“Keep your hands there, or we’ll do this the hard way. Understand?”
I nod. Since I don’t know what’s going on, I’m not as scared as I could be. As he walks toward the fire, I amend my sentence. I wasn’t as scared as I should be. He comes back with short rods locked together that he took out of the fire. There are flat plates on the end that are glowing molten hot.
It takes a lot of convincing myself not to pull my hands away. I don’t want to know what the hard way is. I have a feeling it has to do with guns, and I don’t want to be shot. It might be less painful than being burned to death, but I don’t move.
Time slows as he brings the burning plates down onto the back of my left hand. I try like fucking hell to keep the scream in, but the pain is unlike anything I’ve ever known. My knees go weak. My hands feel glued to the anvil. I can’t pull them away, no matter how much I want to.
Finally, he pulls the rods away, and I’m staring through tears at the back of my hand that’s now marked with 718. Burned. Branded. I’m a fucking number.
My chest heaves as I try to catch my breath. Bile coats my mouth, and it takes a lot to keep from vomiting.
“Outside,” the man says as he detaches one of the plates and replaces it with another.
I pull my hands from the anvil and hold them to my chest as I stumble from the barn. Shaking. I’m a damn animal. I was branded like a farm animal. Numbered like an inmate.
What the fuck is this place?
I’m led back to the truck and climb in to sit in the far corner. My head rests against the back window, and I close my eyes. There’s no way to talk myself out of my fear now. I’m absolutely terrified. This mark is the stripping of everything that makes me human. People talk about being a number at a doctor’s office or within a company, but they don’t truly understand what that means.
At the end of the day, they’re human. A person. They go home and live their lives with names and identities.
Being transported in cages, herded by armed men, branded with a number that effectively erases everything else about me… that’s what it means to be treated less than human. Yes, beingan account number when you call your bank is impersonal. But this? This is inhumane.
With each scream that follows mine, my nerves fray a little more. The others begin to struggle now. The others are fighting. Not wanting to be burned and branded. In the end, they scream as they become a number too.
I keep my eyes closed, not wanting to see the others as they join me in the back of the truck. I’m on the verge of breaking down in terror at what’s going on, and the more I’m aware of it, the quicker it’ll happen. There’s no way out right now, so all I can do is sit here and try to keep myself calm. I can’t lose it right now. They won’t think twice about killing me. I’m sure their weapons aren’t just props.
The tailgate closes, and I tuck my knees a little tighter to my chest as the engine starts and the truck moves further into the trees. Deeper, deeper, deeper into the forest we drive. Wherever we are, there’s no one else here. There’s no getting out of this. I’m going to die of starvation before I find another living soul if I manage to escape.
This is how I die.
23
VOSS
Statistics saythat recovering an abducted person alive after the first twenty-four hours of their disappearance isn’t good. The probability of them being alive becomes less and less as the hours tick by.
We’re closing in on ten hours by the time I get back home with Jessica from scouring the trees around where we found Brek’s phone. I have to admit, Jessica is surprisingly good in times of stress. Which is fortunate because I’m not. If she’d have become panicking or annoying, I’d have lost my fucking cool.
“What do we do?” Jessica asks as she follows me inside.
I parked at the office building on Van Doren Estate instead of going home. I need my computers.
“I’m going to mirror his phone on my computer and watch his last hour before he turned off the path home,” I say.
“You can do that?”
“Yes.”
She remains on my heels all the way into my office. I flick on the lights and turn the computer on before stopping in the back room to grab a tablet. When I get back, I turn one of my computer screens vertically.
I shove the stool away and grab the bar braces to drag them toward my desk. Pressing the bars into place and locking the structure to the desk, I grab the rope swing and hook it up before taking a seat on it. It’s reminiscent of a rope swing with a disk at the end, like you’d find outside hanging from a tree branch. This is safer. There’s no chance my rig will break in a storm.
“What is that?” Jessica asks.
I glance at her, finding that she’s looking at all the seating options lined against the wall. Turning back to the computer and plugging Brek’s phone in, I say, “I have ADHD. These are sensory chairs. There are sensory fidget toys all over, too. Take your pick, but be careful of the seating you choose, or you’ll end up on your ass.”
“I didn’t realize you have ADHD,” she says.
