The chill permeated through my bones. Spluttering awake, I raised my head to see a bucket with a small amount of water at the bottom. The rest was on me. My wet hair was strung down on my face, reaching the tips of my eyes. My hands were bound behind my back and by legs were roped to a plastic folding chair. Before my eyes was an empty water bucket held by a brawny man. I struggled to get loose. The man put the bucket down and stood in front of me. “It’s not going to work. The rope’s been fortified.” He walked behind me and put his hands on my chair. Panicking I looked around.

I looked around. All around me were giant shelves filled with packaged goods. Looking closely, some of the labels read, Crispy Crunch, Mana Stones, Magical Loops. Behind me was a big black van. A Dirkow. The giant car frame hinted at its Russian origin.

I felt myself being pulled backwards as the man dragged my chair backwards. “Hey idiot? Who are you guys? Serial killers? Want to feed me some Wheaties before you kill me is that right?”

The dragging stopped. The man walked in front of me. I took greater note of his impressive physique. His biceps tugged at the shirt he was wearing and I could swear there were veins popping out.

“Heh heh heh. I like you kid. Not many can joke when they think they about to die.” The Russian bodybuilder, oh did I mention he was Russian, patted my cheek and walked behind me again. He pulled me through those flappy double doors you see in warehouses and placed me in what could guess as a storage room.

There was movement. I seems I wasn’t alone inside the closet. To my left sat a man who looked either Chinese or Korean, wasn’t sure which. He had his head down. To my right was a woman, she was white with platinum blonde hair. Her head was leaned back with her eyes closed and for some reason, she had tape over her mouth.

“Hey.” I called out the people tied up beside me. Unlike my current plight, they only had their hands tied together and weren’t strapped to a chair. “A little help here?” The Asian lifted his head first.

“It’s no use. We tried to loosen the ropes of each other. After every attempt they kept getting tighter and tighter. The people outside are the only ones that can completely untie you.”

Right on schedule, the door opened. There stood the man I saw yesterday. There stood the man I meet earlier. It was the same guy who stood at the front of my apartment and failed the simple job of shooting me with a stun gun. He gave me a feral grin. He strode forward and punched me in the face. My head snapped back and my nose felt weird. He took out a baton from nowhere and smashed it against my head. The chair crashed down sideways and brought me down with it. He pulled me back up. Before he could do anything, a hand grabbed his shoulder.

“Stop it Chad, we can’t break him. We assured that the people won’t be damaged. Just because the kid busted your balls doesn’t mean you should bust him.”

It was the person who had actually knocked me out. The man looked like exactly like Morpheus from the matrix. He looked me up and down and glanced at the other two in the room. “Also, the boss wants the three of them out for the screens.”

Chad gave him a disappointed look. “No more fun?”

“No more fun. Now, inject them and bring them out.” The man brought out a case with 3 syringes in it. Chad grudgingly took them. He lunged forward and stabbed it in my neck.

My head rolled back. In my peripheries, Chad walked past me and injected the Asian man. He tried to struggle, but it was useless. Before I could see what happened next, I blacked out.

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I woke up gradually. I tried opening my eyes, but as soon as I did I got blinded. My neck was on fire and I could barely move it. The light dimmed a bit. As soon as my eyes adjusted, I could make out a monitor and a camera. To my right sat both the girl and the Asian, both tied a chair this time. There was a projector on the wall behind the camera that pointed at us. It seemed we were relocated into another closet, although this one a bit bigger than the ones before. A thin looking man walked inside the room. His brown hair waved above his head and he had a white lab coat on. We walked over to the camera and opened it up. Without pause, he turned to us and said, “You might be wondering why I brought you all here today”

“For two of you the reason for why I had you kidnapped was obvious. Ms. Einhorn and Mr. Chen, both of you are from very influential families, and I will get a very handsome ransom from both of you.” The monitor pinged with a notification. “Ah! Right on time.” By clicking a few keys, he brought up a projection. Surprised, I saw two faces. One was a random white man, but the other was someone I had just met the day before. Magister William Chen.

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Chen squinted his eyes. “Let go of my grandson you crazy idiot.”

The white guy sighed and put his palm against his head. “Tanny, can we please talk about this?”

The mad scientist jumped up and screamed. “NO. WE WILL NOT TALK. YOU WILL GIVE ME THE MONEY I WANT OR SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN TO THESE PRECIOUS OFFSPRING OF YOURS. ALSO, I TOLD YOU TO NEVER CALL ME TANNY. MY NAME IS TANNERAIN.”

I looked over to the two other individuals tied up. The Asian man had his eyes closed and was shaking his head. The white girl rolled her eyes. The Asian spoke up. “Uncle Tanner, can you please let us go? It’s been the third time this year you did this. Won’t you get your funding in a couple of months?”

The crazy man looked at the kid. “You don’t understand! They’ve been cancelling the funding over the past six months. I need more!”

“That’s because you kidnapped us six months ago!” retorted the kid. “Can’t you at least take the duct tape off Lucine’s mouth?” Judging by the conversation, I assumed Lucine was the girl. “Also, why did you kidnap a random?”

Tanner crossed his arms. “No way kiddo. I just got chewed out fifteen minutes ago because I kidnapped you guys again. I can’t handle another lecture right now. Also, I got some mercs to pick up the random because he has talent and will be joining you at school next year. I looked and your grandfather has already spoken to him. Speaking of which,” the kooky scientist scanned me. “Why are you beat up? I only told them stun you and knock you out via the serum.”

I spat in the man’s face. “That’s because the mercs you hired have an anger problem. Much like the one I have, so why don’t you untie me so I can strangle you to death?” In the background I heard some laughter. It was William Chen, the dirty old man.

“It seems you got your hands full there Tanny. Don’t worry, I’ll send you the money. The reason for delaying it in the first place was you to think about what you did. We can’t have you be kidnapping people at random, can we?” After getting his laughs out, the man put on a serious face. “Although, I will talk to you in person. How dare you involve someone who has no knowledge of anything happening.” The white man nodded in assent to William’s statement.

“Heed my words Tanny, this time we will not protect you in front of the council. You need to answer for what you just did. We had to cancel the Amber alert out for my Lucine. Do you realize how much trouble you caused grabbing her from the entrance to a shopping mall?”

Tanny looked peeved. He started twisting the already messy hair on his head. Under his breath, he muttered, “I only wanted him to bond with little Lucine and William Jr. They will be schoolmates after all, and with his talent it would be great if they became friends.”

I looked at the man as if he was crazy. Actually, scratch that. I confirmed he was crazy. “Are you an idiot. If you wanted me to friends with these two, there is a million better ways than kidnapping me. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with both of them and their families anymore.” I looked at the camera and spoke directly to the men watching. As coldly as possible I said, “Thank you Mr. Chen for all the help you provided me, but I think it’s best for me to cease all contact from now on. I can’t trust you people anymore.”

The man on the screen closed his eyes. “I deeply apologize for what my friend here did to you. I will provide appropriate compensation but I hope this won’t sour our interactions in the future.”

I smiled at him. “Oh, don’t worry, it won’t spoil our future interactions at all. That’s because there will be no more future interactions. Mr. Chen, I am sorry.”

His face scrunched up. “Tanny, untie all three right now. Where are you?”

Tanny pouted. “I was just helping the two of them make a new friend. Fine.” He walked over and untied William Jr. “We are currently located at a warehouse in Virginia. It’s a local storage area and the goods were set to be shipped in about three days, so you see I was going to let them go. Here’s the actual address.” He went to the computer and sent an address via the video chat function. Walking over to the woman named Lucine, he ripped off the duct tape. Without a millisecond going by, she started berating the man.

“How could you! Uncle, we know that you are crazy but I didn’t expect you to be this much of a lunatic. If it is as you said you wanted me to make friends with the other person you KIDNAPPED, it doesn’t help that we know each other. You just made him hate us. Don’t you ever think with your brain while making decisions? I know you have this massive IQ and developing all sorts of things for the government but you overstepped your boundaries.” The man’s face grew sadder and sadder with each passing sentence, but that wasn’t the end. “You better believe aunt will hear of this. We had kept it a secret from her because there was no real harm done, but not this time.” As if someone shot him, Tanny had a look of horror.

“Please please PLEASE, anything but that,” the man pleaded. Lucine only gave him a cold look in response. With a dead expression, he meandered over to me. Stopping in front of me, he asked, “Won’t you forgive me? I know this must have been traumatic and I’m sorry, but can you look past this.”

I gave him the brightest smile I could muster. “Sure! I realize your viewpoint and I won’t hold a grudge.”

He smiled back. “Thank god, with you being understanding it makes everything better.” He looked towards the two other teenagers staring at him. “This makes it fine, doesn’t it?” Waving his hands, he undid whatever spell was on the ropes. They fell down loosely to the ground. Turning around, he started walking towards the camera setup.

“Wait!” In a hurry, I got up and put my hand on his shoulder.

“What?” Tanny turned around to face me. Without any notice, I punched him in the face.

He crumpled to the ground unconscious. There was movement again on the projector screen where the white guy placed both his hands on his forehead. Looking behind me, the two teenagers started walking towards me. Glancing for a moment at the body on the ground, they disregarded it and held out their hands. “Hi, sorry for the unfortunate circumstances my name is Lucine and this is my friend William. Nice to meet you.”