Why You Were Taken

TEAMBUILDING ₁₅

Johannesburg, 2021

Fiona and Seth lie naked in their hotel bed. They are on their backs, gazing at the ceiling, allowing the air conditioner to cool their pink skin. It’s a Friday afternoon and they’re supposed to be at teambuilding, but instead they’re at the 3rd hotel on their list: The Five-Leafed Clover. They have decided to try out all the top hotels in Jo’burg; they have 36 to go.

Fiona loves hotels. She likes to arrive at the concierge, hot, breathless, and get a room for an hour, or an afternoon. She likes leaving the room a tangled, stained mess, steal the stationery, and flounce out of the entrance a few hours later, flashing the eyes of a woman clearly satisfied.

Seth had expected her to be the opposite: shy of checking in, sure to make the bed before they left, straightening towels on her way out, but she had surprised him, and herself. She would giggle, mid-strip, and say things like ‘Goodness, what has happened to me?’ or, more specifically, ‘What have you done to me?’

She still wore polka dot silk blouses, but underneath she had exchanged her practical undies for the expensive lingerie Seth would buy her, or she would now buy herself. She still had the innocent freckles and the easy-blush cheeks but she wouldn’t hesitate to go down on him in his office, as long as the door was locked and the camera cloaked.

Seth held her hand, which was wrapped around the locket she always wore. Lockets were back in style, even some forward-fashion men wore them, but Seth got the feeling Fiona was wearing hers long before they started trending again.

‘What’s in the locket?’ he asks. They were used for so many purposes nowadays: pills, flash drives, patches, pedometers, mirrors, cameras, keys, IDs, phones.

‘It’s a vintage one,’ she says, ‘just holds a couple of pictures.’

‘Let me see,’ he says, peeling her fingers back.

‘No!’

‘Why not? What are you hiding?’

Fiona giggles. ‘Nothing.’

‘You are,’ he says, kissing her nose. ‘What is it? A photo of your ex? Your KGB files? Your real identity?’

She laughs some more. ‘No, silly.’

She relents and lets him open the locket. Two cats stare back at him.

‘That’s Khaleesi,’ she points, ‘and that’s Killmouski. I have a third one now, but I don’t have his photo in here.’

‘Kevin?’ he asks. She smacks him, laughs, kisses him. He closes the locket and lays it back down to rest just above her cleavage.

‘Lucky kitties,’ he says, resisting a dirtier phrase.

She smiles at him. He thinks: I’ve got you.

‘Although,’ she starts.

‘Mmm?’ he murmurs.

‘Talking about spies… I’m sure it’s nothing… I don’t want to talk grind… but when I was looking at the composition reports, just as a matter of interest, ‘cos I’m trying to learn everything there is to know about the Waters, I saw that this month’s Hydra reading was exactly the same as last month’s, and as the month before. I mean, I know nothing about science…’

Seth lifts his head, acting interested, but not too interested. ‘Isn’t that normal?’ This was just the pillow talk he was hoping for. ‘I mean, it’s supposed to remain stable.’

‘Relatively stable, yes, but these reports are carbon copies of each other! As if someone in the lab is too lazy to test the sample and is just copying the exact same data every month. I mean, if I was too lazy to do the readings then I would just tweak them slightly month-to-month.’

‘And the others?’

‘Tethys and Anahita have fewer samples, fewer readings, but their reports vary slightly. You know, January magnesium 3.13, February it’s 3.11. It just doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Strange, indeed,’ Seth says, moving onto his side to face her, stroking her stomach. ‘I think you’d better investigate.’

Fiona scoffs. ‘Yeah, right, little Fiona Botes against the megacorp that is Fontus.’

Seth’s hand moves down to stroke her, and she stops laughing. ‘It’s probably nothing,’ she inhales, ‘an admin error.’ She feels the blood rush away from her head: no more talking shop now.

‘Yes,’ agrees Seth, ‘probably.’ He shifts his body down, she opens her legs.

Maybe she would just check it out.