weapon. Rigby wasn’t supposed to be the villain here. He couldn’t have been. He was a loyal soldier of the GDF and, above all else, he was her friend.
“Why,” she repeated, more clearly this time, “are you doing any of this?”
Nonchalantly he shrugged and strolled forward. His boot tapped the shoulder of the deceased Corporal in front of him, the disrespect only being added to with a sneer. “It was a shame Dennis didn’t want to cooperate. I gave him every chance, but…” Rigby sighed. “He could have been so much more useful. So much potential gone to waste.”
Kayo eyed the door to her left. It was open, with a bright red Exit sign tantalisingly flashing intermittently over it. If she could run fast enough, she’d be able to get out and contact the GDF with the truth of the situation—
“Do. Not.” Rigby punctuated, raising his hand, “Even. Think. About it.”
A gun was now pointed at her. Despite his warning, his eyes were daring her, challenging her to defy him. To give him an excuse to pull the trigger.
No, this couldn’t have been Rigby. This wasn’t like him at all. Those piercing blue eyes of his were slightly dimmer, though they shone with the glint of a madman. No, it had to be some sort of weird dream. Perhaps she hadn’t been careful enough when looking out for traps. Perhaps one had got her. Perhaps she’d wake up soon and be in Dennis’s clutches. Kayo would have rathered that situation than this one.
This very real one.
Because no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise, Rigby was pointing a gun at her. He had killed Corporal Dennis. That word friend which she had used to describe him for so long now was no longer an accurate description for him.
Yet, despite the reality, she still held onto hope that things weren’t as they seemed. The Rigby she’d known would never have betrayed his fellow soldiers. The Rigby she knew would never have murdered someone in order to get his hands on an experimental weapon. The Rigby she knew wouldn’t be looking at her like she was next on his hit-list.
“Why did you lure me here?”
“Join me,” he answered simply.
Kayo scoffed. “In this mad charade? No, thanks.”
Rigby appeared unperturbed by her refusal. He stepped towards her eagerly. “Join me,” he simply said again, though his gun was still trained on her.
She instinctively took a step back. “Will you shoot me if I don’t? Will my fate be like Dennis’s?”
Those blue eyes darted down to the corpse of the corporal, utterly void of any emotion. It was unnerving how much Rigby had changed. How fast. No, something didn’t sit right with her.
“I needed you to stop looking for me,” he explained. “When Corporal Dennis here wised up to my plans, I decided to use him as a decoy. Have the GDF think that it was him who was behind all of this. I didn’t expect you to be the one who came knocking, especially without a back-up team. Honestly, haven’t you learned your lessons yet?”
Rigby took another step forward but, again, Kayo stepped back an equal amount.
He chuckled at her response. “I guess that’s to be expected.”
“So this was all because you want the secret weapon? Why?”
“It’ll be worth a pretty penny when sold to the right person.”
It was all so very wrong, and when Rigby neared her again, almost backing up her into the small gated area where the generator sat, Kayo struck. She aimed for the gun first, whacking his hand and causing his grip to falter. It didn’t take long for it to fall to the floor with a clatter. Then, she went for his legs, swiping them out from under him. Rigby was a tall, well-built soldier, trained for fighting, but he stumbled clumsily. He barely remained upright and he certainly wasn’t balanced when Kayo slipped past him and kicked him forward, past the open gate, and into the generator.
“Nice try, uncle,” Kayo spat, shutting the gate before he could run back out. “But Rigby would never be swayed by something so pathetic as a quick cash grab.”
Rigby, who she had since realised was thankfully not Rigby, cursed her. He rushed to the gate and rattled against it. The lock held firm. “You’ll regret this!”
“You say that every single time, and yet I’m still waiting on the chance to cash in that threat of yours.”
He rattled the cage again as Kayo crossed the room and searched through his belongings. It didn’t take her long to find his favourite gadget. With a push of a button, Rigby’s face morphed back into the owner’s true visage; the Hood.
“And I rarely do any mission without back-up, uncle. They’ll be here soon enough, but while we wait, why don’t you tell me where the real Captain Rigby is?”
The Hood knew he held the last card that Kayo so desperately wanted. He knew what the friendship she’d cultivated with Rigby meant to her. It was probably half the reason why he’d chosen his face as his disguise. He probably could sense her anxious heart beating wildly as she awaited his answer.
So when he refused to oblige her and offered up a smug grin instead, Kayo wasn’t too surprised.
She lifted the gun from where it had fallen and watched as, for a split second, fear crossed her uncle’s features. It soon changed back to glee.
“Are you going to shoot me, Tanusha? Are you finally going to put an end to this game of cat and mouse?”
Kayo inspected the gun carefully. She turned it over in her hands, felt the weight of the weapon. “It’s tempting,” she admitted aloud. “I suppose I could. I could argue it was self-defence. I could say I had no other choice.” She made sure her next words were spoken with unyielding eye contact, and she stepped closer to the gate. “But I would never stoop to your level. I would never kill as an easy route out of a difficult situation. As much as you want to mould me into your likeness, uncle, I will never be like you.”
Despite her words and their bite, the Hood was entirely unbothered by her words. If anything, he looked bored. “Give it time, dear Tanusha. One day you truly won’t have a choice.”
“There are always choices.”
“Yes, there are. But sometimes every single one of them is a bad one.” He chuckled at that, unfazed by the march of soldier’s footsteps high above them as he concluded, “I look forward to the day you finally pluck up enough courage to pull the trigger.”