赤裸裸的滑稽故事

He didn’t know how much longer he could stay in this place.

It had already been ten hours since the lab’s destruction had begun. The standard protocol would have a team sent from Spring more than three hours ago.

The small bunker was designed to withstand the self-destruction sequence, a fall-out shelter for any scientist that might have been in Wonderland.

Of course, the destruction in the upper levels was never supposed to have spread to the lowest lab. Still, he suspected Alice had been the cause of that coincidental ruin.

The heavy door of the bunker kept the fires and smoke out, but it didn’t stop the bleeding from his hand or the internal bleeding he suspected he had from being thrown against the wall.

His injuries were not life-threatening, but they were enough to keep him in constant pain for the past ten hours.

She could have killed him.

Holden was keenly aware of the fact that killing him would hardly have taken any effort on the part of the young Luna of Summer.

Though he was glad to count himself among the living, he couldn’t help but feel a bitter resentment at how easily she ignored his presence.

He had seen them leave, seen her glance back at where she had pinned him to the wall with his own knife. While Holden had managed to escape that particular nuisance, he hadn’t gotten far. She only needed to look a little to the left, and she would have found him huddled pathetically against the wall. Hiding like a child hoping the monster wouldn’t see him.

The thought angered him.

But what really bothered him, what honestly had him grinding his teeth as he sat hour after hour in this small room waiting for the team that would come to clean up the mess, was one single thought.

She hadn’t even bothered to look.

He knew that she must have known he was alive. She saw that he was not where she had left him. Yet, she simply walked away after a brief glance.

The Winter Princess, Luna of Summer, this girl, this… child, had turned her back to him as though he were no threat to her at all.

Holden seethed with anger.

As soon as he left this room, he would make her understand just how easily he could hold her life in the palm of his hand.

For now, he would wait.

It was another two hours before he finally saw movement on the monitors. Unfortunately, many of the cameras in the upper levels were damaged in the destruction. However, there were still a few that were in operation.

It took an hour for the team to make its way down through the wreckage. Holden had set off the beacon in the bunker almost as soon as he got inside. They already knew he was here, so there was no reason to search the remains of the building for him.

When the bunker’s door was finally opened, Holden was more than a little surprised to see who stood on the other side.

“I did not expect you to come for me…” he said as he straightened his back.

The corner of Roman’s mouth lifted into a half smile.

Any smile worn by Roman gave off a sinister feeling. But the thick, uneven patch of leather he wore to cover his missing eye and the scar surrounding it only emphasized that feeling.

“Why?” he said. “You came for me on the mountain. So why shouldn’t I come for you inside the mountain?”

Holden smiled, but in his mind, he felt nothing but irritation. He knew Roman was enjoying seeing him in this position. Injured and trapped in a box.

For now, he would let him have fun and make jokes. He had more important things to worry about. First, he needed to find out if Alice was alive.

He glanced at Roman, wondering if he already knew that Alice had been there.

Roman’s smile grew.

“What are you so happy about?” Holden asked, feeling even more irritated.

“I was remembering something we once talked about,” Roman replied. “About how replaceable we both are.”

Holden narrowed his eyes.

“Turns out,” Roman said quietly. “You are, in fact, irreplaceable.”

Holden clenched his jaw; he didn’t understand what Roman was saying. He would never willingly admit that Holden’s importance was more significant than his own, so what was his game?

“The thing is,” Roman sneered. “There is more than one way to be irreplaceable.”

Behind Roman, another man approached; he held a chair in his hands. It was charred but still holding together. He moved past Roman and Holden, setting the chair down behind Holden.

“One way is that you provide a service that is so unique or well done that no one else can take that role from you,” Roman continued. “That’s the category I fall into.”

Roman smiled with a tip of his hat.

A second man entered behind Roman, walking around him to join the first man. Holden felt a lump forming in his throat.

“But, the other way,” Roman said, pausing to give Holden a satisfied grin. “Is to be such a disappointment that you and your role are abandoned and disposed of. Never to be thought of again.”

Holden couldn’t help but notice that the men that had entered the room had their eyes on him.

“Guess which one you are?”

The sinking feeling in Holden’s gut hit him almost immediately when the man behind him pulled him down to sit in the chair. He tried to struggle, but both men held his shoulders down. Individually they were each already much stronger than him. But, combined, they kept him in place with ease.

Roman smiled down at Holden.

“You really fucked up, Holden,” he chirped.

Holden clenched his jaw, breathing deeply through his nose.

Roman pulled out his phone and pulled up a video to play for Holden.

“They saw everything,” Roman said. “Heard what you said.”

Holden looked down at the screen. Before him, he saw a video feed of the lab. Of his conversation with Alice. Telling her that they needed to run, that he had no intention of killing her as he was ordered to.

He closed his eyes and swallowed.

“Funny thing,” Roman said. “The feed to the lab was cut ten minutes before you entered.”

Holden took a deep breath; he had cut that feed himself before making his way into the elevator to go to her.

“Fortunately,” Roman continued pulling the phone back and adjusting the video. “It was turned on again just as you walked in.”

Holden opened his eyes, and the video showed him standing at the door. It closed behind him. Alice turned from the monitor to face him, but just before she spoke to him, just the tiniest flash of her eyes to the camera.

He sighed.

“Yep,” Roman smiled. “Alice turned the cameras back on. Seems to me she knew that you were going to say something stupid, and she wanted to make sure someone heard it.”

Holden lowered his eyes away from the screen.

“She really hates you,” Roman said. “I don’t blame her.”