Broken Storm Part One (8 page)

C
hase Harlow

No more stuffing around, no more keeping this to himself.

It had turned ugly and serious fast, and though Chase
was a lot of things, he was not above the law.

He called the police, specifically one of his
friends from high school.

Hell, in the mood Chase was in right now, he could
have called the Army, called the President herself, a personal friend.

Because he was ready to move earth and heaven to
get her back.

He’d dragged her into this, and now Keiko Teshi was
facing a danger she couldn't comprehend.

'It'll be a small unit,' Frank said as he stalked
around in front of Chase’s desk.

Frank was a detective, the best the city had, and
he was also Chase’s long-standing friend.

'I didn't recognize the guy,' Chase pointed out for
the umpteenth time.

'That means nothing. He could have been a mercenary
or a local hired gun. Though I doubt the last one; we are dealing with
professionals, after all,’ Frank snapped.

Chase nodded slowly. He felt sick.

He had a reason to feel sick. He couldn't stop
thinking about her, and more to the point, what they would be doing to her.

She didn't seem to be the kind of girl that could
live through something like that. She seemed to be the kind of girl that would
fall apart at the first sign of trouble.

Well now she was in trouble, more trouble than most
people could imagine.

The guilt crashing into him in another thick and
powerful wave, Chase pushed himself backwards in his chair.

'They would be keeping her locally; they're not
stupid enough to drive across the border with a body in the back,' Frank
pointed out.

These were already facts Chase had thought of.

He didn't need any more brainstorming; he needed
someone to
do
something. He needed somebody on the ground to find out
where they were keeping her, and he needed them to send in their best team to
get her back.

'Chase, we’re doing everything we can,' Frank
paused, looking directly at his friend, his expression reassuring.

There was nothing that could reassure Chase right
now though. Nothing save for Keiko walking back through that door.

Though in that moment the door did open, Chase did
not snap his glance up to see her face.

Instead Victor leaned in.

He was aware of the situation, and aware of the
fact Chase had specifically asked not to be disturbed. But the expression on
Victor's face was a crumpled, confused, strange one, and it got Chase’s
attention.

'You really need to see this,' he said in a careful
voice, giving a light cough at the end.

Chase was about to sell him to close the door and
go away, but something about the way Victor looked at him made Chase pause.

He got to his feet, mumbled at Frank that he would
be right back, and walked out into the corridor, closing the door.

Maybe Chase needed to be distracted right now,
because if he sat in that chair, staring at Frank and listening to every single
suggestion the competent Detective could make, he would probably go insane.

'What is it?' Chase said through a clenched jaw.

'I've pulled up the security footage on her,'
Victor said.

Chase ground his teeth together. 'Victor, let it
go, she doesn't work for them. They just kidnapped her,' he snapped, the guilt
plucking at his spine again.

Victor put up his hands quickly. 'Come and have a
look at it, that's the only thing I'm asking.'

There was a very strange quality to his tone, and
his expression was one Chase rarely saw.

Victor was a hard man to surprise. The perfect man
to track down a mystery like the one that surrounded the wind goddess Aiko.

But right now he looked shocked, confused, and
rattled.

So Chase walked with him, down the corridor, into
another office, and sat there as Victor manipulated the keyboard, running
forward through footage Chase suddenly realized showed the area just outside
his office door.

The footage ran forward, and nothing much happened
until suddenly the door burst open and Victor leaned out, a clearly angry
expression on his face. Then the footage showed him shouting at somebody,
presumably off screen, before he grumbled, went back into the office, and closed
the door.

Victor paused the replay.

He looked up at Chase meaningfully.

Chase stared back.

‘What the hell is this? Victor? Did you just pull
me out of my office for this? It shows nothing.’

'What it shows, is me shouting at your friend Keiko,'
Victor said mysteriously.

Chase got up from his chair. ‘Did you really drag
me out to see this? She is obviously off screen.’

‘She is not off screen. She was standing right in
front of me,' he pointed out carefully.

‘Victor, I'm looking at the footage now, there's
nobody there,’ Chase said through an exasperated breath.

‘But there
was
somebody there, that's what
I'm trying to tell you, she was clearly in shot, she is just not... on the
footage,’ he managed. Then Victor, a man fiendishly hard to rattle, looked up
at Chase with a shaky expression.

Was this some kind of game? Was Victor trying to
distract Chase away from his guilt?

‘What the hell are you talking about, Victor?'

'I don't know. All I know is that she was standing
right in front of me. She was in line of the cameras. She should be on the
footage. But she’s not.’ He looked up sharply.

Silence spread between them.

Chase could hear the wind outside, however mutely,
as they were protected from it by thick, reinforced windows.

It caught his attention.

Did it blow harder and faster in that moment?

Chase was not a suspicious man. He was a man of
science. He'd wanted to devote his life to being a doctor, after all.

He was not religious, and he always wanted
something to be proven before he tried it.

Nonetheless, Chase had gotten stuck up in this
world. The mystery of Aiko.

And despite the fact he kept on telling himself,
trying to prove to himself that he certainly was not superstitious, the wind
outside clearly blew louder, buffeting against the windows despite their
strength.

There was no such thing as a goddesses of the
elements or spirits of nature.

They were relics from histories long past, myths no
longer needed in the modern age.

Yet Chase Harlow, 15 years ago, had been sitting in
his father's office when a statue of Aiko had exploded.

Some things could not be explained, and right now as
Victor looked up at him, his expression certainly not one of jest, Chase realized
this was another one of those things.

Swallowing hard, he tried to comprehend what he was
being told.

She was in view, she couldn't be seen.

What the hell did that mean?

Chase knew that there were certain technologies
being developed by the military that would allow the wearer to scramble footage
taken of them. But they wouldn’t disappear. The footage itself would simply
become filled with static. It was interference, not
this
, whatever this
was meant to be.

‘I'm telling you, she was in view,' Victor assured
him again.

Chase shivered. His whole body felt cold, from his
skin to his very bones.

He didn't know what to do with this fact, because
he had no idea what it meant, and no idea whether it was true. Perhaps Victor
was mistaken. Perhaps she hadn’t been in view or perhaps he had brought up the
wrong footage, some other moment of Victor tugging open the door to shout at
some unfortunate person along the corridor. It wouldn’t be the first time,
after all, that Victor Woolworth had let loose with his trademark bluster.

But no matter how hard Chase tried to convince
himself that this was nothing, a strange feeling niggled at his gut.

He backed off, heading towards the door. 'I don't
know what this means,' he said very honestly and candidly.

'Neither do I,' Victor confirmed.

'Just make sure...' Chase trailed off as he latched a
hand onto the door and opened it.

Make sure of what? That Victor wasn't mistaken?

How could he do that? Chase only had his friend’s
word here, and though Victor was trustworthy, what he was suggesting seemed
ridiculously fantastic, beyond the realms of science, into an area Chase was
not and would never be comfortable with.

'Are they any closer to finding her?' Victor asked
in a low, respectful voice.

Chase shook his head and finally walked out.

No they weren't.

But he knew enough to realize that the longer this
drew on, the more time would run out for Keiko.

The Sect were not forgiving. They were not
incompetent, and they would get exactly what they wanted, no matter what they
had to do to obtain it.

K
eiko had no idea what time it was, and she had no
idea how long she’d been sitting in this dark room, tied to the chair.

Without a clock or some other way to keep track of
the hours and minutes, they seemed to be swirling into one lump.

Long ago she'd stopped crying and the tears had
dried up, but her skin still tingled where they had tracked down her cheeks,
chin, and neck.

Though she sniffled occasionally, that was it. She
had stopped screaming and calling out for help. She just sat there, shaking
slightly, eyes closed against the dark.

Long ago she had stopped telling herself this was a
dream, some kind of terrible nightmare.

Because the reality had dawned on her.

It wasn't.

Keiko had been kidnapped.

They had taken a photo of her, then they had left, and
they had not returned once.

She tried to run through her head the possibilities
of what could be going on here, but she came up with nothing.

Nothing made sense.

Why would anyone kidnap her and take a photo of
her? She wasn't worth anything to anyone. It wasn't as if they could send a
photo to her parents and demand millions of dollars; they barely had enough to
retire.

The more time drew on, the more Keiko's thoughts
settled. The more she began to view her situation with a cold, horrid
detachment.

They were going to kill her, weren't they? That was
what happened in cases like this. She had seen their faces, after all. Whatever
the photo was about, it was a prelude to one thing. Her death.

The more she thought about it, the more detached
she became, but it was not an objective, scientific feeling; it made her numb,
as if she was half asleep.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ she tried to tell herself
once or twice.

But her promise was an empty and hollow one.

It was not going to be okay.

Keiko was trapped. She was weaker than her
kidnappers, and she had no opportunity, no chance for escape.

Unless someone came to get her, Keiko would be at
the mercy of her captors.

Even though she was in a closed-off room, it was
then that she heard the wind outside.

Though it had been a particularly blustery and cold
winter, it was nothing compared to the sound of the gale she now heard shake
through the building.

It seemed to be tearing at the roof above, clawing
at it, almost as if it wanted to get in.

It was the single thing that could distract her
from her situation. As she sat there, huddling close into herself, her back
aching as her arms were tied in such an unnatural position behind her back, she
focused all attention she had on the wind roaring outside.

She wanted to rush out into it. Let it pull against
her hair and clothes, and take with it every last one of her troubles.

But she could not get free. And in that moment, the
door opened. The light turned on. Keiko blinked violently against it, the
surprise of it shaking her in her chair.

Then she listened in horrified fascination as slow
steps made their way towards her.

She stopped breathing, maybe her heart stopped
beating, and she waited, waited for whoever was behind her to catch up and to
do whatever they would do next.

They would not get the chance.

She heard an almighty bang as something smashed
into something else. It sounded like the wind had caught the door and
practically ripped it off its hinges.

It shook her to the spot, and then Keiko felt it.
The violent, sudden rush of air as the wind made its way into the room, pushing
her hair over her ears and cheeks.

‘Jesus Christ,’ someone choked over their words. ‘Get
a hammer, prop it closed. The God damn wind’s going to yank it straight off its
hinges.’

Keiko strained her hearing, trying to turn around
as much as she could in the chair.

The wind was still pulling at her, playing against
the edges of her cardigan, pushing at her cheeks, racing against the still-tingling
tracks of skin were her tears had dried up hours before.

It bolstered her. Just for a second it gave her fate,
focused her attention on something other than how trapped she was.

‘Get it secured before there are any more gusts,’
somebody screamed.

Then there was an almighty roar from outside, and Keiko
snapped her head up just as she heard something rip from the roof.

She heard the men behind her swearing, heard their
footfall as they raced about.

But she focused only on the wind. It still pushed
its way into the room, still rushed around her.

And the more it did, the more it took her fear with
it.

There was another incredible bang as yet another
section of roof sounded as if it was ripped away.

More screams. More chaos. And more wind rushing in
towards her.

She could feel the storm outside growing. Surging
to its height.

She looked up a split second before a piece of roof
right above her was torn free in a frantic gust.

It was almost as if time slowed down as she stared
up, the metal yanking off in a screech and falling out of view.

It tugged a whole section of installation free as
it went, and some of it drifted down around her as the wind in the room picked
up and became more erratic, circling around and around, Keiko’s hair pushing
all over her face as it did.

She didn’t close her eyes to it. She didn’t try to
protect herself as best she could. She just stared upwards at the hole in the
ceiling above her.

She could see the sky above. The clouds. Even
though it was dark, she fancied she could still make out the view of them
rushing across the sky. Racing, powerful and fast.

Somebody ran into the room, but as they did, yet
another section of the roof ripped off. They flattened themselves to the floor,
hunkering their hands over their head as sections of ceiling fell about them.

Just as they did, the light above exploded. A track
of roofing must have smashed into it, crashing through the glass.

Keiko didn’t even shriek; she still had her face
turned up towards the sky above.

The glass fell fast, down towards the man. He
battered his hands against it, then got to his feet, heading over for Keiko.

He never made it.

Another section of roof ripped off, but this time
it did not fall outside; it slammed right through the building.

It struck him. With the full force of one of the
most powerful gales Keiko had ever seen.

She screamed and watched the man fall, hitting the
ground with a thud.

He didn’t move, the ragged, broken section of roof
covering him in full.

And that was when her eyes locked onto the broken
metal before her. It was sharp.

Sharp enough to cut through the cable ties that were
locking Keiko’s wrists in place and that kept her feet tied around each leg of
the chair.

Ignoring the wind, focusing on the metal as it
caught what little light filtered in through the broken roof above, she shifted
the chair over to it.

It was a slow, painfully awkward, hard process, but
she managed to reach it, then, with her heart in her mouth, expecting the other
man to run into the room and shoot her at any moment, Keiko pressed her ankles
into the metal, one by one, not caring that it cut her flesh, but grating up
and down until it snapped through the cable ties. Then she maneuvered herself
closer, trying to bend down, trying to turn around until her wrists reached the
ragged metal edge.

She had to move the chair right around until she
found a section of metal high enough and jagged enough to reach the cable ties.
Then, in the most frantic moment of her life, she rubbed against them, her
thumb and palms bleeding from the effort until finally the cable tie snapped.

Keiko pushed herself up from her chair.

She didn’t pause.

The wind roared even louder above, pulling more
sections of roof off.

It didn’t frighten her.

It bolstered her. As it slammed into her, it took
the last of her fear with it.

She ran out the door.

She didn’t look back.

She ran right into the night, right into the storm.

She escaped. The wind at her back, where it
belonged.