When I wake up again I know something is wrong immediately.
It’s almost 5AM and my new (and probably expensive) pajama pants are soaking wet.
I groggily scramble out of the bed, the sleeping pill Major Prescott gave me still has it’s pull on me and makes it feel like I’m walking through gelatin.
Giving up on finding clothes, I fight the sleepy haze and strip the wet sheets off the bed but I don’t know what to do with them.
On the Star I did my own laundry and had my own private bathroom, I could have easily cleaned up without anyone noticing but now I have to rely on other people.
The townhouse is a maze and it doesn’t help that I feel like I’m moving in slow motion. I run into the security guard sitting at the front door and he walks me to the master bedroom and then leaves quickly. Major Prescott had told me they had a rotating shift of 24-hour security guards at the house, but they weren’t allowed to come upstairs unless it is an emergency.
When I knock on the closed master bedroom door, the automatic hinges open and Major Prescott sits up from where he’d been sleeping and turns the lights on with his syndicate.
The bedroom lights are blinding and when my eyes adjust I suddenly don’t know what is more embarrassing;
- That I’d wet the bed.
- That Major Prescott is sleeping with a Starlight the Unicorn plush
- Or the fact that I know he must have brought the plush in the last four years because Starlight was wearing a little plush crown and Starlight was only coronated Prince of Mystic Island in the series finale book that came out four years ago.
“What is it ?,” Major Prescott asks, his voice full of concern as he gets out of bed and walks towards me.
I know I’m not supposed to be talking a lot but I start word vomiting.
“I--I’m so sorry, I—uh, I’m sorry this has never happened to me--”
“It’s okay, son. It's just an accident,” he says, although he looks freaked out.
He walks into a closet that lights up when he steps inside. He comes back with a bag of pajamas from a designer brand.
“This is my fault--you’ve been asleep for 24 hours. I had a secret service agent sit with you when I went work yesterday,” he says. “ I assumed you would wake yourself up to go…I forgot how strong my prescription is.”
I hated that we were having this conversation and I hated that I was now missing an entire day.
I shower for a good hour with fancy soap under and then fall back asleep on the couch.
When I wake up again, Major Prescott is wearing fatigues and shaking me carefully. I impulsively jump up in defense. I wasn’t used to someone always touching me.
“You’re okay,” he says gently but he’s still touching me. “Maxwell and I’s staff are still working out a press strategy for all of this. I need to go to a confidential site today and Max would like you to stay at his office with him while I’m gone. He’s promised me he’s calmed down. He’s just obsessed with getting justice for all this.”
Major Prescott shows me how to order breakfast with his Syndicate--I don’t think there is any food in the house--and I find the cereal I like and an apple that looks like the apples I usually ate on the menu. When it arrives minutes later I’m glad to discover the packaged food tastes about the same as it did on the Star, although the apple is more tart.
I dress in a designer patterned button up shirt and pants and follow Major Prescott out the same backdoor Maxwell and Carrington left out the other day. We walk across the landscaped backyard and down a tunnel, he holds my hand as we walk down the darkened tunnel and come out in another landscaped backyard of a glass and steel high rise condominium.
Two secret service guards stand at the backdoor of the condominium holding boxy black guns. They nod at Major Prescott and eye me suspiciously as we walk inside.
“Maxwell runs his foundation and consulting firm in this building and lives in the condo above it,” he tells me as we take the elevator. “The foundation helps find missing and exploited children, which you might already know, and the consulting firm works with international leaders.”
We get off the elevator at the 14th floor. Major Prescott pauses in front of the office door to let go of my hand and slide a wedding ring on his finger.
He smiles to himself. “Follow close behind me.”
He unlocks the door and we’re in a clean bright office space, glass offices line an expansive rock wall with an expensive looking kitchen area in the corner. It smells like coffee.
Major Prescott walks confidently across the office, rebuffing the people who come up to talk to him with a smile. Some of them ask politely who I am but he easily glosses over the question.
We walk up a short staircase to a low mezzanine reception area. A grinning man is sitting behind a desk. He nods at Major Prescott and just a few steps away from the reception desk is an open office door and I can hear Maxwell’s voice coming from it.
“Good morning all, sorry to interrupt,” Major Prescott smiles as we walk right into Maxwell’s office.
Maxwell is sitting on a couch next to Carrington and on the couch opposite are two other men in suits
Maxwell and Major Prescott are suddenly all smiles to each other. Major Prescott starts talking to the two men in a language I don’t understand. They laugh about something and then he shakes their hands again.
“Major Prescott claps his hands together. "Well, gentlemen I have to be going now. I’ll see you later tonight, darling.”
“Don’t have too much fun,” Maxwell smiles, as Major Prescott quickly kisses him and exits, leaving me standing in the middle of the office.
“Is this one of the boys from your foundation, Kenneth ?,” one of them men asks in accented English.
“Yes. He’s very shy.” Maxwell says, walking towards me. He leans down to whispers into my ear and points to the door. “Go sit outside and don’t even think about fucking running.”
I quickly go to sit in one of the chairs outside his office door.
And immediately consider all the ways I could get out of here.
My guardian had said they Maxwell wouldn’t hold whatever happened between them against me but he was wrong. I couldn’t be alone with Maxwell.
The receptionist outside the office is gone and for once nobody was watching me. I’ll just pretend like I'm going to get something from the kitchen downstairs and then quietly wander away.
I stand up from my seat and the door to Maxwell’s office flies open. Maxwell walks through, with a murderous look in his eyes. He shuts the office door behind him and takes two steps towards me.
“Where are you going ?,” he demands.
“I-I was thirst--”
“What did I fucking tell you ?,” he shouts. “Sit. Down.”
He puts every threat possible into those two words and I sit.
He goes back into his meeting and comes out of the office 30 minutes later with his two guests who smile sympathetically at me, because they think I’m some poor foster boy. Which, up until two days ago I guess I was.
Maxwell stands at the door and gestures for me to come into the office. I don’t want to go in there with him, but I also don’t want to make him mad again. I quickly get on my feet and follow him inside.
“What is he planning ?,” Maxwell asks the moment the office door is closed.
I play dumb, I just stare at him.
“I know you can speak. Quite well, in fact. So polite. I heard you when you saw that needle the other day. Such big words.” he says. “Tell me this, after a decade of being locked away how is it you look so healthy and unhurt ?”
I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say.
“I never showed those recordings to Lansing. When they first started coming I knew his heart was too fragile and after the separation I was afraid they’d trigger him to publicly divorce me,” he explains. “But believe me Lansing wouldn’t be acting the way he is now if he had seen those recordings. He’d be just as suspicious as to how you got free.”
Maxwell shoves me into the wall. He towered over me, he was insanely tall. He grabs a handful of my hair, and pulls, it hurts and I try to pull away but he’s strong for a guy his age.
“Tell me the truth,” he growls. “Tell me what Haley is doing.”
I don't know what to say.
He brings my head forward and then slams it back against the wall. Pain explodes behind my eyes.
“Please…,” I start as he pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and twists it on.
He rolls back my shirt sleeve and presses the heated tip of the cigarette to the thin skin at my wrist, I nearly break my wrist yanking it away. He quickly snatches the hand back and burns it again.
“Stop…Please, I'm sorry,” I beg.
I have never been this terrified in my entire life.
But I can’t tell Maxwell the truth. A part of me still wants the option to go back to the Star and if I told Maxwell about my guardian I would never be able to go back. I decide to spill as much as I can without giving too much away.
“The recordings weren’t real.” I say, through shallow breaths. “He made them once a year. I didn’t know who I was or what the recordings were about but when I found out he let me go. It’s all I know. Please.”
“You expect me to believe that ? Why didn’t you report him ? Why did he just let you walk away? ”
“I aske—ah!,” I start and he burns my wrist again.
“You said him ? Was it Haley ? I fucking knew it was him. Where is he ? Is he in the Eastern State somewhere ?, “ Maxwell says, hovering the cigarette over a new spot. “That’s where the police found you, right ?”
I wasn’t sure how to play this one. Would that be giving away too much information ? The Star would still be docked in the Eastern State and they would find him.
“I am your father! If you want the privilege of being my son then you show me you can be apart of this family. Haley manipulates people and then fucks them over. Why are you protecting your kidnapper ? Did he stick his fingers in your asshole ? Let you put your dick in his filthy mouth--”
“N-no,” I say quickly. I can't believe what he just said to me. “Never.”
Maxwell’s eyes dance quickly in his syndicate and then he projects a video of my guardian for me to see. My guardian is younger and in a dark bedroom with three naked men and a few onlookers.
I close my eyes but I can’t close my ears all the moaning and grunting.
“Look at it,” Maxwell demands, backhanding me so hard my head slams back into the wall again. “This is the disgusting bastard you’re protecting. He’s a fucking whore and a criminal. If you don’t tell me where he is I'll have you held for contempt.”
I consider just breaking and telling him everything.
Maybe it was for the best.
As much as I liked Ms. Walker and Isla and maybe even Luce they all were knowing accomplices in my kidnapping. My guardian had tortured me on my birthday. Maybe if I tell the truth Maxwell won’t hurt me anymore and we can get along.
“I--”
The video is interrupted by an alert of an incoming voice call from Stanford Law School.
Maxwell calls away the projection and picks up the call.
“This is Maxwell,” he says congenially into his syndicate as he guides me towards a a private elevator.
He talks to whoever is on the line in a complicated jargon about legal stuff and elections as we go up another floor and to the front door of what must be the part of the condo where he lives.
He pushes me through the condo door and into an expensive looking living room. He puts the call line on mute.
“Sit on the couch and stay,” he snaps. “ Don’t even think of trying anything. There are cameras everywhere and if you so much as stand up to stretch I will come back up here. And you do not want me to come back up here. Do you understand ?”
I nod.
-2-
At lunchtime we get into a car and Maxwell takes me to a private clinic where I meet Dr. Beltran, the forensic anthropologist.
I tell Maxwell I told him everything I know but he tells me to shut up and then leaves the room as the doctor takes samples of everything from my hair to my toenails.
They give me a mild anesthetic and the doctor uses a scalpel to cut off the tattoo on the back of my ear. Then he straps me down to the table to take my blood samples and then he spends an hour sticking long tubes down my throat to look at what is in my stomach and get pieces of all my internal organs.
When it’s over I feel completely violated and the back of my ear, where they’d cut away the tattoo, hurts like a bitch. I’m taken back to Maxwell’s condo and he leaves me with the same instructions to sit on the couch and not move.
The next time the door opens, Major Prescott is on the other side. He takes one look at me, at the thick gauze behind my ear, and his eyes narrow. .
“Shit, what did he do to you ?,” he asks through gritted teeth. “He took you to that fucking anthropologist didn’t he ?”
I roll back the sleeve of my shirts to show him what had happened earlier but the cigarette hadn’t left any burn marks. I’m about to just tell him this when the door opens and Maxwell steps through
“Lansing, you are not allowed to just come up to the condo,” Maxwell shouts. “Are you checking up on me ?”
“It seems like I was right to,” Major Prescott snaps. “You don’t do fucking anything else to our son without running it by me firs--”
“Who do you think you are to tell me that ?”
“Phoenix, please go wait for me in front of the elevators,” Major Prescott says to me, opening the condo door. “We’ll go home in a minute.”
It takes me a second to realize he is talking to me because he’s calling me Phoenix. I walk out the door and the moment it shuts they start screaming at each other. I heard a sound that is either things falling or being thrown.
There don’t seem to be any armed guards on this hallway. I walk right past the elevators and decide to take my chance. I had to get out of here.
I go for the stairwell, sprinting down 15 flights, taking 3 or 4 steps at a time. When I get to the bottom floor the stairwell door is locked. I knock and bang against the stairwell door, begging it to open.
Heavy footfalls start coming down the stairs behind me and I push harder against the door to see if I can get it to open by sheer will of force but it’s completely locked.
“Phoenix!,” Major Prescott calls, breathlessly coming down the last flight. My body goes stiff as he tugs me into his embrace, he’s out of breath and his chest is rising and falling rapidly. “Don’t…do that…don’t ….ever do that, you can’t just run off--”
“I can’t do this,” I say pulling away from him but he won’t let me go. “ I’m sorry, I made a mistake, I need to go back--”
“Go where ?,” he asks softly. “There is nowhere for you to go, darling. Let’s get out of here, okay ?”
He adjusts his grip on me tighter and then scans his retina to unlock the stairwell door. It opens up to a fancy lobby and he quickly leads me past a doorman, out the front doors and towards a waiting car.
I
know that if I get in that car with him I may never get another chance to leave
before they announce that I’m back and I become…famous ?
I try and break away from Major Prescott’s grasp when we are on the street in front of the condominium but he is prepared for it. He signals to the driver and they both wrestle me into the car. The doors shut and lock immediately once I’m inside.
I still try to go for the door but he pulls me back and hugs me, trying to force my head into his chest. This guy was relentless.
“P-p-please let me go, please I’m sorry--just please I have to go back.”
“Phoenix, I know Maxwell scared you--”
I hated that name. It didn't fit me. Phoenixes were majestic, magical birds that burned bright and set everything on fire. If I’d been raised Phoenix I probably could have taken what Maxwell did to me and been resilient and given it right back to him.
Skylark fit me. Skylarks were small plain birds that lived in the grass and sang annoying songs and probably got eaten by eagles all the time.
“It’s not Maxwell,” I explain and Major Prescott looks so hurt. “I just want to go back--”
“No you don’t, sweetheart,” he says softly kissing my forehead.
“I--”
“This is normal. You have something called Stockholm Syndrome,” Major Prescott tells me. “I talked to some specialist about it today. Max doesn’t understand that it’s a serious condition and he went too far with you. Don’t worry, we’ll get you help.”
I open my mouth to protest but he isn't hearing it as the car takes off down the street.
A/N I know I promised I wasn't going to break anymore cuties but like I said this serial got away from me. This story is going to go in some weird places....at one point it gets a little Jonathon Franzen-y....