Imprisoned

by J D Jacobs

  “Well, I’m off to work. Somebody has to try to run this city.” He softly pats my back as he walks by me. “Again, thank you, Jaden. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good day.”

  He isn’t even hiding his intentions. He’s spitting them in my face.

  …

  Every night before I go to sleep, while Cody’s asleep on the couch across from my bed and while Scat snoozes on the nightstand, I unlock the cigar box and hold the pistol in my hands. I study every inch of it. I hold it on the tips of my fingers. In a weird way, I’m scared of it. I reimagine Ricardo’s fingers against the trigger, tugging on it to kill Britt Solomon. Somebody that Ricardo felt was a threat to him and those around him.

  I try to envision my own fingertips doing the same thing. For some reason, it’s nearly impossible.

  40.

  “Come on, Cody, what’s happened to you?” I taunt, sweat pouring down my neck.

  “Dude, if I make this shot, it’s game.” He jumps up and shoots a three-pointer, but the ball bounces off the rim and I get the rebound.

  “Don’t let me comeback and win it,” I say as I dribble the ball past the three-point line.

  “I spotted you five points and we’re playing to twenty-one. If I wanted to end it, I would have already.” I drive into the lane and force up an ugly shot that barely nicks the rim. “See? You looking like Larry Bird’s cousin, Larry Turd, throwing up shots like that.”

  “Fine, end it already.” He shoots another three, but misses yet again. “C’mon, I got places to be! Why you still keeping this game going if you can finish it?”

  “Sabrina doesn’t want to see you anyway. She’s tired of you by now,” he says as he plays defense on me. “She’s gonna find out how boring you are sooner than later.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” I say, slowly dribbling away from him as I trash-talk, “you’re the relationship guru.”

  “Hey, I dated Terra steady throughout high school, so that’s one thing you can’t make fun of me about. Now quit wasting my time and shoot!”

  I do as he says and toss up a long three. The net swishes loudly. “You told me to!”

  “That was luck if I’ve ever seen it. What’s the score?”

  I toss him the ball. “18-17, you’re up. Let’s also not forget the fact that you’re six inches taller, so this is pretty embarrassing for you.”

  As Cody dribbles, I hear a noise coming from my gym bag that’s set off to the side. “Wait a second,” I tell him as I jog over to my bag, “I think my walkie-talkie is going off.”

  “Boy, if you don’t quit stalling! Nobody’s calling you on that thing!”

  Brrp. “Jaden, you there?” Brrp.

  I hear Dad’s muffled voice underneath my clothes in my bag, and I dig around for the walkie-talkie. Brrp. “Yeah, what’s up?” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Where are you?” Brrp.

  “Didn’t you tell him we were at the courts?” Cody asks me as he catches his breath.

  “Yeah, I did. Guess he forgot.” Brrp. “I’m at the courts with Cody.” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Oh, right. Listen, meet Jenkins at the courthouse.” Brrp.

  I throw Cody a confused look and he mirrors it. Brrp. “Now? Why?” Brrp.

  Brrp. “Yeah. He’s going to show you something there. Cody can go with you, if he wants.” Brrp.

  “You wanna go?” I ask Cody.

  “I ain’t got nothing else to do. Sure.”

  Brrp. “Alright, Dad. We’re on our way. What is this for again?” Brrp. I wait for Dad to respond but he doesn’t. I guess he turned me off after that brief silence I gave him.

  “This should be fun,” Cody says as he grabs his gym bag and tosses it over his back. “Hope you don’t mind me third-wheeling this romantic date that Jenkins has set up for you.”

  “Man, you’re hilarious,” I scoff as we walk off the courts. “Wonder what this is even for. Must be pretty important.”

  “It’s pretty obvious that he’s going to ask you for your blessing to be your step-dad.”

  “Dude, you got to quit with those jokes. Nobody’s laughing from them.”

  “I am. That’s all that matters.”

  We make our way across Tryton and to the courthouse. The courthouse is mainly used for the city council to meet and discuss plans for Tryton’s future. I’ve never stepped foot in it, but we passed by it when Koji was giving me a tour of Tryton.

  It takes us a while to get there, and when we do, Jenkins is waiting outside the front doors for us. “It’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen either of you!” he greets us, trying to overcome the weakness that now subdues his voice. “How are you two doing?”

  “Fine,” I answer him. “What are we doing here at the courthouse, again? Dad didn’t tell me.”

  “Oh, of course. The Tryton courthouse is very important, but today, we’re here because of the bird. You know, Abbi.”

  “What does Abbi have to do with the courthouse?” Cody asks him, trying to hide his annoyance in his voice. Cody knows what the Fuging Bracelet attached around Jenkins’s wrist means, so Cody has tried to be nicer around the guy. With that in mind, making us walk across the city just so he can tell us about Abbi does seem a little weird.

  “Well, it’s nearly been two weeks since we got back from Avvil, and we’ve been discussing a future role for you, Jaden.” He turns to me. “A possibility that Anthony and I came up with was having you explore outside the Tryton walls with Abbi recording everything. Kind of like a TV show, of sorts. For this to happen, though, it’s important that you know the whole situation with Abbi and her recording eye.”

  I almost ask Jenkins why the Scavs couldn’t do this, but then I realize that people would much rather see me on camera than multiple guys in white suits and terrifying masks. Initially, I would be angry at them for planning things for me behind my back since they’ve done that before, but not now. “That sounds cool. I need something to do during the day anyway; this could be interesting. Grant’s okay with that? Why aren’t him and Dad here, too?”

  “Grant said that he trusts you with his bird. And they’re both busy today,” he says as he turns to walk toward the courthouse. “This bracelet may have taken most of my energy, but I’m not completely useless. I volunteered to show you Abbi’s control room.”

  “Control room, huh?” Cody asks, intrigued. “You don’t mind if I tag along, do you?”

  “I don’t see why not.” He then opens the front doors to the courthouse, showing us the large hallways, busy offices, and bright floors of the building.

  “After Abbi attacked that man at your introduction ceremony, this building is where we kept her,” Jenkins tells us as we walk down one of the main hallways. “While we were gone on our voyage to Avvil, I actually asked your father to continue keeping her in here until we returned.”

  Considering that Grant had Abbi both in the flashback I had where I saw him on top of the Tryton hospital and when he rescued me from Avvil, apparently Dad didn’t do too good of a job at locking Abbi up.

  We reach a staircase that leads to a basement. A darker hall and a tall man awaits us at the bottom of the stairs. The man and Jenkins nod at each other, and the man hands Jenkins a key. Jenkins leads the way down the hallway as the man stays at the base of the stairs.

  We reach the final door at the end of the hallway. Jenkins inserts a key to unlock it and pushes the door open.

  The room is small, somewhere between the size of an office room and a janitor’s closet. A machine with a large screen that takes up the width of the room is the only attraction in the room. Connected to the bottom of the screen is a table of complicated buttons, and a single rolling chair sits under the table.

  “This is the room where Abbi’s eye is controlled,” Jenkins tells us as he approaches the table of buttons. “The man we met outside this room is in charge of Abbi’s eye today. Here, we control what she sees, whether her eye is recording or not, and her eye’s position and adjustments to what she sees. When Abbi’s eye i
s on, what her green eye captures appears on this screen.”

  The words almost sound foreign to me. “Abbi doesn’t control what she sees?” I ask more to myself as I walk up to the control table. “Grant always told me that she does. And Grant’s okay with this? The guy who is ultra-protective of his eagle is okay with people having access to record with her at all times?”

  “Not all times. At first, Abbi didn’t even have an eye. We pitched Grant the idea of replacing Abbi’s missing eye with a camera. He wasn’t too thrilled at first, but he eventually agreed. His main condition we had to follow was that he gets to control when Abbi’s eye is on or off. So ‘begin recording’ turns her eye on, and ‘conclude recording’ turns her eye off. Once her eye is on and turns green, this screen shoots on, and whoever is in this booth can see whatever Abbi sees.”

  My fingers glide across the buttons as I stare at the black screen. I’m shocked. I don’t know why; it makes sense for a human to be controlling her camera. But Grant always told me Abbi controlled it. He mentioned a video room to me, but never a control room. He also told me that he installed Abbi’s eye himself. I start to wonder why he would lie to me, but I suppose they’re both rather harmless lies. I guess the reality behind the mystique of Abbi is sort of a letdown.

  But I think back to that night in the Westwood liquor store; the first time I saw Abbi. That wasn’t her who was looking in at me from up-close, zooming her curious, green eye in on me. That was some guy in this room.

  I imagine me in that moment, how I looked on this screen while the rain pounded against my dejected face. Lost, looking for any help, while some guy sat in this room with his feet kicked up and his mouth stuffed with popcorn.

  “You broadcasted me to the city,” I remind Jenkins, waving my hands at the screen. “This screen showed me in Westwood while I was alone. What all did Abbi’s eye capture?”

  Jenkins pauses for a second, thinking his response over. “We have the footage archived. I can play you everything we have. I know this sounds like an intrusion of your privacy, so if you don’t want to watch it, I understand.”

  I don’t hesitate. “Show me.”

  He gives a slight nod, then presses a few buttons on the screen. A series of categories and other sections appears, and Jenkins scrolls his way until he finds a folder titled “Smoke Boy.” I read the title aloud, a sting in the way I repeat it.

  “There’s a reason for that,” Jenkins begins. “When the first group of Scavs found you lying next to the exploded Westwood wall, they didn’t know your name. So, when we sent people in to find you and had Abbi record you, we simply referred to you as Smoke Boy.”

  The screen flashes on to a recorded scene. In the bottom left corner is the time and date: 13:27, April 23rd, 2015. A plus and minus appear below the time, and the camera is zoomed in at +75%. Abbi appears to be a couple of streets over from the house she’s focusing in on. The house has a large crate sitting on its porch.

  “Isn’t that Tyson Armstrong’s house?” Cody asks behind me.

  “This is where Abbi first started recording,” Jenkins ignores Cody. “She captured you entering this house, and she stayed perched on this chimney for a few minutes.”

  There’s another lie Grant told me. He said that he sent Abbi after his first failed rescue mission for me. For now, I’ll let that slip my mind. “Was this seen by the Tryton people?” I ask Jenkins.

  “Nah,” Cody says while gawking at the screen. “I’ve never seen this before.”

  “We wanted to get a look at you ourselves before we did that,” Jenkins informs me as he tries to restrain a wince.

  A few seconds later, I see myself walk out of the front door of the Armstrongs’ house. I watch Smoke Boy pull his forearm above his eyes to shield them from the intense sun as they adjust. Abbi’s eye zooms in: +95%.

  The three of us in the control room remain silent as we watch what’s happening. Cody is very intrigued with what’s going on. As for Jenkins and I, we both know.

  Smoke Boy pulls the hammer out of his pocket and pries the crate open, disappointed at the emptiness in it. He then drops the lid in fear of what’s happening across the street, and as Smoke Boy calls out to the street, Abbi hovers her way to a different house in order to see what he’s yelling at. She’s unable to capture anything except for Smoke Boy yelling at nothing but another crate and falling on his butt like someone were charging at him.

  “What were you doing?” Cody asks me. “You’re acting the same way you were in the Westwood liquor store. A little psycho here, don’t you think?”

  I never told him about the Grims. He wouldn’t believe me, anyway.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Smoke Boy then runs down the street to Grandmother’s house. Abbi hovers far behind, her eye zoomed in enough to see the freshly burnt flesh on his cheek.

  “At this point, we thought you had egotoned,” Jenkins tells me. He presses a button on the control table and fast-forwards the footage. I’m glad he skips through this, because looking at Grandmother’s house on the screen brings up the terrible image of her as a Grim standing in front of her lifeless body. “I’m going to skip to where we started showing everyone in Tryton.”

  “Wait a minute! I want to see what happens!” Cody exclaims as we watch a sped-up Smoke Boy run out of his Grandmother’s house and into Stevenson’s. Cody is starting to annoy me now. My time in Westwood isn’t for his entertainment. That’s not the reason Dad called me to this room.

  Night falls on the screen. Abbi perches herself on the roof of the gas station that I used to fill my Molotov cocktails. Early in the morning, Smoke Boy runs out of Stevenson’s, pausing as he thinks of his next move. Off to Retro’s Motorcycle Shop he goes. Jenkins slows the fast-forward down; slow enough to see what Smoke Boy is doing but fast enough to speed up the normal pace.

  “Around here is when we decided to show the city,” Jenkins tells me. “Most people were still asleep when it came on, but it didn’t take long for all of Tryton to wake up.”

  Another lie Grant told me. He said that Abbi started recording me when I was talking to Xander in the liquor store. Why would Grant basically lie to me about everything involving Abbi?

  “I think this is when I started watching,” says Cody. Right now, Smoke Boy is on the motorcycle, heading for the Westwood wall. The time in the corner says 5:23. “I was going insane at this point. Your dad is actually the one who woke me up to tell me. This was awesome! You fighting against those weird-looking wolves? Badass. It didn’t take five minutes until the entire city was glued to this.”

  “If we all know what happens, then let’s skip this,” I tell Jenkins, getting more and more irritated.

  “Of course, sorry.” Jenkins puts the footage back into the fastest-forward it can, and the scene in Roaksville squeaks by in just a couple dozen seconds. Abbi struggled to keep up with the speed of the Corvette as I drove back to Westwood, but she’s able to fly high enough to watch me crash into the Stevenson’s wall. “This is when we sent a rescue team. We stopped broadcasting the footage when we sent the team off, but we kept recording only to make sure that you were safe.”

  “Thank you for the consideration,” I snap. My thoughts are again starting to slip through my mouth. I allow them to continue. “Why are we really here, Jenkins? I know my dad didn’t call me in here to watch this.”

  “If you don’t want to watch anymore, we don’t have to,” Jenkins tells me as the rescue mission scene speeds by on the screen behind him. All Abbi captures is the helicopter waiting on top of Stevenson’s. As Grant waits, we’re barely able to catch him approach Abbi and tell her to conclude recording. The screen goes black. “I was simply told to inform you on how Abbi works, since you and her might be spending a lot of time together.”

  “I sort of liked watching it, to be honest,” Cody tells us. I still don’t know why I’m being bothered by watching this; it’s not like I’m trying to keep secrets from Cody and Jenkins about what I did in Westwood.


  “Skip to the very last thing that Abbi caught,” I tell him, seeing no harm in it. I’m kind of curious to see where this ends.

  “Sure,” Jenkins says as he turns back around and presses buttons. A list of screenshots fills the screen, and Jenkins scrolls across the screen until he finds a still frame of Abbi looking at the liquor store in the rain.

  “This is a good one,” Cody tells me, beaming with excitement. I’m glad I put on a good show for him.

  Abbi is initially perched far away, looking at the liquor store through the heavy rain. After a few seconds, she flies closer to the store and looks through the window. She captures Smoke Boy yelling at nothing and knocking over an entire stand of drinks. Smoke Boy runs outside, too fast for Abbi to react. She stays put, looking at him. Smoke Boy eventually falls to his knees, and Abbi decides to hover over to get a closer look at him.

  “After you passed out right here was when we quit broadcasting to the city altogether,” Jenkins tells me. “We sent the final ground rescue team shortly after.”

  Watching Smoke Boy desperately look into the camera is really tragic. I genuinely feel sorry for him. Maybe that’s what everybody in the city looks at me with: not with fame, but with pity.

  Jenkins backs out of this scene and goes back to the grid filled with screenshots. “None of these after the liquor store were seen by the rest of the city, but if you two want to watch them, you can. If not, you two are welcome to leave until we have any more info about this show.”

  “Oh! Is that frame of you burning down the liquor store? Let’s watch that one!” Cody points out with excitement. “That is, if you don’t mind, Jaden. If you don’t want to, it’s fine.”

  Jenkins looks at me for my approval. I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t care. I actually like this part.”

  “I think this scene is close to the time we find you, too,” Jenkins tells me as he clicks on the screenshot of the liquor store burning. Abbi’s eye is at +15%, so she’s relatively close to Smoke Boy. Watching the liquor store burn down a second time is almost as amusing as it was the first. Smoke Boy stands up and throws a book in the fire.