by JJ Jones
“Kenny. My name’s Kenny. These two fuckers next to me, the ones who talked so nicely when you were feeling sick, their names are Carl Jimmy and Terry.”
“What the fuck you want to tell him our names for? This ain’t a sorority meeting. There’s no point in learning names. We’re all just as good as dead anyway. You try and prove to me that ain’t the case.”
“That one right there is Terry. Real peach, isn’t he?”
“Yup,” Chase said dizzily, “sounds like a sweetheart.”
“You OK?”
“I-I think. I feel strange. Sick, dizzy.”
“It’s the drugs. They shoot us all up when they stick us in here. Makes you sleep, makes you hallucinate sometimes. Don’t try and fight it. It’ll only make you feel sicker. Just let yourself sleep. When you wake up again I bet you’ll have your sight back.”
He didn’t want to do it, not with so many questions still barrelling through his head, but he was also smart enough to know when he was fighting a losing battle. There was no way he was going to be able to ride this out and it probably wasn’t even a good idea to try. He still didn’t have a clue what he had gotten himself into, but he knew enough to know it was by far the worst situation he had ever been in.
He had a feeling he was going to need every advantage he could get if he was going to get out of here alive. If that meant falling back into this fitful state that passed for sleep, then so be it. After all, he had no idea when the next time he would be able to sleep was, nor where he would be resting his head.
“Chase. What are you doing, you goober? Do you really think this is the time for a nap?”
“God, you’re a nag. Were you always like this? Were you like this when we were little?”
“Probably. I can’t imagine that I was any better. You know I’m right, though, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know it. But I’m just so tired, Katie. I’m so god damned tired. I’ve got to sleep for just a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer, OK?”
“Shoot, does Mom know you talk that way? I bet she’d freak if she did. And I know. I know you’re tired and I wish it was all over, but it’s just not. You’ve got a little ways to go yet.”
Chase rolled over, surprised to see that they were in the attic of one of their old houses, one of the many they had lived in back when they were kids. Katie was sitting cross legged beside him, smiling down on his face with a sad, soft expression he couldn’t quite explain. She looked almost like she came to him from another world with soft light surrounding her thin body that came from some source he couldn’t identify.
He should have been surprised to see her at all but he wasn’t. Everything that was happening right now seemed to be just right. It was just Katie looking out for him, just like she had always done. That was a big sister’s job. That’s what she had always told him. It used to bug the shit out of him, the way she doled out advice nobody had ever asked for and meddled in his business like it was hers to control. But now? Well, now he felt very different about the arrangement.
He needed somebody now. He needed help, guidance. It was something he had never really learned how to ask for but he needed help. He was more afraid than he had ever been in his life, although he couldn’t for the life of him remember why. He knew that something was coming for him, he just didn’t know what it was. He stretched out one hand in Katie’s direction, wanting some basic human contact to make him feel a little bit better, but she pulled back, a silent apology playing across her lips.
“There isn’t time, brother. There’s no time for comfort or coddling. You need to know that things are going to get worse before they get better. They are going to get so much worse, Chase.”
“But what will I do?”
“Be careful. Be wary. The ones you trust the most, the one’s you believe are on your side, those are the ones who will betray you. So be careful, and come find me. I’m very different than I once was, but I’m waiting for you. I want to help you, to offer you a place to rest. Come find me, brother.”
“But you’re right here!”
“No, no baby brother, I’m very far away. Now it’s time to wake up, OK? You’ve got to wake up. To get ready.”
“Hey! Hey, man, you OK?”
Chase sat up like a shot being fired and felt every muscle in his body scream in response. For a moment, he was every bit as disoriented as he had been when he passed out talking to (what the fuck was his name?) Kenny. He had only been dreaming, he knew that now, but it had felt so real! He could have sworn that only a moment ago his sister had been sitting there right beside him. He could still feel her warmth, still smell that distinct sweetness that was another shifter’s odor.
He had learned to love that unique scent. It was the way all of the members of his family smelled. It told him that he was with someone special, with someone who was his own kind. He could see again, though, there was that, so he knew she wasn’t really there with him, wherever he was. But that smell!
He couldn’t shake it, actually smacked the sides of his head, bang, bang, bang, to try and shake the dream all of the way loose, but the smell was persistent. Finally, he looked up at his unwilling companions, afraid of what he would see. The one who was closest to him, the one he assumed was Kenny, gave him a sympathetic smile.
“There you are. You were starting to yell. Whatever you were dreaming, it had you pretty good and riled up.”
“It was nothing. I don’t know. Someone from my past.”
“Katie?” Jimmy or Terry said in a singsong voice that made Chase want to punch something, “Who’s she, chick you’re banging? Better kiss that ass goodbye, seeing as I highly doubt we’re gonna be getting any visitors wherever the fuck we’re going.”
“She’s my sister, you piece of shit. How ‘bout you keep your mouth shut about things you don’t understand.”
“Woo, Jimmy,” the one who must be named Terry laughed, “even I have to agree with him on that. Ain’t cool to make sex comments about a man’s sister. Even if you’re having as shitty a day as all of us are having.”
“That’s enough. I mean it. You want them to pull this rig over? Come give us all another shot?”
Kenny spoke and the other two shut up almost immediately. Apparently, he was the little band of misfits’ leader of sorts. Either that or the threat of their captors coming back to inject them all with more of that extreme sedative crap was a sobering enough thought to calm them all down.
Either way, he was grateful for the brief reprieve. He may have his senses back, at least in part, but that in no way meant he understood what was going on. He needed to get his bearings and that was really hard to do with the idiot twins talking in his ear about things they shouldn’t be talking about. Now that they were silent, he looked around him, desperate to have some idea of the situation he had gotten himself into. What he saw didn’t instill him with a lot of confidence.
He appeared to be in the back of an exceptionally large van without any windows at all. There looked to be seven of them in total, so Kenny had been right about that. Aside from himself and the three men he had already interacted with, there were three other men who appeared to still be passed out. Either that or they were pretending to be, something he wouldn’t have blamed them for in the slightest. If it hadn’t been for a sister that wouldn’t even leave him alone in his dreams, he would still be knocked out and blissfully unaware himself.
In a truck. That explained the rocking sensation. It was more than just a hangover for the ages, it was because he was actually moving. Not only moving, but cuffed as well. Cuffs made out of some kind of synthetic material he had never seen before that even his considerable strength couldn’t seem to break.
The more he pushed against them, in fact, the worse it got until his wrists felt like they were on fire and the cuffs felt so tight he felt like he might just lose circulation and have his hands fall right off. He saw that the other people in the van with him were cuffed as well. They weren’t fighting it, though. Th
ey seemed to have given up already, which wasn’t a good sign.
He was starting to get a better grip on his actual physical surroundings, but that was about it. And then there was the most disorienting thing. There was still that smell. He couldn’t shake it. Just what the hell was going on here?
“So you’ve got your sense of smell back along with your sight. That’s good. You must be stronger than they thought. Took longer for all of the rest of us to get any of it back.”
“Please, just cut the cryptic bullshit, will you? Please. How do you know this stuff? How do you know about my sense of smell, for Christ’s sake?”
“We’re all shifters, man. Why else would we all be in here like this?”
So that was the smell. It wasn’t residue from his dream and it wasn’t his imagination. He was shut up in a van full of shifters driving to god knows where. But why? And how? Was it possible that one of the men in his company had betrayed him so quickly? Surely not. He had looked each and every one of those men square in the eye and seen that they were genuine. It just didn’t seem possible that he could have been so wrong about any of them.
But was it? It didn’t feel possible but at this point, everything was pretty much up for grabs. It seemed like this was one of those situation where all bets were off.
“OK, we’re all shifters. Why are we in here?”
“Do they need more of a reason?”
“Who is they?”
“The country. The people we work for, man. This is a government thing, I promise you that much. This shit has conspiracy written all over it.”
Chase glanced at Jimmy and grimaced. He didn’t like that guy, him or Terry, but he had to hand it to him. What he was saying made sense. It made too much sense to just throw it away without considering. Sometimes the crazy theories about a thing turned out to be just that; crazy. Other times, though, other times it wasn’t that simple. Sometimes the conspiracy theory wasn’t just another hobby for a bunch of crackpots with nothing better to do.
Sometimes things really were seedy and covert and much too big to stand up to on one’s own. He just couldn’t be sure if that was what this was. He didn’t know these men from Adam. There was just no way he could agree with them without any question, especially not after his family had dedicated so much to their country. He needed more information.
“You said the people ‘we’ work for. What do you mean by that?”
“You’re military, right? Well, so are we. I’ll venture a guess the ones still passed out are military, too. All military and all shifters. Don’t you think that would be too big of a coincidence?”
“Seems unlikely, I’ll give you that.”
“Unlikely? Shit, it’s more than that. You ain’t ready to give up on ‘em yet, are you? You don’t think your country could ever betray you. Cute. Stupid, but real cute.”
“That’s enough, Jimmy. Seriously, you aren’t helping and if you aren’t gonna help, just stay quiet. No need to make things worse.”
Jimmy spit in Kenny’s general direction, clearly convinced that there wasn’t any way things could get worse, but he stopped talking. So there was that, at least. It was a small bit of relief but given the circumstances, Chase supposed he should take what he could get. Kenny seemed mostly satisfied with it, too, and he turned his attention to Chase, fully ready to pretend the moron twins didn’t exist at all.
“So what branch are you? If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”
“Navy SEALs. You?”
“Same. These two as well. Now let me ask you another question. That OK?”
“Shit, it’s not like I have anything else to do, right?”
“Right,” he said with a laugh that managed to be friendly and easy despite their circumstances, “I guess you’re right about that. So here goes. Have you heard any of the rumors? Any of the rumors about us?”
“Funny you ask.”
“Funny how?”
Chase was starting to feel dizzy again and he shut his eyes briefly and counted back from ten, willing himself to buckle down and maintain his cool. When he felt his grip on himself return (by no means strong but at least enough to keep him from totally losing his shit) he took a breath and went back to the task at hand.
“I don’t know. Just the timing. I hadn’t heard anything until right before I got snatched up. I was out with some of my buddies, some of the men in the company, and they told me what they had heard.”
“You think it could’ve been them that turned you in?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about that and I don’t. I really don’t think so. I know those men. They would have protected me, not turned me in. This has got to be something else.”
“Like a witch hunt.”
“What?”
Kenny and Chase both asked the question at the same time. There was Terry, looking off into the distance at something only he could see, all of the macho shit he had been projecting long gone. He looked afraid the way a little boy might look afraid. Somehow that was more sobering than all of the rest of it. He looked like he had gone ahead and given up.
“A witch hunt,” he said in a dead voice, “where they round us up and do away with us one by one. It won’t matter that we ain’t done a thing wrong, see? They don’t care. They care that we’re different. They’re gonna take what they can get out of us and if we don’t cooperate, boom! Dead. Or locked up for good, which might as well be the same thing. Like I said, witch hunt. We’re all good as burned, sure as we sit here talking to each other.”
Nobody spoke. What was there to say? Nobody knew if he was being dramatic or if he was on to something. They were completely in the dark. They were going to find out, though, whether they wanted to or not. Because they could all feel the truck slowing and coming to a stop. Their little social hour was through. Chase waited for the doors to open, waited, and waited. Nothing happened. But something was happening, he could hear it just outside. Men were moving and they were afraid. They were afraid of him, of him and his kind. Was that why they had rounded them all up? For a reason as mundane as fear? It wouldn’t be even close to the first time something like that had happened, but nobody ever expected it to happen to them. No matter what history dictated, each new atrocity was always a surprise.
“Maybe we can talk to them. Make them understand we aren’t a threat.”
“Are you shitting me? No way something like that would work.”
“Maybe,” Chase insisted, “if we can look them in the eyes, make them see us as people. Maybe they’ll realize we don’t deserve this.”
He thought there was a real possibility that what he was saying was true. Of course he did, or he wouldn’t have said anything. Unfortunately, he never got a chance to test his theory out. Because they didn’t open the doors, didn’t face them like men and look them in the eye. Instead they opened little grated windows and threw in the tiniest canisters Chase had ever seen. Gas. They were gassing them, like fugitives, like common criminals.
The baseline of respect Chase had always believed existed amongst military men, the code of ethics and honor he had always felt so proud to be a part of, it looked a whole lot now like that didn’t really exist after all. He wanted so badly to break out of his prison and fly away from this place, but he couldn’t do it. His eyes, nose, lungs, every part of him was overtaken by this gas unlike any other he had come across.
He felt like he was suffocating and there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to fight back. A quick glance at the men in the truck with him told Chase that none of them were any better off. It didn’t matter how strong any of them were. They were all going back to sleep and then god only knew what would happen to them. They would be entirely helpless, at the mercy of their unknown captors.
* * *
“Hey. Hey! Anyone out there hear me? Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on here?”
“Nobody’s coming for you, boy. I suggest you quit your yapping. Only gonna sap you of what strength you’ve got left an
d you’re gonna need that. Besides, you’ll be gone from yourself again before you know it. Nothing to worry about, least nothing you can remember.”
“Why? What’s happening? Anything you know would be helpful. Anything at all.”
But whoever the man in the cell next to him was, he appeared to be done talking. Chase was just going to have to do his best to piece things together on his own. Again. He knew one thing for sure, when he got out of this (if he ever got out of this), getting blackout drunk was a thing of the past. He wanted to make damn sure that this was the last time he woke up without knowing where he was or exactly how he got there.
From this point on he intended to be entirely lucid one hundred percent of the time. But for now, back to the pieces; the little fragments he did have. After very little time at all, Chase deduced that he was in a military prison. He had no idea how long he had been there, just that his hair had grown. He had no memories of it, but it seemed like he had been there for at least a couple of weeks. That was terrifying all on its own. How did a person lose weeks of his life like that?