Taken By Surprise (Taken Trilogy Book 1)

by Jessica Frances

  “Get him into the bathroom and hide,” Charlie tells Will and Rose and then turns to me. “I need to ask you permission to—”

  “What is going on?” Stan’s voice booms through the hallway and I shiver in fear at how angry he sounds.

  “To what?” I ask just as he wraps his arms around me and pulls me close to him. Our lips touch just as the door bursts open. We have barely kissed for a second when we jump apart and I’m too shocked to say anything.

  “Are you kidding me?” Stan looks angry. His mouth is open and a vein in his forehead has popped out in a way that appears unnatural. Beside him stands a woman only a tiny bit shorter than him, although she is in high heels. Her clothes are tight fitting, but her only exposed skin is her hands and face. Clothing hugs the rest of her and, while she appears bemused, I feel like she is forcing her soft expression. Her eyes are black and hard and a long scar that runs along her chin looks menacing.

  “See, Stanley, I told you this could be easily explained.”

  “Did we do something wrong?” Charlie asks innocently while glancing at Stan. I try my best to breathe normally and appear innocent. I imagine I give the impression of a deer in headlights, though, so I keep my eyes down so they can’t read the panic in them.

  “The generator is having a fit. You’ve set the power off no less than five times.”

  “Sorry, I guess we got lost in the moment.” Charlie shrugs nonchalantly.

  “You’ve been here ten minutes and already you’re jumping into the sack with each other.” Stan rolls his eyes and doesn’t seem amused at all. He crosses his arms over his chest, his muscles and veins stick out, showing how strong he is.

  “Calm down, Stanley. They’re just trying to deal with this new and scary situation they’ve been thrown in. Everyone has their own coping mechanisms.” The woman’s voice is calm and soothing.

  “Well, learn to deal without setting the power off every five minutes,” Stan barks and then storms off, leaving the woman behind.

  “I’m sorry about that. Stanley isn’t one to empathize with others. I’m Martha, by the way, the poor, suffering wife.” Martha smiles warmly at us and I try to smile back. I fear it looks more like a wince.

  “Nice to meet you.” Charlie is doing a much better job remaining composed. I glance at him and see his body is relaxed while his expression is laid-back.

  “How about we go and round up the others, dinner is just about ready and I can’t wait to meet you all.” Martha turns around to head back out of the room. We have to stop her. The others are hiding in my bathroom, a bit hard to explain that one away after Charlie and I were supposedly making out for the past half an hour.

  “Wait, I can do that. I think Charlie wanted to talk to you privately,” I blurt out, horrified that I have just put everything onto Charlie now.

  “I do?” Charlie shows his first signs of stress. His body tenses next to me and I feel my own panic building.

  “Yeah, remember you wanted to ask Martha something at dinner tonight? I think it’s probably more private, though,” I ramble on, hoping to give Charlie more time to think up something.

  “Oh yeah, I do remember now.” Charlie’s eyes widen when he looks at me, but when he glances at Martha his face shows none of that. Already he has composed himself. “I was wondering if you would know where I can get some…” Charlie glances back at me and I can’t read his expression. He is trying to communicate something, but I don’t know what.

  “Some?” Martha narrows her eyes and I fear we’ve failed this already. Her eyes glance quickly around the room and I resist letting my eyes move to the bathroom.

  “Condoms.” Charlie finally finishes and I swear I hear a quiet snort come from the bathroom.

  “Condoms?” Martha appears surprised to hear that and my face goes completely red in embarrassment. Condoms! Seriously?

  “Yeah, I mean, you can never be too careful, right?” Charlie walks past me now and I don’t think I could make eye contact with him even if I wanted to.

  “Of course, well, I guess we can quickly stop in and see Harold, our resident doctor, if you think it’s that urgent…”

  “Yep, I think we need to see him.” Charlie leads Martha out of my room and I groan aloud in embarrassment. Now she’s going to think we want to jump into bed together the first chance we get like a couple of horny teenagers.

  Rose bursts out of the bathroom then and begins laughing uncontrollably.

  I ignore her and walk into the bathroom to find Drew on the ground. He has sweat dripping down his face.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper, assuming the power is back on now and the listening devices will be working.

  “I’m dying, Zoe,” he states unflinchingly.

  I don’t want to hear those words. “I meant is there anything we can do for you, do you want to lie on my bed?”

  “Here is fine, it’s best I stay hidden in case they come into your room while you eat.”

  “Will you still be here when I get back?”

  “Yes, but, Zoe, Martha is pure evil. Try to stay away from her. Whatever you do, don’t be left alone with her, any of you. Her specialty is being able to poison the mind.”

  I nod, feeling the insistence for us to understand and stand up. I give a worried look to both Will and Rose before following them out of the room. When we turn the corner, heading towards the lounge area, I can’t get my mind away from Drew’s words. I’m suddenly very nervous to be around Martha.

  I see Charlie talking to an older man wearing a white lab coat. I assume this is Harold. He’s only as tall as I am, but his stomach must be at least as wide as he is tall. It makes his arms seem short and I can tell from his waving that Charlie is getting a lecture. I feel bad that I helped get him into this situation.

  He joins us when we pass him, saying a quick thank you to Harold.

  “If you guys want to just leave a sock on the door handle outside, then Will and I will know not to barge in, okay?” Rose teases Charlie and me. My face reddens again. I assume I will probably stay this color for the rest of the night.

  “Shut up, Rose.” Charlie glares at her.

  Before any more can be said, we reach the dining area where Martha is sitting, waiting for us.

  ***

  For two long hours we have to endure Martha asking us questions about our lives and all the usual getting to know you things. I find out a general background from everyone, although Will is rather hard to get much from. Martha does try, though. After we’ve all mumbled through that, feeling like we’re trying to pass some test of hers, we finally come to a reasonable time to get up and leave.

  “Tomorrow morning we’ll be administering a general check up on you all. Nothing that won’t take a few minutes each. We’ll get them started before breakfast because you’ll need to have a blood test and you have to have that on an empty stomach,” Martha tells us.

  “You expect us to let you take our blood? Are you insane?” Rose blurts out.

  “We would just like to make sure you are all in good health,” Martha responds calmly.

  “I can already tell you I’m perfectly fine. No blood needed,” Rose snaps.

  “Rose,” I snap back at her, remembering Drew’s words. Fight with them and they’ll fight back. We have to get along with everyone here or they’ll get suspicious.

  “I don’t care, Zoe. I’m not giving them my blood.”

  “We can discuss this in the morning; you’ve had a full day and you’ve had a lot to take in.”

  “I’m not changing my mind.” Rose stubbornly crosses her arms over her chest and storms out of the room.

  “Zoe, Charlie, can I have a quick word?” Martha stops us in our tracks and I have a bad feeling I won’t like this discussion much. Charlie and I sit back down at our seats and wait for Martha’s lecture. I again think of future Drew’s words. Can Martha really have that much of an effect over someone to poison the mind? What would that even entail?

  “I know you’re both a
dults and perhaps we should have expected this to happen, but I just want to reiterate for you both that you are likely to be here for a while. So there is no reason things between you can’t slow down a bit.”

  I look down at my hands and try to think of a reasonable response for her. I come up empty and apparently, so does Charlie.

  “Right, well, if you need to talk, I’m always here for you, day or night. You can just call out my name and I will be alerted that I’m needed.”

  We both nod and breathe sighs of relief when she gets up and leaves through the wall door.

  “Condoms!” I quietly shriek at Charlie.

  “You put me on the spot!” Charlie whispers back.

  “I know. I’m sorry,” I concede. I hadn’t intended to do that to him.

  “Don’t be, I did sort of head us in that direction by kissing you.” Charlie shrugs off my apology while moving his hands through his short hair. He looks nervous.

  “It worked, so we can’t fault that. What was that Harold guy talking to you about?”

  “It was weird. First, he was lecturing me about not getting you pregnant because he didn’t have the facilities here to cope with a baby and then his eyes lit up and he started muttering about a baby. I don’t know. I just took the condoms and walked away.”

  “Weird.” I cough over my embarrassment and stand up, walking out into the lounge area where Rose and Will are sitting down, watching the television.

  “Do you mind if we talk to Drew some more?” I ask Charlie quietly, knowing it’ll mean cutting off the power again and so soon after talking with Martha. She’s going to think we’ve got problems. “It’s just, I don’t know how long he has and this is my only chance to talk…”

  “Of course, come on.”

  “You better keep up appearances and put those condoms to good use,” Rose teases again and I glare daggers at her, but can’t feel any true annoyance towards her. Truthfully, my emotions are too stretched right now to worry about Rose.

  Back in my room’s bathroom, Drew has sagged down the wall and appears to not be able to move himself.

  “Drew!” I help lift Drew to a sitting position then sit down in front of him and try not to notice how much worse he’s looking. At least the light from outside is disappearing and it’s making it harder to see his deterioration.

  “Told you I would still be here when you got back,” he mutters quietly.

  “Do you need to leave? We can help you get back to your time machine thing or whatever you call it,” I offer, not really knowing how we’re meant to do that since it’ll mean escaping.

  “There isn’t anything to send me back with. In fact, I no longer exist because the timeline in which I go back in time no longer exists,” he explains.

  I feel a headache coming on.

  “It’s a bit of a flaw with time travel. If you go back to a time when the technology isn’t there to send you forward, then you’re stuck,” Drew says.

  “So you’re just going to die?” Stray tears fall down my face, knowing that there really isn’t anything I can do.

  “Sort of, technically, I’m out there somewhere right now, alive, so you don’t need to cry over me, Zoe.” Drew reaches out and touches my hand, leaving it resting over mine.

  “Let’s move him out onto the bed,” Charlie suggests. I let him come in and mostly carry Drew over to my bed. He sits him down on it and Drew doesn’t appear to have the strength to hold himself up so he ends up lying down.

  “So who was the woman who was sent back for me? I didn’t recognize her,” Charlie asks, which gives me more time to compose myself.

  “She was a friend of your Mom’s. She bumped into your Dad on the street about a year from now and she became very close to you both.”

  Charlie is silent at that, I feel his body next to me tense, but he doesn’t say anything to give me a clue as to why that is. When Rose had mentioned her parents being worried, Charlie had only said his Dad would be worried. What had happened to his Mom?

  “Nicole was the only successful one out of us all.”

  “She hurt the boy that got brought in here bleeding?” I ask.

  “Yes, she killed him, her brother, Blake. They’re twins so you can imagine how hard that was for her to do.”

  “What was his ability?”

  “He could read minds.”

  “Wow.” I feel like that puts all of us to shame, although I guess on paper, me being able to see the future probably sounds cool. I suppose hearing thoughts might not be that much fun. “So the fact that you know about us, about me, does that mean I told you about my dreams? I told Dana?”

  “Yes, after getting a job here it became harder to not tell her what was going on.”

  “How did she take it?” I hold my breath, fearing the answer.

  “She was a little upset that you kept it a secret for so long, but honestly, she seemed to think it was pretty cool.”

  It’s the answer I feared. At least if I knew she hated me, then I would know I had done the right thing keeping it from her. However, I hadn’t done the right thing. Deep down, I always feared how Dana would react to hearing about my dreams and all along she would have been fine with it. All that worry and for nothing. Keeping it from her only harmed her in the end.

  “I wish I had told her the first day we met. I wish I didn’t keep it a secret from her.” I can’t see Drew’s expression in the dark, but I know he can easily know how mine looks. I’m devastated.

  “She reacted well, being told when she was an adult. I don’t know how she would have reacted when she was six. Don’t beat yourself up over it, Zoe. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Things might have turned out differently if I had told her.”

  “She might have thought you were weird and you two would never have been best friends,” he points out.

  “Then she would be alive today.” I’m openly crying now, not caring that Charlie is hearing all of this.

  “Don’t do that, Zoe. Don’t say that. I know Dana and I know she wouldn’t change a thing. She would never want to not be your best friend.”

  I wipe away at the tears falling down my face, but more replace them. My eyes are a running tap right now.

  “You know, in my past we didn’t throw you a surprise party for your twenty-first birthday.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, you and Joel had already hit it off a week or so after he started working with you. You had been on several dates already and that night we all went out for dinner.”

  “I had already been on several dates with him? Really?”

  “Yeah, you guys were happy.”

  “I don’t understand that at all. Joel barely spoke to me when we first met and it wasn’t until a couple weeks before my birthday that he actually started to talk to me. How could we have already been dating in your past? Was I different?”

  “The only thing that would have been different was Joel. He wouldn’t have been having his dreams then. It explains why he wasn’t his usual charming self, or at least, not right away.”

  “Why did he have dreams? What did they do to him?”

  “I came back for you, Zoe, but really, I was just a backup plan if Joel failed. He was able to break through to the past using dreams. His plan was to drive your Joel to a breaking point.”

  “Why not just come back himself like you all did? Now Joel is in prison for murder. His life is over.”

  “He blamed himself for the path you took, for not seeing what it did to you. He wanted to be the one to end this and he couldn’t come back over with us because he was too weak. The dreams alone took everything out of him.”

  “It just seems so pointless, especially with what happened.”

  “I know,” I hear Drew’s voice break.

  “What was Dana like as she got older? Did you marry? Did you have kids?” I know these answers will torture me, but I have to know. Charlie’s hand takes hold of mine and I feel warmth traveling up my arm. It feels comfor
ting so I don’t move away from him.

  “I don’t think it will help you to know these things.”

  “Please…” I desperately beg.

  “We married three years from now. The engagement was a long one because Dana was incapable of making up her mind. We married on December 26th. You know what Dana is like at Christmas time.”

  I smile. Dana’s favorite time of year is Christmas. I can picture her walking down the aisle, Christmas trees surrounding the outside of the seats. She would do it at night so she can have the lights of the trees lighting the room.

  “I wish I could have been there.”

  “You were. You were her maid of honor. Joel was my best man. When Joel and you got married, we swapped spots.”

  I feel more tears falling, hearing that. Joel and I had been married in our old future. That seems too unbelievable to me.

  “I never felt sure with Joel. I always wanted to run when he was around. How could I date someone who made me feel that way?”

  “You wouldn’t have felt that way when you saw him in my past. You repressed your dreams so much, Zoe, that you don’t always remember what you’re seeing. Your body compensates for that by giving you incredibly good instincts. I’m assuming those instincts told you to run from Joel because you already knew what he was going to do, you just couldn’t remember. In my past, Joel was never going to hurt you or Dana, so you never felt the need to run from him.”

  “My instincts are telling me we have to get out of this place.” They’re also telling me I want Charlie, so what does that mean?

  “That is because you’ve seen the horror this place is, you just can’t remember.”

  “What if we can’t get out of here? What if we fail?”

  “You all worked so well as a team, it’s another reason you’re so valuable to them. Work together to get out of here, it’s the only way.”

  Drew violently begins coughing and I lean forward, unsure if I should go towards him or not. Instead, my feet stay frozen, waiting for the coughing to cease.

  “Maybe you should get some rest?” I suggest.