by B D Grant
The bench I’m sitting on clearly wasn’t designed for comfort. It’s hard, the metal worn across the top from use, but not enough that my back doesn’t start aching ten minutes into the drive.
Dex looks back at me as I slide to the middle of the bench, turn to face him, and then prop my feet up on the end of the bench as I recline back to stare at the ceiling of the van. He doesn’t say anything as I struggle position my arms comfortably so that they keep me from rolling off, but it all feels awkward. I decide to roll onto my side. At least this way, I’m more stationary. I close my eyes. I try to relax.
Sidney isn’t happy when she finds me. You went with them willingly!
What did you expect me to do? I play for her my last hours as if she hadn’t already scrambled through it as soon as we connected.
You were playing hero, Taylor, and all you’ve done is got yourself killed. You might as well have pulled the trigger!
Calm down, Sidney. They need me for…something. I search for a better answer, but they haven’t given me any information. All I know is that they’re more interested in me than they are in Jake.
They needed me too, she reminds me. She shows me her recent memories on a high speed loop. They’ve put her in that machine several times since the man threatened me. They have been searching for me using her, too. She was questioned over and over about me. Dread begins to set it. I had wanted to think that these two guys finding me had been some kind of slip up on my part for not being incognito enough when Jake and I left New Orleans, but this…this shows and obsessive amount of energy in trying to find me.
Why now? Rogues weren’t interested in me before the raid. Have I done something?
Sidney struggles with the question. It seems she’s been asking herself the same thing. Well, clearly they know you’re more than a Veritatis. I don’t know how much they know, but if they get what they want from you and you become disposable you know what they do to people they don’t need anymore. She lets my mind travel back to what I saw in the basement during the raid. You have to get away.
Sidney, I can’t. I did what I could, but they’re twice my size. I don’t even have a gun anymore.
You’re giving up. Great. I feel her pause, her mind shifting. I sense her uncertainty but don’t know its cause. I don’t push, though—I’m afraid she’ll get defensive. Who do you trust with your life?
Without replying, the first faces that come to mind are my parents.
Say their names, she instructs.
I need time to think. Do I trust Sidney enough to give her the names of everyone I love? Could this be some sort of trick? I mean, I don’t even know exactly how long she’s been a Rogue captive. The only thing I know for sure is that she’s been with them since her and I started connecting like this and that’s been months. There’s no telling what sort of information they’ve gotten from her for her to still be alive. I know she’d just tell me that she hasn’t given any information to them, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t force it out of her eventually.
There’s a way I can get you out of this, but I have to know exactly who you trust. Name anyone you believe would give their life for yours.
I don’t want anyone to give their life for mine.
That’s not the point. With any luck, you’ll be gone before they have the chance to force me to say anything. I understand why she’s not thrilled that I’m so hesitant, but it’s not an easy thing to trust her with their names. She pushes for me to comply. Her persistence pays off.
As asked, I say their names. My voice is uncomfortably loud bouncing around in our minds like an out of control ping pong match. “My parents, Darrell and Catherine Jameson. And Kelly—“
She interrupts me, silently questioning, Are you sure about that one? You barely know him.
He saved my life in the basement. He stopped me from running right into that explosion. He had shoved me out of the way when I ran towards the barricade in the hallway. If we had been closer, he’d probably have died. If he hadn’t been there, I know I would have.
Sidney still isn’t satisfied. It was spur of the moment.
Yeah, and that’s why I trust him. If it was his instinct to save me, that means he’s a good guy. Sidney resigns, letting me finish my list.
Jake Angelo, I say next. I wait to see if she argues. I feel a slight stir, but she says nothing.
William McBride.
I think of my team during the raid, Delta team. Dillon, Bryant, and Ben had made it out of the raid with me. They would fight for me, and I them. Sidney doesn’t stop herself this time. Only the ones who would die for you, she echoes across our connection.
Dillon Weston, Bryant. I hesitate with Ben’s name. I take it as a sign not to include him. I think of Ashley next, my classmate and friend from The Southern Academy. We’re good friends, but she would most certainly die if she came up against a Rogue. Sidney is waiting impatiently. I think that’s it. I’m a bit embarrassed by how few I’ve thought of.
Seven is more than I ever had, she assures me. I don’t have anyone now.
I sink a little at the thought. Surely that’s not true. My inner lie detector didn’t budge, but it’s too depressing to contemplate.
She pulls the images of the seven individuals I told her; I feel her prodding around in my memories, and I let these people float to the surface. Sternly, she thinks to me, You don’t have to do anything besides concentrate on them. Don’t interrupt me once I get started.
Sidney repeats the names as I think of my seven individually. The third time we silently go through the names, she skips over my father. Her mind goes through the rest of the list, but I’m stuck on my dad. Why did she leave him out? My questioning it causes her reasoning to come to the surface of our connection; she believes he’s too weak to provide the kind of help that I am requiring.
The names in her mind become a chant, blurring together with images of their faces, mashed together so tightly that it’s almost painful.
I realize what she’s doing. She’s connecting with them.
One of the blurred faces dulls and then disappears from the connections she’s forming. The remaining five are too conjoined for me to tell who it was that Sidney couldn’t connect with, or I’m just too new to this to process all this information at once.
I can feel the connections strengthening, thoughts and emotions that aren’t my own flickering on. Whatever she’s doing is working.
It’s not like the connections that Sidney and I share. These are weaker, just a faint trace of the others, our minds brushing against each other.
I see my mother. The connection with her is unsurprisingly the strongest. I want to call out, but I can’t. Perhaps that’s Sidney, holding me back from them somehow. Or maybe it’s the sheer fascination, the unfamiliarity of this experience.
My mom is the only one who stops what she’s doing. She pulls off the road, throws her car in park. The last thing I can see from her are her palms coming up to her eyes. She concentrates. Through the connection I can feel that she knows how important this is.
Sidney says nothing to them. She shows each person their memories of me, playing the ones I’ve showed her. Mom begins to cry. Sidney gives all of them a current picture of me from the last perspective I had of myself curling up on my side in the back of the van. My body looks small, more childlike curled up on the bench. If I’m not mistaken that’s precisely her intention. The backs of Gradney and Dex’s head are visible in the background. Not being able to see their faces seems to give everyone in the connection a similar sense of dread.
Sidney ends my recap with an onslaught of dread, conveyed through waves of emotion. I’m fairly accustomed to it, but I can only imagine how the others must feel. But she gets the point across: something very bad is going to happen to me soon. The weak connections strengthen as the interest of those she’s connected with intensifies.
The final thing she shows them is the view from the Horace Wilkinson Bridge. The traffic on the bridge is heavy goi
ng into Baton Rouge.
Is that where they’re taking me, I wonder, but my question doesn’t transmit across the group connection. Sidney must be blocking me from giving any input.
Then, all of sudden it’s like we’re standing on a city street looking up at a building towering over us. Through the connection, two of them try to observe what else is around the building. Tall privacy fencing blocks access to either side of the building. I can feel one of them wanting to see across the street from the building while the other looks for road signs, but Sidney won’t allow them to focus too long on anything besides the one structure. There is nothing about it that stands out to me, but it looms over all of our minds. The connections break simultaneously.
Sidney and I are all that is left.
You know where they’re taking me? I ask.
For the first time since I was captured, Sidney opens her eyes. I had thought she was asleep. But she gets up from the bed, pulling the thin mattress she had been laying on down to the floor. It’s hot in her room. I hadn’t noticed the heat because her mind is only just now registering it. It’s nauseating. Her skin struggles to release sweat but is unable. The floor helps. I feel its cool hardness beneath her feet.
Are you being held in the same building? I ask her, wordlessly.
She sits on the mattress with her legs crossed and places the flat pillow from her bed onto her lap.
Sidney, stop ignoring me.
She bends forward, resting her chest on the pillow, and wraps her arms securely around it. It’s an odd position for cooling off. Out of nowhere, our connection flickers.
She shuts her eyes as the flickering in her mind spreads to her muscles. Her body tenses in preparation. Spasms radiate uncontrollably over her face. Her muscles tense randomly without her consent.
Sidney, what’s happening?
A strong muscle contraction sends her body rolling onto her side. I find myself alone in her head. I can’t find Sidney anywhere.
Her mind has locked itself down. Our flickering connection snaps.
I rouse from the bench in the back of the van, still numb. My movement causes the conversation going on up front to abruptly end, but I wouldn’t have been able to listen anyway. I slow my breathing, keeping my eyes shut. I make sure I don’t move anymore to alert them to my conscious state. My breathing deepens to something like snore as I think things over.
I knew Sidney had connected with other people, but she never mentioned being able to connect with more than one person at a time. It was impressive to witness.
My muscles ache from the spasm. She knew it was coming. That must be why she’s never told me that she could connect with Seraphim no matter if they had the same aptitude for it or not. She did it for me at her own peril.
Sidney had taken Dad out of the equation. It was a smart decision. If I had known she was going to try and get those I named to come for me, I wouldn’t have put him in the mix. He’s been through the worst of it already. Even if he was mentally and physically healed, I wouldn’t have wanted to put him in that position.
The other person who didn’t take Sidney’s conference call must not have been able to receive it, but amidst the chaos, I couldn’t tell who was missing. The only way to be absent from something like that is if you’re no longer here to do so, right? Mom’s connection was the one I watched, the only one strong enough from the beginning for me to understand. She hasn’t followed through with her plan yet, and for that I am thankful. So it was Dillon, Bryant, Jake, Kelly, or Uncle Will. I don’t want to think about that.
The van slows. From the front seat, Gradney barks, “Don’t get up. We are almost there.” I obey. I lean forward after I’ve sat up to see out of the front windshield without leaving from the bench. Sidney had been right. Ahead of us on the right side of the street is the building. Gradney turns the van just short of the building, stopping front of the entrance of an underground parking garage. Dex opens his door and hops out without a word to either of us.
I’m taken out of the back once we have pulled into the garage and stopped. Wordlessly, Gradney holds out a bottle of water. I stretch as I stand, surveying my surroundings. I take my time. The only natural light comes from the far end we drove in through at what looks like the only entrance and exit. I’m not sure but I’m guessing we are now under the building Sidney had showed the group.
An automatic gate at the entrance closes behind a silver sports car, which pulls into an open spot up near the entrance. I take the water from Gradney, keeping the car in my peripheral vision. Gradney watches me, showing no concern for the car. A woman in skin-tight workout attire hops out, carrying a yoga mat. She goes straight to the elevator. I don’t bother calling out to her. She’s too tiny of a woman to be of any real help to me anyways. I look around for other options.
“The garage is gated and guarded by Dynamar,” Gradney says, standing annoyingly close to me as if reading my mind.
I swallow a gulp of water. “I wouldn’t make it that far.”
He glances in the direction of the only exit, speaking conversationally. “No, you wouldn’t.”
When the elevator comes back down, Gradney and I get on. Out of the five floors to choose from, he presses the button for the second floor and the doors close. He points to the top left corner of the elevator saying, “Smile for the camera.” I look up to see a small camera mounted in the corner. The elevator takes us straight to the second floor.
Gradney directs me down the hall where an employee elevator sign is hanging. “Don’t speak to anyone,” he snarls in my ear before sending me off in front of him. But no one crosses our path. I hear loud music from behind some of the closed doors. “Keep going!” a voice shouts at one point. “One-and-two-and-three-and-step!”
We get to other elevator, and Gradney takes a card from his pocket. He swipes it over the gray pad on the wall to gain access without having to touch the button next to the elevator doors. From there, he and I ride it over half way up judging by the numbers inside the elevator that light up as we go.
“Hungry?” he asks when the elevator opens and he casually steps off of the elevator as if walking into his house after a long day.
I can hear the distinct sound of Ed Sheeran singing in the background. “I could eat.”
Chapter 14
Everyone we’d saved during the raid from that underground hell had one thing in common: they had all been starved. Rogues don’t feed their captives until they have gotten something from them.
Gradney’s offer of food is a mind game, plain and simple. Make the new captive think about how empty her stomach is. This is the beginning of my torture.
Gradney’s index finger goes to the back of his ear. “Taylor Jameson and I will be in the main kitchen.”
I look around. The corridor is empty. “Who are you talking to?”
Gradney slows to match my pace as I peek inside an open door. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, falling in step with me. The room holds nothing and no one that can help me.
Gradney holds on to the back of my arm more tightly as he guides me down another corridor that could be the inside of any corporate business in the state. The walls are neutral beige with an occasional plaque between the closed doors we pass. Gradney doesn’t say anything as I slow down to read two of them. The first plaque is in recognition of an Army colonel K. Kendrick below the name there’s the date March two thousand and seventeen. The second is dated November, 1st 1918 with a list of six names below the date.
“Didn’t the first world war start in 1918?” I ask Gradney, continuing down the hall without bothering to read the names.
“It ended in 1918,” he says, giving me a sad shake of the head. “I slept through my history classes, and I know that much.”
“Good for you,” I want to say sarcastically, but instead I just pinch my lips shut.
It’s beginning to smell faintly of garlic bread. He opens a door at the end of the hallway where the smell peaks, waiting for me to enter first. I
f he’s not planning on actually feeding me, then bringing me all the way here is just plain rude.
I walk into an industrial kitchen.
On the far end of the kitchen, next to a double sink, there is a girl and a guy my age making out. They hear me across the kitchen walking in by me second footstep and jump apart. In her haste, the girl knocks over a dish that’s beside the sink. It hits the floor, shattering across the large tiles.
Gradney jumps in front of me with clenched fists, throwing an elbow into my chest to push me behind him. “What’s going on in here?!” he shouts, his words echoing a little. He relaxes, hands uncurling when he sees the couple as they scurry to what must have been their original spots facing the sink.
From behind Gradney, I can barely see it: a tiny wire the color of his skin running out of the front of his ear and looping to the back of it. The Rogues I fought during the raid wore earpieces too. His is fancier.
The girl fumbles with the remaining dishes, her back to us. The guy crouches down on the floor, picking up the shards frantically. “Nothing. We were just…”
“They were washing dishes,” I tell Gradney as he examines the scene. “I guess I surprised them.”
“Yeah,” the girl says. “I went to set the plate down and saw her out the corner of my eye and jumped.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “That’s what I get for staying up late last night watching scary movies, right?”
The guy grabs a broom and dustpan from behind the large trashcan next to his side of the sink. On the other side of the trashcan is a second door positioned in the middle of the kitchen. There are two industrial sized stoves on the left side, closer to this side of the kitchen with a prepping station separating it from two sets of stacked ovens. Cabinets run the length of the prepping station, but the majority of the cabinets are on the right below and above the counter space. Three of the top cabinets are open showing half-full shelves of plates and coffee cups. Two of the biggest microwaves I have ever seen sit on the counter beside the two, equally over-sized refrigerators that are on this side of the door from the trashcan.
