-x-x-x-
The man is idle. His brain is buzzing with heightened anticipation. He would get up and pace the room, if it wasn’t for his disability.
A bright red phone rests on the edge of his glass desk. His pale hand lingers over the receiver. The other hand taps a hurried rhythm on his knee.
It won’t be long now, he thinks to himself. But I need it to be now.
The gold plague on his desk reads Loren Mark, Mark Industries. Not that the plague needs to sit there. The lucky few allowed entry into his private penthouse study are the kind of people who would already be familiar with his title.
Loren’s attire for the day is a tailor-made, black collar shirt and designer jeans. He was a man with a taste for fashion, and for success. His black hair is styled professionally, groomed and held back with a gel.
At last, the red phone rings. He hurriedly picks it up.
"Leon?"
A grunt in response. "You won't believe our luck."
Loren leans forward in his chair. "Go on."
He was expecting the good news, but the realisation of it suddenly hits him and he hangs onto every word his lieutenant speaks.
"Two of our wanted are in the same house. Seems like they've made acquaintance with each other." Leon pauses. "If there's an opportunity to attain them, it's now."
"Are you organised?"
"I've equipment the men with the serums, the target's birth records have been burnt, and the older target's house could be demolished immediately by a single phone call. We're more then prepared."
"As I would have expected," Loren says, his face stretching into a smile unlike the devil's He leans back in his chair.
"Do we have your word, sir?" Loren lets the question hang in the air, to toy with Leon's emotions. After awhile, however, his humour evaporates.
"Don't make me regret my decision to go ahead," Loren warns, then places down the receiver, ending the phone call.
-x-x-x-
"So, how do you work one of these contraptions?"
"It's simple, mister," says Cherrie, eyes shining, "You press this button and then this one and then my parents answer."
Mr. Scott pushes down a bony finger to the button on the foreign device in his hand, and is surprised to hear a whirling noise in response.
"I've only know how to work the traditional cord phones," he explains to the girl, "but this- I've never seen a phone like this."
"Phone? What's phone?"
The pair of them look at each other with eyebrows raised.
"Isn't this a phone?" Scott glances down at the device in his hand and back up again to make a point.
Cherrie's eyes narrow and she pulls a face. She shakes her head.
"This is a holographic mobile."
Holographic? Scott had heard that word before. As a strapping young man, he recalled visiting a movie theatre to watch a film called Star Wars. He was sure he'd heard that word from that movie.
Of course, since his sixties, he hasn't followed the media, so to this "holographic mobile", Scott was clueless. If Cherrie was really saying today's technology had advanced so much so that live video holograms were possible—
"Look! Mum and dad's connected!"
A bright beam of rainbow light bursts from the mobile in his hand. Little microscopic pieces of the lights scramble around, trying to assemble an image. They work from top to bottom, meshing together and swirling in a colourful display. The heads of two adults appear, followed by their faces and upper body. The blue room behind them is an unfocused blur, but the adult's images are so sharp you'd have sworn they were here in the flesh, apart from their apparent lack of a lower body, which hasn't been transmitted at all.
Scott hands back the device and its attached adults to Cherrie, who scoops the mobile in her palms. She twists the projected screen on an angle so both herself and Scott have a clear view of her parents.
Scott doubles back when the figures on the screen start to move and talk.
"Cherrie May Déqua!" screeches the female, an older replica of Cherrie in appearance, but darker in skin tone.
"Where've you been?" says the male, a man with short blonde hair, stubble, dark eyes and an athletic figure. His eyebrow is raised, unimpressed.
Cherrie immediately protests.
"Mum! Dad! I've been selling chocolates!"
"But you're not home yet, and it's late!" Cherrie's mother shouts. "And by god, who is that man you're with?"
"Nice to meet you ma'am. My name is Henry Scott—" he offers a hand to shake before he realises his blunder. He swings it down again ashamedly, but not before the mother and father exchange bewildered glances.
"He's given me this book. See?"
Cherrie swivels the screen to the fairytale book on the ground, and back up to her and Scott again.
"Cherrie, what have we told you time and time again about strangers?" her mother says tiredly, completely ignoring that Scott was standing right in front of the screen.
"Never accept anything from them," Cherrie grumbles dully.
Scott scratches his chin. "Err— Hannah and Aiden Déqua, I take it?" he questions.
The father is confused.
"How do you know our names?" Aiden narrows his eyes at Scott, but Hannah suddenly gasps.
"I know you! You're the one with that funny house!"
Scott recognises the insult, but takes it as if it were a compliment with a slight nod of the head.
"Yes. I do remember running into you one evening as you were jogging past. Quite hesitant to introduce yourself, if I recall properly."
Hannah blushes.
"Cherrie, make sure you've got everything with you. We'll drive over to collect you right now," she says, changing the subject, and with a hastily said goodbye, the connection between them is cut off.
Cherrie slowly stashes the holographic mobile into her skirt pocket, and turns to face Scott.
The weather has taken a turn for the cold, and a chilly breeze sends Cherrie into shivers. She looks up at Scott with wide eyes, unsure of what to say next. There is silence.
"Cherrie, you'd better not stay out here, you're freezing," Scott says soothingly, shaking his head. "Come inside while you wait for your parents to arrive."
Cherrie shifts her gaze to the house, and back to Scott again. She makes no attempt to move.
"You'll be safe," Scott reassures, taken aback by this sudden resistance. "I'm not a stranger, despite what your parents might believe. After all, didn't I just take you on an adventure through the sevens seas?"
This seems to melt Cherrie's sudden fear.
"I know that," she says with a smile and a wink, and hurries to the door.
Scott humbles over to let her in, and together they walk inside.
Cherrie breathes in sharply as she swallows in her surroundings.
Scott's home is swarmed by all things beautiful, old, and most noticeably to Cherrie, breakable. Mahogany shelving lines the western wall of the entrance room, cramming to bursting point with books. There are vases of all shapes and sizes, filled with flowers.
She shuffles to the next room. A fireplace holds embers of a once roaring inferno. A chair rests in front of it. Sitting on its arms are a pair of reading glasses and a book. Coloured portraits of people cloud the walls, and a furry blue rug protects the wooden floor beneath it.
"You've got a place just like—" she runs to the chair with the glasses and plonks herself on it, "—just like a house from a fairytale!"
The man laughs wheezily. "Well, thank you. I do try to keep it that way." He gazes to the floor and adds a muttered, "no matter how much the government wish to demolish it."
Cherrie pays no attention. She's busy staring up at all of the photos in frames upon the walls.
"Who are these people?" she asks.
Scott walks over and lays a hand on her shoulder.
"My family," he whispers.
Cherrie looks at the shoulder, and up to Scott's face.
"Where are they now?" she whispers back.
Scott's eyes glaze over and lift to stare at the roof. It takes awhile for him to respond.
"In a better place," he says simply. Cherrie does not press further.
In the silence stretched between the two, there comes a screeching sound all too familiar with the sound of tyres suddenly coming to a halt on the road. Cherrie runs to the window facing the front of the house, and peeks through the blinds.
Emerging from two sleek, silver cars are men with identical haircuts, in identical dark grey shirts and matching dark grey pants. Each man carries a deadly-looking device in hand, apart from the one at the back of the pack, who carries sheets of paper, too far away to read the writing on it.
Scott appears beside Cherrie, and peeks a glance at the men. He stumbles backwards and almost trips over.
"It's the government!" he squeals. "They've finally come to claim my home!"
A bang against the door is heard, and then an almighty crash follows as the men slam the door open. They burst from the front room into the very room where Cherrie is panicky and where Scott is in a state of hysterics.
"You can't take it from me! I've worked my whole life—"
The sentence is never finished, for at that moment one of the men aims a gun-like machine at Scott's neck, and a dart is ejected into his throat. Scott is out before he collapses to the floor.
Cherrie shrieks and ducks behind the chair. She is just not quick enough. A dart clips her ankle and the girl passes out instantly.
Scott is wrong. These men aren't from the government.
Two of the men hoist their bodies upright and fling them over their shoulders. They march out of the house, lay the targets in the boot of the cars where cages awaits them both, and without another sound, the men drive off.
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