ONE
Logan
“Eli?” I shouted out of routine as I climbed the tattered wooden stairs of Mr. and Mrs. Tucker’s battered house. I wasn’t very fond of Nora and Clifford Tucker, for very valid reasons that went beyond just hating your foster parents on principle. Eli, Sebastian, and I were thick as thieves, though, so I considered us a family, albeit without parental figures. Sebastian assumed that role hesitantly. He was one year older than me and Eli. At fifteen, he had already completed high school. I was in awe of Bastian. He was already working and bringing in some money for the three of us. Right now, I knew Bastian was at work.
Eli on the other hand was more my twin. He was the baby of our brotherhood, even though he was a few months older than me.
Eli and his shy mouth. God, he was too quiet sometimes. Never shared his story with us. I still didn’t know what his beginnings were.
I, on the other hand, had shared almost everything with Bastian and Eli in the past three years we’d been with the Tuckers. I was the trailer park kid, but instead of living with a deadbeat dad or a stripper mother, I lived with an old man until I turned six. He named me Logan, but I didn’t even know his name. He never really cared for me, but he did provide food once a day. I was more his pet dog, than a kid wishing for shelter.
When I showed up muddied and starving at a grocery store one day, the police were called and I was reluctantly thrown in the foster system. After going through nine foster homes and living on the streets for two years, I was finally assigned the Tuckers at the ripe age of eleven. This is where I met Bastian and Eli. Clifford Tucker was a mean old bastard. He would beat Bastian up every chance he got. I think he was racist. Bastian’s dark skin color never bothered me, or even Eli. We just assumed that’s how he was and continued with our friendship.
I grabbed the keys tucked and hidden behind the mailbox and opened the lock.
“Eli!” I shouted again as I entered the house, hoping this time I was louder and Eli would answer.
Then I heard heavy breathing coming from our room. Like someone was running haggard, full speed.
“You in there, Eli?” I cautiously walked towards the closed door. The hair on my neck rose with unanticipated terror.
The door creaked as I swung it open.
Bastian was the one breathing heavily, sweat dripping down from his forehead to his nose. A bead of sweat dropped and landed on Eli’s chest. He was lying down flat, his eyes wide open yet unseeing. Bastian was pressing both his hands on Eli’s chest, giving him CPR.
I knew this wasn’t a dream. I pinched myself to make sure of it. Then Bastian looked at me. His red-rimmed eyes filled with terror mirrored mine. His gaze inadvertently dropped to somewhere near Eli’s feet and I followed it.
A bottle of tiny white pills lay there, open and toppled. And in that moment, I knew what was happening. But I couldn’t move. My legs refused to acknowledge the urgency. I just helplessly watched Eli lose the fight with death. Eventually, after maybe thirty minutes, Bastian tired himself out and stopped. His head hung low and he started wailing.
Bastian was supposed to be a sea of calm, yet here he was, howling, screaming, and crying over a dead body that once was Eli, our brother.
???
I snapped awake, another haunting vision of Eli dissolving as reality settled in. He was there again in my dreams, wedged between our bunk beds, his eyes bulging, bloodshot from the drugs coursing through his veins.
You couldn’t have stopped it, Logan. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know.
I didn’t know, that was true. Yet, Sebastian fucking Blackthorn did. He knew all along. He didn’t intervene; he didn’t save Eli. He just watched as he slipped away.
I shook my head fiercely, trying to dispel the guilt and anger brewing inside me, but the motion only ignited a sharp pain that speared from my temples down to my neck. My ears rang with a persistent echo, blurring my thoughts.
Was I still in that fucking torture chamber? Or was I back in my cell?
My unfocused eyes finally locked on the blurry ragged floor beneath me. A floor I recognized.
Cell, it is.
I dragged myself to the front of the cell and grabbed the tiny bottle of water they usually left for me. Today’s torture was apparently over. I guess they couldn’t find more space on my back to play tic tac toe with their knives. It was when they waterboarded me that I lost my consciousness.
Fucking Garret Tyson.
After the explosion at Warehouse 67, I was left scarred, a charred shadow of my former self. Pink, raw burn scars sprawled from the left side of my neck, across my chest, and down my arm. My tattoos sure as hell were ruined. Another casualty of that blast was the RLM device, which I was nearly certain had been damaged in the explosion. Yet, when my squad didn’t come for me—two weeks with no sign of rescue—I realized they must think I was dead.
In some twisted way, I preferred they believe that lie. The thought of them attempting a rescue and being dragged into this hellish place, wherever the fuck it was, was unbearable.
Clang!
Clang!
A slow rhythmic sound of a plate being rammed into the cell’s metal bars sounded, elevating my throbbing headache to a point where I was dangerously close to passing out again.
Clang!
Clang!
“Stop it, 387!” I yelled, my voice wavering with pain.
I whipped my head up and literally growled like an animal at the man in front of me. This was what captivity was doing to us. It was morphing us into fucking wildlife. 387 was a man in his forties or maybe fifties, who was often experimenting with the limits of my sanity. We were all numbers here. My number was 424. I didn’t hate it. It was nice.
But right now, I hated 387. He was freshly tortured and in a dazed state, possibly demanding his dinner.
We were given minimal food twice a day. It wasn’t a well-balanced meal that would let me keep my muscles and strength intact. So, I was gradually losing muscle mass. I could barely use my left arm due to the burns, and that combined with the daily torment, I could barely do two pushups.
Fuck , I was in my worst state and it was only going to get worse. The clicking of heels echoed through the cell passage and my mind went alert.
She was here. Again. She was going to check my wounds. Again. Make sure I was healed enough for the next round of torture tomorrow. Again!
The sound of her heels neared and slowed as she reached my cell. I was on all my fours, not my best position considering I was only wearing some random white boxers they had provided me. They loved seeing blood contrast with that white cloth.
I pulled my gaze up slowly. The red stilettos filled my view, and as she stepped further down the passage and stopped near my cell, I anchored my eyes on her silk-teal dress. Not a drop of blood on her.
And then I met her gaze. She was also dead, just like me. The difference was the wall of bars between us. I was a prisoner, a number, a toy. She was the queen, a name, and a tool. Garret Tyson’s whore, Kaylan ‘Healer’ Bennett. Alpha Squad Two, certified combat medic. She had technically died a few months ago in Florida.
But was she dead? No.
Here she was, in the flesh, drinking champagne and eating briskets with the enemy. Garret followed close behind her, and when he stood right next to her, I spat at their feet.
“This useless fuck,” Garret gritted his teeth. I didn’t know what I expected Garret to look like, having chased him for months with my squad, but I didn’t expect a lanky, fifty-something, silver-haired clown. He looked weak, but I remembered his punch from a few nights ago. I was pretty sure he dislocated my jaw.
He threw his kerchief down on his shiny shoes and snapped his fingers to call someone. A terrified, small boy, barely an adult, ran to him and knelt to wipe my spit from his feet.
My gaze briefly drifted from Garret to Kaylan again. She was smirking as usual. Probably happy that my spit didn’t reach her glittery crimson shoes.
“I think his back needs some antiseptics,” she purred at Garret. He responded with a grunt and stalked off.
A first aid kit magically appeared in her hands and one of the men, Noel, behind her brushed against her bare shoulder to open my cell for her.
I couldn’t quite understand why that irked me. Objectively, she was beautiful. I guessed that was why Garret liked to fuck her in all the ways he could. I bet she was enjoying her new allegiance with him. I wondered how much money she was paid to stick around. I knew she had a family. Had she abandoned them for the sake of money and power?
Her faint smirk answered all of my questions. But there were still a few unanswered. As she stepped into my cell, my arm gave up, and I fell on my right elbow.
The vulnerability was eating at me. Here I was, at the mercy of the enemy.
“Don’t spit on my dress, it’s new,” she smiled and glanced at Noel, who was watching her from behind the bars. My face twisted in disgust but she couldn’t see it.
She gloved up and gently pushed me down until I was lying fully flat on my stomach on the cold floor. The tic tac toe’s massacre of a playground laid completely bare to her.
Maybe it was my imagination or a momentary haze, but I swore I saw her wince as she eyed my bare back. I couldn’t see it, but I was sure I looked like a Frankenstein experiment gone incredibly wrong.
She cleaned my back using some wipes. Then she whipped out a tube, unscrewed the cap, and squeezed out a generous amount of cream.
The cream was mildly cool against my skin, or maybe I was burning up due to some infection that would kill me in a day or two. I couldn’t tell.
Her fingers were awfully gentle on me, she carefully swept through all the corners and ridges of my back, and then she applied bandages on a few that were too deep and nasty in her assessment.
As she packed away the first aid kit, I watched her pale skin flushing slightly near her cheeks. I frowned and peered my gaze away. I shouldn’t be noticing things about a woman who was literally in bed with the enemy.
What I needed to do was to find a way to escape. Now that I knew Squad Six wasn’t coming, I had to find an out by myself. Perhaps this bitch, Kaylan, was the key. If I render her useless to Garret, I could get a trade, her life for my freedom.
All I needed was a plan.