Absolute Unit by Nick Kolakowski & Crystal Lake Publishing

Author:Nick Kolakowski & Crystal Lake Publishing [Kolakowski, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
Published: 2021-07-28T22:00:00+00:00

14.

Trent opens his eyes.

He’s in a windowless storage room, its sides lined with shelves loaded with canned goods, bags of flour, boxes of dried meats. Through the thick steel door comes the roar and clang of a kitchen in mid-shift, chefs yelling in Spanish as they wrestle with a tide of orders.

Trent winces at a line of pain around his wrist. He’s handcuffed to a floor-to-ceiling pipe, the cuff tightened until it threatens to break the skin. He tries to stand and the cuff smacks against a flange, stopping him in a crouch. He plops back onto cold concrete, tears brimming in the corners of his eyes.

Stop it, we tell him, hoping he’ll somehow hear—and wonder of wonders, he does.

I can’t, he thinks at us. Then: Wait, you weren’t a dream?

No.

“God,” Trent says, scratching at his neck and arms with his free hand. “Am I fucking losing it?”

Calm down. If you don’t, we’re not getting out of here.

Despite our request, Trent’s heart speeds, his forehead beading with sweat despite the coolness of the room. We squeeze out dopamine until he relaxes.

What did you just do to me?

We can control your hormones, other chemicals. We offer another burst of happy juice, just to prove our point. Notice how quickly you’ve calmed down today?

Dude, that’s awesome. Give me more!

No. Too much, and you’ll burn out. So, we have direct communication with the host. While it’s not exactly full control, Trent seems amenable to our presence.

Trent plops on the floor as we perform another quick damage assessment. Parts of our core are singed, and we may no longer control Trent’s left leg, but otherwise we seem more intact than we have any right to expect. Lactic acid drenches Trent’s muscles around our tendrils, harsh as cold coffee. What did they hit us with upstairs?

“Oh man,” Trent says. “My jacket’s gone. I loved that thing.”

We have bigger problems, we tell him. Hear those footsteps outside?

The door crashes open, revealing the Mountain. In his left hand, he holds the largest taser we’ve ever seen. Well, that explains how he put us under. A couple thousand volts to the back of the neck will make anyone feel a bit poorly.

The Mountain steps into the room, followed by Big Jim with his cigar tucked into the corner of his mouth. The stogie looks half-smoked, which, if it’s the same one he lit upstairs, means twenty minutes or so have passed since the Mountain fried our circuits.

“Carrie,” Trent says.

Big Jim shrugs. “She’s fine. Which is to say, she’ll get over it. She really cares for you, but she’s young.”

“I want to see her.”

“Sure, yeah. But first, I want to talk a bit about our mutual friend Frank and your uncle Bill.” Retrieving a stepstool from between two shelves, plunking it on the tile near Trent (but just beyond the reach of Trent’s kicks), Big Jim takes a seat before continuing: “I think you’re lying to me.” He blows smoke in Trent’s face. “In fact, I know you are. Our friends with the police, they tell me you were present when Frank got splattered.

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