The Stolen

Chapter 17

What am I doing?

I'm traveling through an unknown place with complete strangers. These girls could be killers for all I know. 

The voice was right. I'm going nuts.

"You okay there, Chrix?" Marta asks.

"Yeah." I answer. I've been with them for what felt like hours and I don't know the first thing about them. "So... What is "the headquarters"?"

I decide I have to know more things about the place they're taking me to.

"What?"

"The headquarters," I repeat. "You said something about a place called The Headquarters earlier."

"Oh!" Marta says. "You mean Stolen HQ. That's how we call them. I don't know why, but yeah, Olympia calls it 'the headquarters'."

"Stolen HQ?" I say, scrunching my nose. "Why do you call the place 'Stolen HQ'? Are you robbers or something?"

Marta laughs. "¡Claro que no!" she says in Spanish. "Of course not! It's... kinda hard to understand, especially with your amnesia and all..."

I refuse to tell her I haven't got amnesia. Something tells me it's better if she doesn't know.

"Okay, so you're just going to take me to a place I don't know without even trying to explain why?" I ask. 

Marta stares at me for a few seconds. “I would like to explain, Chrix. But I meant it when I said it; it really is hard to understand.”

I open my mouth to speak, but Ségolène doesn’t let me. “Chrix, you need to go with Olympia to the Classification Area.”

“What?” I ask and look around me. The bumpy ride is over. We have apparently arrived at our destination.

If this can be called a destination.

We’re in the middle of nowhere. Well, not exactly. There is a sign that says “Danger ahead”, but that’s the only thing in sight.

“Why are we stopping?” I ask.

Olympia looks at me. “Can you get up?”

I frown. “Yeah, I think so but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Then get up.” Olympia says, still not answering my question.

“I won’t get up unless you answer my question.”

“I won’t answer your question unless you get up.”

Marta rolls her eyes. “Look, I’ll help Chrix up while you answer her question. It’ll be a win-win.”

Olympia shrugs. I nod. Marta lifts me slowly, helping me from the back. It’s weird, getting up. I feel like I haven’t walked in ages.

“So,” Olympia says, “think that our technology is really advanced. We can trick you into seeing things that aren’t really there, and we can as well hide things that we don’t want you to see.”

I don’t understand a thing. Olympia must notice it because she smiles and explains it again.

“You think you’re standing in another normal part of this endless desert, right?” She says, gesturing to our surroundings. I nod. “Well you aren’t.”

She taps three times on the “Danger ahead” sign and the ground shakes.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

Ségolène smiles. “You’ll get used to it.”

Used to what, I want to ask. But I don’t, because I see that the ground isn’t just shaking. The part we’re standing on is elevating. Sand is falling at the edges, and I’m afraid I will trip and fall too.