Page 37 of Take You

“Well excuse me if I don’t trust someone who is completely and utterly unqualified to make a judgement call of that nature. Turn the van around, we need to take her to the ED.”

“What? Not going to happen. We’re almost at the warehouse now, anyway. We’ll lay her down, and she’ll maybe just be a little woozy when she comes to, that’s all.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind? It’s not your job to play God with other people’s lives. She could have a bleed or swelling on the brain, for all you know. If she dies, we’ll have blood on our hands.”

“Just like she does on hers,” I reminded him sardonically.

“That’s not the same thing at all, and you know it. Killing someone is not what I signed up for.” Even with the mask on I could hear how angry he was.

“I don’t see this as any different to what she did. Having a hand in someone’s death is having a hand in someone’s death. But in any case, it’s a moot point, given that she’s not dead or dying. Stop being a fucking drama queen.”

Chapter 21

Rose

I hadn’t seen it coming. Any of it. Walking home from campus I’d been so in my head that a bomb could have dropped from the sky, and I barely would have noticed. Academic probation. I couldn’t believe it. Everything I’d worked so hard for was in danger of slipping away from me.

I hadn’t been suspended yet, but with the three strikes rule, and all the shit that had been happening, I suspected that it was only a matter of time. I’d already been summoned by the Dean following the incident in the lecture hall, and then there was the sex tape to add to my rap sheet, so when I went in for my appointment, I was interrogated and then lectured about both.

The highlights were that they each represented a violation of the college’s code of ethics and conduct in three main ways. Firstly, the obvious breach of security protocols was a major concern—on both occasions someone had infiltrated the college’s systems, manipulated them as they saw fit, and then left, seemingly without a trace.

The second issue was the nature of the content itself—especially the sex tape. This was against the rules about dissemination of certain types of information throughout the college. In a nutshell, nothing lewd or extreme, including hate speech, or anything of a sensitive or shocking nature, was permitted. Some of the images in the lecture theatre slideshow definitely fitted that description—they were distressingly graphic and gory.

That led to the final transgression. The dissemination of any content that did, or could bring the college into disrepute was absolutely verboten. It was also, oddly, a blessing in disguise for me, as protecting their reputation was possibly the main reason that the college didn’t seem to want to involve the police in the matter, for the moment, at least.

I guessed they figured reporting the incidents would draw unwanted attention, and spread the story farther and wider than if they just buried them, and investigated privately.

Another small mercy was that the Dean did seem to believe that, apart from being the subject of both videos, I’d had no part in their appearance, and as such, hadn’t directly broken any college rules. On the other hand, I got the distinct impression that he didn’t believe my repeated assertion that I had no idea who was responsible.

That being said, without any specific evidence of wrongdoing on my part, I was seemingly on probation more as a precautionary measure and a cautionary tale to other students, thank anything else, which really made no sense to me, as I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Still, I’d been trying to look at the positives. The police weren’t involved, and they hadn’t withdrawn or paused the Fellowship...Yet.

With all that crowding my head, I hadn’t noticed the van draw up alongside me as I walked until it was way too late, and even as I registered what was going on, I was already being forcibly bundled into the back of it, complete with a hood over my head.

As soon as my brain caught up with what was happening to my body, survival mode kicked in and I fought with everything I had in me. Not that it did much good, given that my hands were tied behind my back, and whoever had snatched me was obviously a lot stronger than I was. Still, there was no way I was just going to lie there and accept my fate, whatever that might be.

When my captor spoke, nervous hysteria almost got the better of me, and it was all I could do not to laugh. It wasn’t that the situation was funny. It was far from it, but something about the cliché of the robot voice, combined with the stone-cold terror flooding my body, made me want to laugh. It made no sense, but then nothing in my life did at that point in time. I’d actually stopped expecting it to.

The last thing I remembered was being flung around like a piece of popcorn in a pan, before everything went black. When I came to, my head was throbbing, and when I struggled to sit up, it felt like it weighed one hundred pounds. I was lying on a mattress in what seemed to be some kind of storage space or warehouse. What the fuck?

“Hello?” I sounded unrecognizably weak and feeble.

“Sleeping Beauty awakes.” The robot voice really wasn’t a laughing matter. In fact, it was creepy, and weird, and couldn’t mean anything other than danger. Grabbing me from the street obviously spelled trouble, but somehow the disjointed speech made the situation even more ominous.

“Hello, and welcome to the show.” With those words, the space that had previously been gloomily and eerily dark was bathed in what seemed like the light of a thousand semitrailers, or the floodlights at a football stadium, but all crammed into a much smaller space. I squinted out into the excessive brightness, but couldn’t see a thing. Now my head felt like someone had carved my skull open with an angle grinder, and removed my brain while I was still awake.

“Hello? Who’s there...? Where are you...? Who are you...? What do you want?” My voice sounded as rough and croaky as my throat felt.

“Leave the questions to us. This is our show, and you’re not in a position to do anything other than whatever the fuck we tell you to do. On your feet. Now.”

If I thought sitting up was bad, standing up felt like I was one hundred and fifty years old, and someone had poured acid onto my aforementioned pre-extracted brain.

Everything hurt. I stumbled a little, worried I was blacking out again, and was surprised to feel arms reach out and steady me from behind. I hadn’t realized that anyone was so close. I didn’t know if I was disoriented, or if it was the acoustics of the lofty space, but I’d been unable to pinpoint where the voice speaking to me had been coming from, though I’d been fairly certain it was from somewhere in front of me.

It occurred to me that I could still be right about that, as the voice and arms could belong to two or more different people. I knew from the van that there were at least two of them—the one who’d grabbed me, then proceeded to bounce around the back of the vehicle with me, and the driver.

I hadn’t been able to see into the cab, so for all I knew there could have been a passenger, also. Likewise in the back, though I wasn’t aware of anyone apart from the person who was manhandling me, that didn’t necessarily mean that there weren’t others silently watching on.

The same was true of the warehouse. I’d clearly been out cold when they’d brought me in, so I had no idea how that was handled or by whom, or when the hood had been removed. Now, peering into the blinding light, I couldn’t see much of anything or anyone, but that didn’t mean there was nobody or nothing there. Plus the voice had said “we,” which suggested a minimum of two, unless they were referring to the voices in their head.

---