Elias awoke to a rich metallic taste in his mouth.
His body didn't ask or wait for permission as his throat violently convulsed, spewing up hot bile all over his chest. Even throwing up didn't give him much relief as his stomach retracted into an even tighter, undoable knot. He tried hard to ignore the nauseating smell of his own vomit as he forced open his eyes. It took an embarrassing amount of energy to keep them open for long.
The only thing he could recall was a sharp, piercing pain before everything went black. Whatever unknown cocktail of drugs he'd been injected with was far from a light sedative.
He blinked hard, trying to clear some of the disjointed haze that had replaced his vision.
After a short time, Elias could vaguely make out that he was in a small storage room. As if the stomach pains weren't freaking him out enough, he became aware that his arms and legs were bound up tightly in rope. He barely managed to quieten his rapid breathing.
His thoughts were running a hundred miles per hour, trying desperately to cling on to any small crumb of information – anything that could give him a better idea of how he ended up here – but his foggy brain wasn't cooperating the way Elias needed it to.
He looked down dejectedly at his tied hands and saw a small thin cut running across it. Looked like it was probably from a knife. His knife. He remembered now. The knife that had been ripped out of his grasp by Shezza just before he'd been drugged.
Still, Elias knew he was forgetting something important – something that caused him to feel a primal stirring of both confusion and deep rage.
He felt like he was going to throw up all over again as the fog started to peel away. The second figure. It was his words that had caused that twisting of emotion – two simple everyday words that made Elias want to burst into flames.
Little brother.
"It can't be… Please, God, not them."