A gust of wind blows against me. The dust in the air lightly scratches my face. Light shines down, covering half of me. Am I dead? Can't be. Almost dead? I feel like it. I lay face up on cold cement, unable to hear clearly. Someone talks in the background. My head pulses, hearing my own heartbeat in my head. How long has it been? A day? A week? It's felt like a month. I can barely move my arms, but my hards still work, slowly.
Where am I? The light causes me to squint. Somewhere dusty. Sand and dirt covers my lips. I try to speak but only a deep groan escapes me. A blurry figure approaches me and hovers over me, blocking the light. He says something I can't understand. He opens my eyelids wide to check on me.
I have too many questions. Where's Dale? What happened after the party? Where's my wife and kid? A blanket is placed over me. With the body heat I have left, the blanket quickly becomes a cozy place, reminding me of home. I drift in and out of sleep, eyes heavy until I let the darkness consume me again. I only hope I wake up back, as if everything were all a dream.
I wake again, much warmer than last time, at least under the blanket that is. It's dark out, and unlike the city, it's quiet when it's nighttime. Peaceful. Quiet except the voice of someone talking nearby. Laughter follows. This time, I can actually hear what's being said. It's a voice I recognize. Dale's. Sitting up, I look down at my hands, noticing a bandage around my right, which reminds me of what happened at the party.
Dale sits between an older man and the young woman who drugged me at the party. A fire burns hot and bright in an oil drum. Dale is the first to notice my awakening. "Arles, you're awake," he says. He gets up from where he's sitting and pulls me into a hug. I almost lose my balance. "You won't believe it, these guys are great. They even—"
"Dale..." I stop him before he makes my headache come back. "Okay." He gets my message. I half stumble backward, regaining my balance from however long it's been.
I almost forget I'm in an unknown location. It doesn't take long for me to realize it's a parking garage. An beaten-up one at that. No cars are in it. No where close to the city either, the outside is bare. No buildings, no roads, not even the sound of cars. Only the sound of the wind. It's gotta be the outskirts. Impossible.
The man gets up from where he sits and approaches me, offering a handshake. I accept. A firm grip he has. "The name's Mike. Nice to meet you," he says. "I know you have a lot of questions. Your friend here sure did." He speaks in a deep growly voice, almost as if he's angry at something. He's tall, gray hair, probably somewhere around 50 years old.
"Where are we?" I barely muster out. Sleep still rests in my eyes. I don't even know how long it's been since the party. It couldn't have been long, as Dale isn't freaking out. He doesn't freak out at much to begin with.
"Good question. We are in an old parking garage if you couldn't tell, about 25 miles from South Newgle. In the outskirts obviously, if you couldn't tell."
"How?" I ask. It's impossible. No one lives out here. They'd die. Everyone knows the outskirts are dangerous, and anyone who traverses it never comes back. There are plenty of stories of people trying to hike through the outskirts, only to die from dehydration from the heat. Some try to drive, but the cars either break or explode from the heat. Dust storms are a whole different issue. Official search parties never go out. Rarely will volunteer search efforts take place. They say it's a waste of time and resources.
"You ask a lot of questions. We'll explain everything." He motions me to sit next to all of them on the benches they have laid out. I sit next to Dale. "This is Aria, she grabbed you at the party," Mike says, pointing to the woman who knocked me out at the party.
"What up dipshit." Rude. After a short wave, she continues to twirl a butterfly knife between of her fingers making a metallic clattering sound. It twists around while opening and closing, around each of her fingers and back. The kind of knife has been classified as an A-class weapon, one reserved for authorized personnel only, making it illegal to possess, sell, or buy.
"She's like that, You'll get used to it after a while." Aria rolls her eyes after that. "Anyways... we're The Reformers. That's what we like to call ourselves at least, though we haven't done a whole lot of actual... reforming."
"Correction," Aria says, "he likes to call us The Reformers. I think it's a stupid name."
You're probably wondering about the party next," Mike continues, stealing the words out of my mouth. Not like I could get a word in anyways. "Well, that happened about 48 hours ago." He notices the shock on my face. "Yeah, that stuff is pretty potent—"
"No no. Not that." I have to cut him off. "You said 48 hours? As in like two days?"
"No, he meant two decades dummy," Aria says. Dale silently chuckles at the joke. She's just like him, making sarcastic and stupid jokes left and right. They'll definitely get along together.
"I have work. I can't just miss two days without notice," I point out. At other places missing a few days might not be a big deal. But at the power plant, things need to be done every day, and if those things aren't done we lose money. Money that comes out of our paychecks.
"Better than being kidnapped eh?" Mike says. "Or killed," he says more quietly.
"We literally kidnapped him idiot," Aria chimes in.
"What?" I ask, confused.
"That's right, you don't know everything. I keep forgetting. There's no easy way of putting this but..." He takes a deep breath, I know what's coming. "Whoever they told you died, are dead." He watches me for a moment before continuing. "I'm sorry." In a instant my confusion turns to anger. I try to hold it back but Dale sees right through it. He tries to throw an arm around me, but I shake it off. I avoid his gaze.
Nothing makes sense. I want to run away, but to where? We're in the middle of nowhere.
"How do you know?" I ask, almost whispering. I feel the world closing in around me, everything's falling apart.
"It's happened to us too," Aria says. "So? Who was it?" she asks after a moment of silence. In any other circumstance, it would be a rude question to ask at this time. I still answer though.
"It was my wife and daughter," I say flatly. Dale mutters something under his breath in shock. He looks toward the floor, burying his head in his hands, running them through his hair. It looks like he's about to get up and leave but instead he stays. He knows how important my family is to me. He was close at times, especially around the holidays. It probably hurts him as well to know that they're gone.
"Once they dragged out your nerdy friend, which was unexpected, we had to change plans last second. Mike had to carry him over his shoulder back to the van. I'm pretty sure he hurt his shoulder, he'll tell you he's fine."
"It was her idea to snag you guys. I thought it was a good idea anyway," Mike says, almost like he's bragging. "I think we have some good news that might ease your confusion a little bit. Come on, follow me."
He gets up from where he is sitting and leads all of us into a small room made for two or three people. Inside is a small desk with a laptop on it, and many papers and junk littering the ground. It seems like it was a maintenance room or a janitorial closet before it was converted into a small office.
A television is hung on the wall, running the midnight news, muted. An old space heater hums, warming the room, being the only other heat source out here other than the fire. Everything here is old, the door, the ceiling, the power outlet types.
Mike bends over and pulls a large plastic bin out from under the desk. He slides it onto the desk, opening it. It's full of papers and hard drives.
"This... is what I have been working on for the past year. It started just over a year ago when I was approached by people like you met at the party about the deaths of both of my elderly parents. They were already knocking on death's door anyways, about to probably die in the next few years. My mom supposedly died in the hospital she was staying at, and my dadsupposedly died by falling down the stairs in his own home.
"Nothing in the news was presented about the accident nor was I allowed to see any bodies. The hospital said they knew nothing about what happened. That's when I knew something unusual was up. I was left alone. I started doing research, connecting all the dots. Nothing made sense. Calls were made, meetings were scheduled but then were canceled last minute. Nothing.
"Nothing until I found Aria. I was driving home from a late-night at a bar. No one on the road. I saw the same black cars you saw at the party, driving down the road, the same black cars that had pulled up to my workplace. It took me a minute to process what could be happening, but once I did, I followed them, curious."
I look over to Dale to see how he's handling it all. His eyes are partially squinted, mouth hanging slightly open with a confused look on his face. He's holding back something. Thinking deeply about something. I've seen this look before. He snaps back to reality when he notices me looking at him.
Aria picks up where he leaves off. "I was at the park. Late... I know. Guess I was bored, I don't know. They just walked in front of me and told me that my mother had died. I thought it was someone pulling some prank on the depressed girl in the park. It wasn't. She wasn't in her house. I triple-checked every room. Harmony wasn't aware at the time. I had to tell her. So I did just that. Drove back to our apartment and told her. She cried and cried and cried. Cry baby. But being the big sister, I had to be there for her. I think it took her two weeks to calm down. Even today she's probably not over it. Both of us aren't. It sticks with both of us... even though I might not show it.
"The next night Mike found me wandering the streets... somehow. He told me everything that happened to him. Knowing I had barely anything to lose, I blindly followed him. Still don't know if it was a good idea."
Mike shuffles through the bin, pulling out printed news articles and maps of buildings. "With Aria, I lead me to believe it wasn't just some coincidence," he says. "Now with you guys showing up, I can say confidently that something... big.... is taking place. I wondered how many other people went through things like us. It was near impossible to find any information. Aria's been a big help.
What he doesn't tell us is if he's contacted other people before. What if we're not the only ones he's found. Others could have heard all this and just left him.
"We're trying to answer a couple of simple questions..." he continues, "find out who's behind it all and why, and we always need extra hands. If you decide to help that'd be appreciated, but if you don't that's fine as well. I think you'll be a great person to have with us."
I struggle to find words. I don't know what to say. Knowing what happened to everyone around me. How they were just as confused as I am at one point. Something tells me to help them, but I can't. I can't bring myself to it. I don't know if it's the confusion that's getting to me.
I just want to be alone. Gone. Away from everything. Why should I be dragged into this? I barely know these people. Do I owe them a debt just because they possibly saved my life? Maybe I just don't want to help them. I can't quit my job, hell I might already be in trouble for the last two days.
"What have you got so far?" I ask curiously. "Who's behind it all?"
"That's the hard part. We think it's the government," Mike says.
I laugh. "The government? Killing people for fun?"
"Sure. Maybe not "for fun" so to say, but they've got some reason for it. There's plenty of evidence supporting it. Ask yourself this. Why haven't any of these deaths been recorded in the public archives? Why is there nothing in the media about the murders? The custom fancy cars? Men in suits? Doesn't it seem like the government is behind it?"
I think about it. "How do you know it's not some bad actor pulling a sick joke?" I ask.
"We don't. Plus even if it was a specific person, why haven't they been caught? With the amount of surveillance in the city and online, these murders should have been caught. Just last week an anonymous user was tracked online and arrested for collusion to assassinate Dunn."
"He completely hid his tracks," Aria explains, "though multiple VPNs, tunneling his internet usage through multiple computers built across the country, using his own proxy. Government still found him in a shack in the middle of nowhere, using satellite internet with a stolen government satellite dish. I'd kill to have one of those things."
"Oh, before I forget... these are yours," Mike says, tossing me my car keys. I barely catch them using my non-bandaged hand. "It's out there. Underground, level B." I totally forgot about my car. I walk out down to a lower level of the parking garage, below the ground. Someone must have driven it from the party.
Sure enough on level B, my car is parked in the middle of the place. It's dirtier than I remember, probably from the dust from the outskirts. My phone is fully charged right as I left it before the party. It's using the satellite for service because of the lack of modern cell towers. It's used for short transmissions like texts, so no phone calls or streaming video or music.
There's an unopened message from Nathan. Multiple actually. Five to be exact, over the course of the last two days.
I send a short message back, despite it being almost 2 a.m. He'll surely be asleep.
It takes 20 seconds to fully send. I pocket the phone and throw the keys in one of the cup holders and head back to the office. It's much harder walking up the ramps of the parking garage. My joints are slower than normal, so it takes twice as much effort to get up the ramps.
When I enter, the news is unmuted. Everyone watches it with undivided attention. The news anchor talks about the party from two nights ago. She's outside of the house of the party describing the developing story about a mysterious blinding light in the middle of the night. A couple of people from the party are brought on for a short interview. I recognize a few of them.
No one really knows what happened but the news seems to think it's some outside threat. They even asked the Dunn administration about the possibility of aliens. They declined to respond due to being too busy with the transition to the new Johnson administration. So he won. Not really a surprise.
"So we haven't been caught yet. That's good." Dale says.
"Told you. We kinda know what we're doing," Aria replies. "Also...
aliens
? That's the best they think of?""Dale, come outside. Let's talk."
Dale follows me outside. I sit down on the bench around the fading fire. He throws another plank of wood in before sitting down next to me. It's hard to read what he's thinking. Either he's interested or he's confused and just as hurt as I am and he's hiding it well. He's usually in a playful and fun mood, so it's strange to see him like this.
"Sorry about Kristen and Julia," he starts. "I didn't know until just now."
"I don't know," I say, staring off into the distance. "It should be an easy decision to make but it's not. Maybe I can give them a chance. But what if it's all a joke? It probably isn't though." I find myself going down a slippery slope. I stop myself before I go insane. I don't know what to do.
"Do you think they can help us?" he asks me.
I laugh at the question. "Help us? We're the ones that would be helping them. What if it's all a waste of time? We could get in trouble for this. For being around them. You notice Aria? She's gotten away with illegal things before. That knife could land her in prison if someone finds out."
"Would it give you peace of mind knowing the truth?" It would. We should just leave. Drive away and forget this even happened. Did Mike feel this way? Did Aria? I don't even have proof that they are dead. I haven't even been home. They very well could be alive and perfectly well, and this could all be a joke.
"What was up with earlier?" I ask, not knowing where to take the conversation. "When Mike was explaining his story. You were holding back something. Hiding something?" He doesn't respond. At first I think he's ignoring me.
"I'll explain later." He speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Now's not the time. I will tell you though, I'll stick with you with whatever your choice is. But if you ask me though, I would see what I could do to help." He's never been one to hide things. He's always talked to me about anything. He never had someone like that in his family when he was younger.
What seems like a minute passes between us. Watching the wood burn and listening to the sound it makes. The fire and the moon make up all the light out here. There's something calming out here. Something that I miss. Maybe something I want. Away from the chaos of life, to have my mind free for once. But is it really free since what happened?
"Fine," I say. Dale looks towards me. "We'll see what we can do. But first, I want to go back to the city before any permanent decision is made. Make sure everything is okay back there," I explain.
"Knew you would." He throws an arm over me and lays his head on my shoulder. The suddenness of it makes me almost fall over. "We'll get through this. Just have to ride out the storm once more." I laugh. "What?"
"Reminds me of that one time at middle school summer camp."
"Oh no, not this again." He knows the story just as well as I. We can laugh about it now because it happened a long time ago. But then, it was no laughing matter.
"You thought you were the bravest kid in our grade, so you decided to climb the biggest hill in camp... which happened to be right outside of our cabin. You dragged me along even though I didn't want to go. A quarter of the way up it started raining. Halfway it started to thunder. But you kept going. Kept going until the tornado siren came on."
"Bummer we never made it to the top. We should try again sometime."
"Nah. They'd never let us. I like to think that we needed each other that night. Me to prevent you from killing yourself trying to climb a hill. You to push me out of my comfort zone and challenge me to do more adventurous things in life."
He thinks about what I said for a moment. It brings us both back to a time where we weren't afraid to do things and where life was more worry-free. "There were a couple of close calls though. You got your leg stuck between a tree and rock."
"And you almost got us both killed that night." I remind him. He laughs at that. "Remember we got back to the cabin and the counselor caught us walking in. Both of us were soaking wet and blood running down my leg. You had to make up something stupid. What was it again?"
He thinks for a moment. "Going out to the archery range even though it was almost pitch black out."
"That was it. Even the camp staff was probably sleeping." For a moment I forgot that my life is in shambles. The effect of meeting Mike and Aria finally dawns upon me. "When you're young you get to do so many stupid things and get away with it. Is this one of those stupid things?" I ask.
"I don't know." A minute passes of us both watching the fire, wondering what lies ahead in the road of life. Before it gets too awkward, Dale gets up off of me and brushes the ash from the fire off of his pants. "We should probably get going soon anyway. I'm super tired," Dale says.
"Before that, promises must be made." I briefly explain what I'm thinking of to Dale. In order for things to work out between us and Mike and Aria, we need to trust each other, especially with someone possibly as serious as this. After a moment of thought, Dale seems to agree without objection. Glad we're on the same page.
We both re-enter the office where Mike and Aria sit. "We'll consider it." Mike smiles at the statement. "First, I have some terms."
I sit across from Mike like it's an interview, with Dale standing beside me. Dale asked for the heater to be turned off before as a part of his "terms". Aria left the room voluntarily for privacy. I begin the real terms that Dale and I discussed.
"First, I live in the city and keep my job," I say, noticing an old mattress and pillow in the room. "So does Dale."
"Fair enough. Both of you can live where ever you want. But if you ever need a place though..."
"Thanks... we're fine though," Dale chimes in.
"Secondly, You leave me out of everything for the next few days. The next few days are for me. Then, once I come back on my own terms, I'll make a final decision." He agrees and nods his head.
"Finally, I need to know right now if this is a joke or not. If you say it isn't and I later find out this is, I'm gone, never to return. That, and you need to promise me that nothing creepy is going to come out of any of this... including your box. We need transparency if I am to agree to this. You tell me everything you know, I'll tell you everything I know."
Negotiation tactics were something that my dad had taught me from a young age. It's come in handy multiple times. And now, I have to hope it's enough. Mike doesn't have much to barter with, and I have a feeling he needs me more than I need him. There's still things that are unanswered.
"I can guarantee you that this is not a joke. And also nothing creepy, you have my promise on both of those things. I know this was a lot of time to take in, especially at two in the morning. Along with me promising you these things, you gotta meet me in the middle. So, you have to promise me that you'll at least consider working with us."
"I will."