Beyblade Fan Fiction ❯ Intoxication ❯ Chapter 4 ( Chapter 4 )

Intoxication

Chapter 4

I've gotten so many lovely reviews since I started this fic. I'd like to thank everybody for taking the time to give me credit for my work. It's giving me incentive to write more ambitiously. Enjoy.

P.S: It's going to be about a week before I can get the next Chapter up, and then it will be after James Joyce's birthday. So stop all that guff, give up yer aul sins and have a good week!

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Kenny was minding his own business the day after the police left. The atmosphere within the Bladebreakers was sombre and melancholy. Takao spent all day going over every nook and cranny in the hotel, searching in vain for some sort of clue as to Rei's whereabouts. When he came up with nothing, he just sat on his bed with his head in his hands. Max couldn't go longer than ten minutes without bursting into tears, and refused to leave his room. Kai stayed in the courtyard of the hotel, spinning Dranzer over and over, seemingly deep in thought. So it was from early morning running into late at night. Kenny thought it would be best to retire to his own room and work on their Beyblades.

At around ten o clock at night, Kai suddenly burst into Kenny's room. All day, he'd been rather unemotional but now there was a look of grim determination etched into his face. He grabbed the chair that Kenny was sitting in and swung it around so that Kenny was facing him. When Kai spoke, the first time he'd said anything since around four o clock the previous day, his tone suggested he was not to be argued with.

" Set up your computer. We're hacking into the police files."

And then he was gone. Kenny adjusted his glasses slightly, and pulled up his Internet connection. Moments later, Kai reappeared with a sniffling Max and a morose Takao. He dragged his chair right up to the plywood table that the laptop was sitting on.

" What's going on, Kai?" said Takao. His voice sounded weak and reedy. Kai's in contrast was quiet but confident.

" Kenny's going to hack into the police files. That Kane guy knows something, and if he's not going to help us, then we'll help ourselves. We can't even begin to tackle this until we know what we're dealing with."

Hearing the conviction in Kai's words, Max and Takao brightened. Kenny looked unsure, but how could he refuse? With a sigh, he began hacking. Three times firewalls kept him from the confidential files, but at last he broke through and entered the police system files. The amount of folders, each with hundreds of profiles, were staggering.

" How are we going to find Rei's case? There must be thousands of cases, and the names are no help."

For a moment, Max's hopes had been raised. Now they were dashed again. The files all had cryptic names, such as Little Man Tate and Blind Alleycat. To casual observers, it was a mess of obscure reference points. Kenny, however, was no casual observer. He had an intensely analytical mind and knew his way around complicated structures such as this. Without a word to explain his actions, he eliminated hundreds of files with a few typed letters. The others looked on in amazement.

" Just what are you doing, chief?" Takao was used to having Kenny explain everything he did. The fact that he was so quiet about something so important was unsettling.

" I organized the files according to age, gender, crime genre and investigating officer. Rei's in one of these five."

Sure enough, only five folders remained on the screen. Kenny opened each one after the other. Three were simple custody cases involving a son kidnapped by a parent. Two ended in murder and suicide. One involved a boy so obsessed with another that he abducted the boy and locked them both away for two weeks. The case was dismissed and the perpetrator was sent to a home for the mentally ill. Then there was only one.

" That's gotta be it! We're going to find out where Rei is!" Takao thought he'd be elated to discover this. Instead he felt just a sagging relief. Kenny spoke quietly, his voice warning them to prepare for the worst.

" He's placed in the Special Victims Unit."

" What does that mean?"

" It's usually reserved for cases involving paedophiles, rapists and sexual deviants."

Max closed his eyes tight. Takao had to swallow before he could trust himself to speak.

" Well, we don't know he's in there. He might not be on the system at all…"

" Open it, Kenny." Kai spoke through gritted teeth. Kenny did as he was told.

The file was called "The Borgia Case." And sure enough Rei's picture was there. It was a small portrait sized picture taken while Rei's mind was on other things. His hair was pulled back so that his face could clearly be seen and identified. But that picture was unimportant. What was important was what was in the rest of the file. After all, Rei's friends knew what he looked like. And because they could identify him, it made the photo seem all the more incongruous in the setting it was in. The Bladebreakers stared at the photo of their friend, surrounding by the terrifying truth of what had been kept from them.

" Jesus Christ…" breathed Max.

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The night of Rei's introduction to his captor ended with him crying himself into a coma-like sleep. It was impossible to tell just how long he had slept for. And when he woke up, the pillow he'd been resting on was damp. Under most circumstances, a person who finds themselves in such a predicament may jump to the conclusion that what happened the previous night was just a figment of a fevered imagination. However, Rei was absolutely certain that he wasn't dreaming. When his eyes fluttered open, the black/blue ceiling that floated into his vision confirmed this.

Clutching the all-too-revealing white sheet to his body, Rei pushed himself off of the bed. It was just too damn comfortable to lounge on for any length of time. Briefly his eyes met with those of the nymph who was still being accosted by that lecherous winged youth. Was that glimmer in her eye a dab of light deliberately placed by the artist or a sign that she sympathised with Rei's quandary? He couldn't tell, after all, wasn't she meant to be an inanimate object? Rei's ponderings on the supposed sentiments of the harassed girl was interrupted when a flash of red inside the grey-hued compartment caught his eye.

His uniform sat on a small shelf imbedded in the door, beside a tray of cold food. Rei treaded gingerly over the cold metal floor to the shelf, and picked up the garments. There wasn't much to say about them, except that they were made of some wispy, sheer material (rayon, perhaps) and they were a deep scarlet. They consisted of a set of loose trousers that would have looked indecent if not for the almost knee-length long sleeved tunic that covered them. The outfit was held together by thin pieces of ribbon, the tunic wrapping around the waist like a kimono. There were no shoes, or undergarments for that matter. And although it was better than having only that diaphanous sheet to preserve his modesty, once Rei was dressed in the provided clothes he felt ridiculously exposed. His eyes caught the nymph's again, was that glimmer a look of envy? Rei forced himself to look away. He investigated the food instead.

Although the fare was obviously prepared in haste and put together sloppily, it was expensive stuff. There was a salad made with some exotic-looking leaves, a few slices of bread dotted with herbs and smelling of garlic and a wine glass half full of red liquid. Rei sniffed it. Definitely alcoholic. His subjugator was trying to spoil him with sophisticated food and intoxicating drink. Even so, Rei ate the food quickly without savouring the taste and drank the wine, which burned his throat unpleasantly. It was only after he had finished eating that he saw the note. The kidnapper had an elegant Copperplate script, scrawled neatly across a thin slip of paper. It was the kind of handwriting that suggested years of disciplinary practice.

Rei,

A bell will sound later on in the evening. When it does, you will have an hour to prepare. Exactly one hour after the bell, your door will open for ten minutes and close again. You will walk down the hall into the ballroom at the back of the building, where we will be having supper. Do not linger in your room, or in the hall for any longer than five minutes. Bathe before then, and wash your hair. Leave it loose.

C.

C? What did C stand for? Rei decided to comply, only because the man's madness was evident even in this tiny note. The orders, the precise time structure, the ballroom? Rei suddenly realised that he may have slept through the bell and panicked. How much time did he have to prepare, and what would happen if he didn't have enough time? He opened the door to the bathroom, and when he saw the inside he felt a wave of nausea.

The whole room, aside from the inside of the bath, the toilet and the sink, was covered with mirrors. One stretched over the entire ceiling, panes the size of the door adorned the walls, tiny pieces of glass were inlaid as a mosaic into the sides of the bathtub, even the floor was a mirror. And surrounded by several reflections of himself every which way he looked, Rei could help but notice how pale and thin he looked, like a ghost. The fear was already eating him alive. Shaking his head, Rei brought himself out of his stupor and started filling the tub. The bottle that C had given him was sitting beside the taps, alongside the shampoo and conditioner (both for fine and oily hair, just how much did C know about him?) and a cake of soap. Rei closed his eyes to the mirrors and undressed, then stepped into the tub.

Washing his hair had always been a tricky experience, and most of the time Rei had it pulled back to avoid having to do it. There were other reasons, but he liked to keep them at the back of his mind. He tried to get through it as quickly as he could, first massaging the oily substance through the wet tendrils, and then rinsing through the shampoo and conditioner. While he was washing the remnants of the conditioner out of the ends of his hair, he heard the bell ring. It was the kind of bell you might expect to hear at a convent or monastery, high pitched and glassy. He opened his eyes, and regretted it as soon as he caught sight of his hair wet and loose, flowing around his shoulders. Closing them again, he was relieved that now at least he knew that he had time to prepare himself for what was coming, both physically and mentally.

Rei dressed quickly, and for almost an hour he stood still in the metal room with his eyes closed. He didn't want to look at the paintings, no matter how beautifully painted they were. And just looking at the wall might not be worse, but it certainly wouldn't be better. As nervous as he was, as frightened about what might happen next, he actually found himself wishing the door would open. Surely what he was going to experience couldn't be worse than the suspense of waiting for it.

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, right? You know he's trying to keep you on edge, and it's working. But at least when that door opens you might have some idea of what you're up against. Because standing here like this, you might as well be blind and deaf. You're pretty helpless.

There was his sensible voice, but it sounded horribly cruel. But Rei had no time to feel hurt by the cutting edge of his internal monologue. There was three high-pitched beeps, then the door slid open. Rei opened his eyes and stared into the hall. The terror he had felt last night came back in full force, but he forced himself to step outside the cell. As soon as he was out, the cell suddenly seemed like the safest place in the world.

The hallway stretched out into the distance, beset on all sides by long windows and an array of different paintings. These paintings all appeared to be religious icons. There were several Madonna-and-child, including a reproduction of Da Vinci's Madonna with the Long Neck. Rembrandt's Flight into Egypt was placed beside the entrance to Rei's cell, and Titian's Ecce Homo was on the opposite wall. Rei decided against regarding the paintings for too long. With his arms wrapped around himself, he padded barefoot and without sound through the hallway.

Looking through the many windows was pointless, it was night and pitch black. The floorboards creaked lightly under Rei's feet, the huge candelabras bathed him in an amber glow. The whole atmosphere was unreal, like something out of a book by one of the Bronte sisters, gothic and brooding and filled with a sense of dread. He almost felt relief when the carved mahogany double doors appeared at the end of the hall. But after opening those doors, the relief dissipated. Rei was frozen in the doorway, unable to take another step. What was in the Ballroom was worse than anything he could have imagined in that little cell.

There was a long ornately carved table in the Ballroom surrounded by matching chairs, with placemats and expensive silverware at each seating. And each of these seats held a young man. They all looked up when Rei entered the room, about forty pairs of eyes altogether, and there were audible gasps from some of them. Their faces showed the strain of being held prisoner by a madman, but still their eyes held sympathy for the new arrival. Not one dared move, they all sat with their hands in their laps and their shoulders held rigid. Then, one of the men caught Rei's gaze and urged him to sit in the empty seat beside him. Rei complied, hurrying to sit before C appeared.

As soon as he was sitting down, Rei took a good look at the men surrounding him. They were all stunningly attractive in different ways, although none were as exotic-looking as Rei. Their ages seemed to range between well-preserved forties and early twenties. One of the men, who looked about thirty-two with blonde curls and narrow green eyes, made a sound as if he wanted to say something. The man beside him, a tall fellow with short black hair and brown eyes, shot him a look that said keep your mouth shut! The first man ignored it. His soft, nervous voice was just about quiet enough not to echo around the enormous hall.

" How old are you?"

Rei was surprised by the question, but he answered just as quietly.

" Fifteen."

The man shut his eyes tight. Some of the others looked away sadly. Then, everyone straightened in their chairs and focused their eyes far into the distance.

C had entered the room.