"Mr. Stanton. Eyes up here, please." The woman tapped her nails on the table between us.
I raised my eyes again, focusing on the woman's face instead of the unbuttoned top of her shirt β that peeked down into that nice little bit of cleavage she was showing. Her light brown hair was tied back in a small bun, and she wore a pair of square glasses. She was pale-skinned, and her blue eyes were quite clear. Beneath that prim grey jacket, white blouse, and pencil skirt was an obviously nicely shaped body. She couldn't have been older than thirty-five. The only thing about her that wasn't pretty was her sour, over-serious demeanor.
We sat together in the room they'd put me in; it wasn't the sort of prison cell I'd been expecting. Instead of a concrete box with a bunk bed and a toilet, this was more like a hotel suite β the walls were done up with a nice, cream-colored damask-pattern wallpaper, the floor was a thick berber carpet, and the furniture was mostly heavy stained wood β if looking a bit used. It was well-lit, and there was an odd smell in the air β like the sea. Perhaps we were near the ocean?
There was no doubt, however, despite appearances, that I was in a cell. When I'd first awoken here a few hours ago, dressed in only a simple pair of pants and a shirt, I'd tried to break out β first trying to barrel through the door and nearly dislocating my shoulder, then almost breaking my knuckles trying to remove one of the ventilation grates. Whatever windows had once been in here were paneled over with solid metal. I wasn't sure if it was previously an abode that had been repurposed into a prison cell or vice versa.
A few minutes previous, the door had suddenly opened, and three armed men with guns trained on me had stepped inside. They were clearly professionals, and kept me at a distance β and they were all bearing automatic shotguns instead of the small-bore assault rifles they'd carried in the past. They knew how to fight me.
I'd gone free for sixteen years, globe-hopping and shacking up with one of the girls or another. Melody and Hannah fit in well, and by then I'd also recruited Wren, Monique, and, less than a year ago, Sasha. The family was growing, and it pained me that we all remained separate. My new power had served me well; they never seemed to expect it, and even if they did, they always underestimated the power that raw lust had to control a person and override everything else. The girls, too, seemed to like when I used it in the bedroom, in smaller and more controlled doses.
I'd become confident, and quite adept at avoiding capture, and my practice in martial arts, meditation, and focus had all advanced quite a lot over the years. I was going on fifty years old at that point, though a normal human looking at me likely wouldn't have thought I was over thirty.
Despite all that, I'd been captured again β and I was still more than a little upset about it. They'd intentionally caused a riot at a major soccer game just to draw me out, and, before I went down in the chaos and confusion, I'd seen that they hit me with what appeared to be a horse tranquilizer fired from a modified sniper rifle. They'd waited until Wren was away and off buying us some food to strike. In hindsight, I'm glad; had they decided to attack while she was there, they likely wouldn't have bothered to try taking her alive.
I cracked a small smile at the woman in the room with me. "Sorry. You look great, by the way. I never got your name."
She glowered at me for a moment, then laid down a hand on the table, next to the blank legal pad on which she'd apparently been planning to write. "You can call me Miss Shields. I'd like to continue, if you wouldn't mind."
"Let's." I grinned. "Where were we?"
"The terms of your surrender." She sat back in her chair. "I'm still waiting. The committee is willing to be very generous. You've been very costly to pursue and capture, and all we really want from you is the truth."
"The truth." I chuckled. "About what?"
"You. What you are, where you came from. We have only a few parts of the story and we'd like you to fill in the blanks. In return, the committee is willing to forgive all your crimes and the damage you've caused, even the loss of life-"
"How generous, to end a fight you started, and to forgive my self-defense." I sighed, and leaned back with my hands behind my head. "Let's talk about something else."
"Like what?" She sounded testy now. "I'm only authorized to discuss the terms of your surrender. If you aren't going to talk about it, we have nothing to discuss." She stood up.
"Sit back down."