Next Up

Track 26 Torture

"Two of them? Who's the other guy?" Marcello asked into his phone.

"Not a guy," Gemo replied. "Looks like Zheanni."

After a long silence, Marcello spoke, "Alright, that doesn't matter. Everything's gonna remain the same. They're still following the route?"

"Yup."

"Okay, when they cross the street, start following."

Zoe sprinted and jumped, landing safely on the next building. It was a little higher than the other, but she cleared it rather effortlessly. Gemo was on the next building over; a long apartment complex.

Below, Poatan casually strolled down the street. Civilians gave him and his friend a wide berth, moving out of the way as they walked past.

Poatan stopped outside the doorway, looking around. The windows that faced the alley were dark, or curtains had been pulled in front of them. He couldn't escape the feeling of being watched. His instincts were hardly ever wrong. "There're energy users near," he muttered, casually leaning against the back apartment door.

"Huh," Zheanni yawned, looking around tiredly.

"You don't feel that."

"I haven't felt anything for like ten minutes."

"Shit, I know das' right. How many did you do?"

"Two," she chuckled. Her eyes felt heavy, barely able to look up at his face.

"Yo," he looked at a nearby brick wall, seeing a massive gash that ran several feet along it. "Dis' where they found him, right?"

"Who?"

"Antwan! Who else would I be talking about?"

Zheanni shrugged lazily. He noticed her eyes were glassy and had a hard time focusing. "I dunno."

"You are slower than usual today, ain't'chu? But yeah, Conor was tellin' me that unless we can get some kind of energy healer, then that dude is gonna stay cooked. Like in a coma forever."

"An energy-healer? Shit, that reminds me," she said. Poatan rolled his eyes, knowing that whenever Zheanni said, 'that reminds me,' he knew what was coming next was absolutely irrelevant to the previous statement. "My dad was tellin' me a long-ass time ago when I was a little kid, right? This was when my little brother, Augustine, was...uh...I can't remember the...what's it called when a baby debuts?"

An absolutely dumbfounded look crossed Poatan's face. "You mean being born?"

"Shit, yeah."

"What in the hell is wrong with- You sure you only took two? You really gotta get off that." He stopped walking and grabbed her by the face, his concerned eyes studying her dilated, unfocused pupils. "All jokes to the left, I'm being for real, Z; you could OD off this shit."

"Fuck off me," She pushed him away. "You can't OD when you have energy. Everyone knows that. Shit, my dumbass woulda been cooked long ago."

"You know Conor hates it when you do this. He does care, ya know, it's tough for him seeing you be a fiend. Y'all are family after all-" He was cut off by what felt like a bunch of invisible pillows lifting him softly but quickly into the air, disappearing from Zheanni's sight in under a second.

Zheanni looked up, absolutely stunned. Her jaw hung open. She normally would've felt her brain race from anxiety, but the crushed Xanax she'd snorted twenty minutes prior muted those feelings.

In the back of a limo, Poatan sat, bound with a blindfold over his eyes.

Bulwark and Marcello sat in the back with him, staring at the massive man in front of them, and the almost gleeful grin on his face.