We’re moving toward the trees.
Jessica continues to dial. Her phone lights up with Brek’s face on it as the call waits to be answered. Over and over and over.
We break into the treeline and pause. There’s buzzing. We look around the trees, waiting to see something awful. His body. Blood.
A light breaks through the leaves on the ground, and I walk toward it. Bending down, I dig it out. A phone. With Jessica’s face flashing on the screen. The call ends, and the screen reads 61 missed calls.
“Where is he?” Jessica whispers as she stops at my side.
The screen on Brek’s phone turns off. I look around the trees, dread overtaking me.
“I don’t know.”
22
BREK
The car bounces,and something hard digs into my hip. My head is still fuzzy, and the loud clanging isn’t helping. It feels like we’re driving on a rough road, which makes no sense. It’s all highways and paved roads that lead home.
The tire falls into a hole. Metal scrapes on metal. The sound is so loud and sharp that my jaw hurts. The metal bars slap into my ass and back and shoulder. I try to brace myself, but can’t move my hands. Something is wrapped around them tightly. It stings in a way I’ve never felt before. Bad enough that tears fill my eyes.
I squint and nearly pass out again. This isn’t the car. I’m surrounded by bars, which makes sense since it felt as if bars dug into me. Fear covers me like a cold blanket, and I shiver.
Once again, I try to move my hands, but the sharp bite cuts into them again. I shift and find that my hands are zip-tied together. Oh my god. What the fuck happened? What is this? Where am I?
I struggle to sit up. The cage I’m in is just big enough to do so. My body aches as if I’ve been punched all over. Kicked. Thrownoff a building or shoved in front of a speeding truck. Everything hurts. Everywhere feels bruised.
My glasses are askew, but somehow they’re still on my face and not broken. That doesn’t mean I can see anything, though. They’re too fucking dirty to get a good look.
From what I can see, I’m in a long box. It’s not difficult to figure out that this is a tractor-trailer truck. I’m inside the trailer. There’s a length of large-bulbed string lights hanging from one end to the other—the kind that are hung in backyards or on decks.
Kept in a cage but given a light. That’s… oddly considerate.
I’m not alone. There are a dozen other cages just like mine, lining each side of the trailer. Someone is in each. Most are guys, from what I can tell. There’s a single woman at the very end.
I lift my tied hands and try to rub my glasses with my sleeve. It only helps a little. Mostly, I smudge the shit already there, but I somehow manage to clean part of them. Inconveniently, the clean parts are in different sections on the glass in front of each eye. This is going to give me a quick headache if I continue trying to look around.
So I don’t. I lean back and close my eyes. I’ve seen all I need to see. I’m in a fucking cage like an animal. I’m not the only one.
With my eyes closed, I feel around for my phone. I’m not in the least bit surprised to find it missing. “Anyone have their phone?” I ask, already anticipating the response.
A quiet chorus of no answers my question.
“That would be too easy,” someone mutters.
I nod in agreement. “I didn’t want to be a cheesy meme and not ask,” I say.
“Did you restart your computer?” someone else says. It’s not difficult to hear the mocking in his tone.
“Are you seriously joking around right now?” someone else snaps. “We’re being fucking trafficked, and you’re joking about memes and restarting computers?”
“Is panicking or sitting here in silence going to change the situation?” the man mocking a restart asks. “No. And neither is being a dick because you’re scared.”
“We don’t know our situation right now, other than we’re being kept like dogs. While I think we can all assume this isn’t a surprise secret society induction ceremony we’re being brought to, sitting here letting our fear get the better of us isn’t going to help.”
No one answers. He’s right, of course. Meaningless chatter is a distraction from the seriousness of the situation we’re in. Sitting here with nothing but my terror to think about is only going to amplify my anxiety, and I may miss something important.
Not that I actually have any hopes that I’ll be able to get myself free. I’m not that kind of person. I have no fighting skills, no street smarts. Fuck, I don’t even know how I ended up in this situation! Wasn’t I in a damn Shuttled feeling carsick? How did I go from the Shuttled to a cage?
