Taken By Force (Taken Trilogy Book 2)

by Jessica Frances

  “You think they won’t be expecting you to try and run? You think they’ll take their eyes off you for even a second? You don’t even deserve to be taken in. I should kill you now for what you’ve done,” the boy hisses at me.

  He’s right, it will be impossible for us. Chances are there will be no escaping it this time. We failed Drew and we didn’t prevent our future from being on this path. Whatever horrors we committed in our old future, we’re going to do them again. We shouldn’t have run in the first place. We should have just taken our own lives as soon as future Drew came to us. As much as that wasn’t even considered an option to us before, as completely radical and crazy as that would have been, it would have kept us from months of running. It might have saved Joel’s life and it definitely would have protected the lives we affect in our future.

  “What are you talking about?” The kid shakes me and then let’s go. I fall to the ground, my eyes opening upon the impact.

  I didn’t even realize I’d been speaking out loud. “Just take me in already,” I gasp out, my throat dry and sore.

  “You kill my family and then you think you can order me around?” he growls at me, grabbing hold of me again, bringing me so close to his face that I can feel his breath hitting my neck. He’s breathing heavily and I can see he is only just controlling his anger, only barely stopping himself from hurting me further. There is something about him and I again focus on why I know him.

  “Are you Blake? The kid who was shot?” I ask him, picturing the kid we saw being brought in by those two guards back at The Windmill. The same kid that we had been told had died. The very one that Rose realized was still alive. The one who attacked me back at her apartment.

  “You don’t even remember me? After you tried to kill me? After you killed my family? Killed Sophie!” He shoves me angrily again and this time my fall to the ground knocks the air out of my lungs. Before I can catch my breath he sits atop of me, grabbing out a knife from a strap along his leg, holding it in front of me. He leans it against my neck and the sharp edge digs into my skin, although not enough to cut my skin.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t try to kill anybody,” I rush to say, afraid when I swallow painfully past my fear and against the knife that I might cause him to cut me.

  “You’re lying.”

  “The first time I saw you was when they brought you into The Windmill. It was the first day they’d let us out of our rooms, the first time I met the others. We saw you brought in by two guards and you were bleeding.”

  “I was bleeding because you shot me!” he rushes to say, but I see the confusion in his eyes.

  “I’ve never fired a gun before in my life. I was taken by P.A.G.E. the day after my twenty-first birthday. I was held in my room for days before being let out. I didn’t shoot you.”

  “If you didn’t, then it was the others,” Blake states. I know he doesn’t sound as sure of himself. The knife is still pressed against me, but I can feel him pulling it back slightly.

  “They didn’t. They arrived there around the same time I did. We all had attempts on our lives. I was shot at, too, same with Will. Rose had a bomb go off at her work and Charlie had a knife pulled on him.”

  “You’re lying. Agent Goodings said… he told me that you killed my family.”

  I shake my head, able to do that now that he’s pulled the knife completely away from my neck. He still holds it in his hand, his body continuing to hold mine down, but I am free to breathe now.

  “He lied. Look, I know this sounds crazy, but people from our future came back for us. They tried to eliminate us so we wouldn’t be taken in by Stan. They get us to do something awful in the future, maybe even a bunch of awful things. It was bad enough for them to need to stop us. But they all failed. We thought you were killed, though.”

  “Bullshit.” Blake places the knife back against my throat.

  “I’m not lying. Drew told me that your sister came back for you. Didn’t you see her? Didn’t you see who shot you?” I plead with him, hoping she wasn’t some sniper shooting from miles away unseen.

  “No, I don’t remember.” Blake shakes his head, his gaze leaving mine, looking next to me. His eyes no longer see me or the ground; he’s recalling that day. I see the play of emotions cross his face. His eyes narrowing, changing from anger and horror to grief and then shock.

  “That’s not possible,” he says, leaning back and away from me. All his weight is on my legs, and pins and needles travel down to my feet.

  “We didn’t kill your family, Blake, and honestly, I find it hard to believe your sister would have killed them. Her only target should have been you. Did you see them go down? Did you see them hurt?”

  “No, but Agent Goodings said they were all dead. My sister, my girlfriend and even my parents.”

  “She wouldn’t have killed them, not unless it was an accident,” I tell him, although it’s one thing for Joel to shoot and miss me, catching Dana by accident. It’s another thing entirely to have killed four people by accident.

  “He said you went to my house, said my dad had come home early to surprise us. You guys shot and killed them both and then came to the school to kill me.”

  “She wouldn’t have had to go to your house, not to kill your family.”

  “He showed me newspaper clippings, reports of the murders.”

  “I saw the same story of Joel hanging himself in his cell, except we both just saw Martha killing him today. They can fake that stuff, Blake.”

  He stares at me for a while. I get the distinct impression that he’s trying to read my thoughts.

  “Agent Goodings said I shouldn’t talk to any of you, that you were all expert liars and could manipulate people.”

  I roll my eyes at him. How far has Stan taken this lie? Why even lie at all? Just to get Blake on his side? Then I remember all the grief Rose and Charlie gave them about missing their family, about wanting to go home. Maybe this was their way to keep Blake from wanting to go home. Maybe this was a mission that they could be sure to get Blake’s assistance on while they fed him lies and trained him.

  “I should call this in right now.”

  “Do you know where they’re taking the others?” I ask, surprising him with my lack of care about his threat.

  “No, they have several facilities in the area that they could take them to, even more if they don’t stay in this area.”

  My heart drops. “Then call it in. Take me away so I can be with the others.”

  He assesses my face while I resist the urge to hit him. I’m angry that he’s taking his time. Part of me thinks that maybe if I strike out at him then he might be more willing to give me up.

  “If what you’re saying is true, then I don’t want any part of what is going on. I had a life before all this. I didn’t choose to do this. If my family is alive, if Sophie is back home waiting for me, then I want to go back to my old life. I want to forget this ever happened.”

  I wince at his words. “You can’t, though, because they won’t ever stop looking for you. They might even use your family against you, or at the very least they’ll be put in danger if you go back home. It’s why we were on the run. It’s why we wanted to fight them. We all want to go home, Blake. We just can’t.”

  “Then I’ll help you.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll help you guys finish this.”

  My eyes try to pop out of their sockets at his words. “You believe me?”

  “I haven’t decided, but there is an easy enough way to check on what you’re saying. First, we have to get out of these woods and then I need to make a phone call.”

  Hope builds inside me that maybe I’m not alone. Maybe there is a chance that we can do this, but it’s quickly crushed. We’re still only two people against an army.

  “It’s not completely hopeless. I’ve been training for months for this type of thing and your other two friends are still out there.”

  “Rose and Dean?” I gasp
and finally that hope begins to build again.

  “Yeah, at least I haven’t heard any different. But we need to move, it won’t take them much longer to realize they’re following you down the wrong way and they’ll double back.”

  “Reader where—you—position—hurry—over,” a voice yelps between static and Blake looks down at the radio sitting on his hip.

  He clicks off the sound and then drops it to the ground. He gets up off me, not offering to help me up. My legs feel boneless and it’s painful as I begin to get feeling back in them.

  “If I find out that you’re lying, I’ll kill you all myself.” His voice doesn’t waver and his eyes promise me that he won’t hesitate to do just that. I really hope I’m not wrong about what his future sister did.

  ***

  We run until it’s dark and then we stumble at a slow pace for hours in the pitch black covering us. The tall trees hide any light from the moon and there are no stars out here. We’ve been lucky the weather hasn’t been too bad, but as we’ve slowed down the cold has seeped into my clothes and skin. My teeth are chattering and I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I’d worn something warmer.

  “We don’t have time to stop. Spencer was expected to be at the cabin within an hour of our ambush. If they know I’m with you, then it’ll be easier for her to track us because she knows me.”

  “Who is Spencer?”

  “She has a gift like ours. She can track anyone, anywhere. She’s still learning, though. If you’re in a place you’ve been before, if she’s met you, or if you happen upon a place she’s spent a lot of time in, then you’re easier to find.”

  I vaguely recall Rose saying something about a person called Spencer, but my brain is too exhausted to fully care about that.

  “So what happened to you? You were shot and then what?” I change the subject, hoping his words can take my mind off the exhaustion and pain I’m feeling.

  “I woke up, a month or so had passed. I was told that I was needed to serve my country and that my ability to read minds could do that.”

  “Can you read my mind right now?”

  “No, I’m not trying to, though. If I try really hard I can usually hear something. The more I hang around a person the less I have to try.”

  “That must be frustrating.”

  “I’ve had it my whole life. I don’t know any different.” Blake sighs and I think he might have just walked into a tree. He grunts in pain, but he keeps treading forward.

  “How come you couldn’t tell Stan was lying about us? Couldn’t you see it in his thoughts?”

  Blake is silent. I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t want to answer, if I’ve said something to offend him or if it’s because he’s not even listening to me. I decide to simply drop it when he finally answers me.

  “If you’re not lying to me, and they were… well, they know what I can do. I can’t access thoughts, just catch what’s on their mind at the time.”

  “I would hate to see into the mind of Martha. She is unbelievably evil.” I shiver, involuntarily playing over the scene of her shooting Joel.

  “I’m sorry about your friend back there. It’s the first time I’ve seen someone die. It’s different than what I thought it was going to be. I think I puked because it wasn’t as awful as I expected. It was so easy, one shot and then…” He drifts off and I hear the shock in his voice.

  “It’s different when you know the person,” I tell him, now haunted by the memory of Dana dying in front of me. “It’s one thing to see a stranger die, but something else to see someone you love.”

  “There wouldn’t have been anything you could have done. I didn’t realize what she was going to do until she did it, but her thought afterwards made me think she never planned to take him alive.”

  We walk for a long while in silence then. I’m trapped in my memories and none of them are good. I try to think of anything that doesn’t cause me pain, but I’m consumed by my grief, so I try to keep Blake talking.

  “Did you know a guy called Ocean?”

  “Yeah, you guys took him to the hospital.”

  “Did he make it?”

  “He did. Mags said you shot him, but when Ocean woke up he contradicted it. She was pissed because she got in trouble.”

  “She shot Will four times.”

  “Yeah, she’s a real piece of work. I guess being told the truth your whole life can be pretty harsh. At least when I knew someone didn’t like me, I could see them making the effort to fake it. She got dealt the whole truth no matter if it was good or not. Can you imagine asking a question and being given the truth no matter what? Does my butt look big in this? Do you love me? Why are you breaking up with me?”

  I take in his words, but I don’t have the capability to feel bad for her. My emotions are stretched enough as it is.

  “Who else is there with special abilities?”

  “Just Otis. He can sort of teleport himself.”

  “What?” I gape, but Blake can’t see it.

  “Well, he’s done it once successfully apparently when he was a kid. Now he can just send a hologram of himself somewhere. It’s actually really cool.”

  “I don’t understand why we’re all different. Why were we chosen? What makes us so special?”

  “I don’t know. I mean I have a twin sister and as far as I know, she’s just a regular person.” He pauses and then he growls quietly. “I can’t believe she tried to kill me, I always knew she was crazy, but seriously!”

  I don’t know how to respond to that. Turns out, I don’t have to. Blake’s hand grabs my arm and I stop moving.

  “We should stop now, rest up here and at the first sign of light we’ll keep moving.”

  I wonder about the tracker he mentioned, Spencer, but truthfully, I’m too exhausted to take another step. So I nod, though when I realize he can’t see me, I verbally agree.

  I sit down on the ground and curl myself into a ball, wrapping my arms around myself as I try to think of somewhere warm. My thoughts drift to the dream I had of Charlie and me in the future. I was pregnant in that dream. I don’t want to have kids, at least not any anytime soon, but I would give anything to make that dream real. I want a future with Charlie. I want that dream to be possible.

  I open my eyes, finding myself in a small hallway. I look around myself and see photos cluttered all over the walls. I walk over to them, but before I can look at any of them I hear my own voice echoing down the hallway.

  My heart stops beating when I hear myself saying the name, “Dana.”

  I rush into the open area and see myself leaning against a kitchen bench, laughing. I’m standing in a kitchen I don’t recognize. I look a lot older and I would guess I’m in my forties here. It’s creepy seeing myself looking so much older. I still see the image I see today, except I have more lines running over my face. I’m plumper and I definitely have a mom haircut. It looks shorter and fluffier than I’ve ever seen my own hair. It creeps me out.

  “How is everything going? Are you having fun in Alaska chasing polar bears or whatever it is you’re doing?”

  I try to process what she’s saying to Dana while older me gets to hear Dana’s response. It’s unfair that I don’t get to see her, especially since it’s clear now that the dreams I have where I’m just observing aren’t true. If I’m making them up, then why can’t I simply put her in them? Have our lives play out living together until we’re old, not just Charlie and my life?

  “Are you sure you’re being careful?” She looks worried and I’m shocked at how much that increases the lines covering her face. “I know, I know you’ve been looking forward to this trip for ages. Well, make sure you hurry home because I miss you.” She rolls her eyes then, but she does smile. Tears fall down my face, wishing I could hear what is being said. I wish I could hear Dana’s voice one last time.

  “Fine, but just remember you promised me a dinner and movie date when you get home and I’m holding you to that… Wait what did you say? This line
is horrible,” she complains.

  I watch her move around the kitchen as if she’s hoping standing in a better place will make the line clear up. “Drew is that you? Dana didn’t even say goodbye to me… Oh well,tell her I love her and—Drew?” She pulls the phone away from her ear. I hear Drew’s voice through the receiver calling out my name. My heart tries to rip out of my chest at hearing his voice. I rush next to my old self, hoping I might hear Dana’s voice, too. Instead, she puts the phone back to her ear and I’m blocked out of the conversation again.

  “I know, stupid phone connections. With all this technology you’d think there would be a better way to talk in the middle of a snow storm.” She rolls her eyes again and I put my ear to the other side of the phone, hoping Drew’s voice might come through. It doesn’t.

  “So, are you enjoying the promotion? Is it what you thought—” She stops talking midsentence, hearing a noise from down the hall. I hear it too and my own body goes on edge. Old me doesn’t move, but I walk out into the hallway to investigate. Since this is a fake dream, I’m sure my mind won’t be making up some horrible death for me. It’s bad enough that’ll probably be what waits for me in real life.

  I get a glimpse down the hallway, and what I see is enough to make me smile. Charlie is tiptoeing down the hallway.

  He has aged much more than I have. His hair is receding, his skin looks tough and worn, he is more solid and his clothes look weird on him. He just looks old. There is still my attractive Charlie, but old.

  “Charlie, you scared me half to death,” she complains when he finally rounds the corner only to find her holding a knife in her hands. “Drew, are you there? It was just Charlie—Drew?” She throws the phone onto the bench angrily. “I lost them. It’s impossible to have a proper conversation with anyone up there.”

  “We can try again in the morning. Night time is always worse, you know that,” Charlie speaks soothingly. He walks over to her and she falls into his arms for a hug. As weird as it is seeing us so much older, it warms my heart to watch us still so in love. Even if this isn’t true, it’s nice to think this moment could still happen.