2018.
Kanon POV
"Ragazzo. Ragazzo." Someone was calling him, a male voice, deep and husky. Was he speaking in Italian? "Ragazzo."
Kanon opened his eyes slowly. He had a slight headache and realized he was lying on the floor. The black bag had already been removed from his head and the cuffs from his wrists. He blinked his eyes and came into his focus a young man who should have been 25 years old. He had short, frizzy blue hair, eyes the same color, skin tanned more than his own, and a wispy stubble on his chin. He was strong and muscular, and dressed in casual clothes, a black shirt, and dark jeans, with boots.
"What place is this?" Kanon said, still half sleepy.
"We don't know either" said another voice, thinner and more delicate than the one with the frizzy hair "we woke up like you: with a black bag on our head, inside this room, without any information. Security just throws people into the room and leaves them here."
Kanon looked at the other boy. He was slimmer than the Italian boy, and had long, pool-blue wavy hair, equally blue eyes (with a charming speck near his left eye), pale skin, little makeup, and pink lips. He wore a pink shirt, slightly unbuttoned, giving a view of a thin gold choker necklace near his collarbones, with white pants and pale shoes.
"That's your brother, isn't he?" asked the Italian.
"Saga!" Kanon exclaimed, seeing his brother, next to him, still wearing his black turtleneck shirt and his jeans of the same color "Saga, wake up!"
Saga was still sleeping, breathing deeply. Kanon knew that that injection could potentiate the effects of Saga's drugs, causing him an overdose.
"It's okay with him" Kanon heard another voice, deeper than the boy in the pink shirt, but thinner than the Italian "I've already checked his vitals, it's all right, he just needs to sleep."
Kanon looked back to see who was talking to him. He was a boy with blue eyes, skin a little more tanned than his, lean and muscular, with very shaggy blue hair, which gave him the appearance of an 80s rock singer. In fact, the boy didn't just have similar hair. with that of an 80s rock singer, all his clothes followed the same style. He wore a black leather jacket with spikes over a red shirt, tight, dark, ripped jeans with dark sneakers and black-painted nails.
"Who are you?" Kanon asked "you were also..."
"Kidnapped? Oui" said a boy, behind the rocker. He had blue eyes, and his blue hair was lighter than the rocker guy, but not to be peaked, except for his bangs, which gave him a boyish look. He was dressed in a blue shirt, pale, tight jeans with a rolled-up hem and white sneakers. Was he French?
"The Graad Foundation lured us all in and kidnapped us, throwing us into this empty room. We have no idea where we are."
Aiolia and Aiolos woke up from their torpor too, disoriented. They asked the same questions he did, and the boys answered them, looking tired, as if they'd already answered those questions over and over again.
"Saga. Saga" Kanon patted Saga's face "Saga, you need to wake up."
Saga began to flutter his eyelids and open his eyes, trying to focus on Kanon. He knew it was very difficult to wake his brother up under the influence of medication, but Saga did not have the luxury of staying asleep.
"Where are we...?" Saga asked, in a weak and sleepy voice.
"I don't know, nobody here knows, it seems that everyone was kidnapped" Kanon said "Saga, make an effort to stay awake, we don't know what will happen now."
Saga made a Herculean effort to try to keep his gaze focused on Kanon, but he always gave signs that he would faint again. Kanon put Saga in a sitting position, with his back against the living room wall, while someone pushed a bottle of water.
"Give it to him, young man" said the boy with shaggy hair "so that he can stay awake. Does he take any kind of medicine?"
"Yes" said Kanon.
"So, it's better that he stays conscious as long as possible. Who knows if he will have an overdose or not." he said.
It was a huge, long chamber with pale blue walls. There was only one massive, heavy door, also light-toned and gilded. The windows were of very thick glass, and it looked like it was night. Inside the room, there was only one table, with thirteen gold chairs. Kanon noticed that the chair at the head was the most imposing, with the symbol of an owl and with red upholstery and gold ornaments. The other chairs also followed the same pattern, but with a difference: each of them had a symbol of the signs of the zodiac, totaling twelve chairs.
"We were wondering if you are from Gemini, Leo or Sagittarius" said a boy with short auburn hair, green eyes and a square jaw. He was the shortest of them all, and he appeared to be the youngest as well. He wore baggy black sweatpants for his size, an equally baggy colored sweatshirt, and Air Jordan sneakers. He dressed like a rapper and looked straight out of Instagram.
"Each chair has a symbol of the signs of the Western zodiac" the boy dressed as a rapper continued "I asked everyone's sign. All that was missing was Sagittarius, Leo and Gemini."
"I have no idea of my sign" said Aiolos "I just know that I was born at the end of November."
"You're a Sagittarius, then" said the boy in the pink shirt.
"Saga! Saga!" Kanon exclaimed again, seeing his brother fainting again "Saga, wake up!"
"Put him in the chair" said the rocker "he'll be more comfortable there."
Kanon and Aiolos held Saga and sat him in Gemini's chair, while he himself made an enormous effort to keep his head up.
"Milo, the box opened again!" Camus said "They gave us a bag with saline solution and a... tube, a tape... and... needle... and a note! Says the serum has some... Naloxone (1) ..."
"Perfect!" said the rocker, as he took a keyring from his pocket with a mini flashlight, and examined Saga's pupils, which were extremely closed" give me the IV bag, along with the tube and the syringe. Did they give us some kind of opioid? It can only be, by the use of Naloxone...
"Look man" said a man with dark green hair, short and spiked, chef's clothes, narrow eyes and a little expressionless "I don't think we are the most suitable people to answer that.
"Wait, but will you inject this in my brother?" said Kanon "there is no way to know if it is Naloxone or not!"
"Well," said Milo, "if we don't use it, your brother has a better chance of dying."
"Wait" Kanon said "are you a doctor? Do you know how to do this?"
"No" said the boy in rocker clothes "I'm a medical student."
"And what year are you in?"
"In the second year of graduation" replied the boy "Don't worry, I've already done this procedure in my college friends. It's very easy and common."
Kanon froze. A medical student looking for a vein in his brother with dirty hands.
"Look Ragazzo, if your brother dies with this crazy person there" said the Italian "I'll make a cheap funeral plan for you. I work with it, you know. With the Sicily funerary mask and all."
Kanon looked at the boy.
"I will accept."
"Kanon, I heard that" Saga said, in a thick voice.
"I'm sorry I do this with my hands not as clean as I should" said Milo, looking at Saga "but it's for your own good."
Whether or not Saga understood what he meant, Kanon did not know, but Milo soon injected the liquid into Saga's vein and checked if the medicine came out normally from the IV bag.
"Hey, Aldebaran" said Milo, pointing to a very tall boy with long straight dark hair, also dark monobrows and strong features, with black skin and a muscular body "will you hold the IV bag for me, please? You are the tallest of them all."
"Of course!" said the boy, who had a softer voice than he could imagine.
"Did they give him a higher dose?" Said a boy with straight and lilac hair, blue-green eyes with glasses, very light skin and two exotic spots at the beginning of what should be his eyebrows, since he did not have them "After all, none of us were like that."
"Does he take any prescription drugs?" said Milo.
"Yes" Kanon replied.
"Which?"
Kanon hesitated and took a deep breath. The guy in question seemed to understand medicine, as he managed to get access into Saga's vein perfectly. The problem was to reveal that Saga had psychic sufferings for a bunch of strangers. Saga has always been too insecure and too cautious to talk about this issue. Only family members, close friends, and the university where he worked knew about it (and his fellow professors only knew the reason for the absence because someone from HR leaked the news to them).
"Anxiolytics, antidepressants, antipsychotics..."
The boy with short, frizzy blue hair opened his eyes wide and looked at the boy with the pretty spot in his left eye, who also looked surprised. Like everyone around him except Milo and...
"Surely, it's someone who needs a little peace, isn't it?" said a very blond boy, thin, but muscular, sitting in the Virgo chair, with his eyes closed, wearing a Bindi (Kanon recognized as he already had to work with an Indian girl in the base of Antarctica) and wearing a wine Sari "the evils of the soul cannot be completely cured with man's remedies."
Oh shit. How Kanon hated this little talk of "good vibes" people.
"My brother already has an excellent treatment" said Kanon, sharply "I believe that psychiatrists and psychologists already know what has to be done with him or not."
The boy opened his eyes, which turned out to be as blue as the sky. He looked at Kanon, who had a certain air of curiosity.
"Well," said the blonde guy "I hope your brother isn't looking for peace in medicine, you know. Peace exists within us, and only within us."
Kanon decided to ignore the man. The last thing he needed was a teaching from a stranger.
"Kan...?" Saga woke up, and called for him "Kan…?"
"I'm here Saga. We're giving you medicine to dissipate the drug's effects."
"Guys" said the red-haired boy "everyone is here."
"How do you know?" Said the man in chef's clothes.
"Well," said the redhead, sitting in the Libra chair, with his feet crossed on the table "there are twelve signs of the zodiac marked on the chairs around the table. We find that each of us represents a sign. We are thirteen, but two of our group are twins, meaning they have only one sign."
Everyone looked at each other in surprise.
"And why would the Graad Foundation want to kidnap people of different signs?" Asked the exotic guy with two spots in his head "what can our signs influence their interests?"
"I don't know" said the redhead "but they don't want us dead. They didn't torture us either, since we had lunch."
"And we will have dinner, apparently" said the French man "the box opened again!"
What the boy called "the box" was actually an opening in the wall into which two boxes were pushed into the room. One of the boxes had thirteen pots, each with its forks and knives. In the other box, there were sleeping bags. Everyone took their jars and their sleeping bags, except Saga, who was taking the medicine in the chair and took her jar last, after the serum ran out and Milo removed the needle from her vein. Everyone ate silently and confused, not looking at each other, except for the red-haired boy, who seemed to use all his mental capacity to try to understand what was going on in that situation.
Kanon could not help but notice how different those people were from each other. The Graad Foundation kidnapping did not seem to meet any specific criteria, making the redhead's explanation of signs the only plausible explanation. Some there seemed to have Asian features, like the redhead and the boy with the two spots. Others looked Latin, like the nice big guy. But most looked to be in their twenties and thirties, were all strong and physically good.
Not everyone also seemed to be Saori's political enemies, as he himself was. The handsome guy, for example, was a poster boy for one of Saori's companies. The dull-eyed man did not seem to be an opponent of the tycoon either, as he was dressed in chef's clothes. And much less the good vibes blond guy.
So, what did they want by kidnapping all these people?
Right after dinner, the redhead said that they just put the pots in the box and they themselves would remove the leftovers, as was the case at lunch. Everyone put their pots in the boxes and got ready for bed.
Kanon prepared his sleeping bag in front of Saga, lay down and faced his brother.
"Tomorrow is another day. We have to rest well to prepare for what has to come." Saga said softly.
There was a silence, in which low snoring could already be heard. Kanon suspected they had put tranquilizers for them to sleep, since he was also a little sleepy, although he was one of the last to wake up.
"What are you thinking, Kanon?" Saga asked.
"You already know. I don't need to tell you" Kanon said.
Saga sighed wearily.
"It's too risky, Kanon. She has a lot more powers than us."
"If so, then I could not have faced the Foundation because of the leaks."
"Still, Kanon. Are they safe?"
"They are. Do not worry. It is unlikely that she will be able to reach them, she does not have enough time" said Kanon, firmly "she will not be able to avoid chaos."
"Does Aiolos know about this?"
Kanon smiled.
"He knows. He is better than I imagined."
This time, Saga smiled at his brother affectionately.
"Give me your hand, Kanon" Saga said.
"For what?"
"Because I know you're scared shitless, like when you were a kid and asked you to sleep in my bed afraid of the dark" Saga said, laughing.
"Fuck you, Saga." Kanon said, laughing.
(1) Naloxone hydrochloride is a fast-acting substance that nullifies the effects of overdose by opium-derived drugs (such as morphine and heroin). It is widely used in emergency due to heroin overdose in the US (it is even sold in drugstores).