~SkepHalo Oneshots~

What is all this?

⚠Trigger warning: kidnapping⚠

Zak sat at the bar, bored out of his mind. Darryl had said he was just going out for a little while, but it had been much longer than what Zak considered "a little while." Hoping to find some entertainment, he'd walked over to the bar nearby. Of course, he wasn't drinking; he was only twenty, after all. The bar had plenty of good non-alcoholic drinks.

Despite this, he wasn't having fun; since he and Darryl moved in together, he'd found that there wasn't much fun he could have without his best friend by his side.

A stranger slid into the seat next to him. "What is the cube root of two raised to the fifteenth power times the square root of five raised to the sixth power?" they whispered.

Zak gave a bewildered smile. Who goes up to someone random and asks them a question like that? He internally shrugged and decided to humor them. "Twelve," he answered, confidently pulling a number out of his ass.

The stranger gave a single nod and handed him a file underneath the bar before standing up and leaving. Zak looked down at it, extremely confused, then looked back up to ask the person about it, but they were gone. He frowned, then finished and paid for his drink. He was now bored and confused, so he might as well head home. Maybe this file contained some explanation as to what had just occurred.

As he walked back home, a figure lurked in the shadows of a nearby alleyway. Turning on their microphone, they said, "I've got eyes on the target. He's got the file on him. Not even trying to hide it or anything."

"Perfect," the person on the other end of the line responded. "Take him out, but leave him alive. I want to see if we can get any more info out of him."

"Yes, sir." They turned their microphone off and signaled to the others hidden in the alleyway. As a single unit, they rushed the unsuspecting boy.

——

Zak blinked awake, the first thing he noticed being the fact that his head was pounding. The second thing that he noticed was that he couldn't move his hands. Or his legs, for that matter. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was handcuffed to a chair. He started to panic, especially as he realized he had no idea where he was. Glancing behind him, there were two people standing silently — guards, probably.

"Where am I? What's happening?" he asked, hoping they might be willing to at least tell him that much.

His eyes widened and he panicked further when one of the guards narrowed their eyes and lifted their gun threateningly. He bit his lip and looked down at his lap, trying to hold back the terrified tears that were beginning to gather in his eyes.

He glanced up as the door opened and two unknown figures entered. They were both dressed in all black, checkered bandannas covering the lower halves of their faces. He made eye contact with one of them, who was wearing glasses, and quickly looked down.

"Goodness, Number 2, when I said to 'take him out,' that didn't mean, 'beat him to a pulp.' You told me he didn't put up much of a fight, was that really necessary?" Glasses said to the other.

"Sorry, boss, we just wanted to make sure he wouldn't wake up on the way. Besides, he'll be dead once we're done questioning him, anyway," "Number 2" responded.

At that, the floodgates opened. The tears poured down Zak's cheeks, Zak not even attempting to control them. He didn't want to die. All he wanted was to go home and see Darryl.

Darryl. He wouldn't even know what happened to Zak. As far as he'd know, he left for a while, and when he came back, Zak had vanished, never to be seen again.