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Honour And Duty--Section IBy Emma Elizabeth Anne
Section I,
Chapter 1
Posted on Sunday, 17 January 1999
0300 hours
21 Jan. 1999
The woman's scream echoed down the dark city street, sending a stiffening jolt up Darcy Williams' spine. Concealed in a shadowy alleyway, he pressed his back hard against the cold stone of the building, and fingered the handle of his gun in indecision. It was not his place to get involved. In fact, it was his place not to get involved. Louie Bourg had upbraided him on a number of occasions for playing the saviour instead of the ruthlessly efficient agent he was paid to be.
"When will you learn that we don't want no bloody Superman, caught up with protectin' the innocent and do-goodin' left right and centre. You're trained and equipped to get your man, and that's your one and only objective. Remember that, next time you're tempted t' use those precious resources to some irrelevant bystander's advantage!"
Hell, it was never that simple, though!
"Civilians are merely distractions from your mission. Stay on course, an' never compromise your concentration."
The cry came again, this time cut short by a heavy blow.
Duty or honour? There didn't seem to be much choice. He stepped from the shadows of the alley and scanned the dimly lit streets. This was a rough part of town - most of the street lights had been shattered, and the few that remained flickered with a seedy orange glow. However, the source of the cries was not at all difficult to locate. About 15 metres to his right, a gang of three hefty-looking thugs surrounded a small, struggling figure. One of them was shouting angrily and holding his nose. Apparently he had not given his victim credit for what she was capable of.
Well, it shouldn't take too long. He could be back on watch and Louie would never be any the wiser. Approaching silently from behind, he tapped the largest of the thugs on the shoulder. Ox-like, the man swung heavily to face him.
"Don't hit girls," Darcy articulated, rather flatly, before laying Ox-man flat on the pavement and blocking the clumsy punch which came flying from his partner. His movements were smooth and effortless, coming naturally to him after long practice. He twisted the arm back so that he could deliver a clean blow to the back of the head. Number Two folded onto the concrete, unconscious. The third member of the party, already suffering from his fractured nose, looked fearfully from his incapacitated companions to Darcy, and back again. Darcy raised his eyebrows ever-so-slightly, in what could be interpreted as either a threat or an invitation. The third man did not wait to find out which it was. He bolted.
Darcy had no inclination to chase him, and instead turned to face his rescuee.
The woman was not much more than a girl. Her figure, if she had one, was hidden inside a battered brown coat which was much too big for her, and she was hunched over, her face concealed beneath literally cascades of reddish curls, which Darcy suspected were dyed. As he watched, a trembling shudder passed through her.
"Are you all right?" He asked gruffly. In his job, the patients in need of shock treatment were left to the paramedics in the aftermath. What the hell was he supposed to do now? In spite of all his high-geared and sophisticated training, he suddenly felt very helpless and inadequate. Once of his primary functions as a government agent was knowing how to act in unfamiliar circumstances, but throw one crying kid at him, and he was at a loss.
"Are you hurt?" He tried again. She had stopped trembling now, but she kept her head in her hands and stayed silent. Darcy reached out to lift the curls away from her face, trying to discern if she was injured, or even just to get a glimpse of her features. It was like touching a live wire - she leapt backwards, out of reach.
"Please don't touch me!" She whispered, her voice muffled as she kept her face averted and hidden.
"I just want to know that you're OK. Then I'll leave, if that's what you want."
Her hands were lowered slowly to her sides and he became conscious of her gaze upon him, appraising him. He heard her soft voice again - "Why did you help me?"
Of all the questions she could have asked! What was wrong with this girl?
He shrugged. "You looked like you were in trouble." He took a few steps forward, holding out his hands, palms up, trying to appear as non-threatening as he could.
The girl hesitated for moment, then backed away again, keeping the same distance between them.
"At least tell me who you are."
"Judith." She replied, after another brief hesitation. By backing up, she had unconsciously moved a little further into the thin light distributed by a lonely street lamp. Even as she tried to conceal them, Darcy's eyes were straining to discern her features. She seemed to be reasonably pretty, judging from what he could see, but her complexion glowed strangely, tainted by the garish tint of the street-lights. Dark blood trickled from a cut in her lip.
"You are hurt!" He exclaimed, unsure of why that idea should horrify him so.
Judith raised her hand and wiped at the blood with her sleeve. "It's nothing." She said shortly. Well, at least her shock seems to have subsided, he thought.
Yet again, she caught him by surprise as she suddenly squatted beside the larger of the unconscious men at their feet and lifted his ham-like arm to inspect the wrist. What could she possibly be up to now?
With a trained eye, he observed that her movements were quick and decided, a characteristic which seemed to undermine her nervous stance and diminutive voice. Which trait then, if either, was she faking?
At first he thought she was checking the man's pulse, and it struck him as strange that she should make such a gesture if he had just tried to mug her. But it seemed that her only objective was a brief inspection of the skin at the base of his right hand. Whatever she saw (or didn't see) must have satisfied her, as she dropped the hand and moved over to the second prostrate man. Darcy watched her silently as she turned this wrist to reveal a strange tattoo - three intertwined six-pointed stars. The sight seemed to affect her strongly. She groaned in despair, and threw the limp hand back down on the pavement.
Darcy leaned closer, regarding the tattoo intently. He had seen it somewhere before, he was certain. But where?
He mused for a moment or two, then turned to give his attention back to the girl, wishing to verify his growing hunch that this was no ordinary mugging.
A cold wind whispered gently up the filthy alley, sending a shiver down Darcy's spine. Silent as a shadow in the darkness, the girl had vanished.
Chapter 2
Posted on Monday, 18 January 1999
The moment his attention was diverted, Judith ran. She moved as she had been taught, her soft rubber-soled shoes making no sound against the pavement. Slipping into the shadows, she crouched close to the wall where the darkness was denser, and continued to move away from the light.
She didn't know who had helped her, or why, and she was torn between gratitude and suspicion. When she was a child, she had owned a picture book which featured a tall, dark-haired prince as a dragon-slaying Sir Lancelot. Somewhere in the depths of her struggling desperation as she had watched the dark-haired stranger calmly dispatch of those thugs, that image had unexpectedly resurfaced.
The man who had helped her had certainly been handsome, and she knew with an icy certainty in her heart that if he hadn't intervened, she would probably be bleeding to death on the pavement right now. Or worse...
Nonetheless, she wasn't taking any chances with strange men hanging about in this part of town, no matter how handsome. Hadn't she learned that handsome men were never to be trusted? It was a lesson she had learned in the hardest possible way.
Still, she had been tempted to stay a moment longer with the handsome stranger who had come to her aid. It would have been a foolish risk, it would have made her vulnerable to identification and discovery, it could well have spelt her death. But if she had not discovered that doom-spelling tattoo, she would have stayed a minute longer and thanked him for his help. But that grotesquely familiar pattern of stars had reaffirmed her resolve to remain unidentified.
Because the thug had been one of them.
They were onto her, again.
She kept running.
Chapter 3
Back in his office at HQ, Darcy leaned back in his chair and took a long sip at his cooling coffee. The computer before him hummed softly in the dimness, the bright white glare of the screen providing the only light in the room.
Beside the keyboard lay a rough sketch of three intertwined stars which he had drawn from memory. On the screen before him, blurred by the pixel enlargement, was an almost identical pattern, embedded in skin with blue ink.
Darcy closed down the enlargement and read the original page from the top, despite already having memorised every word.
Name: Christopher James Wickham
A.K.A. : C. J.
Status: Escapee
Wanted for....
That list was extensive, but it was the final criminal offence that made Darcy's heart burn: ...rape, 6 charges. Poor little Gina, all her suffering reduced to a mere sixth of that cold statistical record.
CJ's gaze regarded him contemptuously from the mug shot that accompanied the record. On the portion of his wrist that was visible to the camera, a tiny marking could be seen. This was the tattooed diagram Darcy had enlarged. He now knew where he had seen it before. It was the trademark of CJ and his allies.
Flicking the screen off, Darcy sat in the dark and stewed in his own overwhelming frustration. For three years he had been on that b*stard's trail, and still the snake eluded him. His underworld contacts were spread like cancer through every facet of the city. How could it be that such a man should continue to walk free and prosper while Darcy's baby sister was still cowering in rehab, trapped by the fear which CJ's treatment had instilled in her.
And now he had his first lead in months - Judith. But he had let her slip through his fingers. The girl had known something, that he was sure of. The tattoo of the thug, identical to that of CJ's, had meant something to her. She was somehow connected with that gang, and he needed to know how. Yet how was he to find her again? All he knew was that she had red hair, greenish eyes and stood about 5'4.
He would have to track her down. Well, he would have to try, anyway. With that decided, his frustration was relieved a little. Any lead, however slim, was better than nothing. And if he was honest with himself, he would admit that he anticipated the chance of seeing the girl again. She had intrigued him with her strange contradictions, her mysteriousness, and that incredible hair.... Not that he had any intention of getting personally involved, he reminded himself sharply. That was the last thing he wanted. His work filled his life now, and there was no room for meaningful relationships. Emotions were distracting, tender feelings undermined the efficiency of the machine.
He thought of Judith as another stepping stone on his mission to hunt down CJ Wickham, and that was all. That was definitely all.
Chapter 4
Posted on Tuesday, 19 January 1999
Judith tossed restlessly in the unfamiliar bed. Her hair was spread across the pillow, and her face was damp with sweat as she fought the demons of her dreams. She was in a dark room, her hands were tied behind her back. She was crying, she was afraid. "Don't hurt me! Please, don't hurt me!"
Then suddenly she was running down an empty street, and all the houses were dark, deserted. Finally she saw a warm golden light shining from an open door, and it was her home. Just before she reached the house, however, the door slammed shut. She looked up to see her father framed in the window, shaking his head at her. "You can't come here any more." He told her, frowning down on her. "This is not your home, Judith."
"No Dad, don't call me that! That's not who I am! Please let me come back! Please!"
But her father was gone and the light in the window faded. Suddenly there was someone behind her, and she turned to see the stranger who had helped her. He approached her slowly, holding out his hand. "Trust me." He spoke gently, and she was instantly mesmerised by the low timbre of his voice. She reached out to him, but the moment their fingers touched he snatched her wrist and when she looked again she saw that his face had changed. The features of the handsome stranger were gone, and their place was the horrific leer and the loathe features of the man behind all her nightmares, including the nightmare of her reality.
"Time's up, Judith." He sneered.
"No!"
And then she was awake, her heart pounding, conscious of the way her last desperate cry was echoing in the tiny room.
She stared up at the stained, cracked ceiling of the dingy motel room, and lay still in the dark for a few moments, letting her heartbeat return to normal. Finally, she heaved a tormented sigh, and threw her legs over the side of the bed to enter the grimy bathroom. Switching on the flickering fluorescent lights sent cockroaches scuttling in all directions, and Judith felt sick with despair.
She twisted a squeaking tap and splashed her face with cold water, then raised her face to the rusting mirror. The reflection stared back at her, battered and dull-eyed. Her lip was beginning to heal, but her left eye was blackish-purple and swollen from the impact of the thug's backhand. It had been a close encounter, closer than usual. She had let down her guard when she had taken that walk. She had made too many assumptions, she had not paid enough attentions to the signs that she had been discovered. By all rights, she should be dead right now. By rights, she should have died a long time ago.
She touched the image gently with her fingers, wondering light-headedly which one of them was the reflection and which was the real girl. Somehow she felt that the image in the mirror had more substance, more certainty, than her own dubious existence. I am no one, after all. As far as the world is concerned am dead already. So why do I keep running? Why don't I let them catch me, and make it official?
But there was just enough of her old self left inside her to give her the strength to banish that defeatist thought. She squared her shoulders in determination, and looked the reflection right in the eye.
Judith. That is my name. I am Judith Walker. I am twenty four. I am a drifting, out-of-work actress. If anyone should ask, I am from LA, California, and I am out to see the world.
It was a threadbare story, but if anyone wanted to know anything more than that, she would be gone before they were any the wiser.
Chapter 5
Posted on Tuesday, 19 January 1999
Darcy stood calmly outside a prison cell, gazing coolly at the occupant, who returned the stare with naked bitterness and hatred. Perhaps his head was still aching from Darcy's well-placed blow the night before. Darcy could have assured him that the dislike was mutual.
"We can't keep him here long, you know," whispered the cop beside him, "If the woman he assaulted has disappeared and you don't know where she is, we can pretty much assume that she won't be pressing charges. So there's no way to keep him behind bars."
"That's fine," Darcy replied, not bothering to lower his voice. "I just have one or two questions to ask the gentleman, if he would be so kind?"
The thug narrowed his eyes. "The cops have already been through here, so who the hell are you? I got my rights, y'know. Don't think you'll be gettin' anything outa me. The cops didn't. I'm as silent as the grave."
"Yes, I imagine you'd know quite a bit about graves as a means of keeping witnesses silent." Darcy was bluffing, but the shifty flicker of the man's blunt features was encouraging.
"Who sent you?" He growled. "You don't act like a cop. Cops is stupid."
Darcy ignored the question, and got straight to the point. "The girl in the alley. How much were you paid to kill her?"
"We wasn't paid to kill her. Anyways, it's none of your business."
"What does your boss want done with her, then?"
The man guffawed, scornfully. "You don't know sh*t. You don't even know who my boss is, do yer? So why should I talk to you at all." He clamped his mouth tightly, just to illustrate his point.
Darcy took one more gamble. "You think I don't know CJ Wickham?" He asked casually.
The thug's jaw dropped, then snapped closed again. "I don't know who the girl is. But CJ wants her bad." He spoke quickly, then tightened his mouth once more. "And that's all I'm gonna say." His gaze dared Darcy to push the matter further. Darcy regarded him soberly, then nodded slowly, turned, and walked away.
It was better than nothing, and at least he had an idea of where to start his search for Judith.
Chapter 6
Judith knew it was time.
If her last brush with CJ's henchmen had been close, this latest one had been scraping the skin off her teeth. Her heart was still pounding as wound the duct tape around the ankles and wrists of the man at her feet. His tell-tale tattoo disappeared beneath the plastic tape. She would leave him on the floor of this awful motel, and be out of town well before he awoke.
If it hadn't been for the creaking floorboard she would never have known that someone was in her room. She would never have had a chance to duck the blow which came from behind, would never have had a chance at all. Thank God Tom had time to teach me all that he did before he... Anyway, I've been too lucky. One of these days my luck will run out. At least then I will have some peace... Unless of course I go to hell for what I've done.
She shook her head to be free of those thoughts. She had to live for the moment. There was no future and there was no past. All she had was Now, and Now absorbed all of her strength just to stay alive.
It was time for Judith to die. They obviously knew Judith now, so she had to drop the facade and become a nameless nothing once more, until she could assume a new identity. Nothing terrified her more than her periods between identities, but it was a process she had had plenty of opportunity to become accustomed to.
The first time she had undergone such a transformation, everything had been highly organised and efficient. After the Incident, she had begun her life again as Dawn, the small-town school teacher. She had found that a difficult transition - leaving all that she knew and loved behind to fit herself into a new life, already created for her by the Witness Protection Program. It amazed her that they could do that - erase one woman's life and slip the stripped-bare result into another niche altogether, with a house and a car and even a dog. All accessories of a normal life, all in support of Dawn's personal history - a history she had never experienced, but a life that was now hers to live. It made reality seem like an awfully uncertain phenomena.
She now realised that that transition had been incredibly easy, compared with what she had struggled through since. In spite of her heartbreak and regrets to be leaving her old life forever, the most difficult things had all been taken care of for her. She was lead to feel safe and protected from the nightmare she was supposedly leaving behind. She had Tom... dear old Tom... to help her start her new life, and to teach her what she needed to know. During the transfer period, he had taken her under his wing. Understanding her pain and upheaval and tearing regrets, he had taken her to his sister's home in the country and renewed a little of her interest in life by teaching her all the tricks of his trade. He built on her already extensive knowledge of self-defence and hand-to-hand combat, and instructed her in methods of camouflage, of identity concealment, of guns and even knives.
With Tom's support, she recovered some of her youthful optimism. She was only 24, after all, but sometimes she felt positively ancient. By then end of her therapeutic holiday, some parts of her were even glad to be Dawn - to have the opportunity to start all over again. And with Tom's intensive training under her belt, as well as his continued care, she was feeling a lot more confident than the broken shell of a girl who had agreed to relate the story of her own shame and shattered life as testimony against CJ. How could she have known what was to come?
She had not realised the full scope of CJ's power, nor had she understood just what lengths he was prepared to go to have her back in his clutches.
Both these things were made apparent to her when she came down to breakfast one morning in her new house with her new name and her new dog to find Tom dead at the bottom of the stairs.
In his hand he clasped a note, which she eased from his unresisting fingers, only to read, through her tears, one short phrase in a hand she had come to despise from her soul.
"Time's up, babe."
Dawn ran. She bolted back up the stairs and climbed through the attic skylight onto the roof. An unfamiliar dark car was parked across the road, but it was empty. They were obviously in the house already. Looking for her.
Backing up, she took the only option left to her. Gathering every ounce of strength in her body, she leapt for her neighbour's roof. To her own disbelief, her feet connected with the tiled surface, but at the last moment her ankle turned and she slipped. As she fell, she managed to catch hold of the metal guttering, which cut cruelly into her fingers and she was forced to let go. Dropping heavily onto the grass, she lay stunned for a moment or two, then dragged herself up and began the first leg of what was proving to be a never ending cat-and-mouse chase.
With the money she carried in her wallet, she managed to make it out of town and back to Tom's sister's house. She did not let her friend know that she had been there - she knew that would only put her in more danger. Instead, she located the suitcase full of cash which Tom had told her about. He said he didn't trust the banks, but that if anything happened to him, that he wanted her to have his life savings. They had become so close as they worked together. Tom always said she was the daughter he never had. Even now, as she thought of him, her eyes prickled with tears which would not be shed.
And so began her life on the run. Guarding the considerable accumulation of cash with her life, Dawn cut her hair and bought coloured contacts and a gun to become Danielle, the ski-instructress from Colorado. Danielle lived the life of recluse in Chicago, but two months into her new life, she noticed that she was being followed as she walked down the street. She was quick to skip town, go blonde, and took to wearing heavy make-up. Now she was Paula, the Marshall-arts teacher from New York. The gun and the suitcase were the only items she kept.
Each woman lasted a couple of months, sometimes more, sometimes less, before she began to grow nervous and pulled up to begin again. She usually dressed to hide her figure and down-play her natural good-looks. No one could be trusted, especially not men.
She longed from her soul to have a life again. Ideally, she wanted the life she had lived with her family, before she had ever met CJ, but any life with a semblance of normality and security would do. She wanted love, children, and a mortgage, but she could barely remember if that sort of life still existed in the real world.
If only she had not gone to that party. If only she had not had those drinks. If only she had refused the syringe. If only she had not fallen under CJ's spell. If only she had not been present in that awful room, if only she had not seen what she had seen. If only Tom were still alive. If only...
Furious with herself for wallowing so long in self-pity and regrets, she brought herself back to the present and marched over to the mirror. Judith Walker looked back at her.
She picked up a pair of scissors, and began to hack viciously at her hair. Soon, Judith would be no more.
Chapter 7
Posted on Wednesday, 20 January 1999
Louie Bourg read the email off his lap-top screen, and shook his head slowly. The damn kid was doing it again! Letting personal matters over ride his primary duties. Unable to express himself adequately by typing, he sent an electronic sound file.
"Listen Williams, CJ Wickham is one of the untouchables. I don't care what this bird may or may not know, you'll never get him. So get over it, and get on with the Greenwood case. That's more important right now than trailing some dead-end lead afta a man no one's been able to even get close to for ten years. To make it perfectly clear, I'm tellin' you you'll receive no more funding from this department if you don't get your ass back in line. Got it? So get back on task, because I wanna to know who is blackmailing Senator Greenwood and I wanna know why. Gimme an update by the end of this week."
Darcy listened to recording with a thoughtful expression, then deliberately deleted the attachment. The Greenwood case was a cinch, and he had just about covered that one in full already. Louie would have his update, and Darcy would keep his funding. He didn't care what he was risking. He was never going to rest until CJ was either dead or behind bars.
Preferably dead.
Chapter 8
A nameless woman stood before a rust-spotted mirror in a dingy motel bathroom, completely overwhelmed with despair.
The scissors lay dropped on the floor amongst fallen curls.
Oh God, what is the point? Judith will die and someone else will take her place, and then it will all begin again. Run, hide, discovered, run, hide, discovered, run, hide, discovered - and then one day I won't have to run again. That's how it's going to end, one of these days. As long as CJ holds that price over my head, it's the only possible conclusion.
She looked up and stared in at the woman in the mirror again, searching for an answer to her despair. She fingered the faded bruise around her eye, and noticed that her nails were chipped and broken. Like her. Broken.
For a moment she looked at her hands, feeling only numbness and apathy. And then suddenly, without warning, she jet of flame shot through her heart and she was angry. Furious. How dare they reduce her to this? How dare they take away her right to live? Why was she still running, after all this time? By assuming defeat and simply dodging the blows defensively, she wasn't giving herself a chance to win.
She returned her gaze to the mirror.
The cringing fear that had dominated the short, ghost-lives of Dawn, Danielle, Paula, Judith and the rest was definitely gone. So who was she now? The idea of simply adopting another pseudonym was repugnant to her. What strength did another made-up nobody have? From where would she draw the fervour she would need to see justice through? There was only one woman with the courage to fight someone as powerful as CJ. And that was the one who had all the motives. The one who had strength, spirit and determination.
The woman she had thought was long dead.
She picked up the scissors again, letting her new reckless courage guide the blades. Red curls dropped away.
She wasn't going to run any more. She wanted her old life back. And she was going to fight for it, to the death if need be.
Putting the scissors down, she slipped her green contacts out and threw them away. Wide brown eyes blinked back at her, bright with rediscovered energy and determination.
If CJ thought she was going to play mouse to his cat forever, he had another thing coming. He thought he had broken her spirit, and for a long time, he had been more or less correct. He thought the wild girl he had seduced all those years ago had been crushed, but he had underestimated her. Hell, she had underestimated herself. But she was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction of running until she dropped. It was time to fight back.
Sorting swiftly through her hair dyes, she found a sachet labeled simply "Sable". It looked right. Artificially natural. How ironic. She leaned over the little sink, and began the process.
In her head, she was already making plans and considering her options. It wouldn't be easy, she knew that. The odds of her succeeding in her revenge were low, but she was not entirely without resources. Anyway, she knew she would have to try.
Putting her face under the tap, she rinsed away the remnants of Judith's heavy make-up, then dried her face and applied a little concealer to hide the fading bruise around her eye. This done, she rinsed out her hair and took up a blow drier, purposefully keeping her eyes averted from the mirror. Her hair, shortened to her shoulder-blades, curled into tight ringlets, the way it used to do.
Finally, she was finished. The young woman took several deep breaths, and gripped the edge of the basin for support, suddenly afraid of what she had done. Very slowly, she raised her eyes to meet the gaze of the reflection.
For a moment, she just stared. Blinked. Squinted.
And suddenly, she began to laugh. The sensation was unfamiliar and delightful. She hadn't laughed since... Well, she couldn't even remember. The woman in the mirror laughed with her, and two bright points in the depths of her fine dark eyes began to sparkle.
Elizabeth Bennet lives!
Chapter 9
Posted on Thursday, 21 January 1999
Darcy checked his ever-shortening list of motels and hostels in the local area, and began to lose hope. There were only three names left, and he had wasted an awful lot of time already. By his reasoning, Judith should have checked into one of them at least, unless she was spending her nights on the street, which didn't seem like such a good idea for a girl who had half of the city's criminal population after her.
Remembering the way she had dressed, he guessed that she was being frugal with whatever little money she had. Hence his assumption that she would be staying in tenth-rate accommodation. If she was using a false name, he was in trouble. He was also hoping that hadn't skipped town a...
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