Chapter Text
The room was small. Tiny. It contained only a table and chairs, arranged opposite each other. Oh, and cameras. Three, set up to record the person inside from every perspective. And then there was the motion sensor in front of the door, which would probably activate if she stood too close. She could hear its quiet buzzing, which she wouldn't normally have a chance to hear if the room wasn't so quiet.
Hazal Eyletmez hated the silence. It gave the nightmare a chance to speak up.
“Prison.”
That was the first word he spoke. She shuddered when she heard it; she was startled by the sudden sound amidst the overwhelming silence.
The nightmare could not read her thoughts. Sometimes she regretted it – she could tell him to shut up without using words. And now she had to remain silent. The cameras certainly had a built-in microphone.
Nightmare wasn't happy about that. He wanted answers. Hazal couldn't give it to him. He punished her for it with a sudden pain in her forearms, to which she only closed her eyes. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't.
Time was passing. Her shitty keypad phone had been taken away from her so she couldn't contact anyone. It had been checked so many times that they might as well go in and do it now; it wouldn't make any difference. She wasn't carrying anything. She carried no valuables. Hazal didn't own valuables.
The door finally opened. So much light came into the room that Hazal had to cover her eyes. The individual noticed this, as he quickly closed the door in a gesture of mercy. So she was able to start observing again.
This was not the same man who had questioned her for the past three hours. He was older. He looked like a military officer, furious and ready to issue merciless orders. She showed by her attitude that she didn't give a damn who this man was.
“Let me put it plainly.” His voice was low, but warm. This strange combination did not suit the stony man. “I want you here.”
Hazal hid her surprise well.
“As a prisoner.”
She didn't ask. Although the statement may have sounded a bit like a question, but she really had no intention of asking.
The man shook his head in denial, placing several sheets of paper on the table, clipped together in the corner with a single staple. At the very top, the word 'contract' was written in red ink.
“As an agent,” he announced, while Hazal looked at the first page.
She figured it was a joke.
“I blackmailed you,” she reminded, furrowing her brow. “People won't trust you back.”
“That will be my problem,” the man said, linking his hands together. "I have my reasons for offering you this. You can say ‘no,’ take this phone, and leave the same way you got here.”
“Or?’
“Or you can stay with us, help us with missions, and get much better equipment so you can search for Him .”
Hazal stiffened at his mention. The man probably saw her clench her hands into fists, but made no comment.
“Do you know anything about him?” she asked surprisingly calmly. Inside, she was screaming. Inside she was lashing out at the man, ready to forcibly snatch the information from his thoughts.
“Nothing except the fact that you're looking for him,” he replied, tilting his head slightly to the side. “You'll be able to do your job as long as you help us.”
What could it mean? What was there to help with? Hazal was alone, self-sufficient, with no one in her profession to give her a helping hand when needed. That was fine, that was the way it was always going to be, because Hazal deserved the loneliness she served herself.
“Will you agree?”
Nightmare was sometimes able to use syntactic sentences. Sometimes he just threw in a single word, as if he couldn't communicate with Fade in a normal way.
“How much time do I have to think?” she asked, so that Nightmare would know she was thinking.
She wasn't thinking. She already knew what she wanted to respond to the proposal.
“Three days,” he replied hesitantly and placed a small piece of paper with a number on top of the documents. “Write if you agree. I'll send someone to pick you up.”
“So you let me go?”
The man stood up, then looked straight at the camera. He nodded – a sign that probably meant for someone to stop recording – and looked back at Hazal.
“We'll go get your phone.”
They left the room. Hazal followed the man like a shadow, almost hiding behind the postured man, using him like a shield against what might await her when they exited that hallway. She felt small, pathetic, lost in what may or may not happen. Oh, she hated that feeling.
She didn't want to feel that way.
The Nightmare was churning inside her. He was trying to get at her fear, which she strenuously tried to hide from him. It annoyed him that she scratched her forearms, distracting him with pain.
She tried to remember the path they had taken, but it seemed endless. However, she had the feeling that she knew what the man was doing – he was deliberately misleading her so that she would have no way to escape. Perhaps they went through the same pair of doors over and over again, walked down the same corridor over and over again so that Hazal would not embrace the way.
She was doing the same thing, after all.
Eventually, however, they reached a room with the same man she had been talking to for the past three hours. Cypher , if she remembered correctly. He didn't say anything, also didn't ask anything. He seemed to know everything that was going on in the small room.
“Can't trust.”
Who can't trust him? Nightmare? Hazal? Or does he mean Hazal is the one who can't be trusted?
“Phone,” the man announced, projecting her cell phone toward Eyletmez. “Why exactly this one?”
That's the one no one was looking for after I stole it.
She shrugged her shoulders. She didn't need to answer him.
“No transmitters?” she asked, even though she knew that when she returned to Türkiye she would go into the first better hole and unbolt the cell phone anyway.
“Not one.”
He had a pleasant voice. But he was hiding behind a mask. Hazal couldn't trust him with anything.
“Where's the exit?” she asked, poking her gaze into the ex-soldier.
“Our plane will drop you off at your destination.”
She didn't protest. She didn't feel like playing at stealing and waiting at the airport.
“You're ignoring us.”
Hazal rolled her eyes, hearing the emotionless voice again.
Brimstone, as he was addressed by the robot called Kay/O, led her straight to the hangar, where a small helicopter was already waiting. Hazal wouldn't have given her hand for it, but she was almost certain it was the same machine they had flown to Istanbul. How ironic.
The man did not speak to her at all while they waited for Kay/O to prepare the helicopter for flight. Hazal, meanwhile, ignored the pain in her forearms that Nightmare was serving her. It was as if he wanted to scratch holes in them to escape into the light of day.
“Is he the one who brought me here?” she asked, wanting to focus fully on something else.
“With the help of other agents,” replied the gray-haired man, linking his hands behind his back. “You treated them pretty well.”
“They attacked first,” she announced, shrugging her shoulders. Inside she was boiling. Inside she was furious. Inside she was terrified.
“Get on with it.”
“They couldn't let you escape.”
She didn't want to ask this, nevertheless the question involuntarily left her lips.
“What about them?”
“They're fine,” he answered briefly and succinctly. Hazal did not inquire further. She had no right to do so – that's what his attitude seemed to say.
“Done.”
Kay/O stood at the pilot's door, looking at the two of them standing. Hazal understood that this was a sign for her to get in, so she moved to the seats behind the pilot. She felt Brimstone's gaze on her, as he watched her every step closely. He was thinking. He was waiting. She was also waiting for him to say something. And in the meantime, she buckled up.
“I'll be ready tomorrow.”
He was satisfied with this statement. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if he tried to smile, but the soldier wouldn't let him. Hazal did not reciprocate the gesture. She didn't feel up to it.
“Betrayal.”
She wanted to say that the nightmare said so every time she tried to start a relationship with someone, but she refrained. She herself didn't know if she was doing the right thing.
But she had to try. She owed it to him for delaying her actions and plans for so long.