Song: Dynasty by Miia
***
Why does everything bad happen to me in the bathroom? I ask myself as the boy punches something into his car's autopilot.
He seems young, perhaps around my age. He has dark hair and dark eyes, both of which compliment his tall and serious complexion. He doesn't appear to be extremely strong, but he packs a mean punch; my right arm still aches from the episode in the bathroom.
I know he doesn't believe me when I say I haven't killed anyone; his tracking device led straight to me, after all. But even I still don't entirely understand what I've done wrong. Everything is still all so confusing for me.
He keeps his eyes locked on me and his gun aimed at my side. I know I have no chance of escape, so instead I cautiously ask, "Can you at least tell me what I've done wrong?"
"You've murdered thousands," he deadpans.
"I can assure you that I haven't," I argue. "What proof do you even have to support the idea that I'm a murderer?"
Without hesitating, he says, "I'm not at liberty to say."
I turn my head to look out of my window for a moment to compose myself. Then I turn back to the boy. "Can you at least tell me your name? So I have something to call you by?"
He pauses, and I think I've finally caught him off guard. "You first," he insists.
I sigh, having expected such a response. "I'm Brooklyn, Brooklyn Bell," I say, offering him a limp smile. The name is still unfamiliar to me.
He doesn't return my smile. Instead, he gruffly mutters, "Mitchell." He cocks his head slightly to the left and asks, "So do you really not know why you're in loads of trouble?"
I shake my head. "No, I really don't."
"Where are you from?" he asks, squinting at me as he changes the topic.
"Down south. But I ran away from home," I admit. Lying will do me no good at this point, and I'm aware of that. I'd be in deep trouble if he turned me in after I lied, after all.
"Why did you run?" he continues. "Consider this your official interrogation, by the way," he adds unapologetically, flipping his right palm and dipping his head jokingly.
I roll my eyes. "Thanks for the heads up," I scoff, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. "I ran away because there were these. . . these men were trying to take me with them, and I didn't want to go with them," I say, squaring my shoulders. I decide to leave out the bit regarding my mother.
"Did you know the men?" he prods, still tightly wielding his gun.
I shake my head again. "No, but they were CIA. I came home from a particularly innocent day at school when they informed me that I'd need to go with them, but they wouldn't tell me why," I say, emphasizing the innocent part.
Mitchell tilts his chin upward. "You're not very good at concealing unnecessary information," he says, then continues. "But you didn't go with them. Why?"
"Because they were using unnecessary force," I say. "Sedatives, more specifically. I think they were sedatives, anyway," I say, scrunching up my face as I visualize the syringe that the CIA officer pulled out. "And when I told them I was just going to go stay with a family member until they left, they told me that was not allowed. So I ran for it." My damp hair falls in front of my face and I shake my head to clear it away from my eyes.
A sudden clarity seems to wash over Mitchell, and something in his eyes changes. His grip on his gun even relaxes a little.
I take a deep breath. "Please, you have to believe me," I beg. "You can even go back to the gym and search my car, if you want. I have no weapons, nothing. I'm lucky to have the clothes on my back, for that matter."
Suddenly, his grip on his gun tightens once more and his face hardens. "You're just a filthy, lying Dasher," he sneers.
"What the hell even is a Dasher?" I ask loudly in frustration, and he seems taken aback.
He eyes me suspiciously. "You mean you don't know?" he asks.
"No, I don't!" I exclaim. "You and everyone else keep accusing me of things I haven't done, calling me names that I don't know the meaning of, and nobody in this god-forsaken city will just hear me out!"
He raises an eyebrow. "You really are clueless, aren't you?" he asks with a chuckle.
"In more ways then one," I reply. "But I could be a little less clueless if you'd tell me what a Dasher is and why I'm one."
Mitchell stares at me for a moment before saying, "A Dasher is a Hunted who learns of the Hunter Mission and purposefully evades their termination." He says it quickly, as if reading from a textbook.
And I can honestly say that I didn't understand a word of what this boy just said.
"A who doing what, now? Terminated? Wasn't that a movie back in the 80s?" I ask as a million other questions buzz through my brain.
Mitchell pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "You're a Hunted who has learned of the Hunter Mission and is now purposefully on the run to try and avoid being killed by a Hunter," he repeats in simpler, slower terms.
Hunted. . . Isn't that what the CIA agent called me as I was biking away? Pushing aside all of my other questions, I ask the most disturbing one: "What's. . . What's a Hunter? Like the guys in camo who go out during deer season?"
Mitchell just stares at me, his eyes wide in apparent perplexion. Then he looks down, his gaze fixed on the floor, almost appearing disappointed. He finally places his gun back in his pocket and rubs the back of his neck, muttering something to himself about how "she really doesn't know".
He looks back up at me and says, "Uh, no. A Hunter is someone like me. My job is to kill the Hunted, or people like you."
I instinctively scooch back in my seat, towards the door. "So you're gonna kill-"
"No, no! I'm not gonna kill you," he quickly interjects, waving his hands in front of him. He then gives me the "now how do I go about this tactfully" look, and takes a deep breath. "In fact, I'm not gonna kill anybody. I guess you could say I'm the Hunter who won't hunt," he says with a weak chuckle.
"But killing these so-called Hunted - is that, like, your mission or something?" I ask, furrowing my brow in confusion. It's moments like these where I wish I had a notebook to take notes.
Mitchell nods. "The Hunted are predetermined. Usually the elderly, sick, impoverished: that sort. The Hunters, like myself," he gestures to himself, "are given a list of people, the Hunted, to find and kill, or in the CIA's nicey-nicey terms, 'locate and terminate'."
"What determines whether or not you're going to be a Hunter?" I ask, seeing as he conveniently left that part out.
"The healthy, wealthy, and wise," he says with a smirk. "And now that I've told you all of this, congratulations; you can officially live up to the title of Dasher, because now you are technically a Hunted who has learned of the Hunter Mission. Ta-da," he says dryly.
Just what I wanted, I think to myself.
***
