Is This Real? (Nick Clark X OC) Fear The Walking Dead

Victor Strand, The Con Artist

(Frankie's POV) (Six hours later)

Frankie slowly walks into the building with a grim look on her face. To her, it feels like she has been arrested once again. An officer escorting her in such a sterile white environment? I mean, no handcuffs are in use, and he's guiding her by the shoulder rather than her wrists behind her back, but she can't help but see the parallels to last time.

Nick had gone in just a couple minutes prior. He wasn't dragged from the car like he was from the house luckily, because Frankie doesn't know if she could mentally handle seeing that again. After turning down a couple hallways she's brought to a large warehouse portion of the building. Large chain link fence cages are lined up in rows, all around ten by ten feet in size. People fill them up, six in each max. She makes her way down the aisle between two rows and then is stopped in front of one.

Fortunately, in this particular cage, she can see Nick passed out in the corner. The amount of relief she feels wash over her is something unexplainable to most. First of all, it tells her he's okay, and secondly it means she'll be staying in there with him. The padlock is opened and she's thrown in, violently falling to the cement ground but catching herself with her hands. She gives the officer a side eye as he walks away silently, probably off to terrorize another person.

Frankie crawls her way over to where Nick is quickly. She rolls him off his side onto his back to see that he's unconscious, most likely from withdrawals after injecting some methadone a few hours prior. For a split second she laughs because she realizes that she's rolled him onto his side purely out of habit.

All heroin junkies know that sometimes you can throw up in your sleep and potentially choke on your own vomit, then die. So it's important to be on your side every time you use. Frankie had always done that for him whenever she walked in on him asleep. He groans and just barely opens his eyes.

"You okay?" She asks in a whisper. That's the first she's spoken this whole trip. Her and Nick were put in the same vehicle but there was a wall splitting the car in half. He was on one side, she was on the other.

"Frankie? What're you doin here?" He sets a hand on her shoulder to make sure he isn't just hallucinating from withdrawal. He had no clue about her convincing Exner to bring her with. He isn't conscious enough for the fear to set in, now knowing that she's also in danger so he just stares at her in a sort of daze.

"Just thought I'd tag along I guess. I didn't want you to be alone in this hellhole." Frankie jokingly brushes it off. She sits beside him and lets Nick fall back asleep. The two rest on the thin blanket on the ground, still able to feel the hard concrete floor. Once turning her attention away from Nick she realizes it's not just them in the cage, another man is with them.

He sits on an unstable metal bench, like one of those you see in a dug out at a baseball field. His clothing is fancy, an almost all black suit matching his darkly colored skin. He stands out like a sore thumb in his high end fashion. Frankie feels like he could be one of her hallucinations in that sense, so distorted from the reality around him. Everyone else in the cages looks as homeless as her and Nick but somehow, this guy has found himself here.

She gives a threatening glare to the man. It isn't that she got a bad feeling from him in particular, he could very well be a decent guy, she just knows how people can get in lock up. A lot more desperate and a lot more willing to get violent towards those who have virtually done nothing. The man folds his hands and rests his forearms on his knees. He leans forward and looks back at Frankie. A cocky smile creeps up his face and just as he's about to open his mouth and speak to her, a soldier throws another man into the cage.

Frankie recognizes him. He lived in the neighborhood they did, that's for sure, but she doesn't remember his name. The man in the suit stands up once the man sits next to him on the bench. They talk for a while. The rich guy stays vague in his answers, not giving details on himself but the guy from their neighborhood takes out a family photo from his back pocket. Mr. Wealth leans down to get a better look. He chuckles to himself.