BDCEMF - Chapter Five

5

‘A favour?’ thought Jeff ‘She did this to me and expects a favour?!’

Sam echoed his thoughts ‘Look, I know we’ve got no right to ask you for anything after the way you were brought here.’

She moved closer and Jeff inhaled deeply of her fragrance. The deep flowery scent reminded him of the days before The Mishap, when summer days were filled with the aromas of cut grass and flowers. He knew though, that this fragrance was a mere chemical sham.
The high technology discovered after The Mishap had led to a bloom in devices meant to alter human perception. New technology, new forms of drugs, new ways to escape reality. And this perfume was no different. It was fashioned to be the ultimate love potion, with slogans that pronounced how effective it was. It was effective, sure, but not as a love potion. It merely blurred the sense of the victim and distorted the perceptions they got of the wearer. It was hypnosis in a bottle.

These thoughts racing through Jeff’s mind stopped as Sam traced her fingers down his cheek and gently lifted his head back, exposing his neck. Sam saw the rough scar on his throat, a star-shaped mark that offered a pale contrast to the dark skin surrounding it.

‘Hmm…so you’re mute huh?’ Sam asked.

Jeff looked towards her and nodded. It was nothing he was ashamed of. It had happened in the years before The Mishap. Jeff had been working on a faulty mainline valve-head that had been causing problems for the down-flow of oil from one of the wells he was based at. The valve-head, a large, round crimson-red lump of metal bolted down with rivets, had suffered from a hair-line crack near one of the rivet heads. This made the pipeline pressure very unstable and Jeff was working on it when it blew. Shards of metal flew like flak from an anti-aircraft gun, one piece embedding itself in the Roustabouts voice box. He hadn’t been able to talk since.

Sam walked behind Jeff and uncuffed one of his arms from the metal restraints. He pulled his arm free and shook some feeling back into it. When the pins and needles had subsided, Sam placed a small keypad into his free hand. On the pad was a small black rubberised keyboard with an inset optic bulb. As Jeff began to type furiously the bulb lit up and the words began to appear in front of his and Sam’s face.

‘A favour?’ Jeff typed ‘You kidnap me, chain me up and ask for a favour?’

‘I know and I’m sorry. But if we’d just walked up to you and asked you nicely, would you have even stopped to listen?’ asked Sam

‘Hell no! I don’t want anything to do with you damned cultists, even if you paid me!’

‘See, this is where it’s going to get tricky then. We need someone for this mission…someone who isn’t going to be easily linked with us. That someone is you, and like it or not, you’re going to help us.’

‘What makes you say that? I don’t need money, I don’t need sex and I sure as hell don’t need promises of an afterlife!’

‘Don’t you want to know about your brother?’ asked Sam

Jeff looked her straight in the eye, the effect of the perfume fading, being replaced with a burning feeling in the pit of his stomach. During The Mishap, Jeff had lost contact with his brother, separated as were so many other families during that time of turmoil. He had been searching the Registers of the Deceased in every two-bit town he had passed through since the world had resettled. There were no records and after 2 years, Jeff had finally given it up as a lost cause.
The fact that this woman, this cultist, even knew he had a brother caught his interest. He lowered his gaze and began typing again. The words appeared in the air in front of him.

‘How do you know about my brother?’ he typed.


‘Because he’s my husband’ Sam answered