"Come with me, I'll set you up with such a good man, you'll forget all about your wretched plans!! Come!" Betty shouted as she dragged Vivian out of her room and down a flight of black marble stairs.
Vivian let herself be dragged as she wailed for her mother to give her one last chance. "Momma, I'm sorry, I won't do it again. I —I'm sorry mumma, please let me go, please, I'll do better, I promise, don't send me away mumma, don't you love me anymore?!" She begged as her mother threw her in the middle of a posh Drawing Room, at the feet of an old man.
Vivian looked up, her tear-striken glassy gaze stared at the wrinkly hand approaching her face. Repulsed, she tried to jerk backwards only for her mother to grab her hair and hold her head in place.
"Do you like her? She'll do just about anything to get under the covers with a man. Take this disgraceful thing away and I'll be grateful," she whacked the back of Vivian's head which propelled her to facepalm into the old man's saggy chest.
"Oh-ho-ho, what a fine smelling fresh woman! I adore this!" The man exclaimed and wrapped his hands around her head in order to bury it into his chest.
Vivian's shouts were muffled and her protests landed on deaf ears. She tried to wiggle out of his grasp but Betty kept hitting her hands and feet back in place. She wailed her mother's name but the lady behind her only encouraged the old man.
"You can check if she's a virgin or not. If you don't like her, sell her off to a brothel or something," Betty spat as she walked out of the drawing room.
"Ah-ha, checking the goods, I like that," the man snickered and grabbed a chunk of Vivian's hair to pull her head back. "Be good for me, will you now?" He grinned a slimy smile and ran a hand over her chest. "Soft bosom," he giggled coyly.
Vivian chose his moment of perverted distraction to twist herself out of his grasp and elbow him in the gut. The man inhaled a guttural sob as his shaky hand reached for Vivian's striking scarlet hair only for her to kick him in the face and make a run for it.
The Drawing Room was on the ground floor and on the opposite side was an imperial window awaiting her freedom. She ran towards it, each step on the carpeted floor thumped loud in her ears. She flicked the window lock open and jumped out, temporarily thankful that her mother made her wear a short, frilly, white dress which encouraged mobility.
She landed on the lush grass with practiced ease, whilst inside, the old man was already shouting, "Betty! Guards! She ran away!! Catch her! Catch my bride!!"
Vivan beelined towards the walls of the estate, movement frantic, breath erratic and her heartbeat thundering in her ears. She felt her face flush and heat overcome her limbs as she made a mad dash over the graden chairs.
The back gate was in sight now. Almost close. Just a sprint away — when something tugged at the frills of her dress and pulled her backwards. Her foot twisted and her body complied.
Vivian fell on her butt and turned to spot the family butler. A few paces away, the guards and her mother were catching up. The butler wasn't as old as he should have been for holding the title of the Royal Housekeep but he was as wise as his post expected him to be.
He stared down at her, through his dark twinkling eyes over the half-moon glasses. He had hooked the curved handle of his umbrella to catch the running girl.
"Lady Vermilion," he addressed with a small nod.
"Not the time Allistor, I will be dead by the time you pay your regards," Vivian snapped as she detached the umbrella handle from her dress and got up.
"You were forgetting this," Allistor passed a small black pendrive to her, "Please leave and never turn back."
"Is it—?" Vivian couldn't complete her question as Allistor turned his back to her. He weilded his umbrella like a sword and stood at guard against the upcoming threats.
"Run m'lady," he shouted and charged forward.
Vivian nodded and did not turn to look back. She limped forward with as much strength she could muster. Allistor was a trained assassin but he could easily be out-numbered by Betty's men. The Vermilion estate's guards. The men who had pledged their loyalty to her father. A man whose grave wasn't even cold for twelve hours before his wife was getting rid of his only true heiress.
Vivan kicked the backdoor open and ran out. The metal doors always remained unguarded for they were an unused exit opening into Demiseland, a dark forested territory which was considered to be no-man's-land even with its proximity to the Vermilion Estate.
"Run faster you hooligans! She is getting away! We wouldn't be able to chase her in Demiseland!!" Betty shouted but Vivian was long gone, out of sight and into the darkness shrouded by trees and whatever creatures that lurked within.
Betty held up a hand and her guards took a standstill. She smirked as she stared into the darkness beyond the rusty gates, her button nose flared up and thin lips stretched into a grin. "This is good as well, you know," she announced, "No man has ever survived the Demiseland," she snorted and turned to the bleeding butler restrained by her men, "All of this and for what, Allistor?" Her brows perked up, "I still won!"
Betty Baudelaire's evil cackles surrounded the Vermilion Estate as Allistor was crushed into the ground and Vivian treaded into absolute darkness. She gulped, while her eyes took time for adjusting to the darkness, she relied on her senses. She twisted and turned her right foot to get rid of the limp. For she knew that she would have a long way ahead.
The trees rustled hauntingly in beckoning. Though her feet were clad, Vivian felt the sharp edges of twigs and leaves carress her naked legs. Suddenly, the dress did not feel like a good idea.
If her father's journals were accurate, it would take her two-days on foot to navigate through the terrain. Well, if snakes, insects or the cartels that resided within wouldn't take her out first.
"My biggest threat are the animals," Vivian said to herself as she walked ahead, "My best way out is finding a human."
Though as daybreak trickled into nightfall, the hopes of finding the latter were diminished by meeting one too many of the former.
"Help me, papa, show me a way," Vivian muttered, hugging the pendrive close to her chest. Her feet hurt but the will to overcome Demiseland was stronger.
Mosquitos were her companion on the journey and frogs and dragonflies were ocassional acquaintances. Though, in the dead of the night, it was easier to navigate even the smallest sign of light. Deep into the jungle, on the northeast, maybe around three o'clock, Vivian witnessed a strange flickering of flashlight. It did not take her long to realise that the inconsistent blinks of light were a morse code communication.
The code, Vivian stood and interpreted as the time and location for a drug deal.
"Really, father?" Vivian looked up at the rustling sky and whispered. The sky-high trees rustled back, as if her father was trying to say: 'don't show me the attitude, young lady!' like he always would.
"If I try to intercept, I'll be killed on sight. If I try to approach, I'll be killed on sight. If I try to speak anything, I'll be killed on sight! What the fuck am I supposed to do?!" Vivian mumbled as she kicked a twig and walked ahead.
The twig flung forward, zapped and burnt into nothingness. An insignificant smoke cloud was the only remaining identification of its existence.
Vivian's breath hitched as a perimeter of horizontal red lasers greeted her sight, merely two centimetres ahead of her nose. It flickered twice before disappearing into thin air.
"Holy shit," Vivian mumbled, breathing hastened as she took several steps back. She hadn't realised that there would be traps around this place and certainly not such deadly ones! Sheer dumb luck might have saved her once but history held proof of her not being a lucky lady.
Instantly, Vivian crouched and picked up a handful of twigs. She gulped and threw it on her farther right. If there were lasers installed in the middle of a small dense forest, their emitters or modules should be somewhere around, Vivian deduced.
Vivian test-threw the twigs, assuming the lasers to be a defence system against animals and enemies alike. She narrowed her eyes as she observed the lasers expertly burn each twig, flickering to life for approximately three seconds before disappearing. It took Vivian seven tries to find the weak node.
Vivian followed the lasers along their edge and realised that they were all ending, or starting, at the centre of the same exact tree. The fifth to the last laser stayed visible for a second longer than others and flickered more than the rest.
Vivian gulped as she crouched beside the tree and pressed her ear against its bark. "Hollow," she mumbled to herself as a smirk graced her lips. She threw a twig on the backside of the tree and similar lasers appeared behind it. "Which means..." Vivian mumbled as she brushed the moss off the edge of its trunk and smirked as she felt a hairline seam, "You're my saviour."
Hastily, Vivian shoved the pendrive in her brassier and took a hairpin off her head. She pulled it straight, wedged it into the trunk's hairline seam and pried it open.
Grinning, Vivian popped the bark off and found a service panel connecting a mesh of wires. She surveyed the small panel with her fingers and thanked the heavens when she felt a USB port on the bottom left corner. Vivian took out the pendrive and shoved it into the port.
Instantly, the small screen on the service panel began displaying: Malware Upload— 10% .... 40% .... 70% .... 100%
[USER AUTHORIZATION GRANTED. HOST OVERRIDE. SYSTEM TEST]
Vivian used the buttons on the service panel to navigate downward to the 'SAFE SHUTDOWN TEST'. She pressed it and suddenly, all the lasers were visible.
The panel asked to input a number and Vivian pressed 5. As soon as the command was input, five laser emitters, from the twenty beams horizontally guarding the east front, were disabled.
"This is good!" Vivian grinned and took out the pendrive from the panel. Five nodes were enough for Vivian to kneel or crawl into the territory.
Though, as soon as she knelt, she felt the cold metal barrel of a gun pressed against her nape.
"Going somewhere?" a deep voiced asked.