Chapter 67

Stubz made his way down the same dark hall that he did every day, listening to the familiar sounds of the facility as he walked along the hard concrete floor. His loafers clopped along with each step, echoing off the cold walls as he passed one steel door after another.

Just before passing a security guard on the left, he looked to his right as he passed the room of his former project, FS1. He smirked, thinking about how the dead-end obligation he had with her was no longer his to deal with, but was in fact the responsibility of the new guy, Mr. Ingram.

“I wonder how he’s making out with her?” Stubz wondered as he let his eyes drop back to the floor ahead of him, about to carry on with his normal day, which now consisted of inventory counts and logging weapons tests. Tedious and boring work, but it was a welcome change after being frightened day-in and day-out by that pink-haired psychopath.

A new sound suddenly echoed through the hall, a sound that stopped the agent dead in his tracks. He listened carefully, waiting to see if he would hear it again.

He did. It was…soft giggling?

It sounded like it was coming from FS1’s room. Stubz turned and headed back to the door, putting his ear up close so he could listen. The girl was indeed giggling happily. Stubz had never heard her laugh before. It was a sweet sound, like enchanting music to his ears.

“Jesus, what’s she gotten up to?” he wondered, “Did Ingram fall for her tricks and get killed, and now she’s eating his intestines or something and laughing about it?”

Stubz decided to have a peek just be sure, so he slid the little window on the door open and peered into the room. What he saw shocked him.

The girl was sitting at her usual spot at the table, and she was playing with one of the kittens that they had brought in to use as a control tactic for her. The little animal was rolling around on the tabletop, pawing and batting at her fingers as she playfully tickled its belly with a look of bliss on her face. She was hardly recognisable.

Stubz shifted his eyes to the end of the table where he used to sit, and saw Ingram sitting back with one ankle crossed over his knee, resting his binder on top of his legs as he wrote down some notes.

“What the hell?” Stubz whispered to himself, looking down to grab his access card to open the door and set things right. Ingram had certainly crossed the line by allowing her to have the animals to play with. They were for keeping her in line, not entertainment.

He had the card positioned to swipe it through the slot, but just before doing so he looked through the window again. Stubz froze when he saw her raise her hand above her head, pointing her slender finger down at the kitten’s belly before bringing it down to playfully poke the animal again.

She was unrestrained.

“Ingram!” Stubz shouted through the window, which prompted the scraggly-haired girl to look up suddenly in response. When her eyes locked onto his, she seemed to shape-shift before him; her features quickly darkened as the familiar scowl that Stubz had grown to know returned to her face.

“The fuck do you want, Stubz?” she growled, her voice impossibly different than it was a few seconds ago.

Ingram had turned his head to look at Stubz by then. “Can I help you, Agent Stubz?”

“What the hell are you doing, Ingram?” Stubz asked frantically. “She could kill you!”

Ingram shrugged. “But she’s not…”

Stubz shook his head. “Ingram, you’re putting us all in danger! She could kill you and use your card to escape.”

“Nah,” Ingram replied, turning back to his notes as he pointed over his shoulder with his pen. “The guard has my access card.”

Stubz frowned, turning his head to look at the guard who was standing across the hall. He nodded and picked up the card off his chest to show Stubz. It was attached to a lanyard, which the guard was wearing around his neck while Ingram was in the girl’s room.

The agent looked back into the room, only to be startled half to death by a loud slam against the door, accompanied by the girl’s dark eyes right up close to the opening, only inches from his own.

“BOO!”

Stubz yelped with fright, stumbling back and falling on his rear-end on the floor.

The hallway was filled with her satisfied giggling, causing Stubz to scowl with embarrassment as he used his left arm to bring himself back to his feet, brushing the dirt from his pants while a glancing in the guard’s direction, who Stubz noticed was hiding a smirk after seeing the girl scare the daylights out of the gruff agent.

“Why don’t you go jerk-off somewhere, Stubz?” the soft voice asked from behind the steel door, prompting the agent to clench his jaw in anger, then shake his head as he continued on his way down the hall to return to his previous task.

Inside the room, Fluttershy returned to her seat and resumed playing with the little dark-gray kitten. Her face became sweet and pleasant-looking again as Ingram brought her back to the conversation they were having.

“So,” Ingram was saying, “why do you think I don’t trust you?”

“Because you left your card outside, silly,” she replied softly, giving him a friendly smile.

“Are you saying you wouldn’t take it from me so you can get free?” Ingram asked, scratching his earlobe with the end of his pen.

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” she replied. “You’re the first person here who’s been nice to me, plus you let me play with this cute little guy!” She leaned down and nuzzled her face into the furry little kitten’s side.

Ingram nodded. “Well I appreciate that,” he said, “but you understand I have to do it. Like Stubz said, I would be putting a lot of people here in danger if I had my card in here with you unlocked.”

She nodded quickly. “Mm-hm. I understand. And yes, you would be putting everyone else in danger, but I still wouldn’t hurt you.”

This statement surprised Ingram. “Do you want to hurt the people here?”

She paused for a moment, considering how she should answer. “I don’t like anyone here, except you,” she replied. “They hurt me, so…yes, I guess I do want to hurt them.”

“But you can’t be hurt.”

“I know,” she nodded, “but they were awful to me, and they’ve been killing these little cuties right in front of me,” she said, referring to the kittens.

Ingram’s stomach turned at the thought of the people here, like Stubz, who had such a disconnected state of mind to be able to mercilessly kill an innocent creature simply to gain control of a girl, who by all counts seemed like a very kind person at heart.

“You don’t like Agent Stubz very much, do you?” he asked, furrowing his brow as he chewed on the tip of his pen, waiting for her response.

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, um…I don’t like him very much.”

“Hm,” Ingram mumbled as he thought. “Other than me, do you like anyone here?”

She shook her head again. “No. I don’t like anybody here. I really don’t like being in this place at all.”

“You feel as though you don’t belong here?” Ingram asked. “You were brought here against your will, but was it justified?”

“NO!” she replied loudly, catching him off guard. “I saved a school!” she huffed, and then shook her head. “Everyone must be wondering where I went…”

Ingram sighed. He knew the whole story as it was told by the report, which stated that she was dangerous because she killed those CIA agents, but something about it didn’t sit right with him. He could smell a lie, like they were covering up what was actually a kidnapping. At the same time though, he felt that it was important to heed the warnings he was getting from his co-workers; if they were right, and she really was as vicious as they said, it could be a fatal mistake for him to put too much trust in her. If he forgot to give his access card to the guard and came into the room with her unrestrained, what would she do?

He drew in a breath as he thought about his next question before he asked it. “So, the man who brought you here, Cody, he was wrong to do so?”

Fluttershy’s face went blank when she heard the name. Her eyes darkened when they met Ingram’s, peering out from under her furrowed brows, causing the skin to crawl on the back of his neck.

“You dislike Agent Cody a lot, I take it?” he asked.

Fluttershy clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together before she answered. “I’ve never hated anyone before, Mr. Ingram,” she said flatly, “But I hate Mr. Cody. He ruined my life.”

Ingram nodded. “What would you say to him if he was here right now?”

“Nothing,” she said with a small shake of her head.

“Would you hurt him if given the chance?” he asked.

She glanced down at the kitten, tickling it’s soft underbelly for a moment before bringing her eyes up to meet his with a deep inhale. “If I ever get my hands on him, there won’t be anything left to bury.”

Ingram’s thoughts screeched to a halt when he heard the answer. There she was before him, playing lovingly with a small animal, yet the answer she gave him was so deliberately dark, calculated and utterly frightening. How could it be that one person can have such contradictory traits?

“Is he the thing you hate the most about this place?” he asked, to which she responded without hesitation, giving a quick shake of her head. He was puzzled by the answer, and asked the next obvious question: “Then what do you hate the most about this place?”

She sat quietly, staring blankly at his tie. Ingram watched her, wondering if she had heard him, or if she didn’t care to answer anymore of his questions, but his mind went quiet when he saw the single tear well up and roll down her left cheek.

“Me,” she answered.

*****

Ingram had finished his orientation at ‘Us’ and was now on a private jet on its way to Australia, heading to his new, all-expenses-paid home in Queensland.

The plane landed at a small airport, where a limousine was waiting to take him the rest of the way to the house. He had only minimal luggage to bring with him, and he was told that there would be a long-distance moving company hired to bring the stuff he wanted from his old home in the USA to the new place in Australia.

It was Wednesday, October 12th. He had the rest of the week to set up what he could in the new house, as long as the moving company was successful in getting his belongings there in time for him to be able to unpack it all. He was scheduled to be back to the underwater base on the following Monday, which would be the 17th.

Once he arrived at the house, he marveled at the beauty of it, as well as the rich, isolated surrounding countryside, but he failed to use any of his time for the remainder of that first day to unpack. His mind was stuck on the facility, and how much time they were actually going to allow for him to be here in this new house in the coming years.

They had given him a private phone, one that was linked to a private service that only ‘Us’ had access to, making it impossible for anyone with a regular cell phone to call him on it. The tech officer who set Ingram’s phone up had informed him that the bean counters determined that it was cheaper and less work to establish their own network for the phones. With a public network, members of ‘Us’ could call or be called by anyone, which created the need for massive amounts of call monitoring to ensure the security of the establishment. With the private network, ‘Us’ agents could only talk to other ‘Us’ agents, which eliminated the need for countless hours of call monitoring. Calls on the internal network could be monitored, however the agents generally policed each other, a product of the high level of loyalty demanded from each team member.

He wondered if they were going to pester him on the phone while he was here, and was hoping they wouldn’t since he felt he deserved at least a week to himself to process the life choice he had made. Whether or not it was a good choice was irrelevant at this point since he would not be allowed to leave now that he had seen their base, but he still felt the need to get accustomed to the type of organisation ‘Us’ was.

He already knew it wasn’t what he was expecting. When the scout pitched it to him, there was very little detail given, but it was let-on that ‘Us’ strived to maintain order and justice in the world, and would do anything to achieve its goals. However, this already seemed not to be the case in Ingram’s eyes. The leaders came off as imperialistic, having too much power and money for their own good, and the organisation in general came off as being rather self-serving, unethical and quite frankly, corrupt.

Then his thought’s led him to the girl. He was only there for his orientation for six days, so it really wasn’t enough time for him to get a good impression of her true intentions, but what he did see was a major difference between how she acted around him compared to Agent Stubz. It was like night and day, but then again, Stubz and the others were quite adamant that she could not be trusted and was simply laying a trap with her sweetness for him to fall into.

In time, Ingram knew he would have the truth. He had a psychology degree after all, and if she was not genuinely nice, she would slip up sooner or later and reveal her true intentions to him.

One thing that lingered in his mind, however, was her answer to his question: what did the she hate the most about the place? She said it was herself. Why would she say this? The only explanation must have been her occasionally violent and aggressive nature, which she surely saw as a contradiction to her usual gentle presence. This would indicate to Ingram that her true nature was, in fact, sweet and kind.

And then there was Agent Cody, who was a bit of a di-

Ingram’s thoughts were interrupted by his new phone ringing in his pocket. He sighed and shook his head, annoyed that they were already bothering him during what should have been his own private time.

He pulled the phone out to look at it, making sure to read the time first. “5:31pm.”

Then he looked at the number of who was calling him. To his surprise, the number belonged to a field agent, who doubled as a mission planner and specialist from the base, who he had only met briefly on his fourth day of orientation, along with fourteen others who were gearing up for a mission in western Canada.

They had been sent to investigate multiple sightings of a masked vigilante in the same town that FS1 was captured in, and if it turned out to be another one of these immortal beings, they were to capture it and bring it in. The identity of this person was unknown due to the disguise, so it was impossible to determine without on-sight research if this person was affiliated with FS1.

Why would this agent be calling? Ingram was just the new guy. Perhaps the agent needed some advice, and knew that Ingram had a degree in psychology?

He took a deep breath, readying himself to be as quick and efficient as possible so he could get off the phone and back to his time alone.

Ingram pressed the answer icon. “Ingram here.”

He was shocked to hear a female voice answer him. “Oh, hello darling!”

Ingram looked out into the distant wilderness around his home, confused by the greeting he received. “Uh…can you identify yourself?”

The woman replied, but her voice was obscured by the loud roar of thunder in the background.

“I’m sorry?”

“My apologies. I said I’m afraid not, at least not until I know I can trust you.”

Ingram held the phone to his ear as he turned to walk deeper into the house, trying to listen to the background noise on the other end of the line. It sounded like rain. “This is a private line, and that’s a private phone that you’re using. How did you get it?”

“I would consider it a gift,” she replied. “Besides, I suspect the owner of this phone, who I’ve assigned the loneliest of numbers, will not be needing it anymore.”

Ingram paused as the hair stood up on the back of his neck. “Did you kill him?”

The woman scoffed. “Well of course, darling, but only because he and his band of intrepid boy scouts decided it would be a good idea to try kidnapping me while I was out for a pleasant stroll. Now, let’s make this quick. I am soaking wet and covered in blood, and I simply MUST get home to clean up before I get sticky.”

Ingram’s heart had begun pounding by this point. Who was this woman, and what did she want with him? Was she nearby? “No,” he thought to himself. “Where did that team go? Western Canada, that’s right…wait, what time is it there? It must be about 3:30 in the morning.” He felt some relief, knowing now that her intention was probably not to harm him if she was currently on the opposite side of the world.

“What do you want?”

“I was told by your associate here that you are new to the organisation, and that you deal directly with my dear friend Fluttershy.”

He frowned. “Fluttershy?” he repeated. “What does that mean?” he wondered, then he was struck by the realisation that the ‘FS’ in FS1 must have been the acronym for Fluttershy. What else would it mean? And who else would she be referring to that he ‘deals directly’ with?

“Her name is Fluttershy?”

“That’s right, darling,” the woman replied. “And I’m told you have a bit of a ‘soft spot’ for her, which really doesn’t surprise me one bit. She is such a sweetie, after all.”

“OK,” Ingram said, “and what is it that you want with me?”

“She is the love of my life, and I will not rest until she is returned to me. When your associate here mentioned you were keen on her -- after some ‘persuasion’ of course -- I had to take the opportunity to ask you for your help.”

“What kind of persuasion?” Ingram asked.

“Well, I shan’t go into much detail, but I will say that I was astounded to see how much weight a human shin bone can withstand before it shatters.”

Ingram’s stomach turned when he heard her answer. It seemed out of place coming from such a well spoken individual, however, there was a familiarity about it. “Why would I help you?”

“Because I am willing to bet that you know she does not belong in that place. Am I correct in my assumption?”

He wasn’t listening to her at that moment. Instead, he was focused on something this woman had said earlier. “Who is this woman?” He decided to ask her some questions.

“Why were they kidnapping you?” he asked.

She huffed into the phone. “Darling, please stay on topic!”

“If you don’t give me some answers, then I can’t help you,” he threatened.

He could hear a long, exasperated sigh on the other end of the line. “Fine. I assume they wanted me for the same reasons they took her.”

Ingram’s chest locked up when he realised what she was saying. “This woman, she’s the target! The vigilante they were sent to find…” He reached up to adjust his glasses with shaky fingers. “A-and they failed?”

“But of course, darling. I presume since that nasty Agent Cody took Fluttershy with a team of seven men in suits with basic handguns -- which was their first mistake -- then I assume they thought a larger, more well-equipped team could easily take me, which has led them to their second mistake…”

“Which is?”

“I’m not Fluttershy.”

Ingram was confused. “What does that mean? That she’s even more dangerous than FS1- er…Fluttershy?” he wondered. “Are you saying you fought them off by yourself? Are you even more dangerous than she is?”

“Pshh!” she scoffed. “Please, those fifteen men were no more threat to me than fifteen fruit flies! And yes, my abilities do surpass hers in battle, but please don’t mention that around her, she can be QUITE sensitive about it.”

“Is she dangerous?” Ingram asked suddenly.

“Fluttershy? Absolutely not! She is an absolute sweetheart.”

Ingram bit the inside of his cheek, thinking about how his suspicions of the girl’s innocence were now being confirmed. But he needed to be careful. “The other people I work with say it’s a trick, to lure me close so she can harm me.”

“Preposterous. Are you nice to her?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then she will never harm you. Show her a little kindness, and she will return it to you tenfold.”

He stopped pacing through his house to lift his glasses and rub his eyes. The long trip to Australia had left him run down and feeling tired, and he was having trouble processing what was going on. Was his new employer really this bad? Did they do wrong by these two women?

“I don’t know…” he mumbled.

“Please, darling. She means the world to me, and I miss her dearly. Every night I long for that sweet, cotton-candy hair, her smooth, buttery skin, those gorgeous teal eyes, her lovely smile, her soft voice…I simply must have her at my side again. I love her with all my heart, and every day without her proves my immortality wrong, because I die a little more each time I watch the sunrise alone.”

Ingram took a moment to reflect as he stared down at the smooth, wooden floor. He could feel her words tugging at his heartstrings, and he couldn’t deny that it felt wrong not to help reunite these two exceptional women.

After a moment, she quietly spoke to him through the phone again. “Please. Search your heart, darling.”

*****

The helicopter that brought Ingram back to the ocean base touched down on the morning of Monday, October 17th.

He busied himself immediately, not even taking an opportunity to visit the girl, but instead using his time to decide what he was going to do with her. He was nervous about the whole thing, after all, betraying an organisation like this would surely end with him underground, and he had only been with them for just over a week, which made it difficult to turn on them after they had bought him a new home and shown him great hospitality and gratitude in exchange for his services thus far.

All the while however, the thought of the two women being separated grated at his nerves, and he found himself feeling guilty for playing a part in their broken hearts.

He kept to himself for the next two days as he took the time to learn more about the facility. He was interested to know more about its security systems, safety systems to control water flooding if there was ever a leak, where their mainframe was held, the fuel system for the generators, and so on.

Eventually, his duties demanded that he carry out his job as the girl’s handler, and he was forced to visit her room after Stubz’ insistence, who was left to temporarily watch over her in Ingram’s absence.

Ingram entered her room in the wee hours of the morning of the 20th to find her chained up at the far end of the table as usual, her head tilted to one side, staring blankly downwards at the cold, shiny surface that was sprawled out before her.

He closed the door behind him just as her eyes slowly rose to meet his, and her mouth began to curl up in the smallest of smiles, but was stalled when she noticed the lanyard around his neck, carrying his access card against his chest.

Why hadn’t he left it outside with the guard this time?

He stood at his end of the table, holding the file folder under his arm as he chewed his bottom lip, contemplating on how the following conversation was about to play out.

At last, he sighed deeply and decided to take the plunge. Once he set himself on this path, there would be no going back.

He pulled a small device from his suit pocket and carried it over to the corner of the room where the camera was mounted on the wall near the ceiling. Reaching up, he let the device latch itself onto the side of the camera, then he turned back to the table and pulled the chair out to sit down.

Fluttershy’s eyes were locked on the camera for a moment, then they slowly drifted down to Ingram, who had opened the file folder on the tabletop and was casually scanning the pages.

“Um, long time no see, Mr. Ingram,” she said quietly, prompting him to return his gaze to her.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he replied. “I was out setting up my new home. I’m not sure why though; I’ll probably never set foot there again. Not after what I’m going to do today.”

She cocked her head in confusion. “What do you mean?”

He paused, then slowly closed the file and folded his hands together, resting them on top of it. He seemed to be deep in thought about something.

Fluttershy could plainly see that something was off with his behaviour, and her attention was brought back to the device he’d attached to the camera in the corner. She nodded up towards it.

“What’s that thing you put on there?” she asked.

He didn’t answer for a second, but then snapped out of his trance when he realised she’d asked him a question. “Oh,” he replied, glancing back at the camera. “That’s a scrambler. It garbles the footage so the guys watching on the other end can’t see or hear what is happening, but it just looks as though the camera is malfunctioning.”

This captured Fluttershy’s interest. “Why did you put it there?”

Ingram leaned back in the chair and folded his arms. “Look,” he said, “I’m just gonna cut to the chase. I fucking hate this place, and so do you.”

The girl was still, unsure if she had heard him correctly.

He continued. “What do you say you and I get out of here? If we work together, I think we can pull it off.”

She blinked a couple of times, shaking her head slightly to shed the disbelief from her thoughts. “B-but, Mr. Ingram, won’t that be dangerous for you? What if you get caught?”

He shook his head. “If we work together and follow the plan, then we’ll be fine. It’s a risk I’m willing to take to get you back home…with her.”

Fluttershy looked at him sideways. “With who?”

Ingram took a deep breath, then explained what had transpired in his absence. “I received a call while I was away, on my private line. It was a woman. She claimed she knew you. She spoke clearly, and was very poised, and had a habit of calling me ‘darling’ a lot.”

The shy girl’s eyes widened suddenly. “Rarity??”

This was the last thing Ingram needed to see, which was the girl’s reaction to hearing the news of her companion. He purposefully avoided using her name, so he could see if Fluttershy knew it on her own, which she did.

“Yes. That’s right, Fluttershy,” he said, adjusting his glasses.

She suddenly looked very different to him. It was the first time anyone had called her by her real name for what felt like eons, and she had a look of longing on her face, a vulnerability that could only be cured by the reunion with her lover.

Her stomach was full of butterflies. The thought of Rarity coming to her rescue excited her, and for the first time since she got here, she had real hopefulness of seeing her friends again. “You know my real name?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yes. And today, I’m going to get you home.”

She sat forward nervously, laying over the table on her forearms with her chained-up wrists just below her chin. “OK. What’s the plan?” she asked softly.

Ingram followed suit and sat forward to lean in closer. “I am going to destroy this facility, but it needs to be set up so it can be executed once we are clear. I need to plant some explosives in key areas, then I can remote detonate it once we are on the chopper.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Chopper?”

Ingram rubbed the tip of his nose. “Are you aware that we are at the bottom of the ocean under an oil rig?”

Fluttershy recoiled. “Oh my goodness! Really?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“So, are you gonna blow a hole in one of the walls and let the place flood?” she asked.

“No,” he answered, “there are too many flood doors in here, which are triggered by sensors when too much water comes in. There’s just not enough explosives on-hand here to outnumber the flood doors.”

“So what are you gonna do?”

“Well, this place is powered by turbine-engine generators,” he explained. “And the fuel is processed from crude oil, which is pumped into the engine room. I can split the pipe at the pressure regulator, which will leak fuel into the room. It won’t be enough to trigger any flood doors, and the fumes will spread through the facility, and by the time we detonate the explosives, this whole place will be full of vapours and will go up like a firebomb once ignited.”

“Oh my! That sounds like fun,” the shy girl said with a giggle.

He put his finger up. “Just wait though, that will be part of your job. See, the elevators are the only things that connect the levels here, and they are hermetically sealed for flood control, so the doors at each end need to be rigged open or blown so the fumes can spread throughout the entire facility.”

“OK. I should be able to, um…do that,” she replied.

“Good,” he nodded. “But that’s not all. There is a mainframe that I need to destroy.”

“Mainframe?”

“That’s right,” he replied. “There is a large data storage mainframe in the lowest level. The room that contains it is under the ocean floor, to eliminate the chance of a leaky or blown wall, and the access to it has a heavy flood door that will be triggered when we blow this place. This will keep it protected and theoretically recoverable to them even after the rest of the place is destroyed. I need to set up a charge to blow that room, as well as the flood door so we can be sure that the mainframe is lost.”

Fluttershy shrugged. “What is on this mainframe?”

“Everything,” Ingram replied. “Every piece of information since the inception of ‘Us’. Every assassination, recovered alien weapon, every person who’s ever served here, every pay stub, you…EVERYTHING. It is not linked to any network or internet, which makes it unhackable, and it is stored down there, in the safest place possible.”

“And if they lose it?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Then they lose everything,” he answered. “They’ll be back to square one. It is the heart of the operation, and the loss of it would be devastating to them.”

Fluttershy nodded in approval. “OK. Let’s do it,” she said enthusiastically, but then her expression dropped a bit. “But,” she continued, her brows furrowing as she asked the next question. “Is that all you want me to do? Just blow the elevator doors? Can’t I be of more help to you than that?”

“Oh yes,” he nodded. “I have lots for you to do, in fact, you get to do all the fun stuff.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Oh?”

“It’s going to take me a while to set up these explosives,” he said, “and I haven’t done any of it yet, because the security here is too tight. I need a distraction.”

A devilish smirk crept across Fluttershy’s pretty, yet dirty face. “I’m listening…”

“I’m going to unlock you and turn you loose in this place. I want you to create the biggest diversion you can, which will allow me to set up the explosives,” Ingram instructed. A smile then crept across his face before he continued. “And if you feel the need to settle a few scores along the way, feel free to indulge yourself.”

Fluttershy licked her lips, feeling a sudden hunger for violence as all the faces she wished to destroy started flashing through her mind. “I can do that.”

“Oh,” Ingram said as he was reminded of something else. He fidgeted through his suit pockets, then finally produced a small card with some numbers on it. “Here,” he said, sliding the card across the table to her. “Do your best to memorise those coordinates.”

She frowned, looking down at the card. “Coordinates? For what?”

Ingram stood up and took something out of his pants pocket next. “There’s a supply chopper due to arrive tomorrow. We’ll hijack it, and have the pilot take us to those coordinates, which I have chosen at random. I want you to know them too, in case I don’t make it.”

She looked up at him with wide eyes. “Oh, Mr. Ingram! Don’t say that. You’re gonna make it.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Either way, you need to know them. You have to get to those exact coordinates. Your friend Rarity has arranged for someone to meet you there who will take you home.” He then held out the object that he took from his pants pocket and set it on the table in front of her.

It was a simple black cylinder. On one end, there was a clear, dome-shaped cap with what appeared to be a button protected underneath.

Fluttershy studied it for a moment, then returned her gaze to Ingram. “What is that?”

“It’s a remote detonator. For you.”

She frowned, shaking her head in confusion. “But…I thought you were taking care of that part?”

“I am,” he replied, “but, same as the coordinates, if I don’t make it, you need to make sure those explosives go off.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Don’t say that! I told you you’re gonna make it.”

Ingram chuckled. “Look, it’s not like I intend to not make it,” he joked, “But if I don’t, then you have to be the one to do it. It’s too important to leave it to chance. This place has to go down.”

Fluttershy nodded. She understood her mission, and was ready for action. “OK. When do we start?”

Ingram took the lanyard off and held his card up, shaking it smugly in the air. “Right now,” he replied. “Now, I’m gonna set you free, but I need my access card, however I’m sure one of the other guys around here will loan you theirs with the right ‘persuasion’.”

She grinned. “I can be very persuasive.”

He snickered as he bent down and slid the card into the table, which prompted a beep to sound, followed by the handcuffs falling free from her hands and ankles. She rubbed her wrists with her hands, then looked back at him for a moment.

“Good luck, Fluttershy,” he said as he unlocked the door to open it.

She put one hand out towards him. “Wait!”

He stopped to look at her after opening the door.

“Um…thank you,” she said, her cheeks flushing darkly as she let her eyes drop to the tabletop.

He smiled, feeling his heart warm up at the adorable display of gratitude. “No, thank you.” And with that, he left the room, leaving the door wide open behind him.

It was a sight for sore eyes. Fluttershy was at the table, unchained, looking at an open door.

This was it.

Before getting up from the table, she held her hand up and began poking her right palm with her left index finger, pretending to dial a cell phone. She then held the invisible phone to her ear, letting her eyes drift up to the lights on the ceiling as she listened to the imaginary ringing.

Her eyes went wide with excitement when someone ‘answered’, and she drew in a small gasp. “Oh! Hello, Angel of Death? Hi, it’s Fluttershy. Um, how would you like to take the day off?”