“Watch your feet,” Rightie said.
I could hear a door open ahead of me, over the plik and plok of us stepping across the pebbles, like giants in a ball pit.
When the door closed behind me, I could intuitively tell that this wasn't a particularly fancy or luxurious place. It was a homey one. I felt like I was back visiting my grandmother's house in the city, stepping across the thick, fluffy carpet. Only instead of laying back in a soft, engulfing LA-Z-BOY recliner, looking at colorful binders filling the bookshelf against the wall, I was being forcefully escorted, a gun barrel prodding painfully into my side.
Wordlessly, they yanked me forward.
A grandfather clock ticked away somewhere near the entryway.
A fireplace spat and crackled somewhere in a room off to the side.
With every step my toes sank into the spongy carpet, entangled by the fuzzy fibers.
Suddenly, the caravan came to a halt. The hands holding my arms felt like they were connected to rigid pillars.
"What's the holdup?" I said, without thinking.
Instead of hitting or threatening me, one of them—Rightie—said, "Stairs."
It occurred to me that I could use this to my advantage. Ever fall down a flight of stairs? It’s enough to distract you, slow you down for a few moments. Long enough for a captive to wrench off his blindfold and get away. I’ve seen it in the movies.
Still, the blindfold posed an issue. How could I leverage things to my advantage if I couldn’t see what I was leveraging?
Needed to even the playing field.
"We'll just have to take it slow," Leftie said, and they began to pull me forward.
"Or," I chimed in, "we could, you know, get this thing off my head?”
The only response was silent hesitation. One of my feet was planted firmly on the top step, the other hanging out over what could be an abyss, for all I knew.
"Look," I said. "You guys are obviously professionals. You—" I winced as Rightie jabbed his handgun painfully into my vulnerable side. "—somehow managed to abduct me from a secure government facility. I'm not even sure exactly how. I know you're probably looking forward to the part where you put me in a seat in front of your employer before dramatically pulling the bag off my head, but if we could dispense with just the one part of that—"
My head whipped back as the bag was forcefully removed. The fabric and seams scraped my face, giving my cheek what felt like rug-burn. Strands of my hair were caught, painfully snapping off my scalp.
I blinked. I was facing a long, downward set of carpeted stairs, turning, going who knows where. My eyes, accustomed to an entire day in darkness, protested against the round light in the ceiling of the stairwell.
The pressure on my arms disappeared, unexpectedly. I tottered, but regained my balance.
Until a thick, divoted boot sole pressed against the small of my back, shoving me forward, into infinity.
Well, not infinity, exactly. Unless infinity is the amount of time it takes to fall forward onto a flight of stairs. Or just enough time to think, “Shoulda seen that one—”
My shoulder hit the steps first. My hands were still zip-tied behind my back, so there was no way to try and cushion the impact.
It was more painful than I thought it was going to be. Or at least more than I had time to imagine while I was in free fall.
I hit my nose on the sharp corner of a step and kept going, slamming my side, followed by my knee, and a dozen other places.
By the time the world righted itself, I was curled up against the wall, at the corner halfway down the stairwell. My cheek was flat against the cold, bumpy texture of the wall. I had the aching sensation of a dozen different bruises sprouting throughout my body; enough that I likely wasn't aware of them all.
Boots stomped slowly down the stairs above me, every thump accompanied by a slight creaking reverberation.
I tilted my head.
“Whoops.” The man said smoothly, stepping toward me. He wasn’t looking at me.
He had to be Leftie. His hair was neat, smoothed over in a fashionable way, with only a little bit of shine. He walked right past me like I wasn’t even there, jerkily adjusting the flaps of his suit jacket as if to knock some small, clinging thing from it.
It made sense, really. I had asked to be able to see where I was going, and he had given it to me. But not without warping the situation, to show he was in control.
Cute.
Rightie followed behind, and he was exactly and uncannily what I had imagined.
If Leftie’s footsteps were tremors in the stairwell, Rightie’s were full-on earthquakes. He pounded from step to step, descending on me like a Saint Bernard.
Underneath a coarse-brown Carhartt jacket, his gut strained against a plain T-shirt, protruding over and on top of a belt that was holding on to his blue jeans for dear life. That belt was also somehow responsible for a handgun holster at his inner thigh, as well as another holster that seemed to be holding a cellphone. Not all heroes wear capes.
He stopped and looked down at me, running a hand over the scratchy, receding stubble on the top and sides of his head.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re gonna have to get up on your own there, buddy. Upsie daisies.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I flexed my elbow, stifling a groan. I was beginning to feel that these people weren’t my friends. You know, just beginning.
A part of me had hoped that the secrecy of the bag over my head had been for my sake as well as my captors. A quickly dissipating thought, and perhaps a naive one to begin with, but again, everything was a little fuzzy.
The possibility these people were trying to help me, even if there were other interests at play, was part of what kept me calm during our little road trip. That and it wasn’t the first time I’d been in situations like this. It came with the territory.
As I leaned against the wall, pushing myself to my feet, I couldn’t help but think of the definition of Survivor Bias. “I’ve lived through every other gunpoint encounter before, so obviously I’m going to survive this one...right?”
“I said get up.” Rightie said.
“Get him over here,” Leftie said, voice echoing weirdly from the room he’d stepped into.
“I’m not going anywhere.” I said, heart thudding, lungs working. “Not until I...have a word with my lawyer...”
I wasn’t scared. I’d dealt with punks like these before.
I wasn’t scared. It was gonna be fine. It was gonna. Be. Fine.
Rightie gripped his gun like he was about to whip it out.
“Okay!” I said. I leaned, palm pressing against the cold, lumpy texture of the wall. “I’m getting up.”
The stairwell led to a garage, big enough to fit two or three cars. It was empty, except for three metal folding chairs scattered in the center and a folding table against the far wall with a coffee machine and an upside-down stack of styrofoam cups on top, an orange extension cord running out from underneath. Rightie stood next to the folding table, hands in his pockets, studying me distantly. There was also a black duffle bag underneath the table. I tried not to imagine what was in it.
The garage door was closed. It looked sturdy, secure.
Leftie walked around past me, grabbing one of the chairs and banging it loudly as he adjusted it, gesturing for me to sit.
I sat, deciding not to mention that a cushion on that seat sure would be appreciated.
The place smelled of coffee and motor oil. And the penny-lick odor of blood, but that was probably just my bruised nose. I wiped the blood coming out of my nostril on my shoulder sleeve.
“Coffee?” Leftie said. He was perched like a statue, hands still in his pockets. His face was placid, enigmatic.
“Am I leaving here in separate bags, or what?” I said, then found that I was biting my tongue.
Nice. Give them ideas. Great job, Kit.
“Eh, sounds messy.” Leftie said. “I’d rather move you, first. I like to avoid messes. Which is part of why you’re here, but it also means I don’t like to shit where I eat.”
Reassuring.
“This your place, then?” I said. “I like it. It’s...homey.”
“One of my places,” Leftie said, speaking casually. “It’s a safehouse, of sorts.”
“Might want to keep that information a little closer to the vest.” I said.
“Oh, I’m not worried about it.” Leftie said. “We’re either going to be friends, or we’re going to be enemies. And if we’re enemies, it won’t be for very long.”
“I try to avoid relationships with unhealthy power dynamics. Like the kind where I get held at gunpoint and kicked down a flight of stairs.”
That got a little smirk from Leftie, which was unsettling more than anything. There was a wound-up tension behind his eyes that looked like it could blow at any moment, despite how composed the rest of his body was.
Behind him, Rightie was walking over to the folding table, reaching for a cup. His back was to the both of us as he set his cup underneath the coffee machine spout. As he flicked the lever, the smell of coffee intensified, and the garage echoed with trickle and sputter sounds, making me viscerally aware of the fact that I had not peed in over twenty four hours.
“You don’t even know how it happened, do you?” Leftie said.
He seemed way too happy about that.
But that was what I’d been trying to figure out earlier, wasn’t it? Retracing my steps and all that.
I woke up. Sunflower. The guy with the drugs. Laying on the bed, waiting for the pills to kick in. And then…
I stiffened. Somewhere in the dark and dusty attic of my doped up, underslept mind, a light flickered on.
“Assholes. You drugged me.”
Leftie shrugged noncommittally.
I probed my mind, tripping over splintered memories that before now hadn’t had any context or grounding, no relevance or reason to exist.
I must have been only half conscious when it happened. I remembered being wheeled on a gurney out the back of an ambulance, oxygen mask over my face. They’d rolled me out onto some freeway, slamming and sliding across asphalt toward a black SUV.
Of course. It’s always a black SUV. If there was an APB out on all black SUV’s, organized crime would be done for.
Then there’d been a needle in my arm; painful, biting. Injecting something. They propped me up in the backseat of the SUV, shutting the door behind me. Child safety lock on that thing.
Once they were in the front seats, they revved the engine, leaving the gurney lying sideways on the road behind them.
Had they spiked my meds, intercepting me on the way to the hospital?
“Picture this scenario,” Leftie said. “We roofie you, so you forget any of this ever happened. We leave you, say, on the side of the road somewhere. The police find you. You end up back in Aberdale, filed away, prescribed new meds, kept on an even tighter leash.”
My jaw clenched.
It was a strange thing. Usually I wasn’t one for violent thoughts—outside of virtual reality, anyway. But I slowly found myself developing a self-righteous desire to off this man.
“Alternatively,” Leftie went on, “Here’s another scenario; one I actually find a bit more compelling. Imagine that everything I just described has already happened to you. Spiking your drugs, kidnapping you. Using you for our purposes. We’ve already done all of this before.” He crossed his arms. “You just don’t remember.”
I bit the inside of my lip. It was warm and tasted the way rust smelled.
I held Leftie’s iron gaze, not daring to show weakness.
Ringing loud and clear, clanging through my memories like a bell, was the voice of one of the glorified yoga instructors at Aberdale. I could practically feel the tickling grass underneath me as I stretched, my eyes closed, taking in the instructor’s words.
“You are not a victim.”
But maybe I was, wasn’t I? My parents dying in a collision, being taken in by my aunt—I hadn’t chosen that. It was something that had happened to me.
When I'd first become a Rithium user, I'd had no idea just what it was, or that in a matter of months it was going to be illegal in most countries. I hadn't realized it was brain-altering, or chemically addictive. All I'd known was after a long period of mostly death, it was the only thing that made me feel alive.
I decided not to give Leftie the pleasure of responding. Just because I was a victim didn't mean I needed to act like one.
There was a tense moment of quiet, interrupted by Rightie loudly slurping his coffee in the corner.
“Good stuff,” he said.
“It was in the bargain bin.” Leftie said, annoyed, eyes still fixed on me. He suddenly stepped away from the table and pulled a small roll of black duct tape out of the deep pocket of his dress pants.
Rightie continued to slurp his coffee in the corner, but he was watching carefully, with one hand on his gun.
Leftie stepped around behind me, putting me between him and the coffee-sipper. “Hands behind you, through the back of the chair.”
Rightie nodded at me, tapping his gun assuringly.
I balled my fists and put them behind me. Leftie ran a zip tie around my wrists and pushed them against each other, zipping them tight. He moved quickly and efficiently, taping my legs and lower torso to the chair. It was kind of strange, though; he left my upper torso and arms untouched by the tape. Not that I was about to complain.
He stepped back, tossing the leftover roll of tape onto the table. There was an awkward silence following this, as both my captors seemed to relax visibly. They were clearly waiting for something. Or someone.
I wriggled a little, adjusting against the tight constraints of the tape. “So, what now? Twenty questions?”
No answer.
“I could start,” I said.
There was a loud whirring sound. Light beamed in from under the slowly rising garage door, a bright bar slowly moving it’s way across the cement floor. Warm sunlight blasted the inside of the garage.