Margaret’s heart was hammering a galloping rhythm of sheer excitement through her chest, shuddering and vibrating every bone in her body; somehow, the universe had just turned the wheels of fate and aligned the stars and planets in the exact configuration she had hoped for. This was better than good; this was the best possible news she could have heard. She had anticipated a lot of cajoling and pleading and manipulation to get permission to spend more time with Tesla, but now, amazingly enough, everything she needed had been handed to her on a plate. Everything was exactly how it needed to be.
Sudden terror, however, flooded ice through her veins as doubt fired a venom-laden blowdart from the cover of foliage within the forest of her mind.
What if this is some sort of trap?! What if that maniac knows what I’m planning to do, somehow?! What if he’s setting everything up so perfectly for me just to tempt me into attempting my plan? Things don’t just go this right by chance – they don’t. No, no … calm down. He can only read my mind when he’s physically close to me, and I’ve made damn sure that I haven’t thought of the details of my plan at all whenever he’s been around. No. That news of the mercenary attack was no rouse – the emotion on that man’s face when he heard of the dead soldiers was as genuine as any I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t faking that, not at all. Maybe … maybe it is through sheer, blind luck that this has happened. But either way, I have to take the chance, I have to. Even if it is, somehow, a setup. What other choice do I have? Sit here and rot, until he ‘enlightens’ me? Hell no. I’m doing this. I’m doing this, and I’m going all the way. I’m coming back to you, Ting, I’m coming back to you!
Margaret steeled her resolution, feeling determined to follow through with her plan, whether the General had any suspicions about her intent or not; this was her only way of escaping this place. She decided to hold off before pushing on to the next phase of her plan; despite the fact that things seemed to have fallen into her lap, she didn’t want to risk exposing her true intentions; she needed to play things very subtly and very cool.
She and Tesla sat down, dug in leisurely, and began chatting over the meal. Margaret kept the focus of the conversation on Tesla; the boy obviously didn’t get many opportunities to talk about himself, and he seemed to be relishing in this rare chance to discuss his past, his present, and his hopes and dreams for the future.
Margaret couldn’t help but feel for him; he truly did seem to have a heart of gold, and did not appear to have a mean, malicious or selfish bone in his body. It had been terrible, the things he had been through, the violence and brutality he had experienced as a child, and it seemed, as much as it went against almost everything that Margaret believed in, that soldiering had been good for him. It had instilled in him a sense of dedication, purpose, motivation and, most importantly, a strong sense of self-discipline and self-worth, all of which were often sorely lacking from so many teenagers’ lives, whether they lived in the jungles of the Congo or the urban tangle of Los Angeles.
Getting to know him so intimately made it even harder to think of what she was going to have to do to him. A pang of sadness gnawed with its sharp rodent teeth at her heart, but she steeled herself against the guilt, the pity, and the pain, and forced herself to focus on her own needs.
Collateral damage and civilian casualties are terrible, they’re unfortunate … but sometimes they’re necessary. And in some situations – life and death situations, like this one – one has to make very, very difficult choices. I’m sorry Tesla, I’m so sorry. You’re a good kid, a lovely kid … but you’re my only ticket out of this hell.
Margaret had, by the end of the meal, finished one glass of wine, and with the alcohol stoking the furnace of courage deep within her core, she felt more emboldened to start working on Tesla.
As she poured another cup of wine for herself, she looked at Tesla’s empty glass – which had previously contained water – and grinned.
‘How about some wine, Tesla?’ she asked, with a conspiratorial glint sparkling in her eyes and a cheeky smile paring her lips.
‘Oh no, no,’ he answered quickly, looking somewhat shocked and staring at the angled bottle in Margaret’s hands as if it were a loaded pistol aimed squarely at his face. ‘It is absolutely forbidden for us soldiers to drink alcohol! Alcohol is a great destroyer of many things, the General says. It is a poison, a very dangerous poison! I don’t mean to insult you Margaret, but I must refuse your kind offer.’
Margaret remembered how, on the first night she had met the General he had offered her brandy from his own hipflask, and a jolt of anger flashed hotly through her; the man was a hypocrite, among many other things. Here he was, telling these impressionable teens that alcohol was this evil drug when he himself partook of it; thinking about this twisted a knot of wrath in her stomach. Nonetheless, she suppressed these dark feelings, kept her cheerful smile in place and rolled her eyes playfully.
‘Oh come on. You don’t really believe that do you? It’s just a scare tactic. You know when I had my first drink?’
Tesla looked distinctly uncomfortable talking about this subject, and he shifted and squirmed in his chair, and turned his face
