White Matter

Transported

It was just like in those reality videos of the police apprehending a felon. At the gunman's barked order, we were stood with our hands up against the wall. Behind me, I heard the front door open and a second person enter. Unable to turn my head and look, and with only the sound of footsteps to go by, I imagined him as a clone of the gangster with the gun, his weapon trained upon us as he weaved between the furniture.

The after-effects of the drug were back with me. It was as if my body was struggling to react to the situation, but didn't know how. As fear rose like bile in my throat, I was starting to have doubts about the naturalness of the high, even more so about the non-existence of the comedown. First a rescue mission, now held at gunpoint. We were testing the maker's claims to destruction. The person standing behind me with a gun was most likely a representative of that self-same manufacturer, but then I didn't suppose he was here for market research.

That quality in the air, the translucence and immediacy that so energized me in the first flush of drug-rush; it had congealed now to a brittle solid, encasing both me and the world around me. The slightest of collisions and one of us would shatter.

The invisible accomplice halted behind me. I tensed, clenching my whole body lest my knees start rattling together. After patting me down, extracting my phone and wallet in the process, he moved on to separate Graeme from his gun. Having done so, he retreated back to the front door.

Thus disarmed, we were ordered to pack an overnight bag, and to change out of the technician's uniforms we were still wearing. Easy in my case; I was still living out of the suitcase I had arrived with some days earlier.

Did this mean they intended to keep us alive, or did they simply want to give the impression we had left of our own accord? I imagined the words of a news reader back home: "The scene showed no signs of a struggle."

I wondered, too, about the laboratory in the spare room. The man with the gun had made no reference to it, but then he must have searched the entire place before we returned.

Back in the lounge, we were made to stand once more against the wall. The accomplice, who had kept out of sight through all this, looped a strand of thin, unyielding wire around my neck and threaded it down under my shirt. The wire terminated in a hand grip, one he could have used to lead me about like a dog on a leash. Instead, the gunman came over and clipped it to his belt. Graeme got the same treatment.

"Keep your eyes forward," said the gunman. I heard the footsteps of his colleague cross the floor, followed by the rattle of suitcase wheels and the sound of the front door opening.

"Let's go."

We took the stairs to the ground floor, then walked out through the lobby and onto the street, the three of us in tight convoy. The street scene was as busy as you would expect, late on a weekday afternoon.

"You will keep absolutely quiet." He spoke in a conversational tone. None of the passers-by paid us any mind, even when he reinforced his words by giving a mild tug on my tether. It ratcheted tighter, unpleasantly so, but not enough to constrict my breathing.

A takuhaibin courier van was waiting for us in the street, its rear doors open. I caught sight of a figure pulling my suitcase around the far side of the vehicle, just long enough to suggest a woman rather than a man.

We were ushered into the back where our leashes were unclipped from our captor and reattached to metal struts in the wall. After a few moments to get ourselves comfortable on the hard floor, our wrists too were handcuffed.

Time was difficult to estimate. The drive could have taken anything from half an hour to an hour. When the van door finally opened, we were blindfolded with what I guessed to be airline sleeping masks before being unclipped and ordered out. All I could tell from a brief glimpse was that we were inside a building. Any attempts we made to speak during the short walk that followed were met with a slap to the side of the head and no reply.