There it stood before me, holding me back like I was water and it was the biggest goddamn dam in the world.
Steel.
Solid steel.
Against what?
A fragile, starving, weak, relatively short, brown-haired, brown-eyed, college sophomore girl named Zara, and a six-foot-two, curly brown-haired, blue-eyed, stronger, but also weak and starving young man named Baldric of about the same age as the aforementioned young lady.
I had no idea how either he or I got here.
Neither did he.
I had some theories of what this could potentially be from my first few days working at the FBI as a forensic analyst intern. Psychopaths, human trafficking, ritualistic or just normal homicides… it was all sick and twisted and absolutely terrifying, but they were possibilities. One of the more interesting cases was that of some sort of organization intent on taking control of anyone and everything.
“I swear to god if we don't find a way out of here soon I'm—”
“What the hell are you gonna do? Huh, B? There's nothing but solid steel walls in here. There's nothing you can do, dumbass,” I retorted, the starvation and lack of sleep evident in the tone of my voice.
“I'll figure something out. But we can't stay in here forever, Zara. There has to be something.” His eyes were frantically lucid, and his hair was messier than the situation at hand. Back and forth he paced while I sat there, pensively looking at every little detail in the room to see if there was any way out.
There was a single light bulb in the center of the ceiling that gave off that white light that would make you think of a hospital morgue. There was absolutely nothing in the room but solid steel walls. For what had to be almost a week now I kept hoping this was a dream or a movie or anything but real. But I guess one can only hope.
“Hey, what’s that?” Baldric suddenly spoke up as he paused his pacing and pointed to one of the corners where the ceiling and two walls met. There was a small glass circle, through which there was nothing but more concentric black-looking circles.
“It’s a camera.”
“Now that’s a little weird.”
“And you didn’t think it was weird that we were locked in here without any recollection of how we got here?”
“No, I thought that was scary.”
“It’s both, B.”
“Why us though?”
“No idea.”
“Sex experiment?”
“You’re such a guy,” I sighed.
“It’s a possibility,” he shrugged.
“I highly doubt it.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to try, would it?”
Baldric's eyes were the happiest I’d seen them in days, and although he was still clearly weary and famished, he moved closer to me smiling sweetly.
--------------------------
When Zara and I first started dating, everyone at work thought we’d just be the summer flame that would quickly burn out when we realized how difficult it was to actually manage school, sports, and our relationship.
Damn, were they wrong or what?
The first time I saw her we barely talked. We didn’t talk much until a couple weeks later, actually, when we and a couple of fellow lifeguards decided to have a night out. She and I talked almost nonstop and from that night on, she was on my mind more than anything or anyone else ever had been. We texted every night after that, without fail, and more and more we just fell for each other. It’s a cheesy high school and workplace romance, I know, but it’s actually lasted.
We’d ended up going to the same college. Zara and I even lived together in our own apartment. We had a history. If only it were easier to be the power over science rather than the other way around…
--------------------------
“I’ve been dying to do that for a while, you know?” he teased, still hovering over me.
“I know. But let’s not forget what happened last time we did too much,” I reminded him.
“I know, I know. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying I’m happy we got to do that,” he said, a peck on the nose ensuing those warmly spoken words.
“I’m happy we did too, babe.” Uncontrollably, I blushed.
“You think it’s gonna work?” he asked me.
Just then there was a sound that shocked both of us. Other than each other, it was the first sound we’d heard in days.
“No,” a robotic voice rung through the room.
His immediate reaction: cover his nipples.
Mine: just stay frozen in place as hysterical laughter began to bubble up inside me.
“So this isn’t some weird sex experiment like in all those stories and books I’ve read?” B asked. No reply came. I couldn’t hold in my hysteria anymore, so I started nervously laughing and running my hands through my already disheveled hair.
“So you're not gonna give us any hints as to what the fuck you guys want?” I started ranting. “You're just gonna leave us here to die with no humanly possible way to get the hell out of this fucking box?”
“Zara—”
“Don't—”
“Zara, listen—”
“B, please—”
“Zara, dammit listen!” My hysteric state vanished and I heard a faint buzz radiating from the walls. I slipped my oversized shirt over my head and got to my feet, taking hesitant steps toward the wall where the doors were, where the buzzing was coming from.
“Cover the light,” I demanded, mindlessly thinking of how stupid I was to not think of this earlier.
“Why—”
“Just do it dammit.” He flinched, knowing it was a rarity for me to raise my voice, let alone go all-out insane in front of anyone, himself included. His six-foot-two stature made it easy for him to reach the light bulb in the ceiling and twist it until it came out of its socket, leaving us in almost complete darkness.
On the walls were glowing neon arrows and symbols and words, all of which seemed vaguely familiar at the very least. The words we recognized as jargon from either of our future professions: mine being forensics, and his being law. I was training to become a forensic analyst for the FBI, and in the days before we were taken we were learning about alternate light sources and fluorescent powders– how stupid I felt to have forgotten about that so soon– but lack of food, sleep, and water made a solid excuse for the lack of concentration on figuring out how the hell to get out of here.
“What’s this all supposed to mean? This is law terminology… and that looks like your kinda thing…” he thought aloud to himself, somehow making his way to me in the dark without an issue.
“Maybe the words are meant to distract us. It’s a puzzle, B. We can figure this out,” I said in a doubtful, but still semi-hopeful tone. “The arrows and symbols– that’s our probative evidence.”
“Well then let’s see if there’s a starting point to all these arrows. Pick a spot, trace it back, see if it starts at any one particular symbol,” Baldric suggested.
“No, I think maybe the arrows could be a distraction too…” I contemplated his idea, and thought it a logical solution. “You know what, you do that, and I’ll do my thing. I think maybe all but one symbol is here more than once, I just have to make sure.”
We continued to try and decipher whatever code would get us out of here for what had to be hours until the sleep deprivation and now dark environment caused our eyelids to become lead, drooping more and more with tired weight until sleep came upon us like a giant buzzing cloud.
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I woke up in a room with two steel doors,— one behind me and another in front,— and the faint smell of mold. But there was another smell lurking around the slightly larger concrete space. The only light allowing me to see came from a single light bulb, much like the last room, except that this light was more natural and less sterile. Across the room Zara was laying down, still deep in her sleep. Then I saw what every guy dreams of: food.
There was a table of fresh bread and fruit with an expensive bottle of wine and a cooler with water bottles. Watermelon, green and purple grapes, raspberries, bananas, kiwi… it was all there, ready and ripe for eating. I tried to walk over, but halfway through the room walked into a clear wall of some sort.
She had all the food while I was left with nothing.
Was this some sort of sick joke?
She had the food I’d been dying for all this time.
Was it her sick joke?
Zara would give me some if she could, wouldn’t she? She would find a way so I didn’t starve.
I pounded on the invisible flat surface, trying to wake her up. She stirred for a couple minutes before she finally saw the food, then me as I continued to beat at the invincible barrier between us. Zara stood up and took slow steps toward me. My hands stopped banging and instead my palms were stuck to this wall like glue.
“What happened? Why are we here?” Her voice barely traveled through the glass. Muffled silence and the buzz of the light bulbs ensued.
“Is there any way you could get some food to me? Please, babe?”
“I don’t know… I don’t think so,” she answered, glancing the glass up and down, obviously pretending to look so she could take the food for herself.
How could she be so selfish?
--------------------------
There I was, this time alone, but somehow waking up to banging from one of the concrete walls.
Where is B? Where is the banging coming from? What happened to the steel room? Now how do I get out?
I turned around and saw a thick iron door in the now natural-looking lighting. To the left of the door, there was a small wood table with a matching wood chair.
Wait, the lighting looked natural?
I stared up at a bright blue sky. There was a skylight thin enough so that I could barely hear the birds chirping outside. There was a feasible way out.
I scrambled to my feet. Dragging the empty table and the chair from the corner, I positioned the table beneath the skylight and the chair next to it so that I could grab it when I climbed on top. Surprisingly, it was easier than I’d expected it to be. I only needed to strike the window three or four times with the chair in order for the glass to break. While I felt some of the shards sting and bite my skin, I carefully set the chair on the table so that I could climb on that and jump out of this prison back into the world where I belonged.
Where we belonged.
I needed to find Baldric. I needed to get him out of here too.
She ate it all. She barely even tried to find a way to get even just half a loaf of bread to me. Then, she even found a way to open the fucking door behind her. I had no such luck opening ny door. I kept hitting the glass between me and the open door, hot tears streaming down my face. I loved her. She clearly didn’t feel the same after our three years together. Now, I was left here to die, all because of her.
My chest felt like it had a million bricks on top of it, my stomach wanted to regurgitate whatever contents it had, and I just wanted to get it all over with.
I collapsed on the floor, head tucked into my knees, in a heap of self-pity and denial when finally there was something that gave me hope. There was the sound of a creaking door. I didn’t want to see her, so I didn’t look up. She left me. She wouldn’t come back to me. She wouldn't find a way to get me what I so desperately needed.
“Baldric,” a sweet, unfamiliar voice called from the door. “It’s alright, I’m not Zara. My name is Dilara.”
“What do you want?” I whispered, still not looking up at her.
“To show you why you’re here.”
“I’m nobody anymore, you might as well just kill me and get it over with.”
“But Zara still is someone. She’s training to be an FBI analyst, but did she tell you she’s already working on her first case? She’s the best person the bureau has for the job.”
“And what do you want with her?” I asked, slowly picking my head up to see the woman speaking.
“We don’t want her to expose our organization. See, what we do is important for the future of mankind. Anyone that gets in our way, however, we like to eliminate. And Zara I'm afraid is in our way.”
“What is it that you do that's so important, might I ask?” starting to become irritated by the vague answers she was giving me.
“I'll show you,” she said softly. I stared at her skeptically at first. I didn’t know whether or not I should trust this lady, but it was my only shot at getting out of this hell and surviving. I let her help me up, then I followed her out the door into a room with the most complex crime lab shit I’d ever seen. Bewildered, I gaped at everything around me.
To my right were several small security camera screens, two showing images of another couple in the steel room, and one showing my side of the concrete room. There were more images of other rooms I didn’t recognize too, also with other people in them, but I held back the appalled reaction I was dying to give. I wanted to get out of here. I didn’t want to stay. And even if she did betray me, I couldn’t “eliminate” Zara for these monsters.
“Food?” Dilara offered, holding a plate of steak, eggs, broccoli, and mashed potatoes out to me. Without hesitation I snatched it from her and started wolfing it down with my hands. I immediately felt myself calming down, forgetting all I just saw on those screens, and all about how hurt I was by Zara. I felt like I was on a cloud, drifting through the sky. I felt different– liberated, even.
“How are you feeling, Baldric? Good?” she asked.
“Yea… yea, I feel great,” my words rolled off my tongue, rather slurred. I wanted to fight this strange feeling, although I didn’t know why- something in the food, maybe. I hadn’t felt this relaxed in what felt like forever. Nor had I felt so attracted to anyone than I did when I looked up at Dilara. Her golden curls and evenly tanned, clear skin were just absolutely stunning as she took my plate, put it to the side, and pushed me to sit in a comfortable cushioned seat. I didn’t dare fight her. I was confused more than anything, but I was strangely enjoying it as she sat on my lap, facing me, slowly grinding me. She didn’t stop. I didn’t want her to. But I also did. I wanted Zara. But Zara didn’t want me. She left me. Dilara was here. She wanted me. Therefore rebound sex would be great, right? Yes. Wait, no. I would feel terrible. But I didn’t feel terrible now. I felt, both physically and emotionally, in a euphoric high that I couldn’t even begin to explain.
--------------------------
I have to get back to Baldric.
I ended up outside of a seemingly abandoned factory. The strangest part was that I wasn’t on a roof, despite having just escaped from a skylight; I climbed out onto the ground in front of what once had to be the main entrance. I ran to the big double doors and tried fruitlessly to open them for a couple minutes.
Eventually, I gave that up and broke open a window, then carefully climbing through it. More glass stabbed my feet as I stepped through. I never thought before that my brutal FBI field training would become so useful because all I wanted to do was analyze what was sent to me from the crime scenes. I had never imagined this.
My stomach grumbled. The wind blew in through the window behind me. I looked around at the cavernous, empty, concrete space. There was the smell of food now wandering in the air, and whether it was me imagining things because I was starving or actual food, it only made me more hungry.
No. No food until you find him. You’ve gotta free B first. Just focus Zara, focus.
I saw no doors but the front door I had just neglected to go through because of how difficult it was to open. There had to be a secret passage somewhere, and there had to be something to indicate where it was, considering how well hidden it was. I walked the parameter of the room several times before I finally recognized a couple of reddish-brown spots on the floor as blood. A shape was formed from the blood which seemed vaguely familiar to something I’d seen at work. A double ring circle with a star from a compass rose on a map, along with a four-way arrow pointing in all diagonal directions.
Finally, the puzzle was almost entirely solved. I was dealing with some mad geniuses hell-bent on controlling the minds of those “inferior” to them, as they would put it. I'd been working on this case for weeks at the bureau for my internship there. What I knew was that they had three main leaders, one that ran their labs, one that maintained their bases, and another that protected them by eliminating any threat they might have.
Was I really that much of a threat?
I couldn't be, I wasn't even close to finding anything significant yet.
Unless I was and I didn't realize it…
But what would they want with Baldric?
I hurried to find my way in. I couldn't let them use him against me. God only knows what they'd do to him in order to get to me.
There was an observation room in front of us. I stood beside Dilara with a plate of food watching two of the test subjects. They were a couple, she explained to me, but they warred more and more with each other every day. She let me ask the man in there if he’d ever kill her in one of their fights. He replied with a long cheesy answer that basically told me he wouldn’t lay a hand on her. Dilara then pressed a button labeled “kill,” and suddenly the man’s eyes were bloodthirsty. His hands and actions soon followed. The woman’s blood, only seconds later, was pooling on the floor beneath her now inert body.
“How did you— You just—”
“I control him. This is what our experiment does, Baldric,” Dilara explained as I finished another plate of food. I couldn't explain how I found this fascinating instead of deeply sick and twisted like I normally would, but something about it was just… amazing. She smiled at me brightly, making me completely forget the me I was before her.
“This is normally where our threats are taken care of, honestly, but you've proven to be… tasteful,” she continued, still smiling. “You could spend as much time here, indulging in those tastes, as you wanted if you would just take care of Zara for me.”
“Who?” I asked. The only woman I knew was Dilara. She was all that mattered. Her, the great food she gave me, and her sex. She chuckled. I thought it was adorable.
“She stabbed you in the back, silly. She left you to starve and die while I saved you. If she ever comes back it's for the FBI, not for you.”
“She did what to me?” I yelled, enraged.
How could I not have remembered this? Surly a man would recall the one person that tries to kill him, right?
“And that's why I want you to take the honor of killing her. I've already taken all the guards from their positions and given them specific orders not to kill her, just so you can. Will you?”
“Gladly,” I replied as she handed me another overflowing plate of food.
--------------------------
There had to be something going on. It couldn't be this easy to get to the control room of this place. There was literally a map hanging on the wall when I finally managed to get through the first door. Not exactly the most secure place if you ask me.
My stomach grumbled and my stomach felt like it had a million hot rocks on top of it. I wanted food so badly.
No. Baldric comes first.
I marched down the dark, sketchy hall with concrete walls, pipes obscuring the view of the actual ceiling, and metal floors, occasionally looking down at the map in my hand that I’d grabbed on the way in. Turn after turn I began to lose hope that I would find him.
Then I heard voices.
I heard yelling.
It was Baldric.
I sprinted toward the sound and finally found a door. Steel. Just like the first one. I turned the handle and tried repeatedly to open it for a good five minutes, but it wouldn’t budge. By then, however, there weren’t any voices. There was silence.
“Baldric?” I dared to call through the door. No reply came. I took a couple steps back, ready to try slamming it open. “B?”
It all happened so fast. The next thing I knew I had thrown myself into the door and miraculously managed to knock it down. I fell to the floor, and when I opened my eyes I saw him standing over me with a gun. I tried to get up, but he had a foot on my chest that could have cracked my ribs if he went just a little harder.
“You left me for dead,” he stated flatly.
“I came back though–”
“You came back for the FBI. You didn’t come for me!”
“What are you talking about? Babe,–”
“Don’t call me that! You have no right!”
“What has gotten into you?” I whimpered. His foot only kept feeling heavier and heavier on my chest. “I left you because it would be a hell of a lot easier to get you out of here that way. I still haven’t eaten. I haven’t thought about anything but the terrible things they could be putting you through.” Tears welled up in his eyes. The gun shook in his pale white knuckles.
“LIAR! You had all the food on your side of the second room. You ate it all. You didn’t even try to find a way to get any of it to me. YOU JUST LEFT. Dilara, though, she stayed. She fed me when you left.”
“Dilara is messing with your head, Baldric. Whoever she is, she’s clearly part of this case from work that probably wants to kill every asset the FBI has on the case.”
“NO. She was here for me. You weren’t.”
“What happened to three years? What happened to college? Law school? Does any of that matter to you? Baldric–”
Those were my last words. Boom. He shot me. He shot me right between the eyes.
She fell back, limp and lifeless, a hole in her head. Crimson pooled onto the floor, contrasting the white marble beneath her.
“More food, Baldric?” Dilara offered. I turned around, prepared to snatch from her hands another heaping platter of food.
“You had to see this coming,” Dilara snarled, holding a gun in my direction. “Well, if you were thinking for yourself, anyway.”
“What? Why? What just- You can’t just-”
“Oh, but I can.” Her laugh was evil to the point of being cheesy. Her gun was steadily pointed at my face still, a handgun much like the one in my hand.
Wait, GUN? There was a gun in MY hand?
Stupidly, I dropped the cold metal thing as soon as I’d realized I had it.
“You were- You just…” I thought out loud, on the verge of a panic attack. I then froze, coming to the realization as to how I was brainwashed.
It was in the food.
“She said she hadn’t eaten. She didn’t, did she? You just made me see what you wanted me to see.”
“As if that wasn’t obvious. You were an easy one to get to eat. Most people still wouldn’t have trusted what I gave them. I had to get all my guards by force. Needle to the neck.”
“You messed up little bitch,” I seethed. I was poised to grab the gun I’d just dropped, but she shot me. A stinging pain surged through my body from the top of my head. I wasn’t dead. I wasn’t angry. I was no longer thinking of what had just happened. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on the same couch she’d first gained control of my mind. I was trapped. I was incapable of fighting it.
She sat on me like she did before, except this time there was no cloud; there was just a nightmare of a life ahead of me.
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