Scars And Stories

Chapter 8

"Excuse me?" Isaac exclaimed after Ben's sentence.

"Yeah, we have to get out of here," Ben retorted.

Joe scoffed and looked down, sighing. "It's impossible." He glanced back up at him. "Just look around you." They all surveyed their surroundings. "There are guards everywhere."

"They aren't that many at night," Ben commented, tilting his head down and averting his gaze to his feet.

Joe sighed again, shaking his head. "We're locked up at night."

"What if we find a way to escape?" He retorted hopefully.

An expression of disbelief appeared on Joe's face. "Dude, we-"

"We're gonna leave this place," Patrick spoke up from behind Ben, interrupting Joe's sentence and attracting his friends' attention, "I had one of those visions - more like nightmares - the other night," He explained as he sat down next to Ben, "There was a man in my cell in the middle of the night. It wasn't a guard. He was wearing normal clothes and a mask, with paint on it." He glanced down at his hands in front of him.

The four other men around the table looked at him without saying a word. Isaac was the first to speak up, "It was just a dream, Patrick, it's probably not real."

"Well, the last time my dreams were that realistic, it actually happened," Patrick argued, gazing up at him.

"How could this man have got in your cell, anyways?" The tallest of the two argued.

Patrick shrugged. "I don't know, he just did."

"Remember the last time you had those 'visions'," Joe said, drawing Patrick's gaze to him, "It almost led you to your death. What if this guy was there to kill you?"

"I've seen other things, and I'm, pretty sure, he wasn't there to kill me," The singer assured him.

Joe sighed and looked around, still a bit reluctant about this idea of leaving the prison. He was scared, scared that, if they tried to escape, they wouldn't succeed and get caught. He was scared that the Syndicate would torture him again, or worst, kill him this time. He still had nightmares of the night he was tortured, the night the Syndicate arrested him in the hotel room.

Six months earlier...

Joe was lying down on Andy's bed, his leg wrapped tightly in bandages. He stared at the ceiling as he tried to fall asleep, but he couldn't. He was thinking about his friends that were risking their lives to bring music back and stop the Syndicate.

About an hour had passed since they left and he was getting more and more nervous. He felt like something went wrong, and he was right.

His eyelids started closing slowly as he began to drift off. He could barely pay attention to what was happening around him, like the sound of cars outside the hotel, and he didn't even hear the sound of the front door of the hotel room being slammed open, or the heavy steps of the Syndicate's guards barging in the room he was in. It was when one of the guards grabbed him that he fully woke up.

"Hey, stop!" He exclaimed as the guard dragged him away, "Put me down!" He struggled in the guard's grasp as they exited the room.

Another guard came up to him and tied Joe's hands together. He put a piece of duct tape on his mouth and a black bag over his head. Joe didn't see a thing for the next hour.

When he was finally able to see something, he was attached to a chair in the middle of an empty room, a bright light shining in his face. He squinted his eyes and turned his head away from the light.

"Oops, sorry about that." A man chuckled coldly with his deep and inhuman voice. The guard turned the lamp away from Joe's face. "You can look at me now."

Joe glared at the man standing in front of him.

He was looking at him with this devious smirk. Like he already knew what he was going to do to him, and he liked that. The black haired man clasped his hands together. "You have two choices, Joey,"

"Don't call me that," Joe spat.

"Alright, can I call you Joseph then? It's your name, right?" He looked him in the eyes, as if to defy him.

"Whatever." Joe shook his head as he looked everywhere but at the man.

"So, as I was saying, you have two choices. Either, one, you tell me where your Blue Birds friends are," He said as he put one finger up, "Or two," He brought a second finger up, "I beat the fuck out of you until you pass out or die. You choose."

"I got stabbed in the leg by one of your friends, and I'm still alive. I think I can handle being beat up by your weak little ass," Joe replied, staring at the man straight in the eyes.

The guard chuckled and scratched his eyebrow as he looked down. "Well, alright," He said before swinging his fist in Joe's face.

Present day...

"Okay, I believe you," Joe spoke up, bringing Patrick's gaze to his, "But we better not get caught when your 'friend' or whatever, comes, okay? I don't want to get killed."

"We won't get caught," Patrick replied, "I saw other places in my nightmares. We'll get out of here."

As he remembered what happened that night, the only thing Joe wanted was to get his revenge, and this was his chance to do so.