The Kovalenko Chronicles (pt. 7)
Hell Beside, Heaven Within, Act 2
As Eva sat on the floor with her eyes transfixed on the melting walls, Xi picked the chair up off the floor. She went to the door and summoned Driver.
“In the chair,” she gestured towards the wall where she had set it.
Driver nodded and picked Eva up like a rag doll and slung her over his shoulder. He deposited her back in the chair as Xi nodded approval. “Dismissed,” she said curtly.
“With pleasure,” Driver was thinking to himself as he made his exit.
Xi approached the chair and leaned over slightly. “Sweet, sweet Eva,” she purred as she pushed Eva’s hair back out of her face. “I’m going to ask you a few questions now and I need you to answer me, alright?”
Eva sat motionless in the chair, completely mesmerized by the wall. Suddenly, the question seemed to resonate with her and she nodded her head laboriously. The time delay between words and action was completely askew. Everything felt upside down and made no sense.
“Did the ISD send you, Eva?” Xi asked her quietly. Against her will, and before she even realized she had done it, Eva nodded her head in the affirmative.
“Good. Very good”, Xi told her reassuringly. She lightly stroked Eva’s cheek and let her finger glide softly down the side of Eva’s neck. Xi’s body tensed slightly as she looked longingly at the lovely specimen in front of her. A lovely specimen that was now completely under her control.
“Eva, what is your clearance level in the ISD?”, Xi queried.
Eva heard Xi’s voice and understood the question. But she was distracted not only by the hallucinatory light show in front of her eyes, but another voice as well. This one more distant.
“Remember…”
In her mind, Eva was straining to hear the voice. It was a familiar one. She tried with all her might to focus.
“Eva, remember your training…”
Along with the voice, she could now see two figures through the haze of her mind. With everything she had, she pulled the image forward.
It was her. And her father. They were in his study.
“Remember your training, Eva. Never give the enemy anything. You never know how many lives you are jeopardizing if you give in to them. Always retain your focus,” her father told her. It was a lecture she had heard hundreds of times over the years.
“Yes, Father. No matter what,” Eva replied firmly.
With her father’s voice still lingering in her head, Eva focused with every fiber of her being, fighting with everything shred of concentration she had to maintain some sense of clarity.
“Eva, I asked you a question. What is your clearance level in the ISD?”, Xi asked again, with a slight edge in her voice.
Eva paused for a moment. Slowly she opened her mouth and formed the answer.
“President,” she said blankly.
Xi looked completely baffled by the response. “President, Eva? Did you say President?”
“Yes. President. I was President of the Chess Club in my preparatory school,” Eva said quietly.
Xi, slightly frustrated, furrowed her brow and took a deep breath. “Eva, I need you to focus now. What is your clearance level?”
Eva’s head was awash with a galaxy of images and thoughts, spinning and turning. She wanted to provide the answer so badly that she actually felt the words forming in her throat.
Xi leaned in close to Eva and whispered softly in her ear. Her full, sensual lips ever so slightly brushing Eva’s earlobe. Her fingers softly caressed Eva’s neck and playfully danced their way down her throat. In spite of herself, Eva felt a ripple of pleasure through the fog that engulfed her.
“Eva, my dearest,” Xi said quietly. “You can trust me with your deepest, darkest secrets. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to help you.”
In her drastically impaired state, Eva wanted so desperately to believe her. She wanted to give this cool. mysterious woman all the answers she craved. She wanted nothing but to please her.
But again, there was that distant voice. Her father.
“You never know how many lives you are jeopardizing if you give in to them…”
Eva stared at the playfully dancing wall before her. Dizzy with confusion, she closed her eyes. She was completely torn between the aching need to divulge everything to this woman and the voice continually calling to her from the ether.
From the very depths of her soul, she summoned every ounce of concentration she had left and in her mind’s eye, she saw a tiny pinprick of light. She poured every ounce of her being into it, and she remembered, for just a moment, who and where she was.
“Eva, I need information,” Xi said softly as her fingers traveled further down the firm, helpless body in the chair.
“Information,” Eva replied flatly.
“Yes,” Xi affirmed. “Tell me what you know, Eva. Tell me everything.”
“Horses,” Eva replied dreamily.
Xi looked at her in utter bafflement.
“Horses. Their field of vision is almost 360 degrees,” Eva stated as she thought happily back to her youth when she would go riding on her uncle’s farm.
Xi’s body stiffened and she glared at Eva with absolute hatred and contempt.
“You bitch!” she screamed as she slapped Eva hard across the face. “So help me, you’ll talk or I’ll make you a mindless husk, you little whore!”
Xi reached into her pocket and fumbled with the black case. There would be no more microdoses. She was going to break Eva by any means necessary. If she couldn’t get answers, she would drive Eva to complete and total psychosis. She removed not one, but two more tablets and forcibly grabbed Eva’s face.
“No one resists me, you little witch,” Xi seethed through gritted teeth. “You’ll die here alone trapped inside your vacant little mind! You’ll…”
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door and Driver entered the room.
“He wants you,” Driver said plainly.
“I’m not done here yet!” Xi replied sharply.
“He wants you now.”
Xi jammed the tablets into her pocket and glared at Eva with complete and total hatred.
“I am not done with you,” Xi vowed as she stormed angrily out of the room.
Eva slumped forward in the chair and faded into darkness as she heard the door slam abruptly.
The Beginning At Last 
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