Scion

Murray McDonald

Published by Murray McDonald

Copyright 2011 Murray McDonald

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Chapter 1

He was lost in a world of pain. Where he was, who he was, why he was there, unimportant. His only goal was stopping the pain. And he was failing.

Just when
he thought the pounding in his head would never stop, it did.

“Police! Throw your weapons down and come out with your hands up!” came the shout from behind the door.

His mind struggled to understand what was happening. Had the pounding been in his head or not? Where was the shout coming from? Was he imagining it or was it real?

“This is the police! Open the door or we’ll  break it down!”

The fuzziness began to clear. He opened his eyes. The light seared his brain. Pain pulsed as each vein expanded and contracted. The room was spinning or was he spinning? He snapped his eyes shut but the room kept moving. It wasn’t him, it was the room. He tried to focus. What had happened? From the glimpse he had caught of the room, he knew it wasn’t his room. He’d arrived and gone for a meal. He’d had one pint but after that, he couldn’t remember a thing. The words began to make sense. Police, open up, break it down. 

“You have ten seconds or we’ll break the door down!”

Each word assaulted him like a baseball bat in the face, the shockwaves of sound blasting him one by one. After a few seconds, the words began to come together, ten seconds, break door. What did they want?

“Put your weapons down!!!”

Weapons? What the hell? His mind began to focus. He didn’t have any weapons. He was in Cambridge, on the university campus. He was a student. Scott the assassin had been left behind. He was Scott the student now or at least he hoped he was.

As the door crashed open
, he tried to move, his mind intuitively reacting to the assault. However, his stomach had other ideas and Scott the student deposited its contents all over the floor. Scott the assassin had most definitely been left behind.

Chapter 2

Detective Sergeant Kelly was second into the room and realised instantly something was very wrong.

“Cuff him!” screamed Detective Chief Inspector Harris, her superior who was kneeling on the suspect’s back.

“Sir, he’s not going anywhere,” she replied ignoring her superior
’s call for cuffs.

Harris turned
away from her angrily and barked at the officer behind her. “Officer, cuff him,” he ordered.

Kelly surveyed the small room as Harris and the officer
restrained the already incapacitated suspect. It was clinical. A bed, a table, a chair, nothing else. No stash of weapons, no sign of any personal belongings, just a drunken comatose student being manhandled by the police. She walked across to the small window and looked down at the chaos below. Police expert shooters, temporary barriers, news crews, floodlights, crowds of students waiting impatiently in varying degrees of undress, huddling to stay warm in the chill of the autumn night and desperate to get back to their beds. She looked back at Harris yanking the suspect from the bed and doing his best to keep him upright. The young man swayed erratically. She had waited ten months to catch this bastard. Five girls raped, the first four almost beaten to death but it just didn’t feel right.

“Don’t just stand there gawping
, woman. Give me a hand!” he shouted.

Kelly walked across and helped Harris stabilise the suspect
. It was obvious he wanted to be seen escorting the suspect from the block.

“Sir, this isn’t right
. It just doesn’t fit.”

“Rubbish, this is the room the victim pinpointed and here he is, exactly
where she said he’d be.”

“But look at him
. Are you telling me this guy just raped someone? Look at him, he can’t stand up never mind stand to attention if you know what I mean.”

“He knew he was cornered and dr
ank himself stupid.”

“With what
? The room’s empty. There’s nothing in here and where are the weapons?”

“She was brutally raped, she may just
have imagined them.”

“
Imagined them? We’ve been here for three hours, we’ve had people believe we’ve got a crazed gunman in here. It’s Virginia Tech in Cambridge. We’re being beamed live across the world and she may have fucking imagined the guns and him being deranged?!”

Harris paused as the implications of the level of response he had ordered began to register. The evacuation of the accommodation blocks, the request for specialist marksmen from neighbouring police forces
, the news crews that had grown by the minute, the interviews confirming the Cambridge Ripper was trapped in the building, heavily armed and in a psychotic state. The links to Virginia Tech were instantly made and Cambridge was number one news across the globe.

Kelly looked at the suspect again
.

“
How would you describe him?” she asked angrily.

“Six foot, slim and dark hair.”

“I’m a woman like the victim and I would not describe this guy like that. He’s the original diet coke guy, tall dark, and drop dead fucking gorgeous.”

“So what are you saying, he’s not the rapist?”

“I seriously doubt it.”

With that thought ringing in his ears, Harris began to pull the suspect towards the door and with
Kelly’s help, manoeuvred him downstairs towards the waiting press.

Scott
was struggling to understand a single word they were saying. All his energies and thoughts were focussed on holding onto the remainder of his stomach, something the motion was making difficult. At the bottom of the stairs, a door opened and a wall of light hit him like a sledgehammer. His concentration went from preventing sickness to covering his eyeballs but, with his hands cuffed, the manoeuvre looked more like a wild jerk than a defensive motion.

As Harris opened the door, the suspect struggled wildly
. Any thoughts of innocence evaporated as the suspect fought against Harris and head butted him in the stomach. Harris, not one for modern political correctness, responded automatically and punched the suspect hard in the stomach sending him crashing to the floor head first. With no hands to protect him, the suspect thudded onto the concrete floor. Vomit spewed from his mouth as his body spasmed uncontrollably.

Kelly
looked on in horror as the news media caught every gruesome detail. After a second of stunned silence, she jumped into action, waving wildly for a police van and bundled the suspect and Harris into the back. They left the news crews with a final comment, a tyre squeal, as they got the hell out of there.  

Chapter 3

“Shut the door,” he barked as the girl walked into his office
.

Darius was not impressed
. The girl had been in his house for four days and hadn’t turned a single trick. He ran the best whorehouse in Washington D.C.. His girls were some of the hardest working in the State. Open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, they never missed a trick, never.

“Well?” he asked without raising his head from the papers on his desk.

“Well, what?” asked Rosie cheerily, opting for the smaller chair rather than the large lounge chair as she sat down.

Darius raised his head slowly from his papers and fixed Rosie with a stare that did not leave any doubt as to his demeanour.

Rosie squirmed in her seat. Darius had always been a perfect gentleman to her. Of course, she had heard stories from the other girls of what could happen if you got on his wrong side but up until that point, they had not really sunk in.

“I’ve not been feeling well,” stammered Rosie, understanding exactly why Darius was pissed off.

Darius flicked a sheet of paper across the desk without breaking his stare. Rosie saw the sheet flash below her and land on her lap but did not look down. Her eyes were transfixed. She felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a freight train. Something bad was about to happen and there was nothing she could do about it but watch as the inevitability of the event unfolded.

“What’s that
?” she asked, her voice beginning to tremble.

“That,” responded Darius forcefully as he reached for his lighter
. “Is how much money I should have made on your scrawny little ass over the last four days.”

Rosie dropped her gaze towards the paper and instantly knew she had made a mistake.
Darius’ motion to retrieve his lighter was nothing more than a deliberate distraction. As Rosie’s eyes moved towards the paper, his left hand hit her like a sledgehammer, her cheek and jaw bearing the full brunt of the blow. She fell backwards in her chair and landed unceremoniously on the floor and immediately rolled into a tight foetal position. The left side of her face exploding with pain.

Darius stood
up slowly, walked around his desk and towards the cowering Rosie, towering over her, at 6’ 4” and over 250 lbs. Rosie curled up even tighter, anticipating further blows. She was left with no doubt that every story she had heard about him was true. Had she been sitting in the high backed chair to her right, rather than the flimsy wooden one she had chosen, she would not have been thrown back and the full force of the punch would have had nowhere to go but into her skull and would have surely killed her. She did not think for a second that Darius had taken this into consideration when he had thrown his punch.

“Get up
,” he commanded angrily.

Rosie shook her still aching head in defiance, she was not going to give up her defensive position lightly.

“Get up, I’m not going to hit you again,” he said in a softer tone, adding as he walked back to his seat. “I’d have to charge less if you had too many bruises.” 

Rosie watched through a gap in her arms as he retreated behind
the desk, sat down and catching her eye, motioned for her to get up. She tentatively stood up, her right hand held her face while she desperately tried to steady herself with her left. Her first attempt failed as her legs gave way and she crumbled back to the floor. Darius rose from his seat.

“It’s OK, I’ll manage
,” said Rosie proudly.

Darius shrugged his shoulders and sat back down, relaxing in his seat as he watched Rosie stagger to her feet,
pick up the small chair and sit down.

Rosie was groggy but it was not the first time she had been punched and was certain
it would not be the last.

Four days
. Rosie could hardly believe she had been there that long. She had heard of ‘The Palace’, more recently referred to as ‘Darius’’ in honour of its relatively new owner. Whatever your sexual preference, The Palace catered for you, so long as it was legal. However, recent rumours were beginning to suggest that the new owner was more lax with what was legal. Rosie had been introduced to Darius through a mutual acquaintance and on seeing the young beauty, he had wasted no time in offering her a place at The Palace with a significant increase on her current percentage.

Darius
eyed Rosie as she sat back down. He was beginning to have second thoughts about this girl. He had thought she was too good to be true when he was introduced to her. Nobody who looked as good as she did was on the game and if they were, they worked privately charging thousands of dollars per night. She was too skinny for him, he preferred his woman with a bit more meat but it didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate true beauty when he saw it. This girl should be in the movies not on her back screwing a punter for fifty bucks. If it hadn’t been for the acquaintance who had introduced her, he would have sworn she was a set up, particularly as she had still not turned any tricks.

“
Who are you really?” he demanded.

Rosie panicked
although managed to remain calm. Did he know the truth? Was that really why she was in there? If so, she was already dead.

“What do you mean
? I’m Rosie,” she smiled, straining every muscle in her face to make it look as natural as possible.