Chapter Six Elliot
The note is on the counter when I finally leave the bedroom the next morning.
I read it three times. The words don't change.
He left me alone. Again.
I don't know what to do with that.
In the holding pens, every hour was accounted for. Wake at six. Inspection at seven. Training from eight to noon. Meals at prescribed intervals, portions measured to the calorie. Free time was a myth. Privacy was a punishment, because it meant they were watching without you knowing.
Here, there's just silence and space and a note that says don't answer the door like that's the only rule that matters.
I stand in the kitchen for a long time, staring at the fridge. My stomach cramps, a reminder that I haven't eaten since yesterday's eggs. The memory of the taste makes my mouth water, which makes me feel weak, which makes me angry at myself for wanting something.
Just open it. He said you could.
My hand hovers over the handle. I wait for the shock, the alarm, the punishment that always comes when you reach for something you're not supposed to have.
Nothing happens.
I open the fridge.
It's full. Not overflowing, but restocked from yesterday. Eggs in a carton, bread in a bag, butter in a dish. Containers of something that looks like rice, stacked in a neat row. Apples and bananas in a bowl on the counter, each one perfect, unstickered.
I grab a banana and wander around while I peel it. My anxiety is still buzzing, but now I can think. Look. Truly look around. Explore a little.
The apartment is bigger than I realized.
I map it the way they taught us in the pens, back when I was still new enough to think escape was possible.
Entry points, exit points, blind spots, weapons.
The front door has three deadbolts and a chain, all engaged.
The windows are sealed, the glass thick enough that breaking it would take more strength than I have.
The bathroom has a lock on the inside, the kind you can flip with your thumb.
The bedroom window doesn't open, but the frame looks old. Jace said it was weak enough to break if I needed an exit.
The kitchen has knives. Real ones, not the dull training blades they gave us for food prep. I open the second drawer and find them arranged in a row, handles facing out, edges gleaming. A chef's knife, a paring knife, something with a serrated edge that could do real damage.
He left them here. Accessible. Within reach.
Again.
I pick up the paring knife, test the weight in my palm. The handle is worn smooth, the blade sharp enough to split skin with barely any pressure. I could hide this. Tuck it under the mattress, keep it close while I sleep.
I put it back.
If he wanted to hurt me, he wouldn't need a knife. He wouldn't need anything. I've seen the way he moves, the controlled precision, the stillness that comes from knowing exactly how much damage he can inflict. Men like him don't need weapons. They are weapons.
And he left me alone with a drawer full of blades like it didn't matter.
Either he trusts me, or he's testing me, or he doesn't think I'm enough of a threat to worry about.
I don't know which option is worse.
The shower is hot.
Not lukewarm, not rationed, not cut off after three minutes by a timer. I stand under the spray until steam fills the room and my skin turns red, and no one bangs on the door, no one drags me out, no one punishes me for taking too long.
I cry.
Not loud, not dramatic. Just tears leaking out, mixing with the water, disappearing down the drain. I don't know what I'm crying for. The heat, maybe. The privacy. The strange, impossible kindness of being left alone.
Or maybe I'm crying because I keep waiting for the trap and it doesn't come, and that's scarier than any punishment I've ever received.
This isn't real. This can't be real.
But the water is real. The steam is real. The ache in my muscles is real.
I wash my hair with shampoo that smells like nothing, scrub my body with soap that doesn't sting. I stay in until the water starts to cool, then turn it off and stand there, dripping, listening to the silence.
No footsteps. No commands. No one waiting on the other side of the door.
I dry off with a towel that's softer than anything I've touched in years and put on the same oversized shirt from yesterday. It hangs to my thighs, the sleeves past my wrists. It smells like detergent and something else, something faint and warm that I can't identify.
Him. It smells like him.
I don't know why that makes my chest tight.
The knock comes at 12:30.
I'm on the couch, knees pulled to my chest, staring at the wall, when the sound cracks through the silence. Three sharp raps, evenly spaced. Official.
My body freezes. Every muscle locks, every nerve fires, every instinct screams hide hide hide.
I don't hide. I slide off the couch, silent, and press my back to the wall beside the door. The peephole is at eye level, but looking through it would put me in view of whoever's on the other side.
The knock comes again. Louder.
"Ministry of Acquisition. Welfare compliance. Open the door."
The words put me in an anxious spiral. Ministry. Acquisition. The people who owned me. The people who sold me. The people who will take me back if they could.
I don't move. I don't breathe.
"This is a scheduled compliance check. Failure to respond will result in escalation."
The voice is male, bored, reading from a script. I've heard that tone before, in the pens, when they came to inventory the assets. Counting heads. Noting damage. Marking the ones too broken to sell.
I press my hand to my mouth to keep any sound from escaping.
The silence stretches. Ten seconds. Twenty. I count them in my head, each one a lifetime.
Then footsteps. Moving away.
Something slides under the door. A card, white with black text. I wait until the footsteps fade completely before I crouch and pick it up.
Compliance check rescheduled. Asset owner to report to Ministry within 24 hours or face retrieval protocols.
Retrieval.
The word burrows into my brain and nests there, spawning images I can't stop. The transport vans. The holding cells. The auction block, lights in my eyes, hands on my body, voices calling out numbers like I'm cattle.
I sink to the floor, back against the wall, knees to my chest. The card crumples in my fist.
He won't let them take you. He said you're safe here.
But he's not here. And they know where I am. And the clock is ticking.
I stay on the floor, breathing in shallow sips, until the panic recedes enough for me to think.
Don't answer the door. That's what he said. Don't answer the door.
I didn't.
I followed the rule.
I was a good boy… wasn’t I?
By the time the door opens at 2:00, I've moved to the couch. The card is in my lap, smoothed flat, the creases from my fist still visible. I've read it forty-three times. The words haven't changed.
Jace enters the same way he does everything: quiet, controlled, precise. Three deadbolts disengage in sequence. The door opens exactly wide enough for his body. He steps through, scans the room, locates me in under a second. Shutting and relocking the door, he stalks towards me.
His eyes drop to the card.
I hold it up. My hand doesn't shake, which feels like a victory.
He crosses to me, takes the card, reads it. His expression doesn't change. Nothing about him changes. The stillness is absolute, the kind you see in predators right before they strike.
"They came," I say. My voice sounds wrong, too thin, but it doesn't crack.
He nods.
"I didn't open the door."
Another nod.
"They said..." I swallow. "Retrieval protocols.”
He looks at me for a long moment. I wait for the lie, the deflection, the careful phrasing that protects me from the truth. That's what handlers do. They manage information. They decide what you can handle and feed you the rest in pieces.
Jace doesn't do any of that.
"If I don’t comply, they’ll send a team to recover you by force," he says. "Sedate you, transport you, return you to circulation."
"And if you don't report to the Ministry?"
"Then the team comes for both of us."
He says it flat, no inflection. Like he's reading weather data. Like the prospect of violence doesn't register as a threat.
Maybe it doesn't. Maybe he's been violent for so long that the idea of more violence is just background noise.
Then it dawns on me.
Why he’s not afraid.
"You're going to fight them."
It's not a question. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his weight shifts forward, the subtle loosening of his hands.
"Yes."
"You could die."
"I could." He tilts his head, studying me. "Does that bother you?"
The question catches me off guard. I open my mouth, close it, try again.
"I don't want you to die for me."
"That's not what I asked."
I look at him. Really look, for the first time since he walked in.
The flat grey eyes, the hard line of his jaw, the controlled stillness that makes him seem more statue than man.
He's not handsome, not in the way the handlers at the pens were handsome, all polish and practiced charm.
He's something else. Something carved out of stone and sharpened to a point.
"Yes," I say. "It bothers me."
He processes this. I watch him do it, watch the micro-shifts in his expression as he files the information away.
"Why?"
Because you're the first person who's been kind to me in ten years.
Because you gave me food and water and a bed and you didn't touch me.
Because you left me alone with knives and trusted me not to use them on myself or you.
Because you look at me like I'm a problem to be solved instead of a thing to be used, and I don't know what to do with that, but I know I don't want it to stop.
I don't say any of that. The words are too big, too raw, too likely to make him realize I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
Instead I say, "Because you came back."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he nods, takes the card from my lap, and walks to the kitchen.
I watch him pull a lighter from a drawer, hold the card over the sink, and set it on fire. The paper curls, blackens, disintegrates into ash. He runs the water until every trace is gone.
"They'll send another," I say.
"Probably."
"What will you do?"
He turns off the water, dries his hands, faces me.
"Whatever I have to."
That should scare me. They don't. They settle into my chest like something solid, something I can hold onto.
"Okay," I say.
He nods again, then opens his phone.
"You need to eat," he says.
"I had a banana."
"That's not enough."
He dials a number and orders take-out. Real take-out. Food I’ve never had before. It sounds exotic and expensive.
When it arrives, I see the label and ask him what it says.
“Phucket Thai. It’s Vietnamese.”
It smells so good, my stomach constricts.
“You’ve never had take-out before have you?”
I shake my head and he sighs, grabbing plates and dishing up food. “Eat.”
“Why… are you being nice to me? Risking it all for me?”
He shrugs. “Not sure, to be quite frank. I think my conditioning is wearing off, and maybe I became attached to you because you are weak and I am not. I’ve spent a lifetime destroying the weak, but you’re not a weak threat.
You’re just weak and vulnerable. It does something to me that I don’t quite understand.
Hence why they want me to come in. Turn you over.
Maybe they can recondition me, maybe they can’t.
Either way I’d end up in a body bag. I am the Reaper after-all. ”
That’s the most he’s ever said to me and probably the most I’ll ever get. I don’t understand it, and neither does he, but we are both in full awareness that something big is coming if he doesn’t hand me over and report himself to the Ministry.
Something in me tells me that he’s telling the truth.
That he won’t just give me up because his own life is at stake.
Maybe I’m a penance he’s paying. Maybe he truly is interested in saving me.
Either way, when his hand comes up under my chin and forces me to meet his eyes, a jolt flows down my spine and straight to the tip of my cock. There is something very, very wrong with this, and yet…
There’s nothing more I want him from than for him to replace the bad memories with new ones that I have a choice in.