Emma's feet skimmed the ground as the salesmen dragged her from her house and threw her into the back seat of their car. The entire process took maybe thirty seconds. They had done this before.
Randomly, she worried that they hadn't locked her door. The blow to her head made it hard to focus. Her mind reeled through the crisis. The rational part of her brain attempted to gain control, but it was impossible. Raw, animal panic had taken over.
The car smelled like stale bagels and pizza. Crumbs on the upholstery stuck to her palms. When the car sped off, she realized that this was an actual thing and it was actually happening to her. She was being kidnapped. The crazy woman from the hospital had been right.
One of them removed the bag from her head and she shrank back against the door. Beside her was a man wearing a blue blazer. The two that grabbed her were in front. She recognized one by his stylish olive-green jacket; the other, with the sunglasses, was driving. Clothes and haircuts aside, they were identical. They all looked distressingly normal; three guys out for a drive, not a care in the world. Shouldn't they have been dressed in black or licking knives? Didn't kidnappers lick knives? She couldn't wrap her head around a world where kidnappers looked identical to ordinary salesmen.
"What do you want with me?" she asked. "Please let me go. I won't tell anyone about this."
None of them even glanced at her. Sunglasses continued driving, looking bored. Blue Blazer laughed at something on his phone.
"Please," she said again. "I don't know what you want."
Blue Blazer grinned with a grotesque, lecherous expression on his face. "We only want one thing, sweetheart." He licked his lips and she almost threw up, a painful cramp shooting through her stomach.
"Give it a rest, Wyatt," said Sunglasses from the front.
Wyatt shrugged and looked back out the window. "She won't remember any of this, anyway."
Everything they said was terrifying, and each individual statement propelled her further into this miserable kidnappee experience.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
"Settle down, little bird," replied Sunglasses. "This will all be over soon. Sit there and keep your mouth shut."
"Why are you doing this?" A hitch made its way into her voice.
Green Jacket turned to face the back seats. "Shut her up."
Wyatt shrugged and punched her in the chest.
The blow slammed her against the car door and her head bounced off the window. For what seemed like minutes, her world narrowed to her struggle for breath and the sound of small gasping noises coming from her mouth. Blackness bled into the edges of her vision.
They had now punched her three times. There was still a small part of her brain that didn't believe it was happening, but the animal part yowled in panic. She choked out a sob and huddled up against the side of the car, hugging herself.
"Nothing personal, kiddo," said Green Jacket from the front, "but here's the drill. You shut up nice and quiet. Behave for the whole car ride, and we won't punch you anymore. Good deal?"
She wasn't sure if they wanted her to respond, or if speaking would earn her another punch. The man in the back seat looked at her expectantly. She gave him a small, hesitant nod.
"Great," said Green Jacket. "We'll get along fine." The man beside her winked, and Emma had to close her eyes to press out all the tears that made her vision blurry. They made hot, wet tracks down her cheeks.
They drove in silence, Emma scrunching as much of herself into the door as possible. Sunglasses got on the highway, down the I90 West towards Springfield. He drove responsibly, in the slow lane, and passing cars broke the darkness with flashes from their headlights as they zoomed by. She let her mind go blank. Even through this whole ordeal, power still flowed into her.
"Let's grab a bite," said Sunglasses. "It's a long drive to the Hotel."
The word, with its ominous undertones, jerked Emma out of her reverie. "What's the Hotel? Is this a sex thing? Can I give you money instead? There isn't much, it's only my Mom and me, but maybe we can work out a deal?" The floodgates of her nerves burst open, and she rambled. "My Dad died when I was young. He collected license plates he thought were keen. My mom kept them in the garage, you can have all of them. I'll help you sell them. I bet you'll get a lot, one spells out 'boobs' with numbers. It's not funny, but then again, some people like having body parts on their cars. I wonder if there's an elbow license plate? I guess it would be 31604? No. That doesn't seem right."
"You talk a lot," said Wyatt.
"Please don't punch me again. I don't like it. I only wanted to know about this Hotel place and to make sure you understand that there is money in it for you if you let me go. And not any old money, sweet, antique license plate money."
Green Jacket rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Jesus, lady. Even if I told you about the Hotel, it wouldn't make sense."
"Tell me," said Emma. "Why are you kidnapping me?"
Green Jacket reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, round compass with a single giant arrow. It pointed at her.
"Do you see this?" he asked. "This points us towards people like you. It went off yesterday, like nothing I've ever seen. Normally, these things give us hints and nudges. It takes us forever to track someone down, but this led us right to you."
"What do you mean, people like me?" Her voice rose. "Redheads? Grad students? Women who watch reruns of Gilmore Girls? There are millions of us, it's a delightful show."
"People with a specific potential that is very important to the person we work for," said Sunglasses.
"What potential? I don't have any potential. I can do a headstand for over a minute, but that's about it, and even then, it's only against a wall. Do you mean my energy thing? That's because I had a seizure. I'm sure it's not permanent. Sure, I can't sleep, which is weird, and I seem to suck the energy out of people, but it's a side effect. I'm sure they'll give me some pills or something and it will go away."
"What do you mean, you can suck energy? Like a Utility?" said Green Jacket. "That's not possible, no one's turned you on."
"You keep saying this isn't a sex thing, but then you continue to use sex terms. I don't understand what any of those words mean in the context you're using them. Ever since I had a seizure the other day, I can, I don't know, absorb energy." An errant, manic giggle tried to escape and she clapped her hand over her mouth. She sounded like the crazy woman from the hospital. "If that's why you thought you should take me, I can assure you I'll have that cleared up in a jiff." She felt like she was making good, logical progress with her violent, irrational kidnappers. Surely, they would realize their mistake. "Here, I'll show you."
Without understanding how she did it, she shifted the focus of the energy absorption and pointed it right at them.
"Wyatt, can you feel that?" The back-seat Wyatt looked at her intensely but spoke to the man in front.
"Yeah," said Green Jacket, also apparently named Wyatt. "You're pulling energy from us, little chickadee. How are you doing that? We're not even Conduits."
"Beats me," she said with artificial cheerfulness. "Are you all named Wyatt? Are you twins, or, I guess, triplets?"
"We're not triplets, we're all the same person, and yes, we're all named Wyatt," said Wyatt in the back seat.
"We're not clones if that's what you're thinking," Sunglasses Wyatt said, in a misguided effort to provide clarity.
"I'm calling Trick. Something isn't right," said Green Jacket Wyatt. He punched a few buttons on his phone and raised it to his ear. "Trick, hi, this is Wyatt. We've got one, but there's something weird about her. She's pulling energy, almost like she's activated already. We can all feel it."
A car pulled up beside them with a young child in the backseat, clutching a stuffed bear. He pressed his little hands and face to the window and they gazed at each other from across the gap. Emma mouthed the words 'help me'. The child laughed and blew a raspberry at her before the car sped off into the distance. Emma exhaled and leaned her forehead against the cold window. She'd never been so alone. The Wyatt continued talking.
"I don't know how, but she's doing it. Said she had a seizure and now she's able to—." The Wyatt listened to the person on the other end and made small nodding gestures. "Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me, too. I didn't think it was possible either." After another moment, he said, "You got it," and hung up.
"Change of plans, everyone. No side trips and no other pick-ups. Trick wants us to lickety-split our way to Nevada. Arthur wants to examine this one himself."
Examine. Emma's stomach clenched and her throat burned as bile climbed up her throat. Would the nightmare never end?
They drove off the highway into the parking lot of a fast-food chain. Apparently, they still wanted a meal before stealing her away forever. They parked at the back of the lot, picking a secluded spot with no other cars around aside from a taxi that pulled in behind them.
"Okay, here's the deal." Green Jacket Wyatt turned around. "We're going to get a quick bite, then we're driving all night until we hit the Hotel. You," he pointed at her, "should use this time to figure out what you can and can't do. Trick would like us to have some idea of what's going on." He looked at the Wyatt in the back seat with her. "He'd like us to be attentive in our efforts to get answers."
All three laughed; a grotesque, sloppy sound that could only be produced by men who were plotting terrible things.
"She'll be good. Won't you?" asked the Wyatt beside her. Before she had time to respond, he grabbed her by the shirt and slapped her. His expression never changed.
Four times. Four times she'd been struck in less than half an hour. She had gone her entire life without ever being hit, and all of a sudden she was an expert at taking a punch.
His hand left a burning mark on her cheek. She was prepared for the pain, but not the immediate shame that followed. It horrified her. It was an order of magnitude worse than the slap itself.
Her Wyatt, as she had now come to think of him, pondered her with a hollow, dead-eyed expression. Another day at work. Kidnap a woman; slap her around. Ho-hum.
They called out burger orders to Sunglasses, who confirmed drinks and fry sizes. He and Green Jacket got out of the car, leaving her in the backseat. The click of a lighter came from outside. One of them lit a cigarette, embers blazing red against the foggy window.
She rubbed goosebumps from her forearms, wondering if she would ever see her mom again. Surely a hidden camera somewhere recorded the situation. Surely it was a joke for a YouTube video. Social influencers were the worst people on the planet, and she wouldn't put a mock-kidnapping past them. Anything for internet points.
Emma rested her forehead on the window and wondered ifdeath would hurt.