Page 40 of Redemption
But wasn’t I? ... Wasn’t I in bed? No. I was with Aly... Waiting for Aly. She was in the bathroom.
I try to open my eyes, but it’s like they’re glued shut. My arms and legs seem to be in working order, though.
Well...somewhat.
My fingers and toes move when prompted, but they feel numb... constricted. What the fuck is going on?
Slowly, my strength begins to return, but along with the subtle twitches and muscle spasms come vague, unfamiliar voices.
“Hey, guys, he’s starting to wake up.” I feel pressure on my leg as someone close by moves, the sound of a body above me shuffling. “Think we should set him up with another dose before we get there?”
Another dose? Of what?!
“Tough fucking bastard, isn’t he?” one of them says, but it’s the low, familiar chuckle that has me steeling my senses.
My thoughts slam back into my head like a battering ram. The steps outside the Governor’s Palace. The drone. The man standing over me with a gun. I thought I was shot. Dead, even. But... there was no blood. Not even really any pain now, apart from the splitting headache currently attacking my skull.
“The pack is down by your feet. Tranquilizer kit’s inside. Go ahead and set him up with another. Last thing we need is to have him wake up and stir up some shit during transport.”
Forcing my eyes to remain closed, I keep my breathing steady and listen, focusing on getting as much intel as I can. If I need to fight back, I need to know what I’m up against, and I can’t do that and plan accordingly if I give away that I’m almost fully awake.
According to their conversation, there are at least two of them in the vehicle. One back here with me and another in the front. While the guy closest to me is focused elsewhere, I start to wiggle my fingers and toes back to the land of the living. Feeling starts to creep up my arms and legs as pins and needles attack my nerves. I grind my jaw at the sensation, holding in the pain until I need to let it out. My recuperation is agonizingly slow, but, thankfully, the inability of my captors to decide on a rational decision as to whether or not the stirring asshole at their feet should get another dose of drugs gives me just enough time to override the sedative in my veins.
“You sure we should do that? We already shot him with three, and you know the boss ain’t gonna like it if we kill a potential candidate,” a new voice chimes in from the front. “Honestly, I’m surprised he’s not beyond twitching and drooling in his own puddle of piss at this point. Fucking impressive, if you ask me.”
Shit... Ok.... Three assholes.
“Hits each person differently. Might be why he woke up so soon. Big-ass motherfucker like him could probably take two more doses, to be honest. He’ll be fine. Go ahead and stick him.”
I take a chance and open the eye that’s closest to the floor, squinting just enough to see that both of my hands are tied together by zip ties and tucked in front of me under a bench seat commonly found in SUVs or vans.
Well, it’s better than being out to sea.
And at least we’re still on the way to wherever we’re going. I’m not sure if Hawk, Cole, or Aly are in here with me, but there’s only one way to find out. Luckily, my hands are still concealed underneath the seat and hidden by the rest of my body, which gives me the perfect opportunity to test outmy dexterity. I pull taut, making a fist a few times to get my blood pumping better. The zip ties don’t budge, but, second after second, I feel stronger, more like myself.
I try to look around as much as I can through the gaps, but I don’t see or hear any sign of the others. Which means they must either already be at the destination, these guys left them behind—unlikely, unless they killed them... Better fucking not have—or they’re in other vehicles still on the road with us. The guy in the backseat with me slumps forward, his elbows dropping to his knees as he searches for the sedative pack, leaving his guard wide fucking open and in the perfect position for me.
Regardless of my steady state of grogginess, I know I can’t just sit here like a wart on a toad’s ass—especially when he just made it so fucking easy—so I might as well take care of one of the three possibilities right now. If the others are in some sort of caravan with this vehicle, I’m not about to let these assholes take us any further than riiiiight...here.
I lift my boot-clad foot and kick Mr. Backseat square in his jaw, knocking the side of his head into the window with a heavy thud. His eyes roll back on impact, and I smile victoriously as he slumps in his seat.
“What the fuck?!”
The sudden movement jars the two idiots up front, causing the guy in the passenger seat to spin around to try to subdue me through the gap in the seats, but he’s going to have to do better than that. They might have bound my hands together, but these halfwits neglected to tie them behind my back. The man in the passenger seat gets a rude reminder of that little tidbit of information as my hands go right to his face, my thumbsdiving directly into his eye sockets and bursting the fleshy orbs almost instantly.
His wails fill the SUV as he convulses in pain. The sound is music to my ears as I turn to the last guy. By some stroke of luck, I don’t need to do anything as the newly blinded guy flails his legs in the tight space, inadvertently connecting his boots with the driver’s face over and over again, and knocking him out for me. The driver slumps unconsciously over the wheel, causing the vehicle to turn suddenly. Completely oblivious to the change in trajectory, the passenger continues to scream at the top of his lungs, cradling his now empty eye sockets as he turns his thrashing legs to his other side. I take the opening and reach for the wheel, attempting to course correct. But before I’m able to even touch the steering column, the road vanishes, replaced with the rocky, uneven terrain of the shoulder, and then the hard reality of a giant tree as we crash right into it, causing the world around me to go dark once again.
∞∞∞
Oh... fucking hell...
With a heaving turn, I roll my body onto my chest, thoroughly fucked up and face down on the ground...again. The wet grass dampens my clothes, but I hardly register the cooling sensation. The intense pain spanning the entirety of my back and head, however? Unmistakable and unyielding.
I tilt my head to the side, groaning and wincing through the agony of the slight movement. Billowing smoke rises from the wreckage of my abduction vehicle, crumpled in a heap atleast a couple dozen feet away from where I’m sprawled out like a starfish, the windshield completely shattered by my abrupt airborne exit.
Fuck me... That... is definitely... gonna hurt in the morning.
It also doesn’t help when I try to make my left arm move and it doesn’t cooperate. At all. In fact, considering the radiating pain and coinciding numbness in my fingers, I’m almost positive my shoulder’s dislocated. Fucking perfect.
