Overreach - 9. Chapter 9

1

“And what about the boy?” The short, sandy-haired man said. He looked at the other man hard. “I take it our problem with The Creators has been solved?”

They were in the lab, where the large telenode stood solid and looming. Drake thought it looked rather like a sarcophagus and nearly expected the heavy lid to fall off and a corpse to come crawling out.

Drake sighed. “The boy’s being tracked. And yes, I took care of the bastards weeks ago.”

“Don’t get all fucking sentimental on me, Drake,” Brian Davidson said. He rounded the table and walked over to a larger, more upright sarcophagus, and then started to type. “This is important work here. No room for screw-ups.” He paused and looked at the other man with an unnerving stare. His face was somewhat expressive, but it never seemed to reach his eyes. “Like taking the boy out early.”

Drake grunted in frustration. “I already went over this with you. It would’ve taken me four times as long to do what my son did in two days! He is a genius, Brian. We’ll need him.”

“Yeah, well your ‘genius’ is screwing up the - carefully arranged - plan. This needs to be air-tight, Drake.” He resumed typing into the telenode, continuing to speak. “Now, what about the boy?”

“I have XCG-889 tracking and apprehending him as we speak. We need to be careful, though. The earlier prototypes we know can be a bit iffy.”

“As long as he get him here in once piece, I don’t give a fuck,” Brian said, raising one limp hand in the air beside his face. “We can upgrade them once we have the boy; that’s the whole damn point.”

2

Elliot's mind seemed to freeze up, as if it had been doused in liquid nitrogen and then tapped none-too-lightly with the back end of a hammer. His thoughts, normally stored gleamingly on a shelf that only he could admire, sagged with the weight of Lucas' pained cry and finally busted through the sagging middle altogether, its contents falling in a disorganized lump like a person's stomach after the apex of a roller coaster.

Lucas whined, his eyes rolling back and falling limp against the man. His hands grappled at the handle of the knife, his hands quickly becoming slick with blood.

Shaking off the utter horror and surprise that had bound Elliot for about a half-second, he bound for the man. Quickly, he felt a tightening on his throat and then a curling blackness around his already tunneling vision as the man swiftly crunched his windpipe.

“This is an insurance policy,” the man stated. Elliot was now slightly over Lucas’s body but face-to-face with the man. He could hear, as if from far away, the shifts and moans from his boyfriend but was more ensconced with the scar that crossed the man’s face like forks in a dried up river. “You come with me, Lucas lives. You fight and I’ll leave Lucas here to bleed out.”

For a moment the wind seemed to do the talking for them.

“You have an option, here.” The man said again, looking down at Lucas. He roughly pushed Elliot away, who stumbled back without taking his eyes off the man. “Put on the handcuffs I have voluntarily, and I’ll carry Lucas myself. If you struggle, I’ll do more than puncture his liver.”

A sense of dread and the acrid sting of regret forced their way into Elliot’s head. They should have been smarter, dammit. He looked down quickly to his boyfriend who had gone silent, aside from labored breathing.

“Fine. Fine. Fuck. I’ll go with you.”

The man showed off his too white and too straight teeth in what Elliot assumed was a smile and quickly turned to kneel down next to the hurt blond. “Fantastic. Give me your shirt.”

Elliot quickly took off his shirt and handed it to the man, who threw down the black handcuffs. “Put these on. I’m using your shirt to put pressure on the wound. Stay close to me; I can’t jostle around too much with him in my arms.”

Elliot reluctantly did what he was told, now more concerned for his boyfriend’s well-being than his own current predicament. The man hoisted Lucas up and started walking north, with Elliot in tow.

They got to the black vehicle and the man beckoned for Elliot to open the side door. Once done, he lifted the unconscious boy inside, sat him limply in a cushioned seat, and hooked him up to an IV. “Get in beside him,” the man said, gruff. Elliot did as he was told, still bound, and hardly noticed the man turn the vehicle on and start towards the road.

3

“XCG-889 has retrieved both items,” Drake told Brian, tapping his pen on the screen of his portable telenode. He ground his teeth. “Apparently my son was stabbed. Would you like to tell me why?”

Brain dismissed him, turning away from the large banks of hard drives on the back wall and shutting an access panel to them with a click. Drake followed him like a reporter following the winning jockey as he breezed across the room to another telenode port. “We needed ammunition, Drake.” He turned and spread his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture.

Drake’s expression transformed from one of annoyance to outright surprise. “That’s my son, Brian! We need him alive to fucking help us, not dead! Are you insane?”

“Relax,” Brian growled, looking sharply at the other man. “He’ll be fine. They’ll bring him to medical, he’ll get stitched up and Bob’s your uncle.”

“Bob’s my --” Drake started, and shook his head. “You are one son of a bitch. We only have a short amount of time, Brian. Weeks. We need to get a head start on this. Soon.” He stopped and then snorted. “God help us when we’re the ones who want to go inside this damned thing.”

“I know, Drake,” Brian said, stressing the name. “Need I remind you that you were the one who didn’t even capture the damn kid in the first place? And, besides, it won’t get that far. You know Angela’s been softening up the directors. Hell, I could hardly believe that she convinced them to outright fire Chris. He was smart as a whip, that one.”

4

The vehicle pulled up to a squat, rectangular structure that reminded Elliot somewhat of a cigarette box. It was fading grey, the windows narrow, and Elliot’s feeling of dread seemed to get worse by the second. Evidently, this man had called ahead because there were people ready to run up to the van with a gurney and other life-saving equipment. As the man exited the driver-side door and walked around the van, the others - a man and two women - yanked open the side door and swiftly pulled Lucas out before Elliot said so much as a ‘Hey, wha-!’

“Shut it!” The man said, grabbing Elliot by the front of his shirt. The ground came closer to Elliot after that, and he heard the dull thud of the van door sliding closed. Before he regained his senses fully, he was hoisted up and grabbed tightly by the man.

They entered the building together, with Elliot practically at gunpoint. He had resigned himself to the situation now, not really think of how to get out of it or who to hurt next. He wanted to make sure he didn’t do anything too stupid that he might not see Lucas again. Then again, he may not.

The building was darker than it was outside, and Elliot’s eyes quickly adjusted. There was a secretary, sat neatly in the middle of the room behind a too-big rectangular desk. The marble floors gave the otherwise bland building somewhat of a stately air, but it almost seemed as if it were an afterthought. The man guided Elliot past the desk and down another cramped hallway that was resplendent with dull metal doors and an odor like drying paint. At the end, he paused in front of one and knocked, the sound reverberating for miles. There was a faint buzzing sound, a heavy clunk of the lock sliding back, and then Elliot was thrust in a minimalist room that seemed almost too mundane for the situation he was in.

In the middle of the room was a metal table the likes of which you’d find in an interrogation room, with a woman sitting behind it. There was one potted plant, and, most surprisingly, a slowly rotating white fan attached to the ceiling. The architect’s last name of this particular building must have been Gray, because that was the color of everything else. Before Elliot could turn around, the door closed and the man was gone.

Elliot stood by the door, unmoving, casting his eyes warily towards the woman. Her face was all severe lines and a pulling, disapproving frown. Her hair, a fading blonde, was pulled up high above her head which reminded Elliot somewhat of a beehive. He was beginning to wonder if she was some sort of statue or something when she extended a hand to motion him to sit down.

“Please, Elliot, have a seat,” she said, her voice high and thin. As he got closer to sit down, he noticed that she was much older than he thought at first. Her bony hands looked almost too large on the stick-wrists that held them.

Once he had sat down, wary and silent, she folded her hands in front of her looking much like a stern English teacher who had caught him drawing titties on his coursework.

“How do you know my name?” He said.

She studied him closely and then spoke. “I first want to let you know that Lucas will be fine. I have been told that you two have begun a sort of… relationship since you’ve been spun up. Rest assured, he will be fine.”

Elliot leaned in, daring to talk conspiratorially. “What is this place? Why have they taken me here? I mean, I know that he wasn’t technically supposed to ‘spin’ me up, but--”

“My name is Angela Kinsey Darrow. Your father’s brother, Evan Hugh Darrow, was once my husband.”

As if he was slapped in the face, Elliot fell silent. “Darrow? My last name is Kestle.”

Angela smacked her lips and looked down at the file she had placed surreptitiously under her hands. Flipping it open, he read a few lines and then looked back up.

“No doubt Lucas filled you in on your less-than-material status in the world you left. I read here that they had not only edited Chris’s subroutines when they spun him down, but they also changed his name and inserted a virus.” When Elliot’s face made no move toward comprehension, Angela sighed and spoke in a more condescending tone. “Chris Darrow, your father, was changed into Lawrence Kestle, his memory was erased, and he was killed off about four and a half weeks ago. As you know, time does not move in the same way. Two years, Chris was with us. Then, I let Chris go from our research group about two and a half months ago, but by the time they had you, their fate had already been decided.”

Elliot fell ashen. He felt his stomach coil and he was afraid that he may throw up right on the table. He pushed it away forcefully and recovered.

“The last nine months of that two-year stint, as he was the head of our program, see, they were pregnant with you. When we let him go, they both spiraled into disuse. Our society, of course, has no care for disuse, and the council and the directors saw fit to spin both your mother, father, and you yourself down into the Overreach.”

Elliot’s shocked silence bid her to continue.

“I know this is a lot to take in. However, you are very important both to the council and the directors. Very important. And we should like to make your stay here as comfortable as possible.”

“Where is here?” Elliot said, gesturing to the stillness around them. The room seemed to grow in closer the longer he was there. “Why didn’t you just have Lucas bring me in - or, hell, why not his dad?”

Angela sighed with a look on her face of - contempt? Disdain? “Drake is more trouble than he’s worth. A complete dullard, too. To be completely honest, we’re much more interested in his son, not him. We couldn’t run the risk of him screwing up the blessedly natural course of events to bring you here. My husband decided to let Lucas - unknowingly - provide the most important service: extraction.”

The woman stood, obviously satisfied with what she had seen. Elliot’s eyes tracked her as she did so. “What do you want from me? Why was it so important for Lucas to spin me up?”

The beehive woman clucked disapprovingly. She continued to talk as she went over to the closest wall and pushed a small button. “All answers will come soon, I assure you. For now, we shall do our best to make you comfortable. Please, when Hadrian gets here, do not resist. We are just taking you to your quarters.”

At once, the door’s lock thunked heavily and a larger man, which Elliot assumed was Hadrian, entered. He didn’t talk, but gestured for Elliot to exit into the hallway.

“You’ve grown up well, boy,” Angela said. “Now we’ll see how much more growing up you can do.”

5

Elliot was led by the unspeaking man out of the intricate hallways to another part of the building completely. He realized that this must be the living quarters, because it was furnished less sparsely and more invitingly, all muted reds and browns. Had he known about the ancient Old West, he would have probably compared the color scheme to that.

After a stretch of time, they arrived at what he assumed were his quarters. The man used a transparent key-card to unlock the door, and swung it open. Inside was a bed, dresser, and an attached bathroom.

“There are clothes in the dresser,” the man said, doing everything he could not to look at Elliot at all. “Food will be brought in three hours. In the meantime, please wait patiently.”

“What about Lucas? When can I see him?”

The man grunted. “When we let you.” And the door closed, locking Elliot inside.

Elliot took the time to take a shower and change clothes, which were an odd grey uniform that was too soft for its own good. Ruefully, it reminded Elliot of the work clothes from his home. He didn’t find much humor in that.

Time ticked by like gears doused in molasses. After what seemed like forever, there was a sharp rap on the door. Elliot quickly jumped up and opened it.

“Lucas!”

Lucas was holding a tray of food and water. Besides being a bit pale, he looked good for being stabbed four and a half hours before. His hair looked wet and stringy, as if he had been sweating. He smiled, his blanched lip dancing, uncertain.

Lucas pushed his way in and set the tray on the bed, while Elliot teetered beside him, concerned. When he turned around, Elliot crushed him with a hug, burying his face in the crook of the blond boy’s neck. After a second, Lucas hugged back with just as much force.

“They won’t let me stay long,” he said, pulling back and looking Elliot in the face. He looked thoroughly worn out, and for a split second Elliot was afraid he had been tortured. “But I’m glad you’re ok.”

“Yeah. Yeah! I’m ok. They, uh, they had me meet my aunt-in-law. Angela Darrow. She told me a bunch of cryptic shit and then locked me in here.”

Elliot watched Lucas swallow and close his eyes, as if he were steeling himself. “My dad came to visit me, Elliot. They’re - they’re recruiting me to work on…” His sentence petered out, and he took a breath. He finished lamely. “To help them with a project.”

In a split second, Elliot’s eyes narrowed. Not nearly as much as he would do to a stranger or an acquaintance, but enough for Lucas to feel like he was being sharply analyzed. “What project, Lucas? What do you know? Tell me!”

Lucas was silent, and at once turned away. There was a waver in his voice when he talked next, as if he was about to sob. “I can’t tell you! They won’t let me. I - I gotta leave. My times up. I’m sorry, Elliot. Please know I love you.”

Elliot was still standing there as he watched the door latch and lock.

END NOTES - In Spoiler