Page 63 of Unraveling Connections

“Do you know if you are the only one that was in the box?” I ask him gently.

“There are more,” he mutters, his voice still hoarse.

I look around for a bottle of water, and Cash, seeming to know what I'm looking for, hands me one; I smile in thanks and then offer the bottle to the boy; he takes it gratefully and then downs the entire bottle.

“I’ll get you more, you should probably take it a little bit slowly though since you’ve been unused to too much food or water for a while it might upset your stomach.” I try to explain gently but I really don’t want him to throw up everything that he has just managed to drink.

He nods, “Yeah, I know. That is what usually happens.”

I try really hard not to react to that as, once again, anger burns through me, “Do you want to tell me about it? Also, what did you mean that there are more?”

He glances at me, as if weighing whether he can really trust me, he answers my second question first, “There are more people in the crates, he likes putting us in here as punishment.”

“What? This is how he punishes you? How long have you been in here?”

The boy shrugs, “A couple of days, maybe more, I'm not sure. I wouldn’t fight one of the other kids, and so he beat me and put me in here. To be honest I like it more than being around him, at least I get left alone for a while.”

“Shit,” I hear someone near me curse.

“Do you know who put you in these boxes?” I ask.

“I think he is most well known as Hunt. He killed my mom and my big sister and has been training me, although I don’t know what for,” he replies.

“Yeah, we know Hunt. We are actually trying to stop him now; he killed my mom, too,” I tell him.

He glances up at me, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry about your mom and sister.” I reply, and he nods, his eyes haunted and sad as he looks away, “So, are the people in the crates people who work with Hunt?”

He nods, “Most of them are, some of them are people that asked him for a favor or wanted him to do something for them, and when he fucked them over, and they complained about it, he put them in the box.”

Hearing a ten-year-old swear is jarring, but I am not about to call him on it, not when he has been through so much, and definitely not while he is in pain and traumatized; that would be a dick move. Besides, he used it correctly, and I think he is definitely allowed to curse in this situation.

I glance up, looking at all of the crates that surround us in just this aisle of the warehouse alone, “Do they all have people in?”

He shakes his head, “I don’t think so. I know he mentioned that he forgot where he put a couple of people, and when someone asked him if he wanted them to search the warehouse for them, Hunt laughed and said no.”

I shudder, “That is so fucking disturbing.”

He nods, “Yeah, it is.”

Peter crouches down in front of us and smiles his big welcoming smile, “Hey, I’m Pete and I’m Ever’s best friend, well one of them, but out of the best friends I am the best.”

The kid chuckles slightly, “That weirdly made sense, I’m Joe.”

“Cool name I like it, and of course it made sense,” Pete replies, still smiling, “I’m not going to talk to you like a child because quite frankly you’ve seen and experienced more than most grown ups have so I think you need to be spoken to honestly.”

Joe sits up a little straighter, clearly proud that he has been recognized as being spoken to like an adult, “I can handle it.”

Pete nods, “I thought so, but just so you know, I can’t handle some adult things, so if it gets too much, you just tell me, okay?”

Joe nods, “Got it.”

“So, Hunt is known to put these tiny microchips in people, and they track a person and can kill them if he wants them to,” Peter explains a condensed version of what they do but put’s it bluntly, it is important that Joe understands. Peter holds up the scanner, “I have this, it can detect if a person has them or not and where it is. All of the men and women that were in the warehouse that we found had them.”

Joe nods, but tilts his head slightly as he asks, “What happens if you find a microchip?”

Peter smiles, “That is a brilliant question. Well, it is not safe to leave it in there since Hunt can use the chips to kill the person that they are in, listen to them, and know their location, so we take them out. My friend Luc is a medic and can probably explain that to you better.”

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