JACKIE:

I awoke with a black cloth bag over my head, unable to see. My hands were bound behind me with metal cuffs. I was in the back seat of a moving car.

“Who are you? Where are you taking me?”

My captor didn’t answer. He drove in silence as I struggled against my binds.

My strength wasn’t efficient enough to break the handcuffs, so I manifested a fireball to melt them away.

“Ow,” I yelped as the fire burned my wrists. The metal handcuffs remained intact. That plan was a dead-end, so I suffocated the flames with my hands to extinguish the fire.

My mind raced with new escape plans. I moved my cuffed hands around the car door in an attempt to find a way to open it, but no luck. I thrashed my body against the seat and kicked the window. The car swerved, and my throbbing head banged against the door. The cloth over my face didn’t budge. Without sight and free hands, what else could I do?

“You won’t get away with this,” I said.

No response.

Who had taken me and why? No one besides Grace knew I existed. Did she hire someone to get rid of me in a misguided attempt to protect her secret? I had to believe she wouldn’t do something like that.

When the car stopped, fear consumed me. My captor cut the engine and got out.

“What’s your plan?” I asked blindly.

My captor opened the car door and pulled me out. “What did you do to my leather seats? Is that a burn? You got a lighter or something?”

I recognized his obnoxious voice once he stopped trying to obscure it. “Feraz, is that you? What are you doing? This is insane. Let me go.”

“Stay away from me and Grace.”

“Fine, I will. After you let me go. We can work out this little misunderstanding. No problem.”

“It’s too late for empty promises, janitor. For whatever reason, Grace likes you. But it’s better to put stray dogs out of their misery than to feed them.”

“You’re going to kill me? Come on. You’re a douche, but not a murderer.”

“Shut up and walk!” He pushed me forward.

Dry grass crunched beneath my feet. Water flowed nearby. I tried to get my bearings, but saw nothing through the dark cloth bag over my head. My best bet was to de-escalate the situation.

“Let’s talk about this, Feraz. Don’t throw your life away. You don’t want to go to prison for killing a dusty janitor, do you?”

He chuckled. “People like me don’t go to jail. My family has the best lawyers on retainer. We own the justice system.”

I stopped and turned to Feraz, even though I couldn’t see him.

“Sure, but what about the physical evidence? My DNA in your car, the burn mark that matches the handcuffs on my dead body, your tire tracks, and our footprints… Lawyers can only do so much. You didn’t think this through, did you?”

He spun me back around forcefully. I tripped over my feet and fell to the ground.

Feraz spit on me. “No one will investigate your death because no one cares about you.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

That was more true than he knew. I wasn’t born in this timeline, so no one would report me missing except for Grace, but she might assume her random new friend left as quickly as I’d come.

Lying on the ground, I tried to see under the cloth bag, but Feraz grabbed me and pulled me up to my feet.

“You’re better than this, Feraz. You’re not a killer.”

“Move it, janitor.” He shoved something firm against my back to keep me walking. I assumed it was a gun, but couldn’t be sure.

The smell of sewage seeped into my nostrils. “Yuck. What’s that stench?”

“The perfect way for a dirty janitor to die… You’re going to drown in sewer water.”

The putred smell choked me. If I died in this timeline, it would be impossible to get back in. Then we couldn’t heal the probably and Alpha would likely enact global genocide. So it wasn’t just life or death for me, but for billions of people.

“Please. You don’t have to go through with this, Feraz. We can pretend this never happened. I’ll leave you and Grace alone. I promise. You’ll never see me again.”

“That’s the plan. You never happened. Grace and I will go on living, and someday, we’ll laugh about that weirdo we met once on campus.”

My footing felt loose, at the edge of a cliff. What could I say to convince him not to push me? I scoured my memories from previous probabilities for information to leverage against him.

“Goodbye, janitor.”

“Wait! You suffered a brain injury in a boating accident when you were a child, didn’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

Hm, telling Feraz his father told that story at a Life Rite party in a future timeline wasn’t a good idea…

“All of this… It’s not your fault, Feraz. Think this through. Don’t spill blood on your hands.”

“No one knew about my accident. How dare you bring that shame back to haunt me.”

“Please,” I begged. “Let’s make things right together. I promise to—”

“How did you know that?”

I flinched from the edge in his voice. My info drop made the tense situation worse.

“Listen, it’s complicated, but…”

Feraz was done talking. Without another word, he pushed me to my untimely death.

Free falling with no clue what awaited below, anxiety thwarted my screams.

Seconds later, my body smacked into a large body of water. The thrust of my plunge ripped the black cloth bag off my head, but my sense of sight was murky under the sewer-filled stream. The taste was unsanitary to say the least, but I held my breath and stayed underwater in case Feraz stood watching. In order to survive, he had to assume I drowned.

When my lungs were ready to explode, I swam to the surface. Gasping for air, floating haphazardly in the city’s waste, the handcuffs made it impossible to swim against the current.

Luckily, I can fly. An important detail my shortsighted captor was unaware of.

I scanned the cliff above to see if Feraz was waiting to ensure his plan worked. No sign of him. He clearly lacked follow through. Should have hired a professional. He could certainly afford one.

I summoned all my energy and levitated out of that stink-hole. When I landed on the soft riverbank, vomit rose in my throat on account of the feces infested water.

After losing my lunch, I caught my breath and focused my attention on removing the cuffs. My anger channeled into fire.

“What a jerk! I’ll murder him for this except he’ll die for real. Feraz has no idea what he’s up against. He’s underestimated me.”

But my revenge plot had to wait. First, those tight handcuffs had to go. I manifested fireball after fireball. None were hot enough to melt the metal cuffs. I’d start a brush fire before I freed myself.

Pacing, my feet shuffled through the mud. “Think, Jackie… How else can I get free? What if I break my hand, slide it out, then heal myself?”

“Not a bad idea, but painful.” Firestorm flew overhead and landed next to me on the riverbank.

“Firestorm! My savior! I’m so glad you’re here!”

I cuddled my head into his neck with my hands still bound behind my back.

Firestorm’s nostrils flared. “Yuck, what’s that smell?”

“Feraz thought the sewer was the perfect place to murder a lowly janitor like me.”

“Why’d he target you? He knows you’re sniffing around? You didn’t fly under his radar?”

“Narcissists isolate their victims. It’s easier to control someone who has no outside support. He doesn’t want anyone getting close to Grace.”

“What’s his end game?” Firestorm asked.

“Immortality, power, the usual. Help me get these off.”

“But murder? Seems extreme for a college pretty boy.”

“His insecurity is raging out of control. He has something big planned for spring break, that’s for sure. We’ve got to stop him at all costs.”

I turned around to present my handcuffs. Firestorm flicked them away with his sharp talons as if they were made of paper.

I massaged my wrists. “Thanks. I thought you left for Bennu already?”

He nodded. “Call it father’s intuition. Something told me to check in one last time. What’s the plan now that Grace’s sidekick tried to kill you? Still want to go to Bennu with the humans? Maybe you should fly with me instead.”

“No. She’s in even more danger than we thought! If I don’t stay close to Grace, how will we keep tabs on her? What if he tries to murder her next?”