Chapter Thirty-Five - Freedom and Not

I had time... like, a lot of it. Almost a whole day, in fact.

I decided to spend it somewhat productively and hit the gym. Unfortunately, Natalie wasn't there, and I didn't really want to try my luck with another instructor. The guy at the counter said that she took Saturdays off, but was usually around on Sunday mornings because she had a class in the afternoon.

So I just exercised quietly while listening to some audiobooks. I'd found a series of podcasts from some D-rankers that talked about their experiences in different portal worlds. It had always been kind of interesting, but now it felt more educational. They talked about monsters and traps and making mistakes that they played up as jokes, but which I took a little more seriously.

Then... I was done?

I didn't push myself too hard. Enough that I was feeling some strain, but not enough to have sore muscles the next day.

For all I knew, I'd have to do fifty-plus loops to figure things out, and doing them with sore muscles would suck something fierce.

Seeing as how I had nothing better to do, I started heading home, only to take a detour and head back deeper into the inner city and to a fancy pharmacy where I bought some magic-replenishing pills. They came in packs of six, with stern warnings not to take more than one per twelve hour period.

I planned on taking one tonight, to make sure I woke up with a full tank, and then maybe another tomorrow before setting out.

There was a list of side-effects as long as my arm that I planned to not ignore. Drugs were scary, and these were expensive, magical drugs that required that I be a D-ranker just to have a look at.

The mini shopping trip did give me time to think about what to do with the rest of my day.

I could do some looped practice, play some guitar, and work on my French. But... those were for relaxing, they weren't great when I was feeling a bit relaxed but kind of anxious.

So after the pharmacy, I went and got a massage. There was a parlour not too far and I saw the big billboard out front. It was a fancier place. Two sections, one for normal clients, one for D-rankers, and even a smaller, more luxurious, appointment-only space for C-rankers and up.

I paid a couple hundred just to get in, but thirty minutes later I was laying face-down on a massage bed and some pretty young woman was working her fingers into the surprisingly tense muscles of my back.

I may have groaned a little, but I didn't care, it felt good. An hour and a half later I was walking out of there feeling like jelly, and there was no way I was walking home, so taxi it was. Screw it, I'd make the money back eventually.

On arriving at home, I wobbled my way over to bed, shoved some clothes off the top, then laid down on my back. It was a few hours from evening, but that was fine.

I had all night to re-carve the paths for Sooth Minor Pain and See Darkness. Nice, chill evening. I'd need it for tomorrow.

***

If she wasn't out of here by tomorrow, then she was going to lose her mind.

"There you go, Miss Ojou," one of the masked men said as he roughly shoved her into a room. "Not one skeleton to gobble you up. You'll be just fine. And look, there's even a bed! Heh."

She glared, trying to memorize the man's face, his details, but there was not much to grab onto.

Her assailants were--as reluctant as she was to admit it--somewhat professional.

They'd grabbed her as she exited from an elevator to the ground floor of the hotel she was living in. The same route she took every morning. Grant had been a step ahead of her, Clive one step behind, their usual spots.

She'd barely noticed the people rushing them as the elevator doors opened. Clive was rammed into the back of the elevator, and one of the assailants pressed a few buttons, sending it up with the unconscious guard.

Grant had put up more of a fight. He was an upper-D-ranker, a man with years under his belt as a professional bodyguard.

She'd gasped when his neck was torn open by the swipe of a serrated blade and he'd fallen down, gurgling.

Stolen story; please report.

And then she was grabbed, pulled along by brutish men into a van. She screamed, of course, kicked one of them in the balls, spat in the face of another, even raked one with her designer nails.

Then this woman in the van slapped her across the face hard enough that she'd been left dazed. They tied her up. Tight zip ties around her wrists and ankles.

The men had turned, looking away in a very mild show of respect as the woman searched her rather rudely. Her phone was taken, her watch, jewelry, wallet, her nice jacket was cut apart and tossed aside and used as a space to hold all of her belongings.

The van had rolled into an alleyway, the door opened, and it was all tossed into a dumpster, then they were off again.

Next was even more intrusive. One of them jacked into her cyberware. It was top-end gear. It wasn't meant to stop a direct intrusion by someone who knew what they were doing.

Her biomods shut down, her connection to the net severed. She hadn't even thought about calling for help with her augs, and now it was too late.

Still, all hope wasn't lost. She had some good cyberware. Even disconnected from the net, they'd be able to trace her... right?

And then after a ride that felt interminable and where every question she asked was met with stoic silence, they arrived at their destination. They didn't even cover her eyes as she was dragged out of the van and into what looked like an old, poorly-maintained warehouse.

She stared around herself, trying to take in what she could, but while there was a lot here, none of it stood out to her. Rusted tin roofing, big I-beam pillars, a concrete slab of a floor. Someone had parked an RV within, and for some reason that made her manic all the more, only they marched right past that and between two old, abandoned cargo containers.

And into a space with a portal.

She'd seen portals before, of course. Had paid for the privilege of being escorted through an E-rank portal when she was sixteen to unlock her potential as an E-ranker.

This one was a bleeding cut in reality, an oval with torn edges.

She felt the magic of it washing over her. Powerful. A D-rank portal, or a very strong E-ranker. Definitely stronger than anything she'd ever had to deal with personally.

Gulping, she tried to fight back, to twist herself free, but it was far too late, and the ones holding her were far too strong.

"Don't worry, Miss Ojou," the woman said with a snide, self-assured voice. "This is just about sending a message. You won't be harmed. Not physically. Just a little stay in here with some undead friends, and then you'll be out, right as rain."

She shoved Francisca forwards.

The interior of the portal world was dank and dark, and she barely had time to register what she was seeing. There was another man here, which made... was that six people now? How big of an outfit was this?

The man wore a balaclava, just like the rest of them, and had a large assault rifle hanging from a sling. "Good, you made it," he said. "This way."

He took the lead. Soon, very soon, they were next to a locked cell door. It was opened and she was shoved within.

And then she was in this cell.

It had a bucket.

A bucket. The door was all metal bars. The bed in the corner was made of three planks crudely nailed together and hung half a foot off the floor.

It was smaller than the washroom in her penthouse suite.

She didn't panic. No, she was Francisca Ojou, heiress of Redline. She wasn't going to break down in tears.

Someone would come to save her. She imagined that already there were multiple guilds sending their best to scour the city to look for her.

Turning, she looked out the door, into the corridor beyond. One man was sitting on a stool, reading from a paperback, gun across his lap. The others were further in, in the starting room of the portal.

A portal they'd clearly taken over just for this.

There were spells that could pinpoint a person's location, expensive spells, cast by experts. They wouldn't work if she was here.

Francisca refused to panic. No, she'd keep her dignity, at least. Until someone saved her. Someone had to save her, right?

***