by R. A. Smyth
Turning off the main road, we veer onto a narrow dirt track that looks like it leads to nothing but more fields. I guess that’s the point. After bumping along it for another five minutes, a long fence-line appears out of nowhere, littered with warning signs indicating this is private property and trespassing is prohibited.
A wide gate with barbed wire coiled around the top and yet more warning signs attached to it blocks the road forward in front of us, and two guards wearing black combat uniforms stand guard on either side of the road.
As the driver talks to the one closest to us, the other guard does an inspection of the car, checking the trunk and waving some device underneath the vehicle. Both guards are armed with guns strapped in their holsters, and their thorough professionalism and the way they carry themselves makes it obvious they’re no amateurs. These aren’t the lazy wannabe cops that sit in guard houses outside rich people’s properties, watching TV instead of doing their jobs. They come across as highly trained, dedicated soldiers.
The driver says something that I can’t make out through the divider, and a minute later the gates roll back and we drive into the compound.
No turning back now, I guess.
We bump along the track for another few minutes until we come up over a hill, at the bottom of which is a large, low-lying building, shaped like a hexagon. Several other large buildings are dotted around the place, and, beyond that, its fields as far as the eye can see. We really are in the back ass of nowhere.
Making our way down to the main hexagonal building, the car comes to a stop outside the entrance where a broad shouldered, muscular man, who looks more like he belongs in Black Creek with the thugs and gangbangers, is waiting. He taps his foot impatiently as I get out of the back of the car and head toward him. He’s dressed in similar tactical gear as the guy at the gate, the guns on his belt immediately drawing my gaze.
“Beck?” he asks—well, it sounds more like a demand.
“That’s right.”
He gives a curt nod as he holds out his hand for me to shake, and I reluctantly slap my palm against his. “Welcome to Nocturnal Mercenaries. I’m Major Bowen. I’m in charge of this place when Mr. Rutherford isn’t around.”
I give him a tight smile and a professional nod of my head in return.
“Follow me.” He turns on his heel and heads into the building, leaving me no choice but to follow him even as my stomach fills with lead, and I swallow roughly around my dry throat.
“I have to apologize. You should have been here weeks ago, but we had a security breach that needed to be resolved first.”
“Of course, I understand,” I pacify, keeping my questions about what happened to myself.
“I’ve set aside an interrogation room for you to use. I, uh, wasn’t sure what all you would need, but you can just let one of my men know and we will do our best to accommodate you,” he explains in a bland tone, not realizing his use of the words ‘interrogation room’ in reference to young children has bile crawling up the back of my throat.
Unable to speak, I give a sharp jerk of my head as he leads me down a brightly lit corridor.
“This building houses the gym, boxing rings, dining hall, and interrogation rooms. The recruits are split into teams based on their competence and age, and housed in the surrounding buildings that you probably saw on your journey in.”
“Teams?” I query, knowing I need to say something. I can’t just continue to nod my head like a moron every time he opens his mouth and spews more words that make my skin itch to get out of here.
“Yes. When they first arrive, we throw them all in together, but as they progress in their training and the weak are weeded out, we put them in teams, which they remain in for when they go out on jobs, etcetera. They eat together, work together, sleep together. That way, they can learn to work cohesively as a team, and can get along with each other in confined spaces, should that be necessary for the job.” He chuckles, but I don’t see what he finds so funny. “It’s not always fancy kills and exciting getaways like in the movies. There’s a lot of boring stakeouts, and long hours spent following a target. It’s important that each team can work through whatever challenges they may face in order to get the job done.”
“Do the teams interact much during their training?”
“Not really. We hold a monthly challenge night where the teams face off against one another. We find it to be a healthy form of competition between them, and it enables us to compare their skill sets and identify any issues. Other than that, they’re kept pretty separate.”
“Where, uh, are all the recruits?” I ask. We haven’t passed a single person, child or otherwise.
He laughs before explaining, “This corridor loops round the whole building and is for staff only. There’s a separate recruit entrance at the back, with a secure hallway leading into the middle of the building, where the main workout area is.”
Coming to a thick, steel door, the guy swipes a card against a reader, the light turning green before he opens the door.
“Each section of the building is subdivided for security reasons,” he explains.
Security reasons, my ass. More like safety measures to ensure no one escapes. The fact Hadley managed to break out of this place is a miracle in itself.
Entering into another similar hallway, we continue walking. “So, from what Mr. Rutherford explained, you’re going to assess which kids are the best candidates for training and which are duds.” The guy says it with such casual indifference, like we’re talking about the fucking weather, further intensifying my disgust for him.
“That’s right.” That’s the only response I can spit out, knowing if I say anything else, I won’t be able to keep the edge of anger out of my voice.
“Cool. That would be helpful. We invest a lot of time and effort into finding kids that are suitable, but we don’t always get it right. Currently, one in five of the kids we think could hack it, end up washing out.”
Why do I get the impression that when he says ‘washing out,’ it’s not like in college when kids drop out and decide to do something different with their lives. No, the way he says it makes it sound much more permanent, and I have to suppress my shiver of revulsion.
“How do you find these kids and determine which ones are worth your time?” Even though I am curious, I’m not convinced I want an answer to that question, but it’s probably expected of me to have some questions, especially about the recruitment phase, since that’s why I’m here.
“We have lookouts on the streets and contacts in the foster system and in children’s homes that report back to us if they find someone they think would be suitable. Someone with no family, anger issues, prone to getting in fights, acts like a bully, that sort of stuff. Then we put surveillance on them, and set up incidents where we can test them to see how they react. If they don’t meet our expectations, we move on; and if they do, then we either approach them or take them.
“The younger we can get them, the easier it is. We can’t test them the same way as the older kids, but they quickly learn here that it’s a survive or die environment. We’ve discovered most kids, if they’re younger, will adapt quicker and question us less.”
What he means is that the younger kids are easier to condition. Probably because they don’t remember what life outside of these bloodstained walls was like. The older kids, even if they did come willingly at first, most likely come to regret that decision, or at least go through a phase where they want their freedom back.
“Honestly, I think your help would be better suited during the surveillance stage, before we bring them in, but Mr. Rutherford wants you to look at the last set of recruits we picked up a few weeks ago.”
“How many kids do you have here?” I ask, changing the topic before he can dive too deep into what I’m going to do. Honestly, I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do when I’m placed face to face with some tear-stained kid and asked to decide their future.
“Thirty.” There’s
a proud lilt to his voice, like coaxing and kidnapping young children and forcing them into a life most people wouldn’t willingly choose, is some sort of achievement. It takes everything in me not to lash out and throw him against the wall. “We have a lot of adults that we train too,” he continues on, unaware of the boiling rage mounting inside me. “Guys that have been discharged from the army, or from private security, that are looking for a new, lucrative gig. The board only started recruiting kids about twenty years ago. We now have three active teams, and the rest are still in training, but so far, they’ve proven to be much more effective than those that come to us as adults.”
We stop at another door and after yet another swipe of the keycard, we step into a different section.
“Alright, these are the interrogation rooms,” he says, taking me to a door on the right. Scanning his keycard, the door beeps and unlocks to allow us entry into yet another hallway. This one is a complete juxtaposition to the one we left behind. It’s dark, lit by dim, intermittent overhead lighting, and I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I swear I can smell piss and fear all around me. It’s potent, activating my gag reflex, and I struggle to lock that shit down.
Thick steel doors are placed at intervals down both sides of the wall, and I don’t miss the hatches in each of them—one at eye level and a larger one closer to the floor. The whole area resembles what I imagine the confinement section of a prison looks like.
Bowen stops outside one of the doors where a guard stands to attention. “We’ve set you up in here,” he states as I follow him into the windowless room. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling, providing an eerie glow that only adds to the foreboding pit in my stomach. Maybe it’s for the best that I can’t make out anymore of the room. The smell of piss is stronger in here, combined with a tangy rust smell that I know all too well. Blood. I knew based on the little Hadley has shared with me that I’d see some shit here, and I thought I’d prepared myself, but every instinct in me is screaming for me to run, to get the fuck out of here and never come back.
There’s a small table in the middle of the room with two chairs placed on either side. Other than that, the room is empty.
“I wasn’t sure what all you would need to do your assessment, but Officer Gordo will be in the hall. If you need anything, ask him.”
I nod my head. I’m not physically capable of doing anything more than that right now.
“We have five kids for you today. We’ve already vetted them from a physical point of view, so I guess you’re here to see if they can withstand the psychological aspects of training? Honestly, I don’t really understand what it is you’ll be doing, but if you can stop us from wasting our time surveilling and training washouts, then I don’t care.” He laughs at his own joke. “Alright, I’ll get someone to bring in the first kid, hang tight.”
He walks out, pulling the door closed behind him. A loud clatter rings out around the dark, depressing room as the door slams shut and a bolt is slid into place, locking it. The sound is so final, like the lid closing on a coffin, sending a shiver of fear skittering down my spine. If I’m afraid, I can only imagine the utter terror those poor kids feel when they’re dragged in here unwillingly.
Just when I’m beginning to reach my limit of uncomfortableness and I’m debating banging on the door and demanding they open it, I hear the grate of the bolt unlocking and the door is yanked open.
The guy manning the door, Gordo, marches a young boy into the room. Giving me a brief nod, he says, “Let me know when you’re ready for the next one.” The kid holds his head high, refusing to be cowered. There’s a hard resolve in his eyes, but he jumps when the guard slams the door shut, leaving the two of us alone in the room, and I don’t miss the way his eyes dart nervously around the darkened space. Fuck, this is going to be a long day.
A headache is beating a drum against the inside of my skull, and I’m both physically and mentally drained by the time I finish up and Major Bowen comes to escort me out.
Instead of leading me back the way we came, though, he directs me deeper into the compound. We walk through room after room where kids are being put through grueling exercises, trainers yelling and threatening them, even as the kids shudder in terror and cry out with exhaustion.
I hate to admit it, but it gets to the point where I try not to look, instead attempting to block it all out until I’m finally directed back to the initial corridor and can let out a silent breath of relief. There’s a tightness in my chest, and the adrenaline in my body is pushing me to go back and help them. Witnessing that and not being able to do anything about it, not even trying to stop it, goes against my very nature. But there’s nothing I can do right now to help any of them. Regardless, every time I saw a guard hitting or screaming at a young kid, all I could picture was Hadley. How the hell she endured this place and didn’t turn into something cold and detached is beyond me. It’s a true testament to her strength. Most people would break eventually. You can only hold on to hope for so long, and once that flame goes out, all that surrounds you is darkness.
When we’re finally back outside the building, I bid a hasty farewell to the sick fuck masquerading as a Major, greedily gulping down the fresh air. I already know I’ll be burning these clothes and jumping in the shower as soon as I get home. I can feel the fear and hopelessness that cloaks this place clinging to me like an unwanted second skin. One that’s not going to be easily washed away.
***
Steam billows out of the bathroom behind me as I step back into my room wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around my waist after a long, hot shower that did nothing to remove the grime clinging to my skin from today. I pause, finding Hadley lounging on my bed, a site for sore eyes in her shorts and t-shirt. I smile softly when she catches my gaze.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to check on you after today.” Her eyes probe against my skin, and I know she’s trying to read me, to gauge the lasting impact from the horror I had to witness. She slides across the bed as I sit down on the end of it, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“I don’t know how you survived it all those years, I could hardly stand being there for an afternoon.”
I feel her shrug, feigning nonchalance. “I think you become indifferent to it all. It’s the only life I remember.”
I let out a long breath, closing my eyes as I soak in the feel of her pressed against me. “I couldn’t stop picturing you there, imagining what it must have been like for you—”
“You can’t think like that,” she chastises, reaching out and wrapping her hand around mine. “I’m here now, with you, and that's all that matters.”
***
On Friday, I knock on the guys’ apartment door at lunch. Ever since West got attacked and they all had to go back to the stupid tradition, it’s become the norm for all of us to hang out here at lunch. I have to admit, it beats eating alone in my office or making stifled conversation with the other faculty members in the staff room, and it’s given me more of an opportunity to hang out with West.
I’m pleased to say he looks a bit better every day, and the bruises have faded considerably. True to his word, he’s stopped icing me out, but things are awkward as fuck between us.
The door swings open, the man himself standing in the doorway.
“Hey,” I greet, striding past him into the apartment. Glancing around, I don’t see anyone else.
“Hey, everyone else should be here in a few minutes. The guys are just grabbing food.”
“Sounds good.” Sitting down on one of the bar stools, I scan my eyes over him. “How are you doing?”
“Much better. Still a bit sore over my ribs, but nothing like what it was.” He takes a seat on the opposite side of the island and we stare awkwardly at one another, neither of us sure what to say.
“This thing you have with Hadley,” he begins. “It’s serious?”
“As serious as it is between you and her.” I know, just from the way he looks
at her, how much she means to him—to all of us.
“And you don’t care that she’s dating three other guys?”
“It’s not quite what I’d pictured for myself,” I admit. I don’t think many people plan to end up in a poly relationship, and certainly any pre-Hadley fantasies I would have had about the idea included more women than men in the relationship, but Hadley is more than enough woman for all of us. “But she deserves to be happy. If you guys make her happy, then I’m not about to stand in the way of that.” I hesitate before continuing, “I’ve spent most of my teen and adult life feeling like I don’t fit in anywhere, but with Hadley, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
He stares at me for a long moment. “You love her.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “I do.”
We don’t break eye contact, and I tap my finger thoughtfully against the countertop as I mull over my question, before finally just blurting it out, “How do you feel about sharing?”
“It feels natural with Mason and Cam. We’ve never shared a girl before, but with Hadley, it just feels right.”
A lump forms in the back of my throat. I’m painfully aware he didn’t comment on sharing Hadley with me, and, good or bad, I need to know what his thoughts are about it. I’m not going anywhere, regardless of what he says, but I still need to know. “And with me?”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, nerves making my palms sweat. It’s ridiculous that, as a fucking adult, I want to be accepted—by him, by the others, but dammit, I feel like I’m so close to finding somewhere I might actually belong.
“I thought it would be weird…seeing you with her. But I see the way she is with you. It was because of you that she dropped her barriers and let us in after everything we did to her.” He hesitates. “I should probably be thanking you, old man.” One side of his lips quirks up in an easy smirk, the tension dropping out of his shoulders when I bark out a laugh. Damn, I’m never getting rid of that stupid nickname, am I?