No 22. DO THESE TACOS TASTE FUNNY TO YOU?
Continuation of “Laced Drink” and “Pinned Down” (2019) and Day 7 (2020)
Whumplet by @adrenaline-whump
Chloe steered me out of the building, which looked like a nondescript maintenance shed from the outside. The rakes leaning on the wall were a nice touch. No identifying numbers or marks. I had zero idea where we were, though I realized with a jolt, it was nowhere near a city. The Milky Way arched over our heads, a hazy river against the blackness.
She guided me down a grassy path, rutted with tire tracks. I wouldn’t mind the occasional stroll by starlight with a cute girl, but this wasn’t quite the way I wanted to go about it.
“In you go,” she said, and I saw the gleam of a black car parked just ahead. I got into it under my own power, feeling more alert than I had in a long time, and she slid into the driver’s seat and whisked us away, off the grassy road and onto paved ones.
After a while, I said, “Someone’s going to be pissed when they find out I’m gone.”
“You have no idea,” she assured me, with amusement in her voice.
“Don’t suppose you want to tell me who?”
She shook her head. “Bad for business to talk about clients.”
“Clients. And you have a new one now. Who also sent you after me.”
“Why am I so in demand?” My organization was a small one, as these things go, and I wasn’t anyone special, just part of the crew.
“Here we are,” she said, and pulled into a storage facility, one of those places where you can rent a metal room to store your extra crap. The one she had a key to was on the ground floor, empty other than a couple of crates and a cooler.
I looked into the cell-sized room. “You’d better not be planning to slam the door with me in here.”
She laughed, not bothering to be quiet now, and walked in ahead of me. “Not my style, honey. We’re just waiting for pickup.”
“Oh yeah? Who will that be?” I asked, as she pulled a plastic bottle out of the cooler. Cold, by the looks of it. I would have salivated if I hadn’t been so dehydrated. The label wasn’t in English; my best guess was Japanese.
She took a delicate sip before she noticed my expression. “Do you want one? That shot I gave you makes some people thirsty.” She flipped the cooler open again and handed a bottle to me.
“What is it?” I was already cracking it open.
“It’s for rehydration; like Gatorade but without all the sugar.”
It tasted fantastic, honestly; cool and salty-sweet, but not syrupy. I downed half the bottle at the first go.
She seemed content to sit there and rehydrate, but I wanted to know more about what was going on. After a minute or two, I said, “So...you didn’t answer my question.”
“Which question, honey? I haven’t answered any of them.”
“Well...true, but I meant the one about who we’re waiting for.”
“I haven’t answered that one either,” she agreed.
“No, I mean, I’m asking you…” my voice sounded a little slurred, even to me, and I stopped. The metal walls around us were getting fuzzy in a way I knew all too well, and the bottle slipped through my hands to land on the floor. “Oh no. No, you din’t.” I tried to stand up, but my coordination had already clocked out for the day, and then Chloe was next to me, easing me down so my head didn’t smash into the side of a crate.
“The first client wanted influence over your employer,” she said thoughtfully. “The second one wants leverage on the first one. I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle.”
“Liar,” I managed to say. “Y’r not sorry.”
“As sorry as I ever am,” she said, not unkindly, and I sank into a sea of dark fog and white noise.
