How to cut a Ruby - Chapter 5 C

Rough calloused hands gripped Ruby's chin and forced her to look up. Her eyes were nearly swollen shut, and her entire body ached from the pounding of fists and stomping of reinforced steel toes. She struggled through the blood, sweat, and haze in her eyes to focus on the face of the man craning her neck back, but the bright light directly behind him made him nothing more than an impending silhouette.

Ruby could barely hear his voice through the thumping in her head. It was as though her ears were smothered in a soft down pillow, like when she was a kid, trying to bury out her mom's voice when it a Monday morning school day: only this was far from soft and comfortable. She focused on the man's muffled voice, making out only bits of the conversations.

"...her the drug as soon as we ... won't pose a threat ... enough to stop a man twice her ... for Burkholder to get here..."

She defiantly struggled to lift her chin from the man's hand and tugged against her binds. The hand slapped her across the face as she resisted him, and she responded in turn by spitting a mouthful of blood into his face.

Ruby's actions earned her another swift punch to the face. She started to laugh loudly at her captors, tilting her head back and closing her bruised eyes to feel the room spin haphazardly. She called out to them in a sing-song voice, "Ain' gonna make me say nothin', twats! Jus' you wait till I get free! Boy, will you be fuckin' sorry!"

One of the men in the room had obviously had enough. He stormed towards her, grabbed her hair roughly, and pressed his pistol against her temple. This only made Ruby laugh even harder. "Shoot me, motherfucker! See how Burkholder likes THAT!" The man cocked the barrel and jerked her head by the hair. "DO IT, YOU FUCKING PUSSY!", Ruby taunted.

The door to the room busted open, and a familiar authoritative voice bellowed.

"Stand down! Don't kill her until we know what she stole from us!"

The rough hands released her, and the cold nozzle of the gun was taken from her head. She couldn't help but smirk.

"'ey Burkholder. That you? I'm sorry, did yer men drag you away from yer pedestal o'bullshit jus' t'deal with li'l ol' me?"

Burkholder growled and kicked the chair out from under her. She slumped heavily to the floor. Her legs and wrists were both tightly bound, but she still managed to find the strength to try rolling away. Burkholder grabbed her roughly by the elbow and tugged her 5 foot tall frame to her knees. He growled at his guards to leave the room and waited for the heavy steely clang of the door before he started his work.

"Arrigh' Burkholder. Y'got me, but y'don' got what we took from ya. Now what?" Ruby smugly grinned at him. He kicked her in the stomach and she buckled over, laughing at him as more blood poured from her mouth and spattered onto the floor.

"You've been more trouble than you're worth, little girl." Burkholder dragged her to her knees again and started circling her. "If you didn't destroy our databases, steal our secrets, and threaten our security, I would have killed you a very long time ago. I'm going to enjoy making you tell me what you were after."

"So, why didn't ya? Why don't ya now? Is th' stuff we stole that important?"

"Shut up!" He punched her between the shoulders and kicked her in the ribs while she was down. She gasped for breath and choked slightly on the fluids in her throat. She forced herself to start laughing again, despite how her entire body screamed at her to give in. She would give Burkholder no satisfaction.

"Y'can' handle a WOMAN! Fucking PATHETIC! How'd you even manage t'make it past Colonel, Burkholder? Whose dick did you suck, HUH?"

Her taunting was rewarded with a surly kick to the face, and her battered body was flung to the floor, her head cracking sickly against the concrete. She opened her eyes and saw nothing but flashing and stars, she felt the gooey heat of blood spilling out of her nose and all over her face, and she tasted copper in her mouth. She vaguely wondered how much blood she had swallowed. She rolled onto her side and spat another mouthful of blood on the floor, her laughter starting up again. She couldn't help it at this point: it was the only thing keeping her in the right mindset.

Burkholder's heavy footsteps approached her, but stopped short as the shrill ring of a cell phone pierced the room. He turned away from her and stepped towards the door.

"Yes? Yes. She's here. No, nothing. Are you sure?" Burkholder glanced over his shoulder at Ruby, who had stopped laughing and was laying very, very still apart from her ragged breathing. "If I do this, we're even. I don't owe you anything else. We won't be needing your assistance," he hissed. "She's a real fucking problem, but it will be over soon."

Burkholder balanced the phone between his shoulder and ear as he tugged his gloves on. He took the phone in a gloved hand and nodded at the voice that had been speaking to him. "It won't get back to you. I'm taking care of her, myself." He watched Ruby, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the possibility that she may have passed out again without giving him what he wanted to know. He addressed the voice on the phone one last time. "Don't worry. It won't be found. We're very good at hiding them. You'll hear from me when it's done."

The clamshell cell phone was snapped shut and placed in his pocket. Ruby had been taking deep breaths to focus her strength. She felt the fury of Hell burning in her chest and begging to be freed. Burkholder isn't the guy? Who is he working for? That cell phone...

Burkholder grabbed Ruby's arm and roughly pulled her to kneel. She tilted her head back and grinned at him mirthlessly. Burkholder wound up to punch her in the face for taunting him again, but couldn't swing fast enough to connect it. The Crey drug worked. Ruby's body exploded into flame with a sonorous roar, and the sheer force of the inferno nearly threw Burkholder through the wall.

Ruby rose to her feet, her body running on nothing but pure willpower, and focused her fires to burn hot enough to disintegrate the ropes binding her wrists and ankles. She tugged an epi-pen from its hidden spot in her boot and thrusted the needle into her chest with a shaky hand. She threw the empty syringe on the floor and turned her penetrating green eyes on Burkholder. She grabbed the chair she had been sitting on earlier and wedged it between the floor and the doorknob to buy a few minutes of time. She then turned to the stunned and disoriented Burkholder, that same mirthless grin plastering her bruised and battered face.

Rein... if yer out there... now's th' time t' come in an' help me!