Author's Note: Evening, all! Welcome to the first chapter! I hope you all enjoy it as much I as I did writing it. My inbox is always open to feedback, positive and negative alike, so feel free to drop me a line! I'd like to point out that all hours should line up almost perfectly with the timeframe; however, if it still seems off or confusing, drop a review or DM me, and I'll be glad to look into it! In addition to this, I'll add that I know zilch about computers other than how to access a Word document, so any references to tracking, hacking, or doxing are 100% fabricated and pulled out if my… erm, nowhere. If it's wrong, it's wrong – but I tried to be as vague as I could manage for this very reason. x-x Still, if you're more experienced in that department, go ahead and drop a review or DM me, and again I'll look into it!
As a sidenote, I'd like to throw out a huge thank you to all of you who reviewed and critiqued the story. As a person who thrives on criticism, I appreciate it more than words can express. With all that being said, here's to another release!
ONE: Spitting Blood
In which: A storm hurls itself against the home, obsolete and furious.
Roughly nine hours earlier
Davenport Mansion
It's after thirty minutes that they begin to worry.
Ten minutes is brushed off with the excuse of bad foot traffic. Twenty minutes proposes the question of, "maybe Perry kept him after?", even when the family receives no calls; no texts.
But thirty minutes— thirty minutes is troublesome, because the truth of the matter is this: it isn't like Chase to be late — not really — but maybe, if they allow themselves to hope against the ever-fulling pool of dread collecting in their guts, maybe nothing is wrong. Perhaps he's gone to see a movie with a friend, and has simply lost track of time. That would explain why his phone is turned off. Why he isn't returning any calls.
It's been almost two hours when Donald arrives home from an interview early— the only one smart enough among them to track and find Chase other than … well, Chase. Ten minutes pass in thick silence, tense and heavy and hot. Another five minutes of four people breathing down the back of his neck, squinting with glistening eyes into the strings upon strings of unfathomable code, and Donald insists that they leave him to work in peace. Reluctantly, they consent, hearts setting with unease and anxiety and apprehension, even if none of them are willing to admit it.
Ten more minutes pass. Twenty. Thirty.
An hour.
An hour and thirty minutes tick away, and Donald Davenport stands from his seat, exhausted and covered in a thin film of nerve-induced sweat.
The hopeful, pleading eyes that fix upon him drive a spear of guilt through his chest, but his face says it all, and soon the party of Tasha, Leo, Bree and Adam mirror his expression exactly.
The nail is driven infinitely deeper when Donald is forced to say on a ghost of a whisper:
"I have no idea where Chase is," he tells them, his throat lumpy, and his voice hoarse. "My program is being denied."
Unknown Location
It isn't like waking the way he does normally. It's colder. The air is heavier, and stifling. His body is numb, and yet his head throbs with a dull pain, pumping steadily and harsh against his temples. He finds himself face-down on a floor of cool, smooth metal, and upon closer inspection he notices a tiny, dark pool on the ground that explains the taste of iron hanging on the edge of his tongue: blood.
After three minutes of fruitless attempts to stand, Chase raises himself into a sitting position, dizzy and groggy and nauseous. From what he can gather, the room he's in is incredibly large.
And incredibly dark.
His bionic sight helps a little, but darkness presses in at every angle. It feels as though something is moving, as if he stands upon a large swaying platform, but for all Chase can tell, he can be inside or outside or in the afterlife.
That last guess steals the breath from his lungs, and he has to remind himself to stay calm.
Chase does not panic, but his heart does hammer against his chest, an unsteady thump that is barely audible over the sound of blood rushing to his ears. Feel that? he tells himself. Your heart is beating. Your blood is pumping. You're not dead.
Not yet.
A draft blows by and cools the sweat glistening against his skin, easing the way his head aches. After deeming himself stable enough for an attempt to stand, Chase raises on trembling legs, choking back the wave of nausea washing over him. He can't stop himself from waiting— waiting for lights to flicker on and blind him. Waiting for Adam to pop out of nowhere, a mile-long grin stretching across his features, jeering, "Ha! Scared you, didn't I?" Hell, at this point, Chase half-expects for a bullet to pierce his through heart at any given second, dropping him to his knees, choking blood from his lips—
But everything remains just as silent as it has been. Nothing breaks the quiet but the sound of his own irregular, heavy breath.
Think, he tells himself, desperate for some sort of balance. How did I get here? How can I get out of this situation? Are my bionics intact—
His bionics. Chase hisses aloud at his own stupidity.
Within seconds, a concentrated version of his Laser Bo Staff solidifies beneath his fingers; a peaceful, breathing glow swathing the shadows before him in a blue, spectral haze. He holds the staff a good arm's length away, trying to bathe the most amount of space possible in the incandescent light.
It takes him some time, stumbling almost-blind through the dark, but eventually the cool, solid metal of a wall slides beneath his fingertips. But the brief sliver of hope blooming in his chest is immediately torn to shreds with the realization that, even standing on the tips of his toes, Chase can't reach the staff high enough to see where the ceiling and wall should meet. The thick sheet of iron recedes seamlessly into the abyss of darkness above. Opting for a different tactic, he runs his fingers along the edge of the wall and starts walking, the staff clutched tightly in his other hand.
It takes almost a full ten minutes to cover every inch of the metal perimeter, tracing his hand along each sheet of stainless-steel, before he finally comes to a chilling conclusion.
I'm in a box,Chase thinks, a shiver threatening to crawl down his spine; a big, metal room. And there isn't a door. How is that possible?
It seems too bizarre; too — ah, what was that word, again? — too outré for it to be reality.
And then reality throws itself in his face.
Without warning, a piercing, blinding light floods into the room, and Chase falls to his knees, the metal beneath him screeching in protest to the sudden drop of weight. He fights to keep his eyelids peeled open, struggles to see anything but the harsh, unforgiving bright, before something sweet replaces the iron on the edge of his tongue. It doesn't occur to him that he's falling unconscious until he's dimly aware of his head thumping against the floor, eyes blurring in and out of a hazy clarity.
It doesn't occur to him that he has no memory of winding up in the box at all, either; until the light fades, and darkness swallows him whole.
Present time
Davenport Mansion
In the end, it's the wait that starts to get to them; climbing with a sluggish slowness like a climax that takes too long to reach its peak. It's the wait that steals the light from Bree's eyes, piece by shattered piece, and it's the wait that silences Adam, still and quiet, like deer who's afraid even the slightest of sounds can spin them into a world of danger.
(But Chase is already in danger, he had told himself dryly on a particularly bitter thought, so what's the point?)
Leo is the only one amongst them who manages to retain even the slightest shred of himself— even if it's false in the way his voice cracks, or in the way his eyes have taken to the floor as of late. He babbles in fragmented strings of conversation, mentioning things like 'hope' and 'strength', before rambling himself into a quiet mumble, sometimes silencing entirely.
(And though Bree takes note of the way Leo hasn't even once mentioned Chase himself, she holds her tongue, allowing her questions to slide like burning liquor down the back of her throat.)
Tasha and Donald don't take the absence the hardest, but they take it hard. All of them do; and it hasn't yet been even a full day. (Two hours was enough, one of them says, at some point, never mind ten of them.)
And those ten hours should have been enough to find him. Ten hours should have been enough to have all the answers, but still Donald sits clueless, idly feeding code into a computer at roughly one-thirty in the morning. A computer that refuses to obey.
But salvation does come. Briefly.
A faint blip on the screen steals the breath from Donald's lips. He waits an hour-long second, his heart threatening to give out, and again the computer bleeps, proudly announcing the location of three bionic chips. He scrambles to save the data, his palms slick with sweat, before the connection breaks and the blip disappears in an anticlimactic silence.
It disappears within seconds, but seconds is all he'd needed.
Within minutes, he visualizes the information on-screen, the gears in his head turning wildly. Donald stares, daring to hope, into the large computer monitor. He clears his throat, calling for Eddy on a ghost of a breath, his knees weak.
The program has the audacity to whine, despite the urgency of the situation, claiming to be busy with some task of particular import.
Davenport doesn't ask, doesn't question what business a computer could possibly have. Instead he waves his hand in Eddy's general direction, opening his mouth to demand the computer get to work tracking the coordinates, searching possible local locations, and other tedious tasks that Donald had no time to complete himself. But his sentence is cut-off when an incessant ring echoes throughout the house, shrill and high and unwelcome.
Not now, not now … He prays, punching in a few quick lines of code. He allows his fingers to slide away from the Cyberdesk, answering the video call projected on the lab's largest screen with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The man facing Davenport is taller; broader-shouldered and clearly well-groomed, chestnut brown hair cleverly combed over a balding spot on his head. He's familiar, but not in a way that brings a smile to his face. Not even a little bit.
"Good evening, Davenport," he greets him pleasantly, but he's shrewd enough that his voice throws Donald off to the point where he can't tell if the friendly curl to his tongue is forced or rhetoric or genuine.
So Donald responds on the churning of apprehension in his gut, "What is it, Kreed?"
A pause between sentences, and Kreed Canterbury thins together his lips in a splay of a mild irritation. "I've news," he says, and the friendly edge to his tone drops like a rock. "You haven't misplaced anything as of late, have you?"
Donald stares; doesn't even bother opening his lips to reply, acidic and burning like a harsh liquor. He allows the scathing retorts to slide down the back of his throat, suddenly livid. Canterbury is a douche, yes, but the two of them are business partners. Almost friends. So Donald allows him the benefit of the doubt; he forces his voice into a tremoring calm. "What do you know about Chase?" Donald demands, cold and dangerous and straight to the point.
"You can lose the sour expression, Donny. I've laid not eyes nor fingers on your son's head in ages," Canterbury assures him, offhandedly, but the tone of his voice is skewed. Davenport's blood boils beneath his skin— that nickname. Only one person in Donald's entire life has ever had permission to speak to him so informally, and Kreed Canterbury sure as hell isn't Douglas Davenport. He forces himself down, to stay calm. For Chase's sake, if not for his own. "However… I may know the person who has. Or, should I rephrase, the persons."
The persons? Donald's gut twists, his chest aching. His fingers curl into small fists at his side. He'd had an idea, a suspicion, but now— he had really, really hoped the churning in his stomach had been for nothing. But Kreed confirms it, washing away one apprehension and, in doing so, replacing it by approximately twenty-three of them.
"The Phoenix," Davenport breathes, his stomach churning, and without waiting for a proper affirmation (he no longer requires one), he says, "I should have known."
The Class of Phoenix, shortened to 'The Phoenix' by those who are unfortunate enough to have familiarized themselves with them, is a throng of wealthy business owners and monarchs, some of California's wealthiest dwelling amongst them; an 'over glorified tea party', as Douglas had rather taken to call it. Despite the numerous offers proposed to the brothers, neither had ever been interested in joining their ranks. Douglas simply does not care for social gatherings— the ones occupied by men who entertain themselves in petty games of fetch and drunken darts, in any case. And while Donald does of course adore the opportunity to flaunt his wealth like a jewel, the group's shady history had deterred them both.
This had been before either of them had known about the truth to their insanity, of course. Their perverse greed and desire for wealth and the horrific means they would employ to achieve their goals. It isn't so much as they are kept well-under wraps, but the simple fact that they had been kind to those they wanted amongst their ranks had been deceiving.
And the name still feels like blades against his skin, knifes digging into his back; the blood they draw elicits in the form of shudders creeping down his spine, eerie chills blooming across his clammy skin. Why him? Why Chase?
What have you done to get yourself thrown into this mess?
"I hear they call themselves by 'The Class', as of late," says Canterbury, and it tears Donald abruptly away from his thoughts. Davenport returns his gaze to the screen, his jaw set. "It's strange, isn't it? After years of silence… although, I suppose it is not unlike them to return in style, I would think—"
"Kidnapping my son is not 'returning in style', Kreed," Donald hisses, not without venom, practically seething. "Why are you telling me this, anyway? What do you have to gain from it?"
The thing about Kreed Canterbury is that he seeks personal advancement at every step of every day, and Donald is well aware of this problematic trait. But regardless of whether or not they are something akin to friends, this is the way things are, and so Davenport has learnt to accept it. And perhaps the man has a way with words, too — What's wrong with a little personal gain, anyway, Davenport? You of all people should understand — so Donald bites his tongue, and he doesn't hold his breath. After all, the balding man on the screen before him responds plainly, without a moment's pause;
"I like a good story."
And just like that, Donald resigns himself to mediocracy, rubbing his thumbs against his temples in attempt to ease the ache reeling in protest to every bad decision that has landed him in this situation, every bad decision that may just get him out of it.
"I assume that's all this call was really about?" asks Davenport, although he sounds too tired to be angry. Too anxious to sound cross.
Kreed does not miss a beat. "Yes."
"Then goodnight, Canterbury."
"Goodnight, Davenport."
—And the screen flickers to black.
end of: 1