Page 36 of Intrepid

“And what’s your name?” Fox peered through the distorted door at me, puffing on his cancer stick, and blew the smoke into the closet.

“Fuck you. That’s my name.” I coughed, batting away the faint plume seeping into my lungs. I didn’t even care if he shocked me for it.

Eli’s screams filled the room again, sending shots of panic into my chest.

Assholes!

An obnoxious laugh bounced off the walls of the room. “We attach it to his head, we can alter his fucking brain!” The gurgle of Trevi’s voice made me think of him drowning as I held his head under water. “No brain, no pain!”

The squeak of my teeth and the sharp spasm of pain in my temple told me I’d been grinding my teeth the whole time. “What do you want?” I gritted out.

“I want you to answer the question. What is your name?”

“Boy. Okay? My name is fucking boy.”

Eli screamed again, and every muscle in my body shook.

“Fucking stop! What do you want me to say?”

Fox’s shoulders bunched, his eyes widening like he feigned surprise. “Your name, of course.”

“James! My name is James!” My stomach folded, anticipating the next round of shocks that never arrived.

“James,” Fox echoed, drawing another puff of his cigarette.

Why was I allowed to answer any different? Why would I keep my name?

“And how did you end up in this shitty situation?”

I took the cue to answer as honestly as I could, for Eli’s sake. “I came here. With Eli. And the other kid, Gideon.” I swore if I could go back to those moments in the Packard Plant, I’d have laid that kid out on the ground and beaten the ever-loving shit out of him right then and there.

“You didn’t want to come here, did you? You didn’t want to steal from me?”

“No. I didn’t.” The truth, and I prayed he could see it on my face through the gaps in the door.

“Well, I’m going to tell you what. You have an opportunity to leave this place. Alive. All you gotta do is keep your mouth shut and behave. Can you do that, James?”

In spite of the wrath burning in my veins, and the watery blur of tears in my eyes, I nodded.

“Now, tell me. What’s your friend’s name over there?”

Lips tight, I frowned, choking back the snarky comment trapped at the back of my throat, one that would surely result in Eli’s torment. “Boy,” I said. “His name is Boy.”

“Good. Very good.”

12

Sera

Present day …

Textbooks lay sprawled across my bed, as I hammered out the first draft of my research paper. The topic was neighborhoods and crime, the subject for which happened to be a childhood friend of mine who’d lived in Detroit and had gone missing a few years back.

Beside me, my cellphone chimed with a text and I lifted it to an unknown number popped up on my screen.

An attached video stirred my interest, and without much thought, I pressed the play button, opening the screen to the sounds of harsh breaths over whipping winds. The rayless night sky added a dark contrast against the thousands of lights, as far as the horizon, scattered between brilliantly illuminated skyscrapers off in the distance. To the left, the distinct shape of the RenCen stood lit like a beacon for the surrounding buildings. The camera panned down to a red blinking light and twisted contortions of metal, like machinery. A lump caught in my throat as the view beyond the structure showed streetlights and small cars tooling along what appeared to be hundreds of feet below the cameraman.

The phone screen flipped to Ty’s magnificent face, his cheeks flushed, presumably from the climb, skin glistening with a thin layer of sweat. Behind him, the city of Detroit sat like his conquered kingdom, the span of his domain spread out before him, while he watched from his throne at a dizzying height.