Fear Itself

“What do you mean you don’t know anything?” Alex asked, tone mixed with disbelief and disappointment.

Moments after we arrived, Alex had rather forcefully shoved me down into a chair, sitting in a rather open room: concrete walls and flooring, only decorated with a worn, silver table and a couple of battered, old chairs. Alex had been joined by a friend, another young man, shorter, mousy-looking. His golden brown hair sat in curls atop his head, and he quivered like a frightened squirrel at the sight of me, especially after a short interrogation period revealed that I apparently “didn’t know anything.”

“Great,” the other man said, throwing his arms in the air as though he had given up. He began to pace wildly, walking in a rather tight little circle, not even looking at me. “We kidnapped Thalia Giroux!” he exclaimed with mock excitement. More terror rang out in his voice than anything. Alex ran a hand through his hair and sighed, rolling his eyes in the other direction while the young man continued his rant. “All you had to do was go inside and download some files, but you didn’t. You didn’t come back with a disc,” the young man chuckled in fright. “You came back with a person! Must I continue? Do you understand how irresponsible this is?!”

Alex groaned. “Oh, Sam, will you please just—“

“Shut up?” Sam interjected. “No, I will not, thank you very much, I cannot, in good conscience, allow you to just go around kidnapping people, especially people related to a Board member!” he exclaimed, scolding Alex like an angry father (or mother, he wasn’t exactly what I would call masculine). “You just put the entire group in jeopardy! We are at risk because you couldn’t just stick to the plan that we had set in the first place!”

“Bloody hell,” Alex mumbled. “Sam,” he interjected, raising his voice. “She doesn’t exist. Her father could not, under any circumstance, call the police and say that she’s missing. Nobody is going to come look for her.”

“Doesn’t matter!” Sam nearly shrieked, eyes wide in utter panic. “We still have to worry about the fact that she has literally breached security! She knows our location—“

“Actually, I don’t,” I told him, cutting him off, still frightened but a little done with the overdramatic nature of the exchange. “I don’t even know who any of you are or what you do. I don’t know where I am,” I explained with seething apathy, shrugging shoulders.

“You,” Sam addressed me rather pointedly, even pointing his middle finger right at my face, much to my offense. “You’re the problem here, and I can’t—“ He stopped rambling, leaving his mouth agape. He clearly hadn’t much more to say. He had rambled himself speechless, clearly. He merely looked at a rather annoyed Alex and narrowed his eyes. “We need to discuss this,” he murmured, clearly looking right at me. I rolled my eyes as Sam locked a hand around Alex’s wrist and literally dragged him into a nearby room, slamming the heavy, metal door behind them. Muffled yelling erupting, but it was nothing I could make out.

I listened to them for god knows how long. All they did was yell back and forth, but the concrete seemed to do a rather good job of keeping the sound inside. I didn’t get much out of it other than that Sam was very angry that I was here, while Alex was still trying to defend my presence (he had yelled something along the lines of that, anyway). I rose from the chair, bored of the position and the vantage point; I relocated to lean against the wall just outside of the door, trying to get a better listen, but the voices didn’t get any clearer. Sam had probably gone through some measures to make sure the room was relatively sound-proofed. After all, he seemed a little compulsive when it came to planning, considering he seemed to rant about how Alex strayed from the plan… these people just seemed absolutely insane, and what got me the most was that they had deemed me useless after barely five minutes.

Never once in my life had someone called me useless. I may have been many things, but useless wasn’t one of them. I had plenty of things to offer; my vast knowledge of nearly everything, not to sound conceited, would help almost any situation. I studied anything I could get my hands on, but I didn’t know much about my father (at least nothing they wanted me to know), therefore I was useless? The logic just confused and infuriated me, and I huffed quietly to myself as I continued trying to eavesdrop, but the muffled yelling was soon broken by the sound of footsteps approaching from the other side of the room, out from the tunnels.

From the shadows emerged a figure: a tall, broad man, probably muscular, with impeccable posture. He stood straight with shoulders back at six foot five, and he was bulky, not with fat, but with a good 220 pounds of solid muscle. He was fit, but he was polished. One could see in his face that he was nothing but dignified. His sandy blonde hair was brushed back a little, parted on the right, perfectly coiffed and svelte. He had baby blue eyes: trustworthy eyes. Nonetheless, his figure was daunting enough; his uniform didn’t help all that much. It was blue, official, and decorated with gold trim and many medallions, lots of trinkets, lots of very shiny things that caught the light and sparkled.

“Enjoying the view, eh, Blondie?” the man laughed, joked even. He shot me a grin, showcasing some nearly dazzling white teeth. His right eye winked as he strode toward the door, the same door the yelling was erupting from. He flung the door open and threw his arms out to his sides. Silence fell as he quickly shouted, “What’s with all the yelling, mates?”

One of the two boys inside muttered, “Bugger off, Dean.” The man, Dean, they called him, chuckled so hard his entire upper body shook, and he walked in, finally closing the door behind him. The yelling seemed to pick up again.

The only seemingly nice person I had met had quickly left to join the arguing. I rested my head back against the wall for a moment, closed my eyes, and hoped that sleep would come, but it never did. This place was far too cold for sleep.