Unbound

Prologue 2

He had been sitting in his car for fifteen minutes.

The radio had been on when he'd arrived, blaring some indefinable alternative rock between mattress commercials, but he'd switched it off. The silence was better. Suited him more, he found. In the confines of his small, decade old Honda Civic, he had a few minutes of peace.

Then his phone started ringing.

Casting about, he pushed through fast food wrappers and empty plastic bottles on his passenger seat until he'd found it. The screen was cracked in three places, but it still worked, mostly. On the screen was the face of his sister, Gabrielle, with a big, goofy smile on her face. He tapped the button on the side, ignoring it.

He was parked a ways outside the large gate of a private marina. The gate had a guard, but he could see a number of folks streaming through it without worry. The area was considerably more upscale than he was used to, and he'd dressed up in his nicest button down and jeans that evening. He'd run into some old friends at a bar two night's prior, friends that had moved from college onto bigger and better jobs than he had ever managed. It had helped, of course, that they had come from money in the first place. The right word from a friend of the family had opened doors for them that people like him never got beyond.

Yet they had all talked easily enough. The four of them were all in town for some conference and were having a party on a luxury yacht one of their pals owned. The plan was to party a bit, then set sail for international waters. He was invited along. Casually, almost offhandedly, in the same breath that they asked a waiter for more wine.

A party. On a yacht.

What am I doing here?

This wasn't his scene. There was a reason he'd dropped contact with these people; they had more money than he was comfortable with, and going out was...not his style. He was more of a stay inside and read a book or browse the internet kinda person. Except his apartment still reminded him of her, and of better times. He didn't want to be there, not if he didn't have to be.

But did he want to be here?

Part of him did, he knew. The part that was sick of the same dull drudgery of his nine to five gig, that groaned every morning when it was time to ditch the oblivion of sleep and commute for an hour. A party was something different. A yacht? A new experience. Why not embrace it?

For all that he was comfortable alone, he craved company. After...after, when his apartment became far more empty than before, the worst of it was the lack of connection. Sitting on the couch together, watching bad police procedurals and eating junk food had been his happy place. His gut was proof enough of that.

Then get up. Open the car door. Go to the party.

Still he sat, staring in silence at the light pollution that ruined the night sky around Fort Lauderdale. The night was mild, a brisk sixty five degrees, and more than a little windy. A good night, all things considered, for getting shit-faced on a boat.

A sharp pinging noise alerted him to another voicemail. That made four in the past ten minutes. He didn't listen to them. That would just make him feel guilty for not picking up in the first place. Gabby knew that.

He knew what she would be saying, anyway.

"You gotta get out more! Can't move on if you're not movin'!"

Of course, she was as energetic as she was wrong. Sure he could move on. He been moving on for three months now. Making big changes in his life now that he didn't have...Big changes. He hadn't changed his job or apartment or his car, but he'd started going to a different coffee shop in the morning. That was something, right?

Right?contemporary romance

His sister was nineteen and filled with more joy for life than he had ever personally experienced. It was like every day was a new adventure to her, and with a few years left of college before the real world smacked her in the face, he could see why she thought that. He, on the other hand, was closer to thirty than twenty and found her joie de vivre to be exhausting.

Everything had become exhausting recently.

His phone rang again.

Might as well get it over with.

It was easy enough to get in. The guard barely looked at him as he passed the gate, and it was as simple as following the crowd onto the massive two hundred foot long boat. Lights pulsed atop the main deck and there was a crush of bodies filled with the insistent bump of EDM. Men and women, mostly young, mostly clad in bikinis and board shorts, drank free drinks and danced to the frenetic music.

It was awful, so he got a drink. It was doled out into a red plastic cup by a half-naked man out of a plastic bin. He recognized it from his college days as a drink made of whatever the hell you had to hand. It was red, fruity, and packed a serious punch. Pretty much exactly what he needed to take the edge off. Sipping at it with a grimace, he wound his way around the deck feeling distinctly out of place.

Help me...

Blinking in confusion, he looked around. Had he just heard someone? It was impossible to tell; the deck swirled with dancers, all of them moving and gyrating against one another in a way that cut all his lines of sight. Someone could have been talking right next to him and he'd never have noticed.

He turned, and nearly tripped over a young woman.

"Oh my god, are you okay?" He half stumbled over her splayed legs, and it took him a moment to reorient himself on the slightly rocking boat. "Hello? Are you--?"

The girl was sitting against the bulkhead, legs out and bent, and her head was resting oddly against her chest. Worried, he knelt down, checking her neck for a pulse. Her skin felt clammy but warm, and her breath was labored. Everything he knew about medicine came from TV so when he felt at her neck, he could only guess that it was maybe weaker than normal. It wasn't racing, at least.

Did she take something? He couldn't tell and, looking around, he didn't see anyone he could actually call over to help. Do I induce vomiting? That's a thing, right?

Thunder crackled in the distance; an early summer storm, a dark purple against the nearly black night. This was stupid. Rain was coming, and the last place he wanted to be was on an exposed deck when a storm hit. So, hoisting the girl's limp form over his shoulder, he managed to get to his feet. Barely. She weighed perhaps 110 pounds, but he wasn't winning weight lifting competitions anytime soon. So it was a pained groaned that escaped his lips as he moved toward the glass covered cabin nearby.

Somehow managing to open the sliding glass door, he staggered into the cabin and set the girl on a nearby couch. White-jacketed servers with trays full of appetizers were walking to and fro in there, and he grabbed the sleeve of the nearest one.

"Hey, uh, she needs help," he gestured to the unconscious girl. "I think she might've been drugged? Or maybe just too much booze?"

"Oh my," the server gasped, and immediately knelt beside the poor girl. Deftly, the man checked her pulse and lifted each of her eyelids as he checked for...something. "Where was she?"

"Just outside on the deck. She'd knocked out against the outer wall. Is...is she gonna be okay?"

The server's face, handsome as he was in a generic sorta way, looked grim. "I don't know. I better call 911."

Two other servers came from nowhere, checking on the girl as the original server took out a cellphone. Almost immediately, he felt superfluous. Still, he lingered a few moments longer, either worried he'd need to help or...or hoping.

For a short few minutes, he had felt important. Helpful. Now he was a bystander again as more servers bustled over to assist.

He left them to it and wandered deeper into the cabins.

The interior of the luxury yacht was, apart from the gentle roll of the water, exactly like an upscale hotel. Gatherings of people were in here, talking animatedly to one another and drinking things that clearly weren't fermented in a Rubbermaid bin. Grimacing, he set his plastic cup on a nearby table and put some distance between them.

"You're here!"

He turned sharply, surprised to find his friend Samantha nearby. Her arms were spread wide as if she was going for a hug, and, hesitantly, he stepped into it. "You invited me, right?"

"Of course, of course! I'm just glad you came," Samantha patted his back and led them toward a group of familiar faces. Brad and David, both tall and skinny, each dressed casually in a button down and khakis met his eyes and smiled. "Everyone! Our old roommate from college arrived! The one I was talking about!"

A round of 'hello's' and 'how are ya's' went off, but Samantha kept talking. "You know my husband Brad, and David of course, but this is David's boyfriend Reese," she gestured to a slightly shorter man with a well-trimmed beard. He nodded, his smile small and tight. "And beside him are my friends Kelly and Patricia."

Two women looked at him, one blonde and perhaps five feet tall and the other a brunette that matched his own five foot ten inches. The brunette did a sort of half wave, while the short blonde merely blinked at him before turning back to her friend.

"So uh, David, how've things been?" He asked, attempting to break the ice he already felt forming. "I haven't seen you in, what, seven years?"

"Something like that," David replied, his mouth smiling in a way that never touched his eyes. "Things have been good. I was just telling Brad here that I had just invested in a new gastro pub downtown. It's an excellent venue and has a six month waiting list."

"Oh, that's--" He groped for the right words. "That's neat."

Brad snorted into his drink. "Neat. Yeah, Dave here is making bank of that investment and here I missed the boat! Wish I could be involved in something so neat."

"Hey, I told you what I was doing. You're the one who decided to fly to Italy for that job of yours," Dave said.

"A job that pays well enough, thank you," Samantha added, draping her arms around her husband. "Though an investment stateside would mean we could return here more often, right?"

"Right right," Brad rolled his eyes in mock-suffering. "My beautiful wife, tired of the jet-setting lifestyle. Begging me to settle down and pop out a dozen kids."

"Whoa whoa whoa. Let's not get ahead of ourselves!" Samantha laughed, and the others laughed with her.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he fished it out quickly. It was Gabby again. Thumbing the silence button, he tried not to roll his eyes. I'm here, aren't I? Stop bugging me, Gabs.

"What about you?" Samantha turned to him, hand on her hip. "What've you been up to the past...six years since we saw you? At our wedding, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, the one on the beach. I uh, you know, I've been working jobs here and there. Getting by."

"Getting by?" Reese said, eyebrow raised. "What's that mean?"

"Making due? Living paycheck to paycheck?" A spark of annoyance kindled in his chest, one that became a flame when the bearded Reese laughed. "You have a problem with that?"

"No no, of course not." Reese smiled consolingly at him, but condescension was writ plain across the man's face.

His phone rang again. Grunting, he pulled it out and held it up. "I've gotta take this."

"Oh of course," Samantha said, her eyes flicking between Reese and his own.

He walked away, trying to quash the mixture of shame and rage he felt burning through him. With an irritate groan, he swiped his phone and put it to his ear. "What?"

"Bumble?"

"Mom? What's going on?" He stopped walking in surprise. "You don't usually call me this late."

"Do you know where your sister is?" His mother's voice shook, as if she was barely holding in a sob.

"Gabby? She's ahh, she isn't at home?" He sucked at lying, especially to his mom. "What's this about?"

"She's not here. She said she was going to a party and said you'd be there. Are you?"

"Yeah, mom. She badgered be into it. But I haven't seen here since I got here."

She sighed in relief, though the latent terror in her voice didn't abate. "She called and left me a terrible voice mail. Something about her and a friend being stuck on a boat? Bumble, she sounded terrified."

He thought suddenly of the phone calls he'd ignored, the volume of them suddenly taking on a different, entirely horrifying light.

"Bumble? Are you there?" The connection started to fuzz into static, and he checked his bars. He was at full.

"Sorry Mom, I'm here. Yeah, I think I know where she is. I'm gonna go check. I'll call you and let you know, okay?"

"Please, just---keep her--afe," his mom asked, tears in her voice despite the bad connection. He replied, unsure if she'd hear him or not.

"Of course I will. You know me."

Quickly, he opened up his voice messages. Gabby had left one nearly every time, so he started with the first.

"Hey dork, hope you're on your way or else I'm gonna be mad. Call me back."

The next one had a lot of ambient background noise, music and joyful shouting. Gabby was equally loud. "Hey! Pick up! You better show up! You promised!"

The next was the same, and the next. Gabby's voice seemed more and more annoyed, and he heard another girl's voice let out several loud 'woos' before she got shushed. But the fifth call was far quieter. The ambient noise had gone, and Gabby's voice was an almost-whisper. "Ohmigod, ohmigod, someone drugged April. She's out of it! Please call me back, I need help! I can't call 911, or they'll put us in jail! Call me back!"

He swallowed, the congenial air of the space shifting toward menacing in an instant. The party still thumped outside the glass doors, a strange counterpoint to the quieter conversations in here. There was only one more voice mail.

He selected it.

"They took her! I left her by the railing for a second to get help, and they took her! Probably back into the cabin! We just got outta there! I--"

The call cut off abruptly, and a yawning pit opened up in his gut.

Oh no.

What had he done?

With a rising urgency, he pushed back through the small crowd and looked toward the couch he'd left the girl on. April, her name is April. But April wasn't there.

Yet he could see a few white-jacketed servers nearby, moving into an adjoining cabin. He thought he saw the girl's foot, then...yes, her shoe. A high heel had fallen on the carpet near the door.

He walked over to them, his fear singing in his veins. The door was open a crack, but before he could reach it, three tall men in polos and khakis stepped out, effectively blocking the way.

"Hey, you're the guy!" One of them said, one that he mentally labeled Chad. "You found our friend!"

"We were super worried about her, man," said another one that looked like a Derrick. "She just up and ran off."

"That girl was unconscious. She needs a doctor," he started, trying to walk around them. Chad stepped in the way. Derrick pulled the door almost closed behind them.

"Private rooms, bro. We're having her brought down to the paramedics right now, though, so don't worry." Chad shook his head in a vague approximation of sympathy. "She must've drank too much."

"Some people don't know their limits," Derrick added. The third one just scowled continuously.

If she's their friend, I'll eat that shoe, he grimaced. They didn't feel like caring friends, or even compassionate bystanders.

They felt like predators.

Yet they had him at an impasse. He couldn't push passed them as they were taller than him, in better shape, and seemed like they either owned the boat or knew who did.

"So just walk away, friend," Chad said, stepping into his personal space. "This doesn't concern you."

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

He was so tempted to do just that. Getting involved, that had been his choice. If he chose to believe these three Abercrombie rejects, he could step away and rinse his hands of the whole ordeal. His car was less than a quarter mile away, he'd be gone in minutes. But Gabby was involved, and that voicemail meant she was probably still on the boat. She wouldn't have abandoned her friend.

That's no choice at all.

"Can't do that, dude," he said with a nervous swallow. "Let me through. I don't trust you guys."

"Wrong move, bro." Chad's stiff arm hit him in the chest, pushing him back. It hurt, but it was only meant to ward him off.

The right hook that hit him in the jaw was meant to hurt.

He stumbled back, tripping over a leather armchair that was bolted to the deck. Chad and Derrick crowed with laughter. Spots swam in his eyes from the hit, and his jaw felt like swollen and blazed with pain. He lurched to his feet, his doughy midsection all kinds of wrong for this sort of thing.

"Hey man, back off!" Chad yelled, loud enough to get even more attention in the cabin. Eyes swivelled toward them all and conversation cut off. "You can't go around pushing yourself on girls, man!"

"What?"

Thunder rolled above them, far closer than before. Chad and Derrick both moved toward him, maneuvering around the furniture. Scowls stepped forward, but still stood in front of the adjoining door.

"I said, you can't push yourself on girls, dude. That's not right," Chad repeated, louder than before.

"Sick," Derrick said with a disgusted grimace. "You better leave."

He looked around himself, not quite believing what he was hearing. People were watching them, whispering, but he could hear snippets of outrage and disgust. More than a few had their phones out, some taking a video and others trying to make calls. "What? No I didn't. I found her out..."

Somehow, a teen girl had slipped behind Scowls. Her face was serious and her makeup was streaked by dried tears. Slowly, she was leveraging the door open further.

Gabby. His eyes widened, and Chad frowned at him and followed his gaze. Panicking, he did the only thing he could think of: he made a distraction.

"Unf!" Chad fell backward into an armchair. He held his hand to his nose, which had started streaming blood. "You hit me! You hit me!"

Cradling his hand and out of breath, he backed away. It felt like his knuckle had split, hitting the man's face. He looked frantically between Chad and the spectators' faces. "I-I-"

His only warning was a blur in his peripherals, then it felt like he got hit by a truck. Derrick, the muscle-bound jagoff, tackled him away from Chad. His breath was stolen, and he literally flew through the air. As if in slow motion, he could see everyone in the room start shouting, Chad pushing to his feet, and, behind the wide-eyed stare of Scowls, he saw his sister slip into the adjoining room. Unnoticed.

They hit the glass door, and the whole thing shattered.

Thunder shook the world.

He gasped awake.

Rain poured down on him. He was...in the crowd? The strung up lights flickered and strobed in the darkness of the storm that had finally found them. He could see a number of men and women nearby, hands over their mouths. Why were they so...oh.

Oh.

Shards of glass were sticking out of his arms and legs. Dimly he could feel his blood pouring out onto the deck. The rain was washing it away.

"What the fuck? You..dude you okay?" Someone leaned over him, reaching out. They hesitated, clearly unsure what to do about all the glass.

He tried to push to his feet, but his limbs wouldn't work at first. Shaky seconds passed, and he managed to drag himself to the outer railing. The unknown man reached down and helped him climb the bulwark.

"Someone call 911! This guy's bleeding bad!"

"This guy too!" Someone else said, and he found himself staring at Derrick, the douchebag that had tackled him out of a goddamn sliding door. He was covered in cuts from the glass, and a particularly long one was embedded right where his neck met his shoulders. He wasn't moving. "Oh god, I think he's dying!"

There was a lot of blood.

Chad stumbled out into the rain, fingers still pinching his nose. He ran his eyes over the crowd and saw Derrick. Lightning split the sky, far above. The thunder was only seconds away.

"YOU!" Chad rushed through the rain and blood, his chest leading the charge as he screamed. He slid to a stop above Derrick, who still wasn't moving. "What'd you do!?"

Behind Chad, he could see Gabby carrying April, one arm over her shoulder. Briefly, she met his eye and she paled. She stopped.

"Go," he whispered. "Keep going."

As if she heard him, Gabby swallowed and started moving again. Thunder hit again, and the string lights wobbled with the sound.

"HEY! I'm talking to you!" Chad screamed. "You piece of shit!"

He looked again, but Gabby had disappeared into the crowd. He thought he saw her head down the gangplank.

Good. Now I just gotta follow--

He didn't see the kick that hit his gut, or even feel the overhand punch that hit the back of his head. All he could sense was confusion as the world around him was tipped over and spun, until he was staring face first into the rain.

"Hope you can swim, asswad!"

"Whoa, don't--!"

Then he was falling. Or maybe flying. It felt the same to his addled head as lightning lit up the rain all around him, reflecting off a million tiny specks. Then the ocean rose up to meet him, and all he felt was a rushing wet darkness.

Thunder, loud enough that the water roiled, slammed into the world.

The entire sky flared bright. The water filled with a crimson glow, as if he'd been dunked in blood, and the lightning somehow arced through the sea. It spread like a slow-motion video, branching and stretching in all directions as the natural world vented untold pressures.

The lightning touched him, but instead of pain he felt it only grab at him, like a thousand fingers on a hand the size of a whale. More and more of it latched onto him, the branches twisting unnaturally to head toward his floating form. He barely had the time to panic, because in the next instant the lightning's path, impossibly, reversed.

He was yanked up and into the howling storm. Into the light.free(w)ebnov(e)l

And then darkness.