The Great Below

The Recruitment: Part 1

Alex recognized that her tennis shoes and pink sweater, strewn among the living room destruction, were recent gifts and allowed her to put them on before wrapping her in a blanket from the bedroom. She saw his generosity as an opportunity to ask about bringing her album. He gave it a quizzical look, but agreed. He then produced thick plastic cable ties from his coat pocket.

It wasn't like being dragged off the Metra; that was a plus. Also, she was still alive, and any outing that involved leaving Victor's apartment had to be explored.

Octavia considered rebelling right away. They hit the final landing and she was within shouting distance of four apartment doors. She even sucked in a preparatory breath. But these were the same neighbors who must have heard her cries just hours ago when Victor put her hands on the casserole dish, and again before Nick and Alex had broken in, and she hadn't gotten so much as a phone call from the office for the noise. Then there were the passengers on the train, who hadn't intervened when Victor attacked her with a stun gun. Was she so easy to ignore? Would she have done it, if roles were reversed?

She turned into the wool of Alex's coat and closed her eyes. He wasn't a fire fighter, but he was carrying her away from Victor's apartment. His cologne was cedar and mint, and it made him smell like he'd hiked out of a deep wood just to her rescue her. She savored it, trying to forget that her extremities were bound and that she was wrapped in a blanket simply because it covered those bonds, and not because she might catch cold. She opened her eyes when she heard car doors opening and got a brief look at a black cargo van.

"Let me have the book," Nick said, hand outstretched.

She'd hugged it between her wrists, which were bound into one useless arm, and her chest. Even if she'd wanted to hand it to him, it was no easy feat to grasp one corner with both hands. Nick waited a moment before artlessly grabbing it, then tossing it with a heavy thump behind him.

"Hey!"

Alex shushed her as he handed her up. Nick maneuvered her onto one of a pair of metal bench seats that lined the interior walls before fastening her seat belt. The only windows in the van were at the front – one at each door plus the windshield – and the rest of it was utilitarian and windowless, the size of a restaurant booth. There was a divider made of metal fencing that allowed Octavia to see the front seats without being able to reach them.

Nick took a seat on the opposite bench while Alex came around to start the van. "Hey," he said. "There's no way Dom told you to bring cable ties to a recruitment."

"Well, no, but it barely takes a Google search to see Victor's anger problem."

The van accelerated through the neighborhood she'd walked last night before reaching the main drag. They blew past the gas station where Octavia had bought her flip-flops. Had her cable ties been intended for Victor? She couldn't picture him wearing them. Instead, she pictured him getting one look at them and then popping Alex in the nose.

"That's not all I brought, either."

Nick chuckled. "He signed on, man. I have to figure he knows what he's in for."

"I hoped I wouldn't have to use them, so you wouldn't get to make fun of me."

Nick shrugged. "They came in handy."

Octavia recognized a familiar turn, and then they were in the boxing club parking lot. A stab of panic, between two ribs. She reminded herself to go limp. It was a trick for anxiety disorders: she was supposed to relax all of her muscles or distract herself with the last five things she'd seen, the last four things she'd touched, and so on. If she could see past her anxiety, she might find that she was wrong about their destination. She'd accepted her current situation, to a point, when she'd seen Alex's gun, and again when she'd nearly leaped from the apartment balcony. The idea of being injured or killed didn't frighten her the way it used to. But she had not prepared herself to be taken straight to Victor after the night they'd had, then forced to share a tight space with him. That was somehow worse – the promise of injury without the possible release of death.

The swinging movement of Alex's parking job sent her scrapbook sliding across the floor of the van, but she didn't notice. Her eyes were fixed on the front window of Victor's club. "Does he have to come with us?" Octavia asked, but Alex was already out of the front seat and Nick opened the back doors just long enough to jump down into the lot.

She was left alone, locked in the dark.

There was a moment of sheer, frightened stupidity as she stared at the back doors of the van, eyes glazing over. They were going to bring Victor, but she had already betrayed him twice in two days. Of course, nothing she did to him was any real betrayal, but Victor had a particular worldview and it was hard not to adopt it herself, after living with him. In his mind, the train station was a betrayal, the spoiled dinner was a betrayal, and leaving the apartment without his permission would be strike three.

Octavia scanned the van's interior. She unlatched her seat belt with her bound club-hand, sliding across the bench and peering into the empty corners. There were storage compartments under the bench across from her, but they had locks on them. She kicked uselessly at one with her bound feet, leaning forward to grip the edge of her seat with both hands to gain leverage, when a sharp edge pricked her finger. She slid to her knees on the floor of the van and swung her ankles to the spot. Her stomach muscles clenched and burned, but she filed the tie back and forth against the bare metal edge. The plastic snapped apart.

Octavia got up, stumbling to the back doors on unsteady feet. The handle flipped up into her fingers but the lock didn't budge. The world was outside those doors, freedom for miles, and if she pressed her face to the seam where the two doors met she could feel the draft on her face. Freedom, so close she was breathing it. "Help," she said, but there wasn't any strength to her voice. "Help," she repeated meekly.

The sting of failure climbed her throat, making her eyes water. "Help!" She pulled again at the door handles, feeling a fresh fire build under her palms. "Help," she shouted, and pounded her fists against the door, whose shallow lines outlined where the windows should have been. Mocking her.

"Help, please!" she shrieked. She was losing track of time – had it only been seconds? Minutes? Octavia couldn't get any louder; she hurt her own ears. After so many strikes to the doors, her upper arms were nearly spent. She sprinted back and made a running attempt to put her shoulder through the doors. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for a spectacular injury, but the doors swung open. The night air swept in.

She collapsed into one of the men, throwing him to the pavement. He rolled to cushion her from the worst of it. She was stuck with her arms folded together around her waist, lucky that she hadn't hit the pavement face-first. Hands closed around her shoulders and she struggled to see who she'd crashed into. Alex looked back at her, worried. "Don't do this," he groaned, and it was an audible struggle with the wind knocked out of him. There was a cold, hard prodding at her ribs and she remembered the gun under his jacket.

Fingers sharp as talons pulled her off of him. Nick caught and steadied her just in time to see Victor slug Alex in the face.

Octavia was being shoved back into the van, where she stumbled to the far corner. In the parking lot, Victor towered over Alex's sprawled form on the asphalt. Nick had removed a weapon of his own and pressed it discretely to Victor's backside. "Let's take a ride in my windowless van, friend," he said.

Victor didn't budge.

"There's candy," Nick coaxed, "and a shiny new bicycle."

Victor turned, if only to confirm that Octavia was waiting inside. She scrunched her back into the seam where the side of the van met the divider. Alex was climbing to his feet behind Victor, and from what she could see, the gun she had landed on a moment ago was shoved against Victor's stomach. Alex's face darkened, and there was a smear of blood on his lower lip. "Get in the van," he growled.