Fear Itself

Another few hours passed within the tunnels, and nothing came but aimless wandering. Sleep didn’t find me, wouldn’t find me, and couldn’t find me here. All that found me was the sting of cold air, the feeling of water flooding my eyes, and the stinging of the glass wedged in my heels.

I wouldn’t have been here had nasty, old Alex not so kindly waved that gun in my face. Who was I to try and fend off a gun? I may have stood at 5’10”, but I was underweight for my height with no muscle mass whatsoever. With that logic, who was I to fend off anything, for that matter? I wasn’t worth a penny in a fight, and I was certainly likely to get five or six teeth knocked out before I even managed to swing.

It was my just desserts, I supposed. I had disobeyed for years, and it was actually rather surprising that it took this long for somebody to leap in through the window, at least based upon what my father had told me of our era’s population. Most importantly, why hadn’t I questioned the fact that he had rolled in through my window? Why hadn’t I been more suspicious? I even offered him snacks, and I didn’t do that for just anyone (not that I could, since I didn’t have friends). I was a little disappointed by the whole situation, really. Alex had seemed so nice at first, so friendly and genuine. I was wrong, clearly. I shouldn’t have been so surprised; I had only met three people in my entire life besides my father, and two of them held a gun at me. I had no friends, no one to trust.

I was alone. I was lost. Maybe that was even an understatement.

Trying to wrap my head around all of this was still incredibly difficult. What was the “Brotherhood,” and why did they deem me useless? From the brief line of questioning Alex and Sam assaulted me with, there were a few things that were clear: they were fighting the government, my father was in the government, and I was supposed to know something about his work, but truth be told, I never knew much about his work at all. In that regard, I was ignorant, while they assumed I would be helpful. This whole situation was very foreign to me. I had never truly disappointed somebody; this wasn’t a feeling that I liked.

Not long after the strangely polished man in the suit, Dean, had passed me, I had left to wander, but honestly, there wasn’t much to wander. Most doors were locked, and I was left unequipped: no bobby pins, no forks, no pens, nothing. I ended up taken haven, sitting against a dirty, tiled wall stained with scum and grease and who knows what else, but it wasn’t really the dirt that bothered me. Truthfully, my feet were the worst part of all this.

The trek from my part of town to the tunnels left my toes stained and muddy, caked with dirt. The balls of my feet throbbed and ached with the sting of blisters and scrapes caused by stray pebbles, rocks, twigs, and everything else adorning the ground (most of which I wasn’t sure I really wanted to investigate). Tiny red lines were etched into the tops of my feet all the way to my ankles, and my heels were trickling small amounts of crimson from the glass. I really wished that I owned a pair of shoes right about now.

With a quiet sigh, I pulled my knees tight to my chest and curled up in a ball. I wanted to cry. I was alone and lost, but I was innocent of everything, yet I had been kidnapped by a scruffy young man with strange eyebrows and a bad attitude. Somehow, despite the fact that she had no involvement in any of this up until a few hours ago, I had done everything wrong. Shaking my head, I buried my eyes in my knees for just a moment. I wanted to go home and forget that any of this ever happened. There was still time, wasn’t there? My father wasn’t due home until well past midnight, and he would never have to know I was gone in the first place. I could just slip right back in.

Stronger than the part of me feeling timid and scared was the part of me feeling offended. Useless. I was not useless, and my will to prove that to this Alex character was far stronger than my will to get up and run home to my father. I lifted my head, eyebrows raised in thought as my eyes scanned the surroundings. Falling forward, my eyes found another figure just feet away. It looked like a girl, and I hadn’t had much luck with the boys, so I might have had better luck with another girl, I thought. I pushed myself to my feet and quietly paced toward her.

She was shorter than I was, but she was clearly tougher: more defined muscle and confident posture. Her long brown hair fell around her in tousled waves, and from closer inspection, she had bright blue eyes, much like mine. Her clothes were tattered, and she wore nothing more than some old jeans, a part of military boots, and a white wife beater. The girl was beat up, clearly, as her skin seemed to shelter a fair number of bruises, not to mention a split lip. Her left hand was entangled in a strand of rosary beads; her fingers rubbed the wooden spheres with a sort of affection. The neck of a green, glass bottle poked out of a crumpled paper bag on the floor beside her feet.

Still in silence, I sat beside her, taking a moment to look her over. I offered a small smile. “You’ve got lovely hair, you know,” I commented. “You should braid it. I think it would frame your face well.”

The second she saw me, the beads were slipped back into her pocket, and she sized me up immediately. She casually pulled a stick of chewing gum from her pocket, which to me something akin to forbidden fruit after my incident as a toddler, and popped it in her mouth. She chewed, and she grinned, merely asking me, “Would it now?” The amusement in her voice was clear, even through her thick, Irish accent. She wasn’t trying to hide how funny she found me, almost as though my entire presence was something to laugh about. I couldn’t exactly argue. The circumstances weren’t what I would call normal. She glanced over me again and quirked a single eyebrow before she continued. “You know, you could really pack a punch if you worked out. You’re pretty tall for a girlie. With the right training, you might not get your pretty ass handed to you on a plate,” the young woman quipped with a wide grin forming around her gum. I watched curiously as she turned from me; she leaned forward and pressed the side of her face to the table. “Maybe then you wouldn’t let y’self get snatched up in your own house.”

“Hey,” I retorted with a quiet laugh. “I had a gun pointed at me. I would have been insane to try and fight off a gun.” I grinned a little and shook my head, trying to recount the exact events that led me here. It was still hard to fathom. I didn’t even know that these tunnels existed. Did anyone? My father had never mentioned them before, though he had always been sparse on details concerning modern society and London. Whereas people like this girl clearly knew enough to handle themselves in the world, I was defenseless. Had my father done this on purpose?

I desperately wanted to believe otherwise; I wanted to think he was protecting me, but fears was crawling in from every corner of my mind. It was quickly pushing me back toward locking myself up in the house for good and listening to my father. I wanted someone to take me home, that was all, yet there was bit of me that wanted to stay here… to explore.

To be able to pack a punch could be nice. The gears in my brain were starting to turn, and I realized this was the perfect way to be useful. Clearly, these people went out on limbs and did some slightly dangerous things. After all, one of them had broken into my home and kidnapped me at gunpoint. Hesitance wasn’t in their vocabulary. There was always a need for people willing to throw themselves headfirst into the fire, right? If I could get involved, even if I had to pour my blood, sweat, and tears into it, I could show Alex wrong. I could already feel the sense of pride burning in my chest. This was my opportunity, and through the silence, I interjected, “Train me.”

The young woman’s head whirled back around toward me, and her eyebrows quirked up in shock. She stared at me without remorse, an unwavering look of shock plastered all over her face. “If you’re… If you’re who I think you are—“ I cut myself off and looked her over again. She must have been Harley. She was the only girl I had seen down in the tunnels all day. “If you’re… Harley, is it? Then word on the street is that you’re the lady to talk to if you want in on the action,” I added. “And I want in. I want to know… what this is, what you are, what this group… does. Want to give a girl hand, then?”

A hint of unease tugged on Harley’s face, but she shot me an easy smirk as she continued chewing. She turned for a moment and unscrewed the bottle in front of her. She put the bottle to her lips and tilted her whole head back, taking a good swig of the liquid before smacking her lips and setting it back. She tossed the cap previously attached to the bottle in her hands and let silence fill the room for a bit of time, before she finally responded, “Train you, eh?”

I watched as she tilted her head only slight to the side and looked me over once more. A smile slowly spread across her face. “Well, we’re the good guys, cupcake,” she explained slowly as she spun a bit to face me. “And here’s your first word of advice: don’t say ‘in on the action.’ Only real assholes say that,” she told me, and I gave her a quick nod. “Before I agree to this, I want to make something abundantly clear. When you agree, you will do everything I say, when I say it, no questions asked. I say, ‘Jump.’ You say, ‘How High?’ You also need to be aware that this venture is going to hard and painful. I am going to hand your ass to you on a shiny, silver platter, girlie, and I’m going to do it a lot before you get any better. You’re starting at the bottom of the valley, cupcake, and it’s a long trek to the top,” she explained. I took mental notes of all of it.

A quick nod was my response, as well as a quick murmur of, “Right. Bottom of the valley, got it.”

“And I want something from you,” she announced. “Might be hard for you to get, and I don’t want you to even attempt this until I think you’re ready, so don’t go waltzing off to the black market without my permission, but…” There was a brief pause. I gave her another nod, this one slower, and my eyes slowly sank to furrow in concentration. “I want a books,” Harley blurted rather abruptly. “Like fancy literature shit and culture and art… things we don’t get to have down here. I want that. We clear?” A smile finally broke across her face, a nice, warm, sweet, one, the kind I was sure she only reserved for friends. “If you do that, we got a deal, girlie.” She extended a hand to me. Slowly growing accustomed to this odd, yet traditional, greeting, I took her hand in a firm grasp and shook it. “Get ready to kick ass,” Harley said, grinning wickedly.

The fact that she was asking me for books confused me. I didn’t understand why they weren’t accessible for her normally while my father was bringing me new ones every day. I had so many questions, and even though I felt Harley would answer them for me, I couldn’t bring myself to ask. I supposed I didn’t want to know the harsh reality, but I also suspected that part of me already did; I just didn’t want to hate the world I had waited so long to see, but sometimes, the truth hurt, didn’t it?

I offered her a warm smile in return, trying to contain my bubbling excitement. “Well,” I retorted. “As much as I’m ready to get started, you know, I would need to return home to retrieve my books and erm—“ I cut myself off, looking down at my battered feet with a quiet chuckle. “Find myself a good pair of shoes,” I joked. “Unfortunately, I don’t know my own way from here, and the person who led me here is off… I don’t know, probably defending his awfully damaged ego.” I sighed faintly. “Not that it’s bad here, I actually quite like it, but my father will have somebody’s head if I’m not home before he returns this evening.”

Harley gave me a laugh dripping with sarcasm. “‘Fraid I can’t do that, cupcake.” She turned from me again and resumed playing with the bottle cap. “My bosses wouldn’t be quite so quick to kiss me on the cheeks for taking you home, so you’re stuck here ‘till they make up their minds and decide your fate.” She glanced over at the shut door. “Shouldn’t be long,” Harley told me. I glanced toward the door and wondered what they could possibly be discussing… besides my fate. Even the discussion of my fate proved alarming enough. What did she mean by that? Was there a possibility that they would decide to kill me? A lump suddenly formed in my throat, and I desperately tried to swallow it when Harley asked, “How much do you run, usually?”

I had to do a double take. A look of utter confusion overtook my face: my eyebrows were raised, eyes wide, and mouth agape. I truly didn’t know how to answer her, and I was left stumbling over my words as I attempted to formulate an appropriate response. “Run,” I repeated, finally able to speak. “I… I don’t run, I…” I looked away, trying to hide the look of defeat plaguing me. “I don’t go outside,” I confessed, though it seemed everyone already knew about me: poor, little Thalia Giroux, the girl who couldn’t leave her house. All of these strangers knew me, but I didn’t know anything about them. This was all just awfully confusing.

She didn’t give me a full response, just a small chuckle. Harley pushed away from the table and out of her seat, leaving the bottle on the table. She strode out into the middle of the room, rolling her shoulders in the meantime. She turned to me, beckoning with a smile grin. “Let’s a spar a little, cupcake.”

Her request was met with furrowed brows. “I… I don’t know,” I replied meekly, hesitantly, but I rose to my bare feet regardless, trying my best to ignore the stabbing pain of glass in my heels with every step. I approached Harley, blinking a bit. “I’ve honestly never done this before,” I explained, but by the time I finished the sentence, I realized Harley had vanished, and suddenly I felt a swift tug on my hair, a yank on my scalp, and I yelped.

“Rule number one, cupcake,” Harley laughed, coming back in front of me as I rubbed my head, trying to get rid of the sting. “Be aware.” She continued to move around in what seemed to be incredibly fluid motion, at least to my untrained eyes. Her feet moved with a certain grace as she ducked behind columns and darted in between the shadows in the room, practically dancing around me. “Use all your senses, don’t just look around at people. Use the shadows and the reflections to your advantage.”

“Right—“ I muttered, looking around a bit until my eyes fell forward on a fist coming toward my face. “Whoa!” I shouted out of instinct, barely ducking out of the way. Harley just laughed again, heckling my ignorance, my naivete, and my fumbling movement. “I wasn’t even ready! What are you doing?!” I inquired with a bit of shock.

“Err on the side of caution,” she explained with a chuckle. “That’s rule number two. Your opponents can and will fight dirty, and they have back-up. You need to be ready to take that punch. Try again.” With a huff, I narrowed my eyes at Harley, watching this time, and when her fist came back, I stared, unwavering, watching, waiting. I had to look at the mechanics: the velocity, the force. Her fist was coming toward my face, and my brain was doing calculations at a mile a minute. My forearm shot up in perfect timing, blocking the fist and sending her arm swinging downward instead.

Harley began to smile, and she gave me a breathy laugh. “That’s more like it, girlie,” she chuckled. She seemed to lower her hands, and I watched as she came forward, smiling a bit, laughing. The tension left my shoulders, and I smiled back, grinning, until I felt her fist slam into my stomach. I choked, coughed, and sputtered. I groaned a bit, and Harley sighed. “Rule number three: keep your distance. Only get close to strike.” She did, this time, allow me a moment or so to recover. I took a deep breath, trying to squash the pain and the nausea. “It’s best to stay toward your opponent’s side and not directly in front. Try to make them an obstacle to themselves, and keep your guard up, even if it’s just extending your hands,” Harley told me, circling me and eyeing me like a hawk. “Place something between you and your opponent, even if it’s just your bare hands.”

“Yeah,” I said through a heavy breath, almost like a gasp for air. “Got it.” Still heaving, Harley chuckled.

“Catch your breath,” she told me. “Because that’s also rule number four: breathe. Breathe deep and relax as much as you can. The more the relax, the more you can focus. You’ll hit harder, and you won’t injure as easily.” She stopped speaking and circled me still. I caught my breath and stood tall, following her with my eyes as far as I could without turning with her. “Now, focus, and try to hit me,” Harley commanded.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and I did as she said. I focused, or at least I tried. My eyes opened with a new determination as I tried to catch Harley in my sights, but she continued circling. I listened to sound of her feet, glanced down to follow her shadow as she instructed, and when time seemed right, I swung. Harley caught my fist tight in her hand, and she threw my arm down, laughing still. “Nice try,” she quipped, a smirk on her face. “But that was the worst punch I’ve ever seen in my life. Did you literally just take a blind guess and swing at me?”

Through her laughter, I rolled my eyes a little. “Yes,” I admitted with annoyance and reluctance. Harley only laughed harder.

“Flow is key,” she told me. “That’s rule number five,” Harley announced, throwing her arms in the air for a moment. “Punching blindly will only get you hurt, cupcake. Feel the motion. Openings will present themselves. Just wait for ‘em.” She smiled a bit and paused. “Then, comes rule number six,” she told me with a sly smile on her face. I watched her with caution, but silence took over and rattled my bones. While I was busy focusing on her face, I felt her ankle collide with mine, and suddenly, my feet came out from under me, and I felt my body hit the ground with a sudden thud. “Balance.”

“Ow,” I groaned, trying to peel my face off the tile, but the toe of her boot pressed hard into my abdomen, and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up again. I coughed, spitting onto the cement floor a little. A muffled moan escaped my mouth, and I bit my lip. My eyes opened to see Harley above me, staring down at me, still circling.

“And the obvious rule number seven!” Harley shouted as she laughed above me. “Defend yourself!” She continued to circle, and I started to feel dizzy. Motion blurred, and at times, she was split in three, like he had two identical clones following close behind her. “Soft spots are key, cupcake. Aim for the face, the temples, the kidneys, you get my point. You don’t have to hit hard; just strike to incapacitate. Scratch, bite, claw, spit, pull their hair, go for the eyes. What have you. Just go for the weak point, and aim to do harm.”

My chest heaved, and I shook with pain. She was right. She did hand my ass to me, and she was going to do it several times after this, so I had to get used to it. Harley finally stopped moving, and she crouched forward, extending her hand. Weakly, I reached for her, and her hand grasped my wrist and tugged me to my feet. “Seems like enough for one day,” she chuckled. “We’ll pick this up another time. I’ve got other places to be.”

With that, Harley left me, hopping down into the main tunnel and walking off into the darkness. My vision returned, and I found myself alone in an empty room again. Tears stung my eyes and spilled across my cheeks, but I wasn’t sure at this point whether it was from the crippling pain wracking my body (a sensation totally foreign to me) or from the emotional distress from feeling so alone and confused. Unable to entertain myself, I went back to my perch against the wall, and I tilted my head against it.

I just wanted to go home, and nobody was going to take me.