Keep Watch

Chapter Fourteen

It was dark in the truck cabin when Chloe woke, and for a moment, she wondered if she was still in the confines of that cold cell. Whether all of that had been a sick dream, and the ceiling messages were just the machinations of a delusional mind.

She could still hear the rumbling of the tires, however, and feel the bumps in the road as they jerked her about. She didn't know if she was imagining it, but she thought she could also make out the soft breathing of sleeping bodies, and the sound helped her relax into the cargo at her back.

She stared up at the blackness, letting her body hang limply to the movement of the truck. Chloe had no idea how long they'd been driving for, but she could imagine it had been a while — she wondered if they would be stopping soon, and if so...

She jerked at the memory of what had happened prior. The chip had taken control, and there were bodies in the cabin, and...

She took a deep breath. As it turns out, it's much easier to calm oneself when there aren't voices swirling wildly in the back of one's head. Chloe focused on the feeling of her heartbeat in her chest and the clarity of her mind; it felt almost awkward, not to have another voice lingering there. As if she had been leaning on an unsteady wall for support, but when it had crashed out from under her, she had discovered that it was the one leaning on her all along.

Chloe closed her eyes. When they opened again, it was to a bright light on her face; the cabin door had swung out, and the trucker stood at the entrance, staring inside.

Before any of them had a chance to react, he'd pulled a gun from his hip and pointed it at Chloe's face, alternating it between her and what she assumed was Aava, Anna, and Jeremy on the other side of the cargo.

"Put your hands up," he shouted. "I'm calling the fucking police!"

Chloe tried to obey, though her hands hung, half-bent, over her as she barely had the energy to lift them at all. Worse was the way she collapsed with relief into the bags that supported her weight. The police were finally being called.

The cabin door slammed shut again, and Chloe heard him turning the key. Her head pounded with blood as she tried to keep herself steady, but she could barely keep her eyelids from shutting, never mind her neck from bobbing to the side.

She felt a hand come up around her waist, and with a little shriek of surprise, flinched away. When she realized it was Aava approaching her in the dark, however, she reached out her own fingers to find his face.

"What's going on?" he whispered, breath close to her ear.

"I'm not sure," Chloe replied. "Just... stay calm and don't make sudden movements when the police arrive. We don't wanna be shot. I'm sure they'll understand as soon as we tell them our story."

He nodded. "Yeah, they will. We'll tell them nothing but the truth. They'll have to believe us."

The two of them muttered softly to each other, their noises sounding much like the crooning of baby birds, as they waited. Anticipation had only just begun to build in Chloe's stomach when she heard the sirens, followed shortly by the slamming of several car doors.

When the cabin door was unlocked again, it was accompanied by several rounds of shouting. "Hands on your heads!" one said. Another yelled, "Get on the ground!"

Chloe wasn't sure which orders to follow, so she held her hands up, eyes wide. She wanted desperately to glance at her friends and make sure they were doing the same, but she was afraid to break eye contact with the gun that was pointed right at her face — and this time, it was centered just on her, considering the other three had their own policemen to threaten them.

Fueled by Chloe's raging headache, the sirens blared in her ears, turning her woozy. She struggled to keep upright, and apparently, the policemen took that as a threat; she heard more screaming in the back of her head, but she couldn't make out any of the words.

There was a flashlight in her face, blinding her. She tried to look away, but it was everywhere — they were cornered on all sides by the inescapable flashing lights. She shouted something back out into the abyss, but it disappeared, and she couldn't even remember what she had said.

The truck groaned as more weight was added to one end, and Chloe bobbed where she was with her knees on the ground. The lights came closer, but she still couldn't make out any of the words being hounded into her.

She was pushed to the ground. Her teeth banged right into the metal, and she tasted blood in her mouth. A man was on top of her, his knee in the middle of her back, as he cuffed her.

He adjusted them much too tight on her wrists. She could feel them digging into her bones, and for a moment, her thoughts flashed to Lachlan. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, but she couldn't move — couldn't resist — if she wanted to stay alive.

They'd believe her, as soon as she had a chance to explain. She could understand why they were treating the group as they were — there were bodies in the cabin, and they looked like murderers. But they would set her free as soon as they knew. She was certain.

𓏬

They packed the four of them into separate cars, and Chloe was locked behind bars once again, if only the ones keeping her from the driver. She felt his eyes on her through the mirror, but never dared look up — she didn't want to aggravate him more than he already was, judging by the rough way he had handled her.

The radio beside him buzzed with static, before a voice came on.

"...missing since November last year," a female voice said.

The driving officer replied, "What have the fucking delinquents been up to since then?"

"...from areas... 'cross the country-"

The sound was cutting out too much for her to decipher any longer, so she diverted her attention toward the landscape rolling past, relaxing her head against the window. The trees here were different from those she had seen in the wilds — they were mostly cedars, with the exception of some deciduous trees closer to the river at the bottom of the valley. They climbed up the mountains like little hairs, and in some places, looked as if they had burnt up, leaving just the spikes of their trunks in their place.

A heavy sigh escaped her chest, and the officer grunted. He didn't seem to like that. "What're you all mopey about, bitch? Sad you and your little friends finally got caught?"

Her eyes widened as she looked at him. "That's not-"

"Yeah, yeah, whine all you want about it," he grumbled, interrupting her. "I know how you women work. Some doe eyes and a high voice won't stop you from going to prison for a long fucking time. So stop trying."

Chloe was scared. Her heart rate had only kept picking up since she'd been shoved into the back, and she could barely control her breathing, with all of her focus going toward keeping it steady. With the officer's harsh words and hateful stare on her, she finally broke, bottled emotions from half a dozen nights seeping out of her at once.

Tears streamed down her cheeks, and it was with a horrified expression that she cried, covering her mouth with her hands. It was the silent, violent kind of sobs that ushered themselves from her chest — they constricted her lungs and cut off her breathing, all the while they could barely be heard, expressing only the deepest and unnameable sorrows hidden in the back of her heart.

"Yeah, cry about it," the officer spat. He looked away, focusing on the road once more, but Chloe could feel the car jerking with what seemed like nerves.

The ringing in her ears pierced her head and dug into her throat. She resisted the nausea that bubbled up from within her, though she couldn't push away the lump that dug into her trachea, turning her breaths into quick gasps.

She felt powerless, and there was nothing she could do to fix it.