When Fletcher woke, he was freezing and in pain. So much pain. Much more than he remembered being in when he passed out. His stomach was no longer a dull ache but sharp jabs at random intervals. After a moment, he discerned that there was something in his body.

  Crying out through some kind of gag, he tried to grasp at whatever was in there to stop it from hurting him anymore, but hands immediately grabbed him and pinned him to the cold table below.

  “Deities, he’s awake,” someone said from above. “I thought you said this would be fast.”

  Fletcher opened his eyes, squinting against the bright light to see the [Shade] peering down at him, two arms planted squarely on Fletcher’s right arm and chest, with the [Dragonist] holding down the left side. The [Gnome] stood on a stool, leaning over his torso and digging some kind of tool into his abdomen.

  Blood leaked from the cut along his stomach where she worked, and a table to the side held a variety of used medical instruments. The urge to throw up hit very suddenly as he realized they were performing surgery on him.

  “Give him a shot of diraxis. He’s already maxed the dose of gorfome,” the [Gnome] said. Fletcher vaguely recognized the terms as some of the newer concoctions created from bridging Unhuman and Human medical science. “I didn’t expect it to take this long, but he wrecked things in here. I need more time.”

  “Are you sure about this?” The [Shade] held up a syringe full of a dull blue liquid. “I thought diraxis wasn’t supposed to mix with gorfome.”

  “It won’t kill him, but he’ll wish it had when he wakes up next. Do it now. He’s losing a lot of blood still,” the [Gnome] said sharply.

  Fletcher gurgled against the cloth in his mouth, trying to jolt away as the needle descended to his neck.

  “Easy there, kid. Just go back to sleep so we can finish up,” the [Dragonist] said in a soothing voice that only terrified Fletcher more.

  The needle went into his skin with a pinch of pain, and then a cooling sensation started from the injection site. In another second he felt the effects hit his brain as his thoughts turned themselves off and his eyelids closed, cutting off the last of his fears.

  ***

  Fletcher slowly dragged himself from the claws of sleep. A massive headache pounded in his head, the entirety of his body ached, and his mouth was drier than desert sand. He must have simultaneously worked out every muscle group at the gym while getting as drunk as possible to get this kind of aftereffect.

  He had yet to take a sick day while in Bren’it’p, but Nanti would surely understand and likely appreciate that he didn’t haul himself into the office while in this condition. Not that he knew how to take an official sick day, but Beam would be able to help him with that.

  Thinking of his girlfriend, he tried to reach out to where she lay but stopped as he discovered his hands were bound together. With that realization, a flood of memories came back. The gala, the explosion, Addy, getting kidnapped… the surgery.

  Panic hit as he tried to sit up, his eyes shooting open. He needed to know what they did to him. Those freaks.

  “Baltic, he’s awake,” the [Dragonist] said as his hands clamped on Fletcher’s shoulders, pushing him back down. “Easy there, kid. The last thing we need is for you to rip your gut open again.”

  They were in the back of an SUV, with Fletcher bundled under a pile of blankets in some type of makeshift bed along the last row of seats. Daylight streamed through the windows as they drove past trees that he recognized as ones common to Mythia, with their blue bark and yellow-tinged leaves.

  The [Shade] drove with the [Gnome] sitting in a booster seat in the passenger seat. Addy was on the second row, leaning forward to speak with them as the [Dragonist] attended him.

  “W-what—” Fletcher cut himself off with a series of violent coughs, each one sending waves of pain from both his stomach and his chest. His tongue didn’t want to cooperate in such harsh conditions, his mouth sapped completely of any kind of saliva.

  “Here. Try this,” the [Dragonist] replied softly, releasing his shoulders to instead hold his head up and place a bottle of water at his lips.

  Fletcher practically inhaled the liquid, ready to down the entire bottle in one go except for his caretaker who forced him to take small sips instead. After he’d made it through about half the bottle, the [Dragonist] pulled it away.

  “Better?” he asked, a smile on his yellow-scaly face.

  “Thanks,” Fletcher muttered, finding most of his panic had passed. He was tied up and injured, but at least his captors were nice—for the time being. He tried to speak again. “Ugh. What did… you guys do to me?”

  His head still ached as though it were actively being beaten, making it difficult to form coherent thoughts. He tried to motion to his abdomen with his bound hands, but they were tucked under several blankets, limiting how much he could gesture.

  The [Dragonist] chuckled. “We saved your life, kid. Agnes pulled a whole bunch of shrapnel from your gut before it could tear up any more of your insides and repaired as much of the damage as she could.”

  “I’m afraid Agnes used all her of [Mana] to [Heal] me, so you’re stuck healing the old fashioned way,” Addy added in. She unbuckled and moved to kneel by him, crowding the small area. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better,” he murmured as he leaned back and closed his eyes. The pain in his skull refused to ease in the slightest.

  “Sounds about right for someone who got dosed with both diraxis and gorfome. Sorry about that by the way, but we didn’t keep a great selection of medical supplies at the safehouse,” the [Gnome] said from the front. “I’m Doctor Agnes Worthrot by the way.”

  Fletcher mumbled something akin to “pleased to meet you,” wishing he was asleep again. The same questions from the night before swirled through his mind. What on earth did they want with him? Why would these people know his name of all things? As he lay there wondering, he became aware of a very uncomfortable sensation that was going to make things awkward.

  Sighing, he reopened his eyes. “I need to pee.”

  “You heard him, Dart. Pull over. It’ll be good for all of us to stretch our legs,” Addy called up to the front.

  “We’re less than an hour away from the outpost. Can’t he hold it?”

  “Now, Sergeant,” she ordered.

  Grumbling to himself, the [Shade] slowed the vehicle to a stop as the [Dragonist] pulled blankets off Fletcher. The front two got out of their seats and opened the back doors as Addy put the first row of seats down and the [Dragonist] helped Fletcher to his feet. He slowly crossed to the door and shivered from the cold draft hitting his bare torso.

  “Careful with those stitches.” Agnes grabbed Fletcher’s arm to keep him from falling over as he stepped into the cool grass with his bare feet.

  He glanced down to see a selection of very dark bruises along his chest followed by a neat row of sutures puckering the skin on the front of his abdomen. As he reached to touch it, the [Gnome] slapped his bound hands away.

  “What did I just say?” she said coolly.

  “I’ll take him out.” The [Dragonist] placed a hand on Fletcher’s shoulder and gestured to the nearest set of trees.

  “Thank you, West.” Addy stood near the door, looking in far better condition than the night before, unlike Fletcher.

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  West followed closely behind as Fletcher struggled over to the woods, rocks and sticks stabbing into his feet and his gut complaining with every step. Once he deemed there was enough coverage, he did his business, ignoring the [Dragonist] hovering nearby.

  After he finished, he stumbled back out of the brush. West held his arms out as if he expected Fletcher to collapse at any moment. In truth, it was a fair assumption because Fletcher felt as if he might collapse very soon with the intense throbbing of his head. At that point, all he wanted was to fall back into the makeshift bed and burrow under the covers in hopes of finding some kind of escape from the screaming of his body.

  West helped him back into the SUV, but he held off on repiling on the blankets as Agnes came to stand near him.

  “Let’s make sure these are going to hold,” she said as she tested the stitches.

  Fletcher bit his lip and dug his nails into his palms while she did her check, only breathing again once she stepped away and he was sure the pain was over.

  Addy took her place, holding a cell phone in her hand.

  “Is there any kind of music you absolutely hate?” she asked him.

  He shook his head and immediately regretted it as the pain intensified. It seemed a little cruel to not give him painkillers after everything, but he didn’t have the strength to argue about it.

  “Great,” Addy said with a smile. She tucked the phone away and produced a set of wireless earbuds.

  “What’s that for?” he replied before his mind could process the information. “Oh, wait. No—”

  The [Elf] cut him off by placing a bud in each of his ears, both blaring music. She said something more to him, but he couldn’t hear it. It wasn’t that music was too loud, but rather that the earbuds were the fancy kind with active noise canceling technology.

  He shook his head to show that he didn’t understand and reached up to take them out. She grabbed his hands and pushed them back down to his torso as West dropped a load of blankets on him. They then secured him further with a tie that went all the way around him and the seat, keeping his arms in place so he couldn’t remove the earbuds.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, probably loudly since he couldn’t really hear himself, but the only response he got was a blindfold wrapped around his head, blocking his vision and securing the earbuds. Next time he went to speak, someone placed a sodden cloth in his mouth.

  Mute, blind, and deaf to everything but the music, Fletcher felt the rumble of the vehicle as the engine started, and he glumly realized he was going to be stuck like this until they got wherever they were going.

  Is this really a better solution than knocking me unconscious again, he wondered. It appeared so since no one made any effort to communicate with him, leaving him to listen to the odd variety of music provided. It seemed Addy had gotten ahold of a library of every kind of music in the world and then simply hit shuffle on it.

  The first couple songs were what he expected, generic pop songs from the 2020’s and 2030’s, back before the Merger when being a musician was a legitimate career. But then a classical piano song came on followed by something sung in Korean, a more or less dead language since the countries who spoke it were wiped off the face of the planet.

  It was when the country song began that he realized he’d lied about his music tastes. If she’d only given him a few moments to think about it, he could have informed her how much he despised the twang of country music, but it was too late now. He was going to spend the next hour of his life trying to guess what the next song might be and wondering what on earth the Hexed Humans wanted with him.

  The constant music, especially at that volume, served to worsen his headache, and Fletcher was convinced his skull might actually break apart at some point during the drive. Thanks to the tie across his body, he had little freedom to move, and his hands were getting tingly being tied up at the wrists and then forced flat against his body.

  The hour passed slowly, perhaps not as slowly as it would have without the music, but by the end of it, Fletcher was ready to be rid of the earbuds and have his regular hearing back. Eventually the SUV came to a stop, and the vibrations of the engine ended.

  Finally, we’re to the outpost Dart mentioned. Fletcher sighed in relief best he could around the gag which was barely damp at that point. He was less satisfied with the situation when the tie around his body came off, and then someone—West if he had to guess—scooped him up like a child, blankets and all, and carried him from the vehicle.

  Fletcher assumed this was only a temporary measure, something to do while they were outside, but West didn’t set him down to walk at any point. The air was cold at first before suddenly becoming warm, so he concluded they were in a building, but the earbuds kept doing their work and the blindfold remained in place, so he had nothing else to go on.

  Several minutes later, Fletcher was placed onto a bed, blankets and all. He hated the humiliation these people were putting him through, but he also didn’t exactly have the ability to argue with them about it. Someone dug through the blankets to unbury his hands and release his wrists, but before he could enjoy his newfound freedom, they pushed them each to their respective side and secured his wrists into different bindings attached to the bed. The same thing happened to his ankles, reminding Fletcher that he was still most definitely their prisoner.

  There was a pause for about a minute, and then the gag was taken out and the blindfold and earbuds were removed. Fletcher blinked rapidly in the sudden change of light, offering a prayer of gratitude to whatever higher being might be out there that he wasn’t in a dark room where his [Dark Vision] would have activated.

  Instead, he was in a sterile, metal room which looked to be a cross between a prison and a hospital room. Agnes was there along with a Human man, somewhere in his thirties.

  “Let’s get him under. The General is eager to see him,” Agnes said, handing the clipboard she held back to the man.

  “Under?” Fletcher said through a tight voice as his stomach clenched. He wasn’t in the mood for more surgery.

  “We have to finish getting the shrapnel out. I didn’t have the proper time or equipment last night. It’ll be short, and we have the proper drugs, so you’ll be asleep the whole time,” the [Gnome] promised.

  Fletcher watched with wary eyes as the Human man came to him with an IV line which he swiftly inserted before pushing a syringe full of something into it. Fletcher took a quick breath and stared at the ceiling to try to calm himself as the drugs took effect. In another moment, he was asleep yet again.

  ***

  The next time Fletcher came to, it was a far more pleasant experience than the previous two times. It was gentle and unaccompanied by pain for once. He even had enough sense of himself to take a second to confirm that he could sense light leaking through his eyelids before he opened his eyes, still clinging to his secret in hopes of keeping it from the Hexed Humans a little longer.

  He blinked and groaned as he sat up, his movement uninhibited for the first time in a long while.

  “Fletcher. Hi. Are you feeling alright?” Addy asked from nearby. She had on a full blown military uniform, but not one he recognized from the Humans or Unhumans.

  “Yeah. A lot better,” he confessed. He wore a pair of cotton scrubs which was a nice change from his bloody pants. Checking under the shirt, he was surprised to find the bruises gone and his stomach smooth except for a thin scar where the gash had originally been.

  “There’s someone else with [Heal] who was able to patch you up properly this time around. We’re lucky we got you here soon enough to be [Healed] at all,” Addy explained, noting the confusion. “If you’re ready, the General would like to see you.”

  Not another general, Fletcher pleaded inside himself. He’d had more than his fill of military officials over the past few months. But seeing no other option, he nodded.

  Addy held up a blindfold and a set of handcuffs. “You understand, right? Just to be safe.”

  He sighed and nodded, moving his hands in front of him. Addy had other ideas, though, and pushed them behind his back where she cuffed them before placing the blindfold over his eyes and the earbuds in his ears, once again cutting him off from the world.

  She led him in bare feet through a set of concrete corridors. The floors were concrete at least, and he chose to imagine the rest of the facility like that since he had nothing else to go on. It felt right for the situation of being held captive, though even with all his wondering, he had yet to puzzle out why.

  It could be because he was an official Unhuman citizen or maybe it was because they knew of his connection with General Taki and wanted the information they thought he would pass on.

  It wasn’t too long before he was pushed down into a chair and his hands were recuffed around the back to keep him in place, ending his musings as to why he was here at all. Surely whatever general he was due to see would answer that and finally put his questions to rest.

  The blindfold and earbuds were then removed, and Fletcher found himself in another metal-walled room, though this one had a desk with a computer on it and a set of shelves along one wall.

  Addy stepped back, and Fletcher glanced over his shoulder to see her speaking with a Human woman who was quite a bit older, somewhere in her fifties. She looked Human enough except for the streaks of blue in her brown and gray hair.

  A Mixhuman then. She too wore a military uniform but was clearly of much higher rank than Addy.

  Addy noticed Fletcher’s eyes and smiled.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” the general said.

  “Of course, General,” Addy replied. She saluted and then walked out of the room, the metal door closing with a final sounding thud.

  The woman walked to the desk, her back to him. She then took a visibly deep breath and turned around, a smile on her face. “Fletcher Anders, it’s about time I saw you again.”

  Again…?

  He stared at her, trying to find the trace of familiarity.

  Her eyes…

  He’d seen those eyes before. Every time he looked in the mirror, that same shade of green stared back at him. Chills crossed over his skin as the recesses of his memories confirmed it.

  This woman was his mother.

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