The Wight's Ordeal

Author's note:

I wanted to make this a pragmatic superheroine story, without the straining lycra and the pumped-up tits and BANG POW, but with a superheroine who gets trapped and ends up a plaything, for a while. So it's not the normal superheroine story, but is what I was intending to write. It also took me about a year, because it kept getting left. A bit of a theme lately, I'm afraid.

Those who are familiar with my other work may notice a certain mechanical theme involved.

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The night was your friend. It was always important to remember that. The night was your friend because in it you were dominant. In it you had the control, the power and the mastery. The night was your friend because you made it the enemy of those who deserved to be your enemy.

It was a mantra that The Wight repeated to herself regularly, and not least before starting a patrol.

There were those who considered "Wight" to be too ghoulish a name, too unpleasant to be the name adopted by a heroine. Or a hero, as some who hadn't met her and disbelieved the stories steadfastly claimed. But it was the name that fitted most for Lisa's hard-willed but svelte-bodied alter-ego: Wights take life from others, they live in unpleasant places and perform unpleasant acts upon those who, lets face it, shouldn't have been fooling around with graves and burial mounds and suspicious holes in the ground. It certainly fitted with the inhuman discipline that had driven her through pain and suffering and that would have made the old Lisa break down in tears. It certainly fitted with the ghostly image of a girl who was never seen by her victims until too late, never seen by the police except as a swiftly departing shadow and never seen by the media at all. In fact, without her publicity photos, suitably shot in dim, gothic light by a photographer friend of hers, they would doubt her existence at all. Without the testimony of those victims she left alive, she would have been labelled a mere poseur.

More, and most, importantly, it fit with her effect upon those criminals whose existence she refused to tolerate, whose actions she struggled to prevent and whose lives she occasionally found it necessary to consume.

What she did not tell the public was that the name had come from none of the above, but from the way that she had of sensing life, of seeing the dark as though it were light with eyes not quite eyes and of sapping the strength of those she grappled with, feeding off it even as they felt it draining away.

As she moved through the abandoned warehouse, now condemned to be demolished but until then available for what the mainstream of society chose to call "suspicious activities", there was always one part of her brain that kept its attention on sounds, one that controlled her noiseless and sure-footed movement and one that kept her eyes achingly alert.

She was looking for wires out of place, the glint of lenses, the patterns of disturbed dust and the doors that should have been shut, or open, or anything other than half-open. She was looking for too much order, or too little. She was listening for anything that betrayed movement, particularly behind her, and she was moving so that nothing betrayed her presence, nothing compromised her ability to listen and she in no way left clues that, later on, she may have to pause to decipher or that someone else may use to find her. She had often wondered how it was she was capable of moving without disturbing the dust, but she didn't let it bother her for long.

Life she did not need to look for; in this environment it would be a siren to her. A normal ambush did not worry her. Traps, however, did. Mechanical devices had movement, but no life of their own that she could detect them by.

She was constantly on the move, slipping in and out of shadow, moving randomly and erratically, just in case a sniper had her in his sights.

She ghosted across a gap and past a pillar, her eyes searching the darkness opposite her.

"Ah Wight," a voice at her ear said. "How beautifully you move."

She slammed her elbow back so fast that when it contacted the steel pillar she feared for one split second that she had broken it.

But her reactions moved faster than her consciousness and her hand slammed up. This time her toughened hands and Kevlar, armour-backed gloves prevented her from feeling even the slightest touch of pain when she crushed the small speaker that had been embedded in the steel.

She didn't waste time swearing or feeling surprised or being startled or shocked. She was already moving: Ducking, weaving, heading fast along the corridor, hoping to take back the element of surprise. She hadn't seen any lenses, but then again she hadn't seen the speaker either.

Was she being watched? She couldn't discount the possibility, and so she kept moving.

She spotted the first trap before it was sprung, and as the man erupted from the pile of trash she attacked first. He came up with an iron bar clamped tight in his fist, but her kick broke his arm before he got a chance to use it and then, as her momentum carried her forwards, she broke his neck the same way.

She leap over him, moving fast and unpredictably, but what felt like a dart slammed into one of the tortoise-shell-style Kevlar-carbon-fibre armour plates on her back. She had known when she made this costume that basing it upon what was essentially a high-tech set of motorbike leathers would pay off in protection what she lost in speed.

Her movements accelerated, off at a tangent, one remote part of her brain, all that she could spare, furiously wondering how the man had managed to hide from her.

The second to attack her she could sense, but only as though through static and he managed to surprise her. But he didn't manage to cope with her using both feet against a pillar to slam her armour-plated back against his chest as hard as her thighs could push her. Stunned by the back of her head contacting the front of his face, he was easy to finish with a rigid hand driven hard into his throat.

There was no dart in that fight. But as she jumped away from it, veering away unconsciously from a pile of rusted chains that may have hid another would-be assassin, one ricocheted off her thigh plate.

"They want me alive", one part of her brain thought, while another exalted "Got you! I know where you are now!"

When her senses, straining now, detected another man standing still behind a section of wall, she came in low and fast, getting the man between her and the sniper, and when he came out low in a wrestler's crouch she barely afforded herself the time to rear up, her head protectively low, her arms up and her foot swinging viciously through to catch him unprepared in the face, bringing "him" up so that she could drop again, barrelling forward to catch his chin with her palm and smash it back hard enough to break his neck.

The realisation that the men appeared to be spaced out, that they seemed to be wanting her alive and that there only appeared to be one actual sniper gave her time to stop and think, using the wall and the dead man's body as cover.

Taking deep breaths to recharge her blood with precious oxygen, the Wight thought furiously, her head buzzing with tactics but without giving her any real hope.

Then something sharp slammed into her side, between her ribs, where she had no armour. She had barely enough time for fractured components of her mind, simultaneously, to recognise it as a dart before she slumped to the floor with none of them working at all.

#

The man with the gun hit the ground running. He was never sure why he took chances like jumping across a two metre gap with a fifteen metre drop, but he could and so he didn't worry about it. The gun in his hand, a one-shot dart rifle, could only slow him down but he had learned long ago not to abandon a potential asset.

His boots, rubber soled, let him move so fast through the old warehouse space that he came perilously close to turning his ankle a couple of times, and his coat, so good for camouflage but now flapping out behind him, narrowly avoided catching on rusty steel points or tangling in his legs. But he was driven by desperation and managed to avoid anything that would trip him up or introduce what he liked to call "an anxious moment". His free hand scrabbled inside his coat every few seconds, but that movement slowed him up more than carrying the rifle did, and it was not a priority.

When he got to where the Wight's body lay prone on the ground, he was only a second too late.

The first of his henchmen had already kicked her, and the limp form was still moving.

The man scrambled to a stop, the rifle pointed one-handed at the man who was already pulling his leg back for another go.

"That's enough!" he barked. "Leave her alone. Your job's done with, you can go home rich now."

"Rich?" The would-be footballer sneered at him. "Mr Hunter, you couldn't pay us enough to be rich. This is just another job for us."

Mr Hunter's shoulder, not the one supporting the rifle, moved in a brief shrug. That arm was once again inside his jacket.

"well, pardon me," he said evenly. "Where I come from, anybody asking your price has usually sold his services to somebody who can pay it more regularly by now. I'm sorry I overestimated your ambition."

The hired thugs, five of whom now survived, took one step forwards in unison as the man's carefully chosen words hit home. They were in a rough circle around the Wight, but began to spread out to try and encircle their employer. They knew full well that the rifle only fired darts, but it had deceived them for long enough to serve its purpose.

"You fucking faggot," the footballer growled, stepping forwards on his own. "I'm going to pound your pansy ass..."

A single hollow-point bullet neatly dissected his eyebrows.

The other four barely had time to start moving, and collapsed face-forwards with their feet almost where they had been standing. The pseudonymous "Mr. Hunter" had been a commando mercenary so good that he had been able to retire to a self-funded business venture while still young enough to staff it himself. More importantly, the thugs had not known that he was actually left handed, and used a rifle with right-hand moulded grips only because he had to.

#

Carefully re-holstering his silenced pistol, Mr. Hunter stood above his prey and examined her minutely.

His company had already financed technologies and devices that the common public dreamed of but that law enforcement agencies around the world had concluded, after much investigation, didn't and couldn't (yet) exist. He had no illusions that he and only he could benefit from this type of carefully focused research and his research on this Wight woman lead him to believe that she most likely already had, and would continue to do so in the future. In fact, although he was now operating on behalf of a client, only the body was part of the deal. Her clothes, her equipment and the contents of her home were his to do with as he could get away with. He intended to get away with everything he needed, wanted, or didn't understand. After all, what you didn't understand was probably either useful or dangerous. He had no habit or intention of bypassing either one.

Sure that she was still unconscious and not just faking it, but with another dart in the gun and the barrel nestled snugly and firmly between two armour plates, where the slightest movement would snag his trigger finger and fire the dart, he slowly knelt down, on one knee, to inspect her.

He was frowning, and staying as far away from her as he comfortably could.

There were stories told of Wight that he didn't believe. But he had heard stories from the Balkans that he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't been in them, so he was in mood to be flippant. The most dangerous one he had heard was that men (presumably women too) lost fights to her not because they were beaten (and they would be, going on what he had seen) but because their strength failed them and they collapsed in exhaustion after only seconds.

Mr. Hunter was not classically educated but he had rectified that in recent years and knew full well what a "wight" was. He had pieced one and two together and three was not the answer that he had wanted to get.

But first things first...

He reached inside his jacket and, from a pocket of his snug bullet-proof vest he pulled a pair of handcuffs formed end-to-end with no chain or even swivel between them.

Still holding the barrel against her costume, he carefully cuffed one wrist firmly and without touching her costume at all. Then he stood, staying well away from her and with the gun still levelled, and pulled on the cuffed hand until he had pulled her body over and off her other arm. By pulling on the cuffed arm and kicking at the other one, he managed to cuff them together behind her back.

Another pair of cuffs went around her ankles, then a pair of leather cuffs held her elbows together. A thick leather belt went around her waist, was pulled tight and attached to the cuffs on her elbows. Finally, a length of rope - he had been unable to carry all the desired equipment with him, so he had needed to improvise - was wound several times around her knees and lashed securely. Then, and only then, did he feel safe not holding the gun.

Taking a deep breath, aware that he had already needed to touch her several times without feeling ill effects but also aware that he had not yet touched her skin, he forced a ball gag into her mouth and fastened it around the back of her head with a thoroughness that he would have considered cruel for any lesser captive.

He left her there while he ran, silently, through the building, across a walkway to the building next door, retrieved his gun case and a small bag of other equipment and returned to her still prostrate form. She had not moved, her breathing had not changed and, when he pushed her eyelids open, there was no reaction. Good.

He dropped the bag on the ground, slung the gun case over one shoulder then, taking a deep breath, knelt down to pick her up.

#

He did not think about revenge. He very carefully did not allow himself to think about revenge. That would be foolish, immature and, more importantly, unprofessional. Revenge was out of the question. He had a job to do and intended to do it. Any other desires, any other feelings, he left at the door.

A lesser man might not have cared for such niceties, but a lesser man would not have earned the trust implicit in this contract.

A lesser man might have un-holstered his pistol and shot her there and then when her eyes had fluttered and a wave of exhaustion had made his knees buckle. A lesser man might not have had the presence of mind to roll, throwing her clear, sitting with gun in hand until he got his breath back and while she moaned fitfully but made no further signs of consciousness, then carefully unpack his syringe and drug kit, measure out a dose and inject her in a place unlikely to cause discomfort or a bruise.

A lesser man, when dragging her the rest of the way so as not to risk further contact, might have been rough or abusive.

But a lesser man would almost certainly not have been able to strip her naked, a task made complex to the point of near impossibility by the design of the suit, position her in the chair, adjust it and then strap her securely down. A lesser man would have fainted, given her enough energy to throw off the drug, then lost the fight.

A lesser man would not have caught her in the first place.

A lesser man would not have been able to keep her.

#

Her eyes fluttered open. The sedative she had been shot with clearly had a fast-acting antidote. She was awake fast enough to catch the last sensation from the needle withdrawing.

She had enough discipline not to try and move. That might have been painful.

She was naked, and she was lying in a chair. That was the first thing that flashed into her mind. She was strapped to a chair - that was the second. She was strapped very well - that was the third.

Then she was fully awake. Every strap, every restraint, held her in with the threat of pain, not just the mechanics of restraint.

She was sitting in a chair that leaned back, her thighs angling up at the reverse angle to her back, her back and head supported comfortably, her legs spread at sixty degrees and held in padded, shaped full-length stirrups, her knees bent at a comfortable angle. Her arms were held out, parallelling her legs, resting on padded armrests adjusted - no, made! - to fit her proportions.

Sheepskin-lined leather cuffs held her ankles, carefully placed so that only dislocation would give her any hope of escape. Much thinner, harder, braided leather cords were secured around her knees so that any movement there would threaten dislocation of her kneecaps. Her hips were left unsecured. A thin but extremely strong wire was looped over her chest underneath her breasts, snugly but not tightly, so that it would hurt if she moved up too much, but did not otherwise restrain her.

Her hands were splayed flat and each finger was held, over the first joint, with a small metal hoop pulled tight, but not enough to be painful. If she pulled too hard, she could dislocate a finger. Her neck was held not with a nice broad strap but with a thin wire that, again, wasn't quite painfully tight but would be if she tried to move.

These were bonds calculated for humiliation, not just restraint. She could not escape regardless but, in order to avoid pain, she would have to not struggle; she would have to sit still and tolerate whatever happened to her; she would have to be complacent, to cooperate in her degradation. It was a situation designed to break her spirit.

Why? She quickly saw what she was looking for; one camera against the wall, at an angle to see her breasts clearly. Another straight down the room from her, mounted underneath the ceiling to stare straight down at her cunt.

Then she saw the table.

#

"Good evening," the hunter said, his voice formal but polite, when he saw her attention riveted by his tools. "I must congratulate you on your efforts tonight. I was not expecting to need quite so many darts, or to have you dispose of quite so many of my associates."

The part of The Wight's mind that was still human was congealing with terror and trying to escape down into the comforting dark of unconsciousness. But she was no longer human as a psychologist might define her and there was enough bravura left to fight back. "Those weren't your associates. They were hired thugs. People like you don't associate with people who aren't as good as themselves. You're the only one here, aren't you? Did they put up much of a fight when you had to kill them?"

Mr Hunter was deeply, deeply impressed. She had correctly diagnosed the calibre of both himself (there can be no immodesty when self-assessment is as ruthless as Mr Hunter or The Wight employ) and of his hired hands. She had identified that he worked alone, not so difficult for someone of essentially the same temperament, although different focus, as himself. She had decided that he would clearly have killed the thugs after the capture was successfully completed. Moreover, she had done so under less than ideal circumstances. That took an excellent mind.

He discarded the possibility that she had been aware of what had happened and was aware of the room outside of her field of view; there had been harmonics of doubt and of questions in her voice.

"Correct, miss Wight," the Hunter continued smoothly, quite prepared to play this game openly and honestly. "Those men I hired as diversions were hired for being disposable and could barely fulfil the jobs I gave them. None of them had wives or dependents, incidentally."