Yesterday's Gone: Season Six (22 page)

For a moment, Ed thought Boricio was about to go off on Lisa. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tangled. Instead, he nodded and said, “Okay.” There was something in that nod, and the way his shoulders slumped, that made Ed wonder if the one-man wrecking ball was finally tired of fighting. Ed knew that feeling all too well.

Ed dropped the tracking chip and crushed it with his boot heel.

* * * *

CHAPTER 4 — Brent Foster

Brent tried to fall asleep, unable to remember ever feeling more exhausted from a day of work.
 

His shoulders weighed a thousand pounds, his arms and legs were tight and burning, hands blistered and speckled in blood. Ben and Becca, to their credit, somehow plugged away, even if they were crying half the day. Brent and Teagan had shared a single, sweet, foulmouthed kiss, barely stolen, after the long day had finally ended, just before getting shoved and shut inside the container. The moment had been sweeter than his midday water.
 

Last night’s silence made more sense after the weeklong day. The slaves weren’t just scared. They were absolutely exhausted. And the arrival of new prisoners had stolen precious moments of their sleep.
 

He remembered what Wilson had said about not getting sick. And in Brent’s experience, the best way to stay healthy was to get a decent sleep.

Eventually, he drifted off on the cold metal container floor, with Ben sleeping against his back.
 

Seconds into sleep’s embrace, the door creaked open, and a blast of halogen lights jarred him awake.
 

It wasn’t yet morning.
 

Two men tromped into the container, Purple Hair and Tommy — neither of whom had stopped taking every opportunity to undress Teagan with their eyes since the group marched through the gates of Hell.
 

Tommy walked straight to Lara.

“No!”
 

Meghan reached out and swatted at Tommy, trying to protect her daughter. Brent could see a horrible gleam in his eye and a satisfied twist in his smile as he pulled back his hand like the string of a bow and smacked her with a loud THWAP across the cheek.
 

Lara, just starting to fight, immediately settled.
 

“Are you okay, Mom?” she asked with surprising calm.
 

Tommy wiped slobber from his mouth. “She will be if you behave.”
 

Meghan, now crying, stood to face him. She screeched, lurched forward, and clawed at Tommy’s face.
 

Purple Hair ignored the quarrel and started pawing at Lara, rubbing her breasts with one hand while cupping her ass with the other.
 

Tommy sent Meghan sprawling to the floor with a shove, and into a curled ball with a kick. Then he laughed and went to join his buddy.
 

Meghan whimpered.
 

Again, Brent felt like a coward, doing nothing to intervene. Too consumed with worry for what would happen to his family if he stepped up to help another. He felt Ben clutching his back. The boy whispered, “Do something, Daddy.”
 

Brent had felt like a shadow of his best self since his return to Earth. He longed to do something now, to stop the wrong being executed before him. Doing nothing was teaching Ben that this atrocity was acceptable, that he was fine with it happening. That maybe he’d let the same thing happen to him, or Teagan, or Becca.
 

But what choice did he have? Anything he could do might draw attention to his family. Or Sammy.
 

The bandits unhooked Lara’s collar and dragged her out, laughing.
 

Just outside the door, Purple Hair said, “Think she’s tight?”
 

Tommy whistled. “I bet she’s like that Indian bitch.”
 

The door closed, and for a few minutes the only thing beyond the container’s cautious, collective breath were Meghan’s quiet sobs coming from the corner.
 

Then came the nightmare’s soundtrack, barely audible though it may as well have been a bullhorn, coming from behind the ugly metal walls one container over.
 

Protests, screams, and cries cut with grunts of male pleasure.
 

Laughter, muffled jokes, the echoes of slapping.
 

It went on too long.
 

Maybe an hour. It felt like a day.
 

Meghan sobbed. Teagan crawled over to her side of the container and held her.
 

Becca lived under one of Brent’s arms, and Ben in the other.
 

Sammy paced.
 

The rest of the container pretended they couldn’t hear.

Ben looked up at Brent, “Why didn’t you do anything, Dad?”

He looked down, wiping tears from his eyes. “Because I didn’t want them to hurt either of you.”

Ben simply stared ahead, as if processing. Brent wasn’t sure how his son would file that — Dad as a coward or Dad doing what he had to in order to protect his family.

Finally, the door opened.
 

Lara was thrown inside, panting, trying to catch her breath, clothes bloody. She ran to her mom, but Meghan didn’t embrace her. Instead, she launched herself at the bandits and pummeled them both with her fists.
 

“You want some too, you feisty bitch?” Purple Hair asked, punching her in the gut.

Tommy grabbed the woman from behind, in a choke hold, as Purple Hair continued to hit her.

Lara screamed, “Stop! Please stop!”

They ignored her until they were ready to stop, and that wasn’t until Meghan was an almost lifeless bloody heap on the floor.

Then Tommy hooked the girl’s wire back up to the pole and left without another word.

Purple Hair spit on the mother then followed his tattooed friend.

The door closed, plunging them back into darkness.

Mother and daughter cried as one.
 

Ben and Becca joined them.
 

Brent was closing his eyes, quietly crying. He jumped, startled when Teagan’s hand grasped his. Their fingers threaded together. With Ben and Becca’s, too, the four a tangled mass.
 

“What did they do to her?” Becca asked.
 

Teagan tried to speak, choked, and closed her mouth to breathe or think. Brent said, “They beat her up and took something that didn’t belong to them.”
 

“What did they take?”
 

“Something she can never have back, Becca. Because they’re bullies who knew they could take what they wanted, and that no one could stop them.”

Meghan hugged her daughter harder and wailed, “I’m so, so sorry baby. I should never have let that happen.”
 

“You didn’t
let it
happen, Mom.” She cried. “There was nothing you could do.”
 

They sobbed harder and louder.
 

Wilson walked over, coughing, and hovered above them, waiting. Meghan looked up, her eyes as angry as her voice, but hard to see in the scant light. “What do you want?”
 

He coughed then said, “To help if I can.”
 

Her voice untrusting, she said, “What can you possibly do?”
 

“I’ll show you.” He looked at Lara then back at her mom. “Over here, alone.”

Wilson took Meghan gently by the arm, led her away toward the container’s rear wall, then told Brent to come, too. “I need to speak to your dad alone,” he whispered when Ben tried to follow.

Brent and Meghan reached the rear wall, where the big man was still out, or dead. Wilson looked at them and opened his palm.
 

A moonbeam glinted off the blade.
 

Wilson licked his dry lips and glanced at Meghan. “Take it.”

“What is it?” Meghan asked, as if she’d never seen a razor.
 

“I found a box of disposables when they brought me in to scrub the bathrooms two weeks back. I snagged a few and chipped the plastic from the metal. Figured I’d find a way to use ‘em before they counted them gone.”
 

He coughed, long and hard, before spitting onto the floor. Brent couldn’t see in the dark, but imagined the man’s spit filled with blood.
 

“I’ve been here long enough to know what’ll happen to her.” Wilson glanced at Lara and lowered his voice even further. “They’ve already started, and they’re not gonna stop till she’s dead. They’ll come back every night and keep on raping your daughter until she’s raw meat.”
 

His voice lost another octave.
 

“And then they’ll kill her.”
 

Meghan gasped.
 

“Take it,” Wilson repeated. “End her suffering.”
 

“No.” Meghan’s whisper was angry and surprised. “That’s
awful
.”
 

A cough then, “Which part?”
 

Meghan paused, thinking. Brent could hear his pounding heart.
 

“All of it.”
 

Another cough, then a gentler voice. “Don’t be so quick to make up your mind. I’d never suggest it if I didn’t know how bad things are going to get for her. Or for you having to hear it each night. Tonight was the start. You’ll be the one holding her after they throw her back. In another few days, she won’t even be able to look at you.”
 

“No,” Meghan repeated. “I could never do that.”
 

She opened her hand anyway, and Wilson placed the razor inside it. She returned to Lara, falling to a crouch and holding her close.
 

“What did he say?” Lara asked.

“Nothing.” Meghan kissed her daughter on the forehead.
 

Wilson turned to Brent. “Open your hand.”
 

Brent did.
 

“Whatever you do, don’t tell ‘em where you got it. Hide it under the dirt on the floor.”

Brent took the second razor and stared at the blade, hoping he wouldn’t need to use it.

* * * *

CHAPTER 5 — Paul Roberts

Paul watched through the observation window as the woman who sliced his daughter’s throat writhed on the table below, trying to free herself from the metal cuffs binding her wrists and ankles.

But there’d be no escaping.

She was naked. It had been a long time since he’d seen a nude woman up close, but her body offered no titillation. Paul was too filled with disgust.

Desmond stood beside him, watching, a satisfied expression on his face. While Desmond had hoped to get Luca, he seemed pleasantly surprised to have captured Mary instead. Paul wasn’t sure of their shared past, but it must’ve been intense, judging from his grin.
 

“What do you need me to find out?” Paul asked.

“Find out what she knows. Dig around in her head. Find out their locations, and we’ll proceed from there.”

Paul had done hundreds of these interrogations over the past few years, with varying degrees of success. If you asked him, he’d say his success rate was 100 percent — when people possessed whatever information he was seeking. Desmond always resorted to Plan B when they didn’t. That involved torture. Sometimes, Desmond conducted the torment himself. Other times, it was Wasterman, who took exceptional glee in such orders. But as Paul remembered how callously the woman had slit his little girl’s throat, he hoped she
didn’t
have what they needed, and that Desmond would let Paul implement Plan B himself.

Paul was about to head into the interrogation room. Desmond put a hand out to stop him.

“What is it?”

“I just received bad news from someone in the field.”

Paul paused, heart racing, fearing Desmond’s telepathic news.
 

“It’s Emily.”

Oh, God, no. She’s dead!

“The tracking chip stopped working.”

“What?” Paul yelled. “What do you mean,
stopped working?
”

“We don’t know if it’s malfunctioning, or if they found and destroyed it.”

“Could it have exploded, and killed her?”

“We’d have received a signal if that happened. My guess is they found and neutralized it.”

“Fuck! I thought you said this wouldn’t happen, that you had this under control! This is now
two
failed attempts to capture your target, and now we’ve lost our only hope of finding my daughter!”

Still smiling, Desmond said, “Please, Mr. Roberts, have some faith.”

Paul wanted to punch that smile from Desmond’s smug face. Wanted to reach inside and yank the alien from inside him, throw it on the ground, and stomp it to chunks of goo.