With the last remnants of his energy, Dennis bolted up from the floor and ran towards the door. He went right for the smallest gap between the two men. One moment he was on his feet, barreling towards the door and the next there was a thud as his body was slammed against the floor. The men hadn’t even batted an eye as Dennis approached. One simply pushed him against the wall and let him slide to the ground.
Lila waited for him to get back to his feet and slink back to her side, but he didn’t. Dennis just lay on the ground, the only sign of life being his little pinkie twitching against the concrete floor. She motioned to go help him but Marie shook her head. It didn’t take a lot for her to retreat. Lila didn’t really want to help him. As much pity as she had for Dennis, he was bringing attention to himself. The six of them weren’t a team. One person’s suffering was another’s salvation.
Simon didn’t need to be pushed inside the room. He walked in and made a beeline to the corner that he had vacated. He sat down cross-legged and stared intently at the men at the door. Even though his hair was styled and his clothes were neatly pressed, his shoulders slumped and he seemed exhausted. She could see his cheeks were stained and puffy from crying. She’d wept to the point of depletion enough times to know the signs.
After they were confident Simon was safely inside, the men backed away and shut the door. The others didn’t know where he had gone and she could feel their confusion as Simon rolled up his blood-stained sleeve. He wasn’t injured, at least not physically.
Benjamin began to walk over to Simon. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Simon said.
Benjamin loomed over him. “You’ve got blood all over your shirt.”
All eyes were on the pair against the wall.
“Why do you have blood on your shirt, Simon?”
No answer.
In the silence, Dennis began to stir. He had a gash that ran down the side of his face from the blow against the floor. With blood caked around his eyes, he got to his knees and glared in Simon’s direction.
“What did they do?” Benjamin asked.
Simon didn’t answer. He seemed almost catatonic except for his trembling hands. Simon shivered as his chest rose and fell with nervous conviction.
“Answer him!” Dennis screamed in desperation.
Marie hadn’t talked in hours. She’d spent the last day mediating between Milo and Dennis, using whatever tools that were left in her therapist toolbox. Milo still sat in rebellious, immature silence and Dennis ached for clarity. So many times Lila wanted to speak up and tell the others what was happening. She knew it all but Milo had sworn her to secrecy. He felt that knowledge of the truth would be too difficult for the others to deal with. Even though it was terrifying, ignorance provided hope. After a few hours of calm psychiatrist speeches, Dennis pushed Marie to the ground in one of his fits, and she gave up. She had stood in the dark corner of the room ever since.
“Guys, please,” Lila said. “Can’t you just leave him alone?”
Dennis shook his head. “He might know something,” he said. “He’s been gone for hours.”
Simon shook his head. “Nothing happened.”
“Bullshit,” said Dennis. “You’re dressed in a $500 suit and you’ve shaved. Something happened and you’re going to tell us.”
Simon looked over at Milo. For a brief moment, they connected. They both knew something and they weren’t talking.
“You don’t have to talk about where you went,” Lila said, “but did you see a way out? Is there a door or something?”
Simon pulled at the cuffs of his shirt. “No. There’s no way out.”
“But there’s got to be a door out of this place somewhere. How’d you get out of the building?” Dennis said.
“I don’t know...” Simon started to say.
Dennis jumped to his feet and ran to the door. He banged and screamed with what was left of his voice, “Take me! Take me next!”
Lila hadn’t stood in days. When she finally got to her feet her legs felt unsteady but she somehow made it to Dennis. She grabbed at his sleeves and pulled him towards the wall.
He yanked her arm away. “Stop it! Let me do this!”
“Sit down. They don’t care about us. They’re not going to do anything you ask.”
His fists lay against the door. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
Dennis looked at her with tears in his eyes. “I can’t believe that.”
His hands were bloody and torn up from the pounding and tearing at the walls. Lila grabbed his arm and pulled it toward her. He was strong but exhausted. With all the power she still had left, Lila got him away from the door.
“You have to stop this,” she said.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have to get back to them.”
She moved him back to the wall. “I know. I want to get back, too, but you have to calm down or you won’t make it.”
As soon as his back hit the wall, Dennis shut his eyes and his knees began to buckle.
“Help!” she shouted. No one moved to assist him as he began to collapse to the ground. Her muscles were weak and couldn’t support his falling body. She caught him a foot from the floor but not before he knocked his head against the wall.
“Shit,” she muttered. She felt the back of his head and there was a small trickle of blood. A slap to his cheek didn’t rouse him, but he was still breathing.
“He’s fine,” Marie said from her outpost. “He hasn’t eaten all day. Just leave him alone.”
Lila stripped off her hoodie and bundled it up into a makeshift pillow. She moved Dennis into the most comfortable contortion his awkward sitting position would allow and placed the make-shift velour pillow behind his head.
“What should we do?” she said.
Marie shook her head. “Just let him be.”
The lines on his face had deepened and his eyes were a pale gray. She moved herself closer to him and gently put her hand on his arm to test the waters. When he didn’t pull away, she wrapped her hand over his. All she could think of was his poor wife sitting alone with that baby, not knowing where her husband went and how badly he wanted to get back to her.
Simon sat in his corner with a strange detachment. His hands shook but there was a satisfied smirk on his face. “Simon?” Lila asked quietly.
“Yeah. What’s up?” he said. The tone of his voice was of a disinterested high schooler.
It was what Milo was like when she first came in. He was broken and hiding it best he could, which wasn’t well.
“It’s okay,” she said, “You don’t have to act like nothing happened.”
He shrugged. “I’m fine. Nothing did happen. I’m fine.”
Milo looked over in betrayal. “Bullshit nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened.” Simon turned his body so he faced the wall and not the prying eyes of Milo, who had perked up for the first time in hours.
“You have blood all over your shirt.”
Simon covered the shirt sleeves with his hands. “Stop it!”
“Milo, please,” Lila said.
Milo moved closer to Simon. He crawled over to where the hunched over Simon sat, and got right in his ear. “Tell them what happened.”
Simon shook his head. “Nothing. Happened.”
Milo bit his lip hard and looked out at the rest of the captors; frustration was burrowing under his skin. “Just tell them.”
“You tell them!” Simon said. “If you want them to know so badly, then you tell them.”
Lila began to move closer to Milo to try to get him to stop what he was doing. There was something about Simon that annoyed him on a deep level and he couldn’t help himself. Milo didn’t know what his words would do to this fragile group.
“What are you talking about?” Benjamin asked.
Marie stepped out of the shadows. “Please. Tell us.”
Lila sent a pleading look towards Milo in an attempt to get him to stop speaking
.
He had told her everything the day after she was brought in. It was an excruciating story. He’d blown up the wrong car. It was a mistake. He had the blood of six people on his hands and to be brought back to the same dark room, alone, broke him.
“Milo, don’t,” she said.
It was useless. Milo had a manic energy that had been absent for the last week. “Check out your chest. See that scar?”
Benjamin and Marie did as they were told and looked down their shirts at the scar. “Yeah, what is that?” Marie asked.
“They did surgery on you, on all of us. It’s this thing around your heart. It kills you. I mean, they kill you with it.”
“Shit,” muttered Benjamin. “Why? Why would they do that?”
Milo shrugged. “Who knows. I just know that if you don’t do what they tell you to do, they flip a switch and you’re dead. That’s what they told me and I believe it.”
Benjamin pointed at Simon. “Where did they take him?”
Simon looked up for a brief moment with tears in his eyes. If he wanted to speak, no words came out of his mouth. He spun his body around, faced the wall and covered his ears with his hands.
Milo didn’t stop. Like an excited storyteller he continued. “They make you do some f’d up shit. This one guy had to push some other guy in front of a subway. He came back but when they took him again, that was it. I never saw him again.”
“God damn...” Benjamin whispered.
“What did they make you do?” Marie asked.
Milo’s lips were pursed. He wasn’t going to say it. All that bravado, and he wasn’t going to say it. Lila knew what he’d done; and it took everything in her heart to not be horrified at what that boy, mere feet away from her, was capable of.
“It doesn’t matter what I did.”
“Yes. It does,” Marie said.
The light above them flickered and sputtered. Milo choked out the words, “They made me do it.”
Lila squeezed Dennis’ hand. He wasn’t unconscious, and the part of his mind that was aware of what was happening grew tenser with each of Milo’s words.
“What? What did they make you do?” Marie shouted. It was the first time her voice had been raised above a reasonable tone since they’d been brought together.
Milo’s cheeks had turned a deep red as he struggled to get the words out of his mouth. “They told me it was supposed to be random. I just had to pick a car...”
“Who?”
He picked at his arm and squeezed his fists hard. “It wasn’t my fault....” His voice trailed off as the emotion took over. Milo buried his head in his hood and turned away from the horrified Marie.
She didn’t have to say a word. Marie’s eyes said it all. She couldn’t even look at Milo or, subsequently, Simon.
Benjamin stepped forward. “They made you...”
Milo nodded.
Silence.
Footsteps banged down the hallway. There was a high-pitched voice that mumbled from behind the door as the locks were unlatched one by one.
“Is it food? Do you think it’s food?” Lila said quietly. A small man had brought them bread and bits of meat and cheese each day. Her stomach rumbled just at the thought of something to eat. Two weeks ago she was a strict vegan and drank only coconut water and Red Bull. Now she was happy to get stale bread and processed bologna.
“It’s too soon,” Milo said. “It’s not food. They’re getting—” He didn’t have to finish his sentence.
They were coming back for one of them. There were four that hadn’t been recruited. The door opened up just a crack and the nasty woman with the stark blonde hair looked in at the group. She clutched her hip pocket as she slipped inside and her eyes scanned the room to make sure no one was going to leap from behind the door and attack her.
No one so much as lifted a finger as the woman walked inside. She strolled over to Simon whose glassy eyes glared at the wall in front of him. The woman placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“Good work, Mr. Archer. I couldn’t have done it better myself.” A reptilian smile crawled across her surgically tightened face. He flinched as her long fingernails dug into his skin.
Lila bit her tongue to keep from crying. She’d hidden from this woman every time she had walked in. The goal was to be invisible. Her heart dropped as the woman’s eye darted from Simon’s shaking body right to her.
“No,” she whispered as the woman began to walk towards her. As she got closer, her two henchmen followed behind.
“Lila,” the woman said, “come with us.”
“Please, no,” she whispered again.
One of the men grabbed her arm and attempted to hoist her to her feet. She pulled back and briefly got out of their grip but was restrained moments later. Their fingers wrapped around her arms so tightly she could feel the bruises form as they pulled her from Dennis’ side.
“Help!” she screamed. “Milo, please...” He kept his head down and ignored her pleas. They weren’t a team—it was every person for himself. Being conspicuous would mean certain death.
She was alone.
Years of watching Law and Order had trained her for this moment. There was no “bad cop” routine that would faze her. She knew that she couldn’t let them see her as weak or vulnerable. She needed to be ready for anything and maybe then they would know they couldn’t push her around.
On TV, when the suspects panicked, the people with power pounced all over them. They were like sharks, swimming around prey and waiting for the moment to attack. The blonde woman sat across from her with her hands folded on the table. Her words came out in a mannered tone as she smiled politely.
The two men who flanked her, however, appeared ready to do whatever was necessary to keep the peace. All Lila needed to do was smile and nod while she was stuck in the building. Once she was out, then she could figure out how to shut this down. Cooler heads would prevail. Milo had prepared her well. If anyone could get out of this, it was she.
The woman slid a folder across the table. “Ms. Backus. We have a special job for you.”
Lila took the folder in both hands and examined it with a detached fascination. There were no words, just a photograph of the coffee shop she had been going to for years. This was the test. She looked up from it without registering a hint of recognition. “What’s the job?” she asked.
“That’s the Blue Brook coffee shop. It’s quite popular with students and stay-at-home moms. Music and nice people in there, you know?” the woman said.
Lila set the photo down. Her ex-roommate had worked there for years. She’d often stop in and beg Hannah to give her a free cup of coffee, which she always did, without question.
“I know it. What is it you want me to do?” Her voice came out borderline annoyed. The woman seemed taken aback. Even though she shook on the inside, Lila calmed her body, sat straight and forced a stern smile.
“You will burn it. To the ground.” The woman didn’t break eye contact as she settled back into her seat.
Her brain reeled. There were ways around this. She could go at night, after it was closed. “All right. That seems fine,” she said. “I will go tonight.” Lila reached to grab the photo again but the woman slapped her hand away.
“Hey!” she said.
The woman simply glared and snatched the folder away. “You will do your task during the business day.”
“But,” she said, “there will be people inside.”
Without missing a beat, she said, “Exactly.”
Her entire body tensed. “I can’t...” she began to say.
The woman ignored her. “We will take you to the location and you will have two hours to complete your task. If you do not complete your task, you will be terminated. If you attempt to contact police, you will be terminated. If you attempt to rescue anyone, you will be terminated. Is that understood?”
Lila swallowed the gnawing fear in her throat and forced the confident shell back into the light. “What if there’s a ch
ild? I can’t do that to a child...”
“No one,” she said, “is allowed to leave once you begin. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I understand.”
Lila fell apart in the car. The partition was up and the windows were blacked out. As they sat in the parking lot, she’d tried to unlock her door so she could jump out at a stoplight, but the driver quickly noticed and put the locks back down. All she could do for the hour long drive was think about what she faced when the car finally stopped.
The driver was the kind of guy who usually ate out of the palm of her hand. Big, burly, football players made up the bulk of her friends by the time she graduated from college. The Sigma Chi frat brothers had made her an honorary member her senior year.
This man was the key to the whole operation. If they never made it to the coffee shop, then she wouldn’t need to do anything. The two of them could simply disappear and no one would ever be the wiser. Or, better yet, she could convince him to let her go and she could go back to living her life. He was the linchpin. All she needed to do was get him on her side.
She knocked on the partition with the hope that he’d be lonely enough to talk.
“Hello?” she said.
The heavy metal music played through the plastic. She tried again. “Can you hear me?”
Lila smoothed down her hair. It hadn’t been soft and straight in so long she’d forgotten what that felt like. The tiny man, whoever he was, had worked miracles on the knotted mess that weeks of damp neglect had created. She had on makeup and fake eyelashes. The man had doused her in perfume to cover up the moist moldy stench that failed to leave her skin even after a scouring scrub-down. She wiped away a nervous tear, as well as a fair amount of eyeliner.
The partition came down just a few inches. “What is it?” the driver asked.
She leaned right up to the gap and let her fingers fold over the top. “Do you think you could turn on the air conditioning back here? They gave me this jacket and I’m burning up.” She yanked at the collar and pulled it down just enough to show him a little bare skin. As hard as he tried to keep his eyes on the road, he couldn’t help but sneak a peek.
The Six: Complete Series Page 7