Crash Morph: Gate Shifter Book Two

by JC Andrijeski

  “They know,” the guy with the European accent said. “Shut up so I can talk.”

  The European went back to talking on the phone, and that time, I realized he was speaking a different language on the phone, which is probably why the other guy couldn’t seem to stop talking to him in English. The non-English language was definitely Slavic-sounding. I was close enough this time to have zero doubt. It sounded Russian to me, like the guy at the bar, but I didn’t know enough Russian to be absolutely sure about that.

  “Are we getting a bonus for pulling her?” Boston said. “There’s money in it, right? Didn’t that jerk-off, Evers, say there was money in it for us?”

  I felt myself tense.

  Not like I’d been exactly relaxed up until that point.

  I mean, I could do the math. Even so, hearing Evers’ name out loud really hit the reality home in a way the handcuffs couldn’t do on their own.

  I found myself feeling over the back seat a second time. I stretched as far as I could in every direction that time, yanking on the cuffs. I felt all over the door itself, too, but still came up empty. I was looking for something...anything, I guess. Anything I might use to pick the lock on the cuffs, although I knew how unlikely that was, especially if the cuffs were police issue. Something to use as a weapon. Anything I might use, for anything...well, useful.

  But there was nothing. Nothing I could reach.

  I tried to decide what to do.

  Then I remembered the implant.

  “Nik. Nik...can you hear me?”

  Silence was my only reply.

  “Nik? Are you there? It’s important! Answer me now, okay? Even if you’re still in that bar...I need you...right now.”

  More silence.

  I tried a few more times, calling his name in different combinations.

  I found myself thinking I had to be out of range.

  I’d never thought to test the range of the implants before. While we’d been in Nik’s dimension, I’d always assumed it was some kind of civilization-wide wifi system, since everyone there seemed to be wired to one another, no matter what the distance. Here, since it was just me and Nik, I figured the implants themselves had to be sending signals to one another, but it occurred to me suddenly that I really had no idea how they worked.

  If we lived through this, I’d have to remember to ask Nik about that.

  “Nik...?” I ventured again, not really expecting an answer at that point, but not sure what else to do. I was startled when I did get an answer, however.

  “Dakota?” he said. “Where are you? We should talk.”

  Nearly overcome by relief to hear his words, I made a sound the guys up front might have heard if they hadn’t been driving so fast with the windows open.

  Even as I thought it, I realized we had to be on a freeway. A highway, at least.

  “Can we meet?” Nik was saying. “Where are you? I think they are getting ready to leave this place...”

  I shook my head, again forgetting about the people in the front seat.

  “Nik...shut up and listen to me. Is there GPS on this thing? The implant, I mean.”

  “GPS?”

  I heard his unfamiliarity with the term in his voice.

  I talked over him before he could ask.

  “Location, Nik. Can you tell where I am via the implant?”

  “Of course.”

  Relief exploded over me, enough to relax my shoulders for real. “Great, Nik. That’s great,” I said slumping into the seat with an exhale. “So where am I right now? Can you see where I am right now, while we talk?”

  There was a shorter silence.

  “Moving fast,” he said then. “Down the road. It looks like you’re leaving the city.” Nik’s voice turned puzzled. “Where are you, Dakota? Did you get the Enfield back from Gantry? Or are you with someone?”

  “The latter,” I said, muttering afterwards, “...Although not by choice.” Again, though, relief overpowered all of the other emotions I might have felt, given everything. “Look. I don’t want you to freak out, Nik, okay? Seriously...it’s going to be fine. But someone took me. Off the street. They must have drugged me or something because I went down...hard...and woke up in the back of what’s probably a van, maybe an SUV. They’ve got me handcuffed to the car, so I can’t get out on my own. One has an accent like the guys in the bar, so there’s got to be some connection. They mentioned Evers, so Razmun might be involved. Or maybe Evers hired the mafia guys on his own, had them follow me...”

  The silence struck me as ominous suddenly and I trailed.

  “Nik?” I said through the link. “Nik...listen. Don’t freak out, okay? Just call Gantry. Gantry’s guys can deal with this. You don’t need to do it, all right? Get out of there as soon as you can and use the number he gave you. Or call Irene’s house, and get her or Jake to call him. Gantry can use his connections to get law enforcement involved. This may be the good news, Nik. We’ll have them on kidnapping, which will stick...”

  Again, no answer.

  “Nik! Answer me, damn it!”

  The silence didn’t get any less silent that time, either.

  “Nik! Don’t do anything stupid, okay? Please!”

  Yeah. Nothing that time, either.

  I kept trying to get him to answer, but I already had a pretty good idea that he wouldn’t, no matter what I said. Knowing Nik, he’d already turned himself into something. Something that might not think the way a human being would think about this...or even a cat. Or something that might be too busy winging through the sky or crawling through the walls to even hear me.

  I knew something else, too. Something that probably should have been obvious, but wasn’t until that very instant.

  Nik wasn’t going to call Gantry.

  Well, he wasn’t going to wait for him, anyway.

  It struck me to wonder in the next few seconds if I could call someone else via the implant. Back in Nik’s dimension, the implants acted as kind of the ultimate mobile phones. But I’d never bothered to ask Nik if we might be able to hook something like that up with the phone or internet system on Earth.

  Another thing I’d have to remember to mention, assuming we weren’t both dead.

  Either way, Nik was probably already on his way to intercept the car. Whatever form he came in, I knew it wouldn’t wait for Gantry to reason with whoever handcuffed me to the back seat. Worse, it might not be all that discreet about how it handled the situation, which could turn out really badly for me and Nik, depending on where it happened.

  The more I thought about it, the more nervous I got.

  Pretty soon, I was mostly yelling at Nik through the link, trying to get him to answer, to at least give me some warning. Asking him if I could call Gantry through this thing, and if not, if he could. Warning him that he’d end up dead...or on a lab table somewhere, having pieces of him sawed off for scientific purposes.

  But Nik just wouldn’t.

  Answer me, that is.

  That, or he could no longer hear me.

  So I lay there, fighting to keep my breathing even as I waited for whatever might happen next. Some part of me listened, maybe for the sound of giant dragons’ wings, maybe for a police siren...or a helicopter...or some combination of the three.

  In any case, I lay there past where my nerves could stand it.

  Nothing happened, though.

  Not for what felt like a really long time.

  When the car slowed finally, I was startled out of my stupor.

  I realized only then that I’d been so busy listening for something to come after the van that I’d forgotten to pay attention to the two guys who actually had me. When the van started to slow, pulling onto what sounded like a gravel road, I realizing they were arguing again, in lower voices this time, as if it had finally occurred to one or both of them that I might be awake and listening to their words.

  “Do we bring her inside?” the Boston guy muttered.

  “What else we do?” the European grunted.
“Leave her outside? Maybe keep her blindfolded and tied up to the outside of the house, to scream as loud as she can when she wake?”

  “What if she sees something?”

  “She has hood.”

  “So? She could see something anyway.”

  “It won’t matter.”

  “What if it does?” Boston insisted. “They can’t just whack a P.I., can they?”

  The European grunted a short laugh. “We kidnap her off the street. You really think we let her go next, to run and tell her cop friends? No. She disappear after this. No worries.”

  “I still think it’s a bad idea,” Boston muttered. “She’ll see the merchandise.”

  “She’ll be dead,” the other guy said, sounding impatient that time. “What part of you aren’t hearing this? It doesn’t matter what a corpse sees. She dead. No problems.”

  I bit my lip, but didn’t move where I lay stretched out on the van.

  “If they wanted her dead, why not have us do it? Now, I mean?” the Boston guy said, his voice still closer to a mutter than regular speech. I heard him turn his head, even as his voice changed, growing slightly louder, which meant he was probably looking at me. “Why wait? Why have us drag her all the way out here?”

  “That Evers guy. You know. He don’ like this girl. He probably play with her awhile.”

  That didn’t exactly give me a warm happy fuzzy, either.

  Now I almost wanted Nik to swoop in to save the day. Even if he did come as a dragon.

  I didn’t have long to think about that either, though.

  The van came to a jerking, sliding halt as the European said those last words.

  The brakes made a low groan, skidding for a few pumps of the brake pedal before bringing the wheels to a standstill on thick-sounding gravel. The engine got shut off and I heard it ticking loudly, as if borderline overheated. After a rustle of what sounded like cloth and papers being moved around, the front, driver’s side door opened. I only heard that one at first, and not the other, which made me listen for Boston, who had been riding shotgun, I was pretty sure.

  I heard him breathing.

  Also what might have been chewing.

  Seconds later, I also heard shoes crunch on the gravel outside of the window by my head. I heard someone else climbing towards me through the van itself at the same time, likely using the backs of other seats to keep his balance. The guy inside the car breathed hard now, like he was overweight, or maybe just suffering from some kind of heart condition.

  He reached me first.

  I lay there, unmoving, while he unlocked the second set of handcuffs that kept my arms and wrists stretched out and locked to the plastic door handle. I felt my whole body coiling up, waiting for the instant he uncuffed my ankles, but he tapped on the window over my head as soon as he had my wrists free. Only then did he slide down the seat to the other side of my body.

  As he did, the guy outside opened the door nearer to my head.

  The second guy, who I guessed was the European since he’d been driving, caught hold of my bound wrists before the other guy began uncuffing my ankles.

  I had to think fast.

  I thought about my chances of getting both of them at once, then realized I didn’t have much choice but to try. If I let them drag me inside whatever building this was, things would only get worse. At the very least, they’d chain me all over again.

  Without knowing where Nik was, much less Gantry, the only thing I knew for certain was that these guys planned on handing me over to Evers. I didn’t even want to think about what that might look like, in terms of the particulars. I knew at the end of it, I’d be dead.

  So when Boston got my ankles free, I brought my knees up, fast and hard.

  I hit him square in the nose, I guessed, from the sound he made.

  He let out a surprised cry, one that held a not-small amount of pain, then a groan as he fell back, probably into the row of seats closer to the front of the car. I heard him crash into those, the squeak of some part of the vinyl and metal, but I didn’t wait. Twisting my body around, I lunged at the guy who held my wrists, trying to force him backwards.

  Unlike Boston, he seemed ready for me, though.

  Instead of meeting me head-on, or even letting me slam into him, the European slid sideways and back, then jerked me forward in a vicious pull by my cuffed wrists. He moved fast. He also used his whole upper body without hesitation.

  In a different situation, I might have been impressed.

  Guy was definitely a fighter.

  As it was, he caught me off-guard.

  I couldn’t see him, not with the hood over my head, but I got the sense he was big. Bigger than Boston. Whatever his size, he yanked on me like I weighed no more than a wet cat. The next thing I knew, I slid across the ripped, vinyl seat and flew completely out of the car.

  Briefly, I was in the air.

  There was that moment, suspended, where I felt nothing under me...

  ...right before gravity kicked in and I fell, straight down.

  Weirdly, it felt like a long fall as it happened. It also happened fast.

  Really damned fast.

  I landed hard, pretty much flat on my face and body. Directly on the hard chunks of gravel I’d heard the European crunching under his boots outside the car’s window.

  I knew, dimly, in the background of my mind, that I had to be lying on a driveway. Because he’d been holding my wrists, my arms still stretched out in front of me. I hadn’t been able to get them under me enough to break my fall. I hadn’t managed to get my knees under myself either, which may have been a good thing...or may not have been, I honestly couldn’t decide. My knees being driven into sharp rocks might have paralyzed me even more than I already was.

  I had a sudden memory of getting my ass kicked on a different world. Glass, volcanic rocks instead of gravel. More guys than these two...guys from a different dimension...but the same idea, all in all. They’d whacked me with metal poles, which hadn’t exactly been fun.

  I shoved the memory out of my head. It wasn’t exactly helpful right now.

  Barely a handful of seconds had ticked by since I’d been yanked out that car door.

  I laid stretched out, flat on my body and face in the gravel, gasping from the wind being knocked out of me. For what felt like a long minute, that’s all I could do, struggling with that feeling of dying as I lay on that river of gravel. Gasping, I fought to force air back into my lungs, breathing against the pain in my chest and belly, fighting to think.

  Before I could recover from that, the same guy kicked me, hard, in the gut.

  I let out a groan when he kicked me a second time.

  He managed to flip me most of the way to my back, using nothing more than my cuffed wrists and twisting my arms. Once he got me there, he kicked me again, in the ribs that time. I felt something crack, tangibly enough I imagined I heard it.

  He kicked me again and I cried out.

  I was still fighting to recover when he proceeded to drag me across the gravel by my wrists.

  I writhed like a flipped turtle, but couldn’t do much to stop him, since I was still half-blind with pain from the kicks and the grinding, cracked bone of at least one rib. Gravel got into my pants and cut across my back, but I couldn’t do much more than gasp about that, either. Looking up at the light through the cloth hood I wore, I saw what looked like deepening shadow, the blocking of sun, but I couldn’t tell if it was a building that caused it or a cloud. Even as I thought it, my back bit into something hard, something that felt like cement.

  My mind turned that into some kind of step or stoop.

  He was taking me inside the house, like he’d said.

  I cried out, terrified by that idea beyond reason.

  I had this sudden memory of being warned against ever letting myself be brought to the killing grounds of a serial killer. An image flashed, of Gantry and Mara standing there, probably in one of my first self-defense classes down at the dojo. The memory had t
o be ten years old, at least. My mind had stored it away somewhere in the dim recesses of my brain cells...only to bring it up now, when it could do me absolutely zero good whatsoever.

  The European holding my cuffed wrists ignored it when I started to struggle harder, fighting to free my hands. He didn’t bother to slow down long enough to even hurt me.

  I writhed my cuffed ankles and legs next, trying to stop him from dragging me through what now felt like a doorway. I tried digging my heels into anything that might provide resistance, a futile attempt to get enough traction to slow him down. When the ground slid under me, I tried to hook my feet on the doorway itself. I don’t think my efforts made a dent. The European barely seemed to notice, giving a more vicious yank as he brought my body up over the doorstep and onto what felt like linoleum or maybe even tile.

  Kitchen, my mind catalogued, somewhere in the distance.

  Back door, then. I was inside the house.

  My mind turned it into an abandoned farmhouse of some kind, and again, the serial killer motif sifted through my mind, even apart from Evers.

  It smelled bad in here, too, I noticed.

  Really damned bad.

  Like cat urine and dirty diapers mixed together bad. There was even a bit of rotten egg smell wafting through the mixture. I started wondering if something or someone might be rotting in the corner...after Evers disposed of his last little plaything, maybe. As bad as the smell was, though, it wasn’t corpse smell, really. It was closer to open sewer.

  Then something clicked.

  Meth. They were cooking in here.

  It’s a testament to where my mind had been going that the realization came with a not-insignificant amount of relief. Meth I could understand. Meth was business...a crappy, horrible, life-destroying business, sure...but a business. Meth wasn’t dead bodies on meat hooks, or piles of baby bones or dead kittens. Meth was mundane horror, not Silence of the Lambs horror.

  I didn’t have long to think about that, either.

  The European dragged me through that kitchen-like room that smelled of meth lab and cigarettes and sweat. Then I was moving faster, still on linoleum but in what now felt and sounded like a narrower hall from the proximity of the walls and the acoustics.