#doctormechanicweek

Her footsteps echoed as her feet hit the cold, hard concrete. There was no doubt in her mind that she had been spotted. She didn’t care. How could she? It was far too late to turn back, there was no other way to handle the situation. She pressed on, the black sneakers scuffing the cement of the sidewalk as she ran. There was someone chasing her, she was almost sure of it. Her hand went to her gun, resting against her hip. Should she shoot? Who was following her? Most importantly, why were they following her? She kept running.

Running, running, running. For what seemed like the longest time. Her hair swung, tied up in a ponytail. She felt like she had not been able to breathe in that whole time. She wasn’t sure. There was only one thing that she was almost certain of— the shadow cast behind her wasn’t her own but yet it seemed so familiar. She was enticed by it, the lack of sounds behind her both enigmatic and seductive in their own way. How could someone obviously be following her, and yet not let her catch a glimpse of them?

Her foot caught on a break in the sidewalk, sending her tumbling down.

“Please don’t kill me!” she cried out, shielding her face as the shadowy figure approached her. “I won’t tell, I promise! Just please don’t— please don’t kill me!”

“I am not going to kill you,” was all that fell from the woman’s lips. She took the girl by her hair, forcing her to stand. “Not yet, anyways.”

The girl looked at her in silence.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, pushing the barrel of a cold metallic object against the girl’s head. It was her own gun, she noticed, her hand on her hip. “Are you following me?” she questioned, eyes glimmering in the dark. “Who sent you?”

The girl said nothing, just nodded against the point of the cold weapon. What could she say? She had been caught, like a mouse under a rug. Her fate, likely to be the same as the rodent’s. “I— I won’t tell anyone,” she said in almost a whimper. The words were out of her mouth and in the air before she could think twice, “I promise.”

She could only hope that the genuine promise would elicit a response from the other.

But it didn’t.

The woman stood in front of her, looking at her with an unmoved look. Unlike the girl, she did not breathe heavily after being following the girl for so long, and she ignored the sweat running down her skin. “Tell me who are you and who sent you. Now.” the attacker commanded, pressing the gun harder against her temple. Then she yanked at her hair, pulling her close and looking into her eyes. Finally letting the girl see her full face. “Or tomorrow they’ll find your brain scattered on the ground.”

It was Abigail Griffin. The person who had been following her, the one that was holding her hair and pressing a gun against her temple, was trying to kill her. Abigail Griffin was a forty year old doctor in the Inova Fairfax Hospital in Washington DC. She lived in a beautiful big house in the suburbs, owned a black fancy car and had a daughter attending Harvard university.

Abigail Griffin was the woman that she was supposed to kill that night.

Raven couldn’t help but gasp, her surprise obvious. This woman was the woman she was supposed to kill. This woman was the one that was supposed to be in front of the gun, not behind it. This woman was not just a doctor, she realized. She was way more than that. Something much more scarier. And if she told her what she wanted to hear, they would kill her. But if she did not tell her what she wanted to hear, she would die this way. She was just as good as a piece of meat thrown to the wolves, ready to be eaten alive. Her life fell to the mercy of the unknown woman, a woman she had been following for weeks and yet she did not know much about.

The girl cringed, and Abigail smiled. As if she enjoyed, even loved, the situation. “Of course you can’t tell me,” the woman chuckled, moving her free hand. So there’s a they. CIA? “We’re going to do this,” she started, grinning. “I’m going to make simple questions, and you’ll answer. If you don’t…” She leaned and hovered her mouth over Raven’s ear, never stopping to point at her head. “I’ll pull the trigger.” she said with a macabre smirk. “Since when have you been following me and what have you seen?”

“I’ve—,” Raven shuddered at the sound of the voice in her ear. She took a shaky breath and turned her face, meeting the woman’s eyes. “I’ve been following you for three weeks and a half. Maybe four. I’ve seen…” she sighed and looked away. A short scuffle was heard in the distance. Raven hoped it was someone else, but all hope was lost when she saw it was just a stray feline, of black soft hair. “I haven’t seen anything.” she finished firmly, although it was a lie.

The woman knew she was lying.

And she seemed offended by that. They sent an amateur to follow me. Who do they think I am? A teenage movie version of James Bond, that they have to send a fifteen year old to spy on me?! What is this, DEBS?!

“Liar. Liar liar pants on fire,” Abigail hissed, absolutely convinced that the girl knew about her cover as a doctor. Just following her into work any morning and asking some questions would be enough to know that. But did she know about her true job, the one almost no no one knew about? “Tell me everything you know. You don’t want to get killed, right?”

“No.” the girl quickly responded, closing her eyes as tears began to slip from them. “Listen, I know you’ve got a whole life here, but, but…” she ran out of words, looking for any sign of humanity in the other’s light brown eyes. “You are a doctor, I know you are a doctor. But please, please point the gun somewhere else. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, okay? Please,” she begged, furrowing in a sad manner. Her teeth grazed her bottom lip as she waited to see if the woman would go out on a limb and give her some space. She had not been trained for this, she was supposed to not to even be caught. Not on her first mission.

“Oh, no, no, no, no. Don’t cry, sweetheart,” Abigail said. Her tone, motherly and caring, as if she was talking to a nine year old. Raven was the one who felt offended now, she was no nine year old. The woman grinned. “It only makes me want to kill you more.”

Raven’s eyes widened.

“Listen to me, and pay attention because your life depends on it,” Abigail said, starting to pull again at the girl’s dark hair, “you are going to stand up, slowly. There is an abandoned warehouse just at the end of this street. You are going to walk there slowly, without making a sound, okay? Because if you talk, if you scream, if you make a movement that seems suspicious to me, or if you simply annoy me, I’ll empty the magazine of my gun in your head. Okay?”

Raven shuddered. The way the woman spoke made her feel so scared, a rush of helplessness down her spine. She felt even weaker than before. She was stupid. Stupid to be so careless and let herself be caught. How could she have missed that the woman knew she was following her? She should have been paying more attention to the details. This was no one’s fault but her own.

She nodded.

Standing up slowly, cringing slightly as she went back on her feet, slowly walking in front of the woman. Still holding her hair, the older pushed her in the warehouse’s direction. Having the woman behind her was nerve wracking. Abigail was pressing her body against the girl’s, making her unable to free herself. And so the hope that she had of the woman making a mistake and giving her a chance to escape was gone. They walked in silence, the girl surrendering to the woman’s force. They finally arrived to an almost unnoticeable door, slightly open. Raven recognized it as the warehouse the woman had visited earlier this morning. What was inside, the girl still didn’t know. She had been following her for two weeks, and Abigail hadn’t visited it until that same day.

What is in there?

They walked inside, the woman looking around in the darkness. There was nothing strange in it apparently, since Abigail pushed her in. They approached a solitary chair in the middle of the room, where Raven was forced to sit down. The gun stopped being pressed against her, and the woman reached for something in the wall behind her. Raven bit down on her lip, shaking slightly. “No, no. Don’t tie me up.” she spoke firmly, decided to regain control of the situation somehow. If this place what was she imagined, she would need some advantage. She couldn’t see what hung from the walls, but she could picture it. Wiggling in the chair, she looked at the woman. “This is where you torture them, isn’t it?” she questioned, almost feeling the pain inflicted to Abigail’s previous victims. Her voice was cold, as if she was already accepting her fate.

The woman did not stop tying her.

“You’re annoying me, darling.” Abigail warned, the endearing term making the girl shudder. She felt her wrists being pulled behind her back, and a rope being wrapped around them. A few seconds later the woman had finished her skilfull work and took a step behind, then walked around the chair. Raven tried to move her hands, but the rope sat right below her thumb joint. She couldn’t reach for the knot. The woman reached for something and the lights turned on, displaying the area. “Nice, isn’t it?”

When Raven looked around her she felt her stomach turn.

“Luckily for you, I’m not going to tie your ankles…” Cordelia said, grabbing a chair and sitting on it backwards, her arms resting on the back of the chair. “But do anything suspicious with your legs and…” she took out a small knife from her pocket and showed it to the girl. “Well, let’s say that walking is better crawling.”

"What’s your name, darling?”

“Fuck you.” she groaned, only to quickly regret it. The fact that she was still able to speak reminded her that she was still alive, that she was still breathing. She still had hope. “And don’t call me darling.”

“Cute,” the woman chuckled, “really, really cute.” She stood up from the chair and slowly walked towards the girl, playing with the knife on her hand. She moved around her, smirking. Once behind the chair, she leaned to whisper on the girl’s ear. “Listen to me, darling. You are going to tell me everything I want to know. Otherwise, I will kill you so slowly that you will want to die.”

Raven felt goosebumps at the words, but her fear became more real when she felt a cold blade on the back of her neck. “Wha— What is that?!”

“A blade, darling.” the woman spoke. The girl was sure that she was grinning. “One used to skin people, actually.”

The blade was pressed against the girl’s neck gently, enough for Raven to notice it’s presence but not to cut her. The woman did not have much rush on trying to kill her. The girl’s lips parted softly, shaky breaths escaping from them each time the cold metal rubbed across her skin. Abigail’s work kept her on the edge of hysteria. No one before had evoked so much fear into Raven’s life, she was on the verge of tears. She wanted to live, more than ever.

“Rachel King.” she lies. A name doesn’t mean anything in the business. Agents hardly ever go by their real name. A name, after all, is just that— a name.

“Good girl. Nice to meet you, Rachel. If that is actually your name, of course.” the woman smiled and took a step back, putting the knife inside the pocket it belonged to. Raven swallowed. She walked to the chair and sat in the same position as before. “I’d tell you my name, but I guess that you already know that. Because you know my name, right?”

Of course Raven knew it. She had been following the woman for weeks, she knew who she was.

“Abigail Griffin.” the girl immediately answered, meeting the woman’s gaze. She had gained a little confidence in the chair. “I mean, that’s totally not your real name, right? You’re an agent after all.”

“Maybe,” the woman grinned. She was about to say something when they heard a noise outside. Abigail turned and looked at the door, then looked at Raven. “Listen to me because I will not repeat this. Don’t follow me again. Don’t come here, or anywhere near me. Simply forget I exist. Otherwise, I will kill you.” the woman undid the tie and pulled back. “Now run and don’t look back. And never follow me again.”

“What?!”

“Leave, Rachel. They’re coming.”

“But—” Raven tried to answer, being pushed towards a back entrance. “What about you? They’ll kill you if they found out I did not—”

“Leave.”

“My name is not Rachel.”

“We don’t have the time for this, run!”

“But— but—” the woman pushed her onto the ground, and Raven could only have time to notice how the door started to close. “Raven! My name is Raven!”