Page 8 of Heresy
I turn terror into data. Helplessness into intelligence. It's the only control I have left. This violation is now reconnaissance. This capture is now an education.
The man who holds my life in his hands turns his back. The gesture is more devastating than any threat. A casual dismissal. I am a problem solved, a variable no longer worth monitoring.
His voice rumbles over his shoulder, echoing off the steel walls.
"Bring her."
The words detonatethrough my nervous system like shaped charges designed to destroy specific load-bearing structures in the architecture of my self-control. I'm half-dragged, half-pushed from the alley, feet stumbling on uneven cobblestones that remember when this neighborhood served legitimate commerce instead of providing cover for the kind of business that requires darkness and silence.
Each stone seems to catch at my shoes, as if the street itself is trying to slow this progression toward whatever awaits.
They march me toward his motorcycle, and I understand immediately that this isn't just transportation—it's psychological warfare made manifest in chrome and steel. The machine waits under sodium lights like something forged from nightmares and exhaust fumes, every surface designed to intimidate rather than comfort. Black paint absorbs light instead of reflecting it, creating void-black silhouette that seems to devour photons.
A monument to controlled violence. A throne for someone who rules through fear.
He's already astride the beast, waiting with the infinite patience of someone who has never doubted that his commands will be obeyed. The angry one shoves me forward with casual brutality, palm between my shoulder blades carrying enough force to remind me how easily he could snap my spine if the mood struck him.
"Get on."
My body freezes with the totality of system shutdown.
Every survival instinct I've cultivated screams against this command. He expects me to climb onto that thing with him? To press myself against the man who just decided whether I deserve to exist? To wrap my arms around someone who views my continued breathing as administrative decision subject to revision without notice?
The President reaches out and hauls me onto the seat behind him.
His grip demonstrates effortless strength, mechanical efficiency that suggests he's had unwilling passengers before. Many of them. My hip bumps against his solid muscle through worn denim, and I flinch away from the contact like touching live electrical wire. But the seat is narrow, the physics unforgiving—there's nowhere to retreat, no distance to maintainbetween my body and the human representation of everything I've been running from.
There's no helmet waiting for me. Of course not.
My safety is afterthought, my comfort irrelevant to whatever equation he's calculating. The message is unmistakable: my life exists as variable in someone else's formula, valuable only insofar as it serves purposes I'm not permitted to understand.
The engine doesn't just start—it explodes to life.
A deep, guttural roar that vibrates from the soles of my feet up through my spine, shaking the very air molecules until everything becomes a percussion section in a symphony conducted by machinery designed for maximum intimidation. The bike lurches forward with violence that throws me against his back, a solid wall of muscle and leather that represents everything I've been running from made flesh.
A scream dies in my throat before it can betray my position.
My hands fly to his waist without conscious command, fingers digging into worn leather of his cut—contact that revolts every nerve ending while representing the only thing preventing me from becoming street pizza. The alternative to touching him is the asphalt flying past at terrifying velocity, concrete that would strip flesh from bone with mechanical indifference.
The wind becomes physical assault.
Ripping breath from my lungs, whipping tears from my eyes until they stream down my temples in silver tracks that taste of salt and terror. The city dissolves into impressionist nightmare—neon and headlights bleeding together like watercolor painting left in rain, visual evidence of life I no longer belong to blurring past at speeds that make recognition impossible.
My hair whips across my face, each strand a tiny flogger delivering stinging reminders of how completely my control over even basic comfort has been revoked.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but I can't shut out the feeling of his body against mine—the solid wall of his back rising and falling with each breath, unyielding strength that speaks to years of violence made routine. I can smell whiskey clinging to his jacket like expensive cologne, sharp scent of gasoline, and something else underneath—something dark and uniquely him, like ozone after lightning strike or metal heated past its tolerance point.
Every lurch of the bike, every powerful turn, forces me closer to him.
Physics conspires with fear to create intimacy I never consented to, violation disguised as necessity. Each shift in momentum presses different parts of my body against his, unwanted contact that carries electric charge of terror and something else I refuse to acknowledge, something that whispers from cellular level about proximity to power and the dark magnetism of barely controlled destruction.
It's a violation disguised as transportation. Assault wrapped in mechanical necessity.
After an eternity measured in heartbeats and the steady erosion of whatever dignity I have left, the bike finally slows. The roar drops to a menacing rumble that seems to emanate from the machine's steel heart rather than its engine. We're turning down a dark street lined with warehouses, heading straight for the open mouth of a massive building that yawns before us like the throat of some industrial beast.
We drive inside.
And a heavy steel door begins to grind shut behind us, a mechanical sound that carries finality of coffin lid closing or prison gate locking. The rumble reverberates through the enclosed space, acoustic signature of my old world being sealed away forever.
