Kidnapped By The Italian Mafia

"KATARINA! COVER YOUR EARS!" She was frantically trying to reach me without turning back herself. She wasn't looking at me, but rather something behind me.

I was smart enough to clamp my forearms over my ear and cover the back of my neck with my hands as I took off running again. The ceiling of the parking garage started caving in behind me, and a giant slab of cement fell onto a spot I'd been standing in just a few seconds before. The force of the impact on the ground made me lose my balance, and I fell onto all fours just past the clearing line of safety, barely outside of the entrance to underground parking.

We were lucky our rental was on the ground level.

Hands grabbed me and pulled me out the rest of the way before letting me lean against a cement wall. We were out of the red zone.

"Here, put these in, quickly!" Claudette handed Henri a pair of something that looked like ear buds, and quickly handed me a pair as well. "We won't die if the watch explodes at this distance but the frequency will cause a lot of impact."

I had one ear bud in and was wondering how I could hear her so clearly. Were these like comms or something? Both Henri and Claudette had placed their buds in, but I fumbled with the second one because the rumbling of the parking garage coming down had pulled my attention to it.

All too late, just as I was putting the bud in, I heard a high pitch squeal that made my head feel like it had burst. Instinctively, I forgot about the second ear bud and clamped my hands over my ears again.

My entire head hurt like hell, and I was sure that I was crying because mascara had gotten all over my sleeves.

Claudette pulled my arm away after a bit and put in the second ear bud. "I told you to be quick."

"We have to get her to a hospital right now." Henri moved to pick me up, and honestly, I didn't bloody stop him. I had almost died multiple times in maybe ten minutes, I was in no position to refuse any help from anyone.

"I know someone who can help." Claudette pulled out a device from her fanny pack and began punching something into it. I only saw that much, because my head hung low again and I couldn't really process much from the pain. It was less now that the second ear bud was in, but still enough to make me cry and clutch my head.

"What's going to happen to everyone else who heard or saw the explosion?" Henri's c.h.e.s.t rumbled against my body tucked into it. So comforting. "Will they also have burst eardrums?"

"Let's just hope nobody was in the parking garage because they're dead now. If the exploding car didn't get them, the collapsing levels did, and if that wasn't it, the explosion made something in their heads pop depending on how close they were." Claudette sighed like this was an everyday occurrence. Yes, I was injured, but I could admit that the woman was f.u.c.k.i.n.g weird.

"Will she have brain damage?" Claudette remained silent, but she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. "Will she?!"

"Let's just get her some help. Don't use your cellphones, all wireless electronic devices and some of a specific code have been disabled with the explosion. We can get your devices restarted in a bit."

Bloody hell, that couldn't be good. An unanswered question was one warranting a negative response.

At least I could still hear from both my ears…

"Do you think we'll be able to recover anything from the car?" Even talking made my head hurt, but I needed to know if I could get files from my laptop back. The explosion had completely obliterated the vehicle but I had important things on that device that I couldn't give up on.

"It's not likely but I can send a cleanup crew to take a look. In the meantime, we need to keep you out of sight and out of mind for Marco." Claudette stopped us at an intersection corner. "The traffic lights didn't take impact from the electromagnetic attack. Good, less chance of dying by car."

In a moment, a black SUV stopped before us, and Claudette opened the backseat door. Henri slid me in first and got in beside me without asking questions, Claudette sat in the front passenger seat.

"Took you long enough." She scoffed as we all strapped ourselves in. "Miss Montenegro almost dies on my hands and you choose to dilly dally?"

"My apologies, I was at a coffee shop that had the most amazi—"

"Shut up, take us to the infirmary."

"Yes ma'am."

In the back seat, I was still cradling my head. There was an annoying ringing sound setting in now that was worse than the pain from possibly having half my head burst open.

Henri, the kind soul that he was, pulled me into his side and angled my head against his c.h.e.s.t to help alleviate my discomfort. Somehow he knew that the biggest problem at the moment was a feeling of building pressure. The angle helped alleviate the feeling of pressure.

"Thank you, Henri." I patted his c.h.e.s.t. "I'm sorry for what I said in Manc.h.e.s.ter."

"Don't mention it." His tone was clipped, which took me by surprise. Sure, I hadn't expected him to forgive me right away, but I felt like he couldn't even see that I was trying.

Nothing else was said by me, and by that, neither was anything said by him. By the time we got to wherever we were going, I was closer to passing out than I was to making any sort of recovery.

"Come on." Claudette held the door open for me and helped me get out of the car. The building in front of us was large and grey with chromed windows. The name Bordeaux Labs Inc. served as indicator that we were at some sort of sciency place. I'd take that over anything else.

Claudette lead the way into the building, as expected. There were several things like checkpoints where she'd have to tap a key card against a reader and say her name before it allowed us to pass.

I kept looking at my surroundings, completely in awe of how monochrome everything was. White on white, grey on grey. As we went down a few hallways and reached an area that looked less like a hotel and more like a clinic, the stench of disinfectant assaulted my nostrils with a burning sensation.

"Where are we?"

"We're going to get you a checkup. Hopefully my doctor will know how to fix you." My friend responded, stopping before a door with a plaque and knocking on it.

The door opened promptly and we stepped inside to a reception area. I stayed put by the seats filling out a form handed to me while Claudette went to the desk and spoke with the receptionist.

"I think this must be the place where she works?" The sentence was meant to come out as a statement, not a question. Henri wasn't listening to me, so it seemed I was talking to myself. By now the ringing had reduced to a buzzing sound that was persistently bugging me. I wanted to rip out my own eardrum.

"Alright," Claudette returned to us and motioned toward white doors with her head. "You can go inside now, the doctor has been notified that you are here."

"Aren't you coming?" She looked anxious to leave, but I wasn't going to point that out. Maybe she had a fear of hospitals?

"My pookie is here somewhere, I will go and find him. You might be asked to go into the back rooms alone." She glanced at Henri. "I hope that's okay."

"Sure, I don't m—"

"I go where she goes." Henri cut me off rather rudely. "It's my job."

And there was the cleverly concealed jab at my guilt. Damn.

"Right. Just say that then, they should let you through. Everyone knows you're with me, nobody knows you're Katarina except me and the agents assigned to your case so there shouldn't be a problem getting around or finding me." Claudette grimaced momentarily. "Although don't find me. Okay, good luck. Bye!"

A bit confused but not surprised, I shrugged off her weird behaviour and pushed through the lobby and into the clinic. Immediately someone with a clipboard directed me to a room where I was told to sit on an examination table while Henri stood to the wall close to the door. With his arms crossed and hovering, he looked intimidating.

I sat there for who knows how long, holding my head in my hands to cope with the infernal buzzing. It was like a bee in my internal cortex, whatever that was.

When the doctor finally walked in, I straightened up and removed my hands from my head.

"Okay, Miss VanBurren, right?" The doctor tapped his clipboard when I nodded. "I have your form right here. Please follow me to this machine here and take a seat."

I did as instructed without question and placed my head on a slanted headrest when he told me to do so. My damaged ear was exposed, so he removed the ear bud from it. As soon as it was removed, the sharp pain from before had returned and made me flinch.

"You seem to have caught the worst of the blast." Even his voice made the pain worse. "Can you hear me on this side?"

"Yes."

"Okay, I'm going to insert something in your ear now." He shuffled around me and moved the piece of machinery above my head. A bit later, I felt a poke into my ear canal. It wasn't uncomfortable, it was more like a little cone being placed into it.

I kept as still as possible while the doctor checked me out, with my eyes closed the whole time because I was falling asleep from exhaustion. The adrenaline had depleted so now I was left with the gruesome reality that I could probably lose hearing in my one ear.

Well, it was a small price to pay for having almost been killed thrice in fifteen minutes or less. This was already enough content to write my memoir with.

"Good knews, nothing was ruptured, just severely rattled. To save you the suspense, you won't lose hearing in that ear." I sighed with relief. "Not completely."

My eyes snapped toward the doctor who was still hovering over me and fiddling with the machine. "What do you mean?"

"If you'd been any closer to the blast, you would've lost your hearing in both ears and possibly received brain damage. That being said, you were closer to it than you should've been even with the Auditory Hive Buds. I don't think you'll ever recover complete hearing in this ear."

My heart sunk to my l.a.p and I sighed deeply. Partial deafness on one side. That wasn't so bad. I could always get a hearing aid.