Story: Nine Lives (chapter 11)

Authors: MadPanda

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Chapter 11

Title: Chapter 10: Two Birds in the Hand

[Author's notes: The cat and the reporter make their way to Plum Island, not realizing they've become pawns in a game played between Cortez and Tesla.]

Disclaimer: Though mentioned in the following chapter, Plum Island, NY and the complex formerly known as the Biological Animal Research Center have never been visited by me, therefore any experiments that may or may not have been carried out there are of a speculative nature only.  Oh, and I haven\'t read "Plum Island" by Nelsom DeMille, either.  Just though I should mention that in advance.

Ikimashou!

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Chapter 10: Two Birds in the Hand

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“You better have a very good reason for interrupting my research at this hour, Cortez!”

The sergeant looked at the image of a near-snarling Peter on his laptop, and couldn\'t help himself from sniggering.

“What is it that you find so funny?”

“I\'m sorry, Tesla,” Cortez said, catching his breath. “It\'s just that you\'re beginning to sound like quite the mad scientist! I wonder if you had a really evil laugh in your repetoire...”

The only reply the sergeant got to that was a cold, angry stare. “...maybe not.” He cleared his throat and took on an air of seriousness. “Well then, I may have something to put a smile on your face.” He held up a picture of twin redhead girls, both dressed in school uniforms.

Peter looked at the photo, then snubbed his nose at it. “You do know you could get arrested for what you\'re thinking, Cortez.”

“What I find interesting is that you were thinking of that...glad to see you\'re not completely messed up in the head.” The sergeant moved the photo from Tesla\'s view. “Those are the \'research subjects\' I mentioned to you earlier.”

“Twins, eh?” Tesla pondered the idea for a moment. It wasn\'t every day that one had the opportunity to use twin guinea pigs without creating them yourself...and since human cloning is still in its infancy, having someone drop a viable set of twins in your lap was quite the feat. “I assume you wish for me to simply turn Attaturk and Stanhope over to you in exchange for the twins, correct?”

“Correct,” Cortez echoed. “Think of it as trading known qualitites for limitless potential.”

“That would be an incorrect assumption, as Stanhope\'s potential has not been fully realized.”

“Alright then...think of it as you being able to put your own stamp on science. Create your own experiment, using one as a test and the other as the control. It\'s a rare opportuinty, Tesla...you shouldn\'t pass this up.”

“Will you shut up if I take these girls off of your hands?”

“No...but you won\'t have to talk to me at all after this. So in a way, you get your wish.”

That fact alone brought a smile to Peter\'s thin lips. “Fine, then. Deliver the twins to me, and I will have the other two sent to you. I do have one request, however.”

“And that is?”

“That they remain silent about what is happening here. If word gets out about Camp Hero or Plum Island, or any of our affiliated facilities, I want them both terminated immediately. Are we clear?”

That condition made Cortez pause: It would practically amount to him giving away the Armbrister twins for nothing. As he was interested in the abilities of Naya and Annette, he wasn\'t about to eliminate them. That would be his little secret; like the newspaper editor Choi said, word would get out sooner or later. To Cortez, it was more important to protect himself and his units, than to cover the butts of people he really didn\'t like in the first place.

“You have a deal, Tesla.”

“If I may ask a question, Sgt. Cortez...why these particular twins?”

The black-clad man\'s face took on a dour expression. “Let\'s just say I have a score to settle. A little revenge that needed to be served, that\'s all.”

“Now who\'s the mad one?” Peter\'s screen went dark.

Cortez folded down the lid of his laptop, and folded his hands behind his head. There was no rush to deliver the twins, so he felt a bit of sleep would do him good. It would definitely get the idea of what Capt. Armbrister did to him out of his head...if only for a little while.

- - - - -

The comissary was practically empty, save for a couple of late-night snackers. Naya and Annette were both very grateful for the kindness of the kitchen staff, who provided them with a nice meal.

“Yeah, if you consider a dollop of tuna a nice meal,” Naya said, staring at her food as she sat on the floor.

“What were you expecting, a T-bone steak?” Annette bit into a prawn, savoring the buttery flavor.

“You could at least give me a couple of those. I\'m a growing cat, you know! I need to eat a lot!”

The reporter looked around to see if anyone was looking, then she beckoned Naya to jump up to the chair next to her. She then took a prawn off her plate and fed it to the calico cat. “Say \'ahhh\'!”

Naya pouted...as much as a cat can pout. “Are you serious? You actually want me to beg for my food?”

“Aw, come on, Naya! You\'ll look cute doing it...and it adds to our cover.” Seeing that the cat was still unhappy about the idea, Annette brought out the trump card. “Please...for me?”

There\'s no way anyone could resist someone who uses that line. It\'s ever harder to do when you\'re looking into beautiful blue eyes like Annette\'s. Naya let out a big sigh and opened her mouth wide. “Ahhh.”

The blonde squealed with joy as she watched the cat take the shrimp in its mouth. “You\'re so adorable!!”

“First let me eat this shrimp...then you can kill me, okay?” Naya had to admit, though, that the prawn was worth losing a little dignity for. She devoured the crustacean, then looked at Annette. “Can I please have another?”

The reporter looked back at the cat like a mother scolding her child.

Another sigh from Naya. “The things I do for love...ahhh!”

As the two friends were enjoying their meal—Annette more than Naya—a tone sounded over the PA system. “Your attention please, your attention please! Naya Attaturk and Annette Stanhope please report to Dock 2 immediately...Repeating, Naya Attaturk and Annette Stanhope please report to Dock 2 immediately. Thank you!”

“You think someone knows we want to go to Plum Island?”, Annette asked.

Naya finished the last of her prawn. “Yes...and I think that person is our Mr. Tesla. I wonder what little test he has planned for us this time.” She jumped down from the chair and went back to the plate of tuna, receiving a cross look from Annette. “What? I need all the food I can get!”

- - - - -

Soon Annette exited the comissary, Naya once again bundled against her chest. A jeep awaited their arrival.

“Excuse me,” said the driver. “Are you Miss Stanhope or Miss Attaturk?”

“I\'m Miss Stanhope...this would be Miss Attaturk.” The blonde pointed to the cat-head sticking out of her bosom.

“Ah...okay...I\'ve been ordered to pick you both up and take you to Dock 2. Please get in.”

Annette got in the front passenger side. “Do you know where we\'re going from there?”

“I\'m sorry ma\'am, I\'m just supposed to take you to the dock. What happens after that, I have no idea.” He watched as the blonde had trouble wrapping the seatbelt around her. “Do you need some help, ma\'am?”

“Maybe it would be better if I sat in the back,” Naya said as she found her way out of Annette\'s cleavage and jumped in the back seat. “Pass me a lab coat, will you?”

Annette fumbled a bit before taking off one of the two coats she was wearing, tossing one in the back of the jeep. She then turned to the driver. “Keep your eyes on the road, soldier...”

The man wanted to say something about a talking cat, but that thought was completely lost when a woman with mostly white hair sat up in the back seat of his jeep, straightening the collar on her lab coat. “Can you buckle up now, Annette?”

The blonde had a much easier time getting the seatbelt around her. “Much better! You might want to strap yourself in as well, Naya...this poor guy might have a bit of trouble remembering what he\'s supposed to be doing.”

Naya leaned over and spoke in the driver\'s ear. “Dock 2, and step on it!”

“Y-y-yes, Ma\'am!!” The jeep peeled away from the comissary and into the night, the laughter of the two women on board drowned out by the squeal of burnning rubber.

- - - - -

The jeep arrived at the badly lit Dock 2, where two other vehicles were waiting.

“I don\'t like the looks of this, Naya,” Annette said over her shoulder.

“I\'m with you...all we need is a cargo ship and guys in Armani suits, and it would scream \'drug deal\', wouldn\'t it?” Naya\'s hair frizzed a bit, as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

“It seems everyone\'s here, then. Time to get this little party started.”

The two women turned to see a tall, wiry man step out of a black SUV.

\'Cortez,” Naya hissed. “What\'s going on here?”

“All in good time, kitten. I want to say hello to your friend.” The black-clad man stepped over to Annette\'s side of the jeep. “I am Sgt. Guillermo Cortez,” he said with a bow. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Stanhope.”

The reporter all but ignored his grandiose introduction. “Naya...you know this guy?”

The other woman kept an eye on Cortez. “Yes, unfortunately. We met while you were recouperating. It was he and his people who were after us.”

“No, dear kitten, you have that wrong,” Cortez interrupted. “We were simply trying to collect you—someone else actually wanted you, but now he has bigger problems to deal with.”

Annette unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face the tall man. “So, what do you want with us, Mr. Cortez?”

“I have an offer for you both—especially you, Miss Stanhope—but I\'ll get to that in a bit. First, business must be conducted.” Cortez left the jeep and went up to where a second black SUV was parked. “Are we going to talk out here, or do I have to go in there?”

The door opened and Peter Tesla stepped out. “I hate the idea of meeting in the dark of night like a group of hoodlums.”

“You have no sense of atmosphere, Tesla,” Cortez said with a mock frown. “Nice to see you\'ve held up your part of the bargain.”

“Now it\'s time for you to hold up your end, Cortez. Where are they?”

“Patience, Tesla, patience...” He waved to his driver, and the man lifted the hatch on the back of his SUV. “Now...you can go see for yourself.”

Because of the angle the SUV was parked in, Neither Annette nor Naya had a good view of what was in it. “Somehow, I don\'t think this is a drug deal.”

Just as she said that, Tesla stepped over to the van and pulled out an ambulance gurney. Strapped to the top of it was a redhead who appeared to be completely motionless.

“Are they trading us for cadavers??” Annette asked. When the second girl was removed from the van, the reporter\'s eyes widened. “Okay...let me rephrase that: Are they trading us for twin cadavers??”

“That\'s beyond sick!” Naya interjected.

“I agree,” Tesla added. “I did not ask for dead bodies!”

Cortez joined Tesla at the back of the van, examining the two redheads. “They\'re not dead...simply tranquilized. They\'re in a very deep sleep. I will give you the drug to wake them shortly.”

“So, they are unharmed otherwise?”

Cortez waved off the smaller man\'s concerns. “Not a bit...they\'ll be a bit disoriented when they wake up, but that\'s because they think they\'re still in their rooms fast asleep.”

“You\'re nothing if not effective, Cortez.”

“Excuse us,” Annette chimed in. “But what exactly is going on here? Are we being traded for those two girls? And to whom?”

Naya assessed the situation. “Well, since it\'s Tesla who seems to be getting the twins, I guess we\'re ending up with Cortez. The good news is that, whatever Tesla wanted to do with us seems to have taken less precendence to those two ladies. The bad news is we don\'t know what Cortez wants with us...it could actually be something worse.”

“Oh, no,” Cortez cut in. “It definitely won\'t be worse. Trust me, you won\'t want to be where those two are going...unless you\'ve already been there, right kitten?”

Naya ignored the man\'s leering looks. “What are you going to do with them, Tesla?”

“Whatever I want!” He looked over the girls, then turned his attention to Cortez. “You don\'t have any paperwork on them, do you?”

“Oh, no...completely untraceable. In fact, their parents won\'t even know they\'re gone until they wake up tomorrow morning.”

“Those poor girls!” Annette exclaimed. “We can\'t let this happen, Naya!”

“There\'s not a lot we can do about it,” the other woman said dejectedly. “Even if we fought with these guys and managed to release them, where would we take them?”

Annette pursed her lips and threw herself back into the seat of the jeep. Cortez came back to her side of the vehicle. “I know you want to save them, but that\'s not your job right now. Right now, you both belong to me. I\'ll take you back to New York, then I\'ll tell you what your new roles are.”

“We were actually in the middle of something here, Cortez,” Naya spat. “There\'s some information we need to find.”

“You wouldn\'t be referring to the truth behind Miss Stanhope\'s birth, would you?”

Both women stared at Cortez in disbelief. “How did you know?” Annette asked.

“Because I was also interested...while we were tracking the kitten there, we noticed that you suddenly became a constant part of the picture. So we did some digging on you; the more we dug, the more interesting you became. Your miracle recovery after the car crash made you a priority, and your fight against that brutish monster...well, let\'s just say you two make a pretty good team. A team I want on my side.”

Naya continued to glare at the man. “Asking us directly just wasn\'t your style, huh?”

“The circumstances didn\'t permit it, kitten. I was originally hired to capture Naya by someone else, but since I actually hate the man, I had planned to use the kitten against him. Now I have two weapons instead of one. Worked out well for me, if I do say so myself.”

Annette was a good jump away from ripping into the black-clad man. “And what made you think we\'d comply with whatever orders you gave us? We don\'t owe you anything, and you\'re not paying us enough!”

“True on both counts, Miss Stanhope, but I have ways of convincing people to work for me...or at the very least, agreeing with me.” He waved his arm over to Tesla, who was happily watching his new lab rats being re-loaded into the SUV for transport. “He\'s a difficult man to please, so working with him requires knowing which button to press in order to make him happy. I can do the same for you both.”

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” Naya asked pointedly.

“It\'s simple, really. Miss Stanhope needs information, which I have. You, kitten, need Miss Stanhope, whom I also have. As she also desires you, and I have you as well, I\'d say I have you both pretty well covered. Should either of you disobey me in any way, two sides of that pretty little triangle will disappear.”

“So if I fought against you, you\'d kill Annette and destroy her information...”

“...and if I fought you, you\'d kill Naya and keep the truth about my past away from me.”

Cortez smiled broadly. “I\'m glad to see we\'re all on the same page.”

Both women looked at each other and laughed. “Are you serious?” Naya caught her breath, then continued. “You could kill us, but we\'d both come back. I\'m not telling you what life I\'m up to right now, but I have a feeling my girlfriend here is more than capable enough to rip you to pieces numerous times!”

Annette nodded in agreement, then stopped in mid-nod. “Girlfriend!?! Does that mean we\'re officially a couple now?”

Naya smiled and blushed. “Why not? Considering what we\'ve been through, I can\'t see any reason why we can\'t be.”

Before Annette could reply, Cortez cut in. “Before you two start picking out wedding dresses, I\'d like to reply to that little threat. I have snipers trained on both of you as we speak. I can disable either of you at a moment\'s notice, contain you and have you carted away before either of you respawn. So, even if you do kill me, I already have someone else in place to handle you both.” He smiled smugly at the two women, who looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. “Are you ready to comply now?”

“I hate thorough people,” Annette griped. “So, where are we going?”

“To confirm a few things...” Cortez beckoned the two women to leave the jeep and follow him. He led them to a small motorboat, which had an ample number of armed guards aboard. “Next stop: Plum Island!”

- - - - -

The editor of the New York Courier surveyed the damage to his office. Just about every inch of the place was taken apart; every drawer, every piece of furniture, even the window sills were pryed open and searched. The disarray of the room matched the dishevled look of its owner, who was both haggard from lack of sleep, and ragged from the rough treatment he received at the hands of Cortez. Even with all this, William Choi had reason to smile. The evidence he had been given by Naya was already gone by the time Cortez\'s unit showed up, sent down an old mail chute used for only the most sensitive material. By the time the unit had finished tearing up the office, the mail was already sent out for the day, so even if Cortez\'s men thought to look in the mailroom, they\'d have found nothing but letters to the editor.

Choi found a spot on one of the windowsills that hadn\'t been chewed up and sat there, further surveying the damage. His source still hadn\'t been revealed, his paper was still running, and he still had his life. Losing a few pieces of furniture in the process meant nothing compared to that. “Maybe I should take the cost of refurbishing this out of Stanhope\'s salary...whenever she gets back.”

- - - - -

It didn\'t take long to get to the small, nondescript patch of land known as Plum Island, but the number of Coast Guard ships greeting the small motorboat Naya and Annette rode on gave the women the impression they were entering an unfriendly country.

The blonde looked at the stern faces of the men on the approaching boats. “This can\'t be good...”

“Agreed,” Naya said with a nod. “If that\'s the welcoming committee, I\'d hate to see what the house-warming party\'s like.”

Cortez\'s boat pulled up to the first boat, and the tall man himself waved to the captain. After taking out his wallet and showing the contents, the Coast Guard boat pulled up behind the motorboat, serving as an escort through the rest of the mini-fleet.

“I wonder who he kidnapped to get that kind of clearance,” Naya joked, while her partner just looked on in awe.

The motorboat\'s escort peeled off as it pulled into a small dock. Cortez collected the women and led them to a jeep. “This will take you to your next destination. I suggest you not try to leave the jeep, as there are some things running loose in this island I wouldn\'t want to bump into...even in broad daylight. Have a good night\'s sleep, and I\'ll rejoin you tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Annette said, a worried look on her face. “You\'ve brought us here, and you\'re not staying?”

Cortez turned and boarded the boat again. “Hell, no! I hate this place!” The boat left the dock without an escort, as Annette and Naya stared at the darkness that awaited them.

“I would have loved to take you to a nice little island for our honeymoon,” Naya said with a half-smile, “but this wasn\'t exactly what I had in mind.”

Annette gave her new girlfriend a hug. “At least we\'re together...that\'s what matters.”

“You keep saying that, and it\'s gonna end up on our tombstones.”

“This way please, ladies.” The driver of the jeep was a gruff older man who didn\'t seem to have much patience. “What Cortez said is right; this isn\'t the place for lolly-gagging.”

The women piled into the back of the jeep, strapping themselves in. “Annette, when was the last time you lolly-gagged?”

“Me? I\'ve never gagged a loli in my life!”

The comment got a weird look from the driver, and more than a few giggles from Naya.

After driving through some surprisingly dense forest, the jeep reached a clearing and stopped at a short building surrounded by a tall fence. “You\'ll be staying here for the night,” the driver said. “Sign in, and go to the first room on your right. There\'s a shower if you like, and there\'ll be breakfast in the morning. Otherwise, don\'t leave the building...seriously. Don\'t do it.” The driver waited until both women left the jeep, then left without another word.

Annette couldn\'t resist mimicking a famous line from one of her favorite movies. “Gosh, people come and go so quickly around here!”

Naya was not amused. “Let\'s just go inside, Dorothy, before we get attacked by flying monkeys or something.”

“Don\'t laugh,” the blonde replied. “They probably have them here!”

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End of Chapter 10

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[End notes:

You wanna talk creepy?  After I finished this story, I'm riding on the subway and I see a poster for a book called "Plum Island" by Nelson DeMille.  I had never heard of him before, so seeing that poster freaked me out to no end.  I hear it's a good mystery...do go read it, if it's your cup of tea.

In the meantime...thanks for reading my story.  Two more chapters to go!

Until next time..."So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

]

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