Rise of the Dunamy (14 page)

30

S
ofia’s head throbbed as she awoke. Her eyes fluttered open, her lashes scraping across the fabric of the makeshift blindfold that now blocked her vision. Dim light crept in beneath the bottom edge of her blindfold. Waves of pain radiated outward from behind her eyes as she moved them, which only made her already pounding headache worse. As she went to reach for the source of the pain at the base of her skull, she quickly came to the realization that her hands had been tied behind her.

Judging from the texture, stiffness, and distinct musty smell that filled her nose, she assumed that her abductor had used an old sock to cover her eyes. In the mere seconds that she had to understand her current situation, she had dismissed the discomfort that she felt all around her face as a side effect of the overwhelming pain in her head; she now realized that she had been bound from head to toe.

Her arms were lashed behind her and were secured to some sort of object that she could not yet define. She considered tapping her head against the object to determine what it was. Thinking better of it, she decided not to test the density with her already desperately sensitive head. Judging by its texture and shape, Sofia felt it was safe to assume that it was some sort of pipe.

There were no corners that she could use to work the material that bound her hands, and it was cold to the touch where her arms rested against it. Her feet were bound and placed directly in front of her, so she believed herself to be seated on the floor; which was clearly cement based on her unbelievably sore tailbone.

Oddly enough, no gag had been placed in her mouth, which was a clear indication that there was no hope in screaming, not that she was about to do so. Screaming for help would only alert her captors to the fact that she had awakened and she needed as much time as she could manage to sort the situation out in her head.

It took every ounce of restraint for Sofia not to panic as she began to recount the actions that had taken place prior to losing consciousness. It didn’t take long for her to remember exactly what had happened. The image of Lucian crawling towards her began running through her mind. Sofia tried to shake the thought out of her head, but it was useless, it was all she could think of. Without the ability to focus her eyes on something else to help her replace the image of his beautiful face staring at her as he took such a savage beating, she simply stared into the darkness and replayed the horrifying image over and over. Sofia knew there was no chance the attackers would have allowed Lucian to live after such a brutal attack; especially once they located her badge that they undoubtedly came across while searching her once she passed out. She could hardly keep herself from breaking down.

Sofia knew that if she was being monitored or if one of her captors was nearby, showing them a sign of weakness at this point could be her undoing. Regardless of her efforts, a single tear squeezed its way free from her eye and sped down her face. Leaning her head down, she pressed the blindfold against her shoulder in an effort to soak the tiny escapee before someone was able to see it. There was a quick hiss as the dry fibers expanded to absorb the salty fluid. Sofia felt a great sadness overcome her. It was the same feeling she had felt immediately before losing consciousness and she began considering what the fastest way to get them to kill her would be. How could she provoke enough of a response to have them take her life quickly without torturing her first? As she ran through the scenarios, she began to imagine the different possible outcomes. Each was more horrifying than the last, eventually bringing her to the realization that there would be no justice for Lucian if she allowed herself to be killed now. The thought that the men responsible for taking his life could potentially go free combined with the level of fear she was experiencing thinking of what these men were capable of doing to her, was enough to give her a reason to at least try and escape. Sofia took a minute to compose her thoughts, try to block out the pain that was radiating from her skull, and began to try and visualize her situation.

From what she could tell she was alone in the room, but she could hardly trust her judgment at this point. She began to test the strength of the material that was binding her hands by pulling her hands away from one another. She tried twisting her hands and feeling around with the tips of her fingers in an effort to evaluate what the material was that was around her wrists. The smooth finish of the material was unmistakable. She began to wriggle and contort her hands in an effort to loosen them, but quickly realized how futile this course of action was. For all of her wriggling and writhing, all she was rewarded with was raw skin courtesy of what she was certain was duct tape. Without the use of her hands, she was clearly going to have to work towards a different method of escape. Sofia knew that she needed to have a working idea of her whereabouts in case there was any opportunity to run. There was little chance that they were going to unbind her and make that possible, but she had to hope there was a chance for escape. Their attack had been far too calculated for this to have been their first time. A crew with a history of this sort of activity was likely to have taken precautions to ensure that escape was impossible. It was at that moment, when she was realizing the level of involvement that had gone into the attack, that Sofia considered something new. The attack could have been a planned maneuver by the very group that she and Bishop had been trying to find.

As she recounted the events of the attack, she understood just how calculated things had been. They had picked a perfect spot to attack the two. Had they realized what was happening, it still would have proven very difficult to escape. The giant that had been used to neutralize Sofia was overkill for most women, but not for a person as well trained as she. Murder did not seem like their original intention, but when Lucian resisted, they made the decision to kill him quickly. After killing Lucian they must have drugged Sofia in order to move her. There was no way she would have been unconscious long enough for them to transport and bind her without waking her up. Passing out from a lack of oxygen simply wouldn’t have such a strong effect.

A group that attacked that precisely, that had the means to drug and move a victim that quickly, and with a location they knew they could take someone without the threat of being found, was a group that had a plan and an agenda. If this was the case, Sofia knew that her odds were much worse than she had originally expected.

Knowing that this group was far more intelligent than the street thugs that she dealt with on a daily basis led Sofia to believe that they would have taken her to a relatively remote location, or someplace in the middle of one of the worst parts of the city. In doing so, they would give themselves plenty of time to recapture her or change locations in the event that she was able to escape as no one would be able to hear her screams for help for some time; or in the event that they had stayed in the city, no one would listen.

Sofia listened for any sound that might give her some idea of her location. The complete lack of airplane noise gave her a very good indication that they were nowhere near the airport, as it was a constant source of noise. The lack of traffic noise from the time that she had awoken indicated that they were far from any of the major interstate or highway. These two facts were enough for Sofia to deduce that if they were still in the city, they were nowhere good. To Sofia’s dismay, this was the most likely possibility. In an area where the gang had established themselves and were known by locals, and as long as they had done them no harm, they would be nearly untouchable.

While she was doing everything she could to remember her training and not panic, it was impossible for her to ignore how dire things had become. Sofia slowly began to realize how hopeless her situation was as she went down the ever-shortening list of ways that she might be able to escape, and nothing sounded likely. Regardless of how impossible the situation seemed she was now determined to do all that she could to obtain justice for Lucian.

She had never allowed herself to feel hopeless before and she wouldn’t make an exception in this case. Her life had started with struggle, so she knew she had it in her to resist the urge to give up.

An only child to village workers in Columbia, Sofia had seen more injustice, devastation, and evil in her childhood than most people could see in five lifetimes. A childhood wrought with as much personal loss and difficulty as hers would change anyone, whether it changed them for the better or worse depended solely on the person. The people of the village that Sofia was born into were used as slave labor for local drug lords. Sofia had watched many of her loved ones work their lives away for these men with little more than a small tin shack to show for it. As bad as the living conditions were, the working conditions were worse. If, and when, someone passed out from exhaustion in the fields, the overseers would simply drag their bodies away in order to make room for the next person. Those who had collapsed were left for the remainder of the day, lying in the dirt to recuperate. In order to dissuade the others from following suite in an attempt at receiving a break, those who had passed out were considered free game for the field bosses. They abuse ranged from spitting on them as they lie in the hot, dry dirt, to urinating on them, and occasionally they would see how close they could shoot the dirt around their limbs without actually hitting them. The use of the laborers as target practice was rare because whenever one of them was foolish enough to hit the target things usually turned out very badly for whoever was responsible once it got back to the big bosses. Although cruel and heartless, the lords knew that a crippled laborer was incapable of being productive in the fields, and replacing a field boss was far easier to do.

Regardless of the attempts the lords made, several of the people that Sofia grew up around were killed right in front of her for various reasons. Some were accused of stealing, which couldn’t have really been true, as they were hardly allowed to wear more than rags to cover their private parts. Others were accused of trying to inform the authorities, which was also a ridiculous concept as every villager knew all too well how useless the local authorities were. Mainly, Sofia believed that they were usually just killing them for sport, but the field bosses would always come up with a way to justify their actions to the lords. Regardless of the accusations placed against them, seldom was anyone ever shown any proof of guilt; they were simply murdered in cold blood out where the entire village could see. Whenever Sofia witnessed such injustice, her mother would indicate for her to keep her focus on the work that she was doing, and not look at what was happening. On the nights that followed such events, her mother would come into her room and, cupping her hands around her ear to ensure that no one would hear her talking about their plans to escape, she would whisper to her about her father’s plan to get them out of Colombia. She would tell her about how were going to escape to America and start a new life where they would never have to be afraid of such injustice happening to them because it was a nation of laws that, when broken, held great consequences. As she grew, and the violence increased, Sofia drew from the many acts of cruelty and injustice that she witnessed as inspiration to do the right thing and make a positive difference rather than allowing herself to accept that this was the best that life had to offer her. Those nights when her mother would whisper to her of their future, she would listen to the wonderful stories that her mother would tell her and she would dream of the fantastic life that they would have once they were gone. Those nights became the only time that she could find happiness because she knew that she could never tell anyone about her family’s plan to leave Colombia.

Most of the other people of her village saw the drug lords as powerful and aspired to be like them. They would also take advantage of any situation that would get them into the good graces of these men in the hopes of being promoted from field laborer to some level of boss. If the news of her family’s desire to leave the village became known to the wrong villager, or God forbid, one of the low level bosses, Sofia and her parents would surely be killed in order to make an example for the others. Knowing that such information could get someone a more prestigious job in the production lines, Sofia never uttered a word to anyone. Sofia’s mother and father had very different opinions of their tyrannical overseers than did the other villagers. Her parents saw them as evil dictators that took advantage of the people in their village, and this is what they taught Sofia. Sofia would listen to her parents’ stories and watch what was going on with her village and developed her own opinions about what she saw. While she hated their tyrannical leaders for the torture that they inflicted upon everyone and all that they were responsible for, there was one group that she despised even more.

The local police would regularly come through her village on their way to the nearby mansions. They would stay for hours, drinking the finest liquors and smoking high dollar cigars with them. They would eventually leave, taking with them bundles of cash and other handouts, and never looking twice at the suffering that was going on all around them as they sped through the village. Her mother’s stories about justice in America and seeing how those responsible for keeping law and order in her village shirked their responsibilities were the two driving forces behind Sofia’s decision to focus her life on stopping injustice and helping people in any way that she could. Sofia pledged that once her family successfully escaped from the cruel dictatorship of their village and migrated to America, she would devote her life to helping those who needed it by punishing all who deserved it. This became her passion.

One night, when Sofia was nine years old, the stars finally aligned in their favor and Sofia’s parents set their plan in motion. Sneaking out during the night, they hid in a number of predetermined locations in order to evade all of the perimeter security sweeps. They had planned the locations based on the pattern of stops they had witnessed the guards making throughout the years they had been observing them. After sneaking out of the village carrying nothing but the clothes they had on and a few sacks containing some stale bread they had saved they escaped safely into the jungle were they stayed in a series of makeshift huts that other escapees before them had built and left behind. It didn’t take Sofia long to realize they were taking an escape route that had been used by numerous escaped villagers before them. She later found out from her father that it was a path able to be kept secret by the fact that it was only known to one villager at a time. Whoever was informed about the passageway was only allowed to tell one other well trusted villager of its existence on the eve of his own departure. Even then, the next man was only told of the first stop on the route as well as what to look for to get him to the next location. The trail only took you to a point that made it possible to find safe passage out of Colombia; it was not a guaranteed exit. Every day they were in the jungle her father would go out and locate the next indicator telling them which direction to go and they would sneak along through the jungle at night to keep from being detected by the small search parties that had undoubtedly been sent out to find them. They knew that if they were found, the drug lords would use them as an example of what would happen to others if they tried to escape. After what seemed like months in the jungle, Sofia and her parents found themselves on the outskirts of Cartagena, a major port city in Northern Colombia, where her father procured them a spot on a freightliner. They rode in the cargo hold with the families of several other stowaways. Although the confines were tight and unpleasant, Sofia would always remember it as the greatest trip of her life based solely on the possibilities that lay on the other end.