Danielle flinches at the sound of the hatch unlocking. The man lowers himself to the floor, a roll of duct tape in his hands.

“It’s time.” The man approaches her, ripping the duct tape out from its roll. “Feet, please.”

Danielle extends her legs and gives a silent prayer to whatever beings of the universe will listen.

~

Xavier’s heart thunders as the man straps his feet together. This is it; he can’t run, he can’t escape.

~

Mackenzie glares as the man rips off another strip of tape. She rears her arm back, waiting for his nose to get in close.

~

Jackson lowers his arms together and extends them for the man before he can request. The man gives a slight smile.

“Behind your back, please.”

Jackson wiggles on his butt until he is facing the wall, then places his arms behind himself for the man. As the man begins binding his hands, Jackson repeats the lines prepped over the last two days.

“I got to thinking again. I know you’ll take me not too far from where you got me, so I was wondering if you might be able to take me to that place I mentioned in the woods: the ridge across from the gas station. If I have only one last thing to look at, I’d like to look up at that sky and remember the meteor I saw. It’s given me some solace to think I was the only person who will ever have seen it, and I’d like to maintain that sediment before the universality of death.”

The man grunts.

Maybe if he could have seen the man’s face, Jackson could have determined whether it was confirmation or denial, but all he could see was the concrete wall.

~

Danielle struggles not to squirm as the man picks her up by the waist. He carries her almost like a football to the hatch then tosses her up through it. He jumps up after her and promptly scoops her up into a cradle hold, causing her to faceplant into his smokey shirt.

~

Dot freezes as the man carries her through a house: around a couch, past a kitchen and towards a front door. When he reaches it, he half throws her over his shoulder and turns the knob.

~

Alesha scans the outside world as best she can with the moon’s illumination. The house sits alone with a small grassen yard surrounded by trees of many species. The house itself is styled like a log cabin. Most likely a hunting cabin tucked away in the woods on the far side of the state.

She begins to shiver as the man takes her to his car. Instead of opening the trunk, he opens the back door. He must know about the emergency exit tab in the trunk of all cars.

He drops Alesha onto the floor between the console and the rear seats before throwing a blanket on top of her.

~

Danielle gazes at the door as the man reaches for something he’s left outside. The windows of the door hold no light from the moon, they’re tinted.

The man returns to the doorway with a cover in his hands. He slides it along the rear seats, and when it hits the closed door on the other side, he lowers it over Danielle, closing her in. Within another thirty seconds the man drops something on top of his cover, the sound resulting similar to when a teenager drops a backpack full of textbooks on a wooden floor.

When Danielle hears the door shut, she taps the cover with her feet. It isn’t going to budge easy. And with tinted windows at night, she wouldn’t be able to signal someone anyways. She’ll have to continue with her original plan.

The man gets into the front seat and starts the engine. The light from the dash leaks through the cracks between the front seats and the console.

The car jerks forward and rumbles on a gravel road. Danielle uses the sound to cover the shuffle as she pries off her shoe with the bar under the chair behind her. She then kicks the shoe up to her hands and reaches inside to the shard of glass she’s kept there.

She holds the glass in a firm grip, the bra pad protecting her hands. She arches back to reach her feet but pauses when something digs into her cheekbone right under her eye.

Danielle lifts her head up and looks down to find a piece of mail. She lets her eyes take a few more seconds to adjust to the dim light until she can make out the name printed on the center: Ryan Leski.