Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Briar
I wake to a pounding headache and an unfamiliar sight. I’m not at home. I’m not even in the lawyer’s office. Instead, I’m lying in some sort of pallet-like thing, without a roof but with plastic walls a foot-and-a-half deep that curve gently inwards and hug my arms and legs.
With shaking fingers, I pull the IV needle out of my forearm. A drop of clear liquid clings to my skin. They drugged me? Seriously! I do not remember agreeing to that.
I try sitting up and find that I’m not lying down after all but that the pallet is vertical. Staying still, I was kept snugly in place. Moving, I easily fall forward, and I hit the ground on all fours, gasping as fresh pain shoots through my skull, sending black spots across my vision.
It feels like someone’s hit me, and when I touch a hand to the back of my head, I find something has matted my hair together. My fingers come away coated in flakes of dried blood, and I stare at my shaking hand as I try to think around the pounding of my headache and make sense of everything that’s happened.
Surely I wasn’t actually attacked. Surely Mr. Smith’s secretary didn’t actually deck me with the paperweight. Things like that don’t happen in real life.
Do they?
Slowly, with black spots threatening my vision, I sit back on my heels and search for answers in the surrounding space. The room’s small, about the size of the kitchenette in my crappy studio apartment. My pallet’s set into one wall, and beside it is a complicated-looking machine with all sorts of buttons and a touch-screen tablet that’s flashing words in a language I can’t read. In the wall opposite is a door. Closed, of course. While set into the remaining two walls are two more vertical pallets, connected to two more machines.
Each pallet holds a woman.
Heart hammering, I struggle to my feet. My head swims, and I press a hand to my mouth in an attempt to not be sick.
They’re both about my age and dressed to impress in fancy winter coats and fur-lined boots. They look to be sleeping, except for the plastic tubes that’ve been pushed down their throats and the needles in their arms. The tubes and needles are connected to their machines, and I hover over one screen, trying to work out which buttons to press to set them free. Because, fucking hell, we’ve been kidnapped!
Literally kidnapped !
For reality TV? Or was that all a ruse to lure us into Mr. Smith’s office? Like the biggest, stupidest idiot in the entire world, I didn’t tell anyone where I was or that I’d signed a contract.
The contract— I try to remember what it said, but aside from reading the first few lines, I’d skimmed the following pages, too worried about my own problems to spend any amount of time thinking about legalities. What if I’d signed something to say I was fine being kidnapped?
Is that even possible?
The strange words on the touch screen all blur together. It’s like my eyes can’t focus properly thanks to the lump on the back of my head. I’ve never been concussed before, but this has got to be what’s wrong with me. Concussed, kidnapped and fuck knows where.
For a second, I contemplate pulling the tubes out of their mouths, because surely whatever is keeping them unconscious is being pumped into their bodies via the tubes. But I’m not a doctor. I’m probably not even thinking clearly, and there’s no way I want to risk hurting them.
Why didn’t I have a tube?
Had I been as resistant to whatever those tubes are filled with as I am resistant to anesthesia? Or had our kidnappers not even bothered trying? Maybe they’d assumed I’d be unconscious for longer. Or, worse, maybe they didn’t care.
I rub my forearm, where the IV had been, which is marked by a circular bruise about the size of a penny. Had the drip just been keeping me hydrated, or was it something more sinister?
Get help. That’s what I’ve got to do. Call for the police and an ambulance. I pat my pockets, but they’re empty, and there’s no sign of my cellphone or purse in the tiny room.
On unsteady feet, I walk toward the closed door. As if sensing my approach, it slides open. I swear my heart leaps into my throat, but there’s nobody on the other side, just an empty passageway.
I creep down the corridor, hoping to find the way out before anyone finds me. The next door opens as I pass, but there’s nobody to see me, nobody to scream about how a prisoner has escaped, so I risk another glance inside. It’s one of those dressing rooms you see backstage, with three places to sit and lights around a wall of mirrors. There are curling irons and hair dryers as well as a whole array of makeup laid out before the chairs like a fancy feast.
The next room is one large walk-in closet, sectioned into three areas and each with a name. Harlee’s clothes are all blue. Lydia’s are all pink, evidently to match her dyed hair.
The section with my name contains more clothes than I’ve ever owned in my whole life, and they’re all green. I quickly glance down at myself, but I’m still wearing my old jeans with the ripped knees and my eight-dollar sweater from Best this gale-force wind is so much worse. It takes what feels like a year to walk the few feet down the ramp.
Why would anyone want to live here?
Stepping onto firm ground is hardly any better. I can’t take shelter from the wind by huddling against the side of the building I vacated because it’s on stilts, raised well above the ground, the floor just about level with my head.
Is it really a building, though? Turning my back to the wind and squinting up at it, I realize it’s more like an airplane than a building. What I’d taken for stilts are actually its landing gear with enormous wheels. And like an airplane, it’s streamlined, with both ends culminating in a curved point—probably the only reason the wind hasn’t yet blown it over.
That and amazingly strong brakes.
I grab hold of one wheel to keep from being blown over myself and again search for signs of life. What I really need is a cellphone. And some painkillers.
And for some way to turn off the wind.
What I find is a building. A proper building, this time, a little way beyond the plane and silhouetted against an otherwise empty horizon. It’s set low in the landscape, like it’s trying to blend into the nothingness surrounding it. One story high, with curved walls that make it more of a semi-circle dome than the traditional rectangle house shape.
I start toward it, tripping over my feet in my haste. For the second time I hit the ground, landing on all fours. Pain shoots up my arms and knees from the impact. The ground out here is rock, blown almost completely bare. All the dirt that probably started life on the ground is now dust in the wind. And in my eyes, mouth and nose.
It’s basically impossible to stand against the force of the wind now I’m down, so I stretch the long sleeves of my sweater over the palms of my hands in an attempt to protect my skin and crawl forward.
Yes, it has occurred to me that my captors are probably inside the only building within sight. Yes, it has occurred to me that I’m probably crawling straight toward them. But I don’t know what else to do. I’ve got to find a cellphone.
Maybe there’s some way I can sneak inside and make a call before I’m discovered.
Desperate, I speed up.
The front door is closed, and it doesn’t automatically open when I approach. Rather than trying to open it myself and potentially alert anyone inside to my presence, I crawl along the front of the building until I reach one curved side wall. The wind isn’t so strong here, thanks to the wall, and I stand up, shuffling sideways and searching for another entrance—maybe an open window or the back door.
I round another corner until I’m completely hidden from the wind by the building. Spitting hair and dust out of my mouth, the pounding in my head returns in full force now my ears aren’t full of the shrieking of the wind, and I sway where I stand, suddenly exhausted.
I’m not entirely sure how all my life choices have led me to this one moment, but here I am, hair matted with blood, throat and eyes so dry I couldn’t cry even if I tried.
And I really want to cry. I want to bury my head in my hands. I want for none of this to have happened.
I swear, if this whole day has been some stupid prank— If there are cameras recording me— If this is actually some fancy studio with painted backdrops that look disturbingly real and strong fans to make the wind— I’m going to throw a good ol’ fashioned tantrum.
I creep forward. There’s a shuttered window set into the wall. The slats aren’t wood or metal, but they don’t feel like plastic either. Nor do they open when I pull on them. I press one eye to the slither of a gap between the shutter and the window frame, praying the first thing I’ll see is a cellphone or a laptop.
I’d settle for two tin cans on a string if it meant getting the hell out of here.