***

  It is as though with a brain still half asleep that she comes to. Groggy and disoriented, with eyes closed against the brightness she can perceive just beyond her, she lies there.

  She becomes aware of the irregular wobble of her surroundings. The feeling of the fabric against her wrists rouses no great concern at first. That they restrain the movement of her wrists is what imbues her with rather more acute a sense of alarm.

  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

  Her eyes snap open.

  She’s on a gurney in the back of an ambulance… no, strapped to a gurney—and… and it’s not an ambulance.

  Both men sit facing her with their backs to the partition dividing cab from rear. The man—who is definitely not a fucking doctor—is half-fallen out of his seat, slumped to the side, asleep, drooling. The other still wears the jacket and the same vaguely hostile expression from before. He is staring down at his hands, he looks bored.

  He glances up and noticed her glaring at him. His face betrays a flash of surprise and as he rises to his feet. Sasha’s heart is pounding, but she refuses to yield before these people anymore. Fuck their sick games, the first chance she gets she’s going to kill this man, or die trying. If looks could kill, she could level a city block right now. She stares daggers into him as he jabs at the sleeping one with his foot and walks slowly toward her.

  To her surprise, instead of a sociopath’s cackle or some clinical monologue recounting her current, less-than-desirable circumstances, his hands open in a placating gesture and his face conveys a loss for words.

  He puts on a reassuring smile, or tries to, the act appears rather unnatural for him. He glances back to his companion who is only just now rousing from slumber, head still lolling to and fro with the bumps and jostles.

  “Wayne!” the man shouts. With no response forthcoming he storms over to the man and shakes him awake.

  “Aye Aye Aye fuck! The fuck you want, Marsh?” The man wipes the sleep from his eyes, giving his friend—this Marsh—a look of what gives. Then he notices Sasha. “Ah! She’s awake!” he says jumping to his feet. “Uhh, okay, well, where to start?” —he peeks his head back into the cab— “yo, Tiff, she’s awake” —he turns back to Sasha and saunters up to the gurney like he’s in a fucking sitcom, shit-eating-grin still plastered on his face— “okay, well, I guess some introductions are in order then huh?”

  Sasha has changed her mind, the first chance she got she’s going to kill this fucker.

  Dead Man Walking continues, “Okay, actually, wait, first things first: you’re safe, okay? We’re on our way someplace we can take care of you, okay? Got a doctor and everything.”

  “I was just at a hospital,” she snarls at him. “Plenty of doctors there I’d think.”

  The man’s face falls flat. “Ah, right… uh… well, uh, we just needed to—“

  “To take me somewhere where no one will ever find me, right?” Despite herself she manages to keep her voice calm and level. “Back to whichever fucking planet that is, right?”

  The man’s eyebrows twitch at her words, a faint smile—different than that he already wears—draws one corner of his mouth up in a curl. “Now what would make you say that?”

  “Maybe you’re used to the women in your life being a bunch of dumb cunts, maybe you like them that way, maybe you get off watching some powerless, stupid bitch torn apart” —almost imperceptibly the man winces— “but I’m not as stupid as you think I am, Wayne, I know the sun doesn’t rise and set in the same fucking place, I know a day isn’t ten hours long, and I know enough of the fucking constellations to know when I’m not on fucking Earth you fucking fuck.”

  “Ma’am,” the other man butts-in. “Everything is fine now. I know it doesn’t seem that way, but it will all make sense soon. We’re here to help you, I promise.”

  Sasha looks at the straps with which she is bound, then knowingly back to the man.

  The jacket-wearing man scratches his neck. “Look, those are just for your protection right now, we—“

  “Fuck it,” the shit-talker says. He’s propped himself up against the wall and looks almost disdainfully at the both of them. “I’m just going to tell her.”

  “Hold on, Wayne, we can’t just tell her, Salinger and Omar both made it clear that we—“

  “Fuck what Salinger and Omar said. You’re not in the fucking Army, Marshal, they’re not your commanding officers, certainly not mine.” —his pale eyes pierce Sasha’s own— “if you don’t wanna tell her, fine, but I’m going to.”

  Marshal scowls and crosses his arms, body language conveying an emphatic and rather intimidating no. Seemingly undeterred, the other man continues, tone suddenly more jocular, “Besides,” he shrugs. “They’re gonna tell her anyways eventually, doesn’t make any real difference if I do it now, right?”

  When Marshal’s posture indicates no change in opinion, the other man remains undeterred and turns to face him squarely. “Look, Marsh,” he says, tone flattening. “You can run up front and taddle on me to Tiff if you want, but unless you plan to gag me and strap me to the gurney with her, I’m ‘spilling the beans’ as they say.”

  The stern man, Marshal, stands there a moment, as though sizing up Mr. Shit Eating Grin, who, although a few inches taller, is all beanpole in comparison to his comrade’s thickly muscled frame. Finally Marshal shakes his head and walks back to the bench.

  “Alright, Wayne,” Sasha says. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Ywain,” the man says, head tracking Marshal to the bench.

  “What?”

  “Ywain,” he repeats, still not deigning to look her way.

  “Vain? What are you t—”

  “Ywain, my name is Ywain” —he turns toward her— “kinda like Uh and Vain smushed together: Ywain.” He gestures behind him. “That’s Marshal. Tiffany’s up front, you’ll meet her later, same with the others.”

  “Others, huh? What, more rich geriatric fucks from your cult? The help? The fucking ‘muscle’ or whatever it is that you guys are? You taking me to meet whoever is running the whole… the whole… the fucking human sacrifice exhibition or whatever the fuck it is? Are those the others that I’m going to meet, Uh-vain?”

  Ywain sucks his teeth, looking her up and down. “No,” he says at last. “The others we’re headed to are gonna help us kill the people” —gesturing to her bandaged hand— “that did that” —casting eyes down with a grimace— “and whatever else they might’ve done to you.”

  Evidently, Sasha’s expression sufficiently articulates the confusion within, because the man goes on, “The people we are taking you to are gonna help us get even, all of us.”

  She eyes Ywain suspiciously, then looks to the obedient bruiser sitting back in his seat, finally she speaks, “And why the fuck would I believe y—“

  “Look lady, I don’t really give a fuck if you believe me,” he says. “You’ll see it all soon enough, I’m just trying to do you a favor, dig? Figured you’d might like to know what the fuck is going on now, rather than freaking out in your ignorance in the back of an unmarked van for the next few hours.”

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  “A favor, huh? Well if you’re in the mood for granting favors maybe you could undo these straps you fu—“

  “Goddammit bitch,” he chuckles, grabbing the end of the gurney and shaking his downcast head. “We’re on the same fucking side, okay?”

  He stands back, staring at her, then throws up his hands and spins back toward Marshal, who’s gone back to studying the lines of his palms.

  “Okay, fine,” she blurts out. “Tell me, I’m listening. Tell me what’s going on.” As much as she wills her voice to remain steady and level, she knows it is beginning to betray the panic that she’s managed to so far hold at bay deep below the surface.

  Ywain turns back and sighs, massaging the bridge of his nose, before looking at her again, something like pity flashing across his face. “You mentioned other planets and a cult of rich old voyeurs getting off on human sacrifices…”

  Sasha nods.

  “Well,” he shrugs. “You’re right…basically. You were on another planet. The people running the whole thing… you could describe them as a cult, I guess, though they’re more like sadists just being sadists in my opinion, just obscenely wealthy ones. People that have it all—and then some. People who want the most exclusive and novel experiences that money ca—“

  “Wait, wait, wait,” she says. “You can’t just say I was on another planet and not elaborate, Ywain. What fucking planet? How did I get there? Why was I there?“

  “You already know the why, you said it yourself: ‘human sacrifice exhibition’, remember? A bunch of sadists being sadists like I said, you know?” —he leans in closer, eyes widening, his utterances growing ever more excited, almost childlike— “but rich ones. And when I say rich, I mean capital R rich, these people are old money, like, seriously you cannot fathom the depths of their pockets. These elites want to partake in only the rarest, most distinctive and sophisticated of affairs, and on account of the incredible wealth we’re talking about here, they can affor—“

  “Ywain, Ywain, Ywain,” she tries again. “I get it, I get it, super rich assholes doing super rich asshole things, that makes sense. I wanna know about the fucking other planet and how I got there, okay? Like, what’s the name of it, how far away is it, are there others or just the one? And what the fuck were those anemone things? Like, aliens right? Some kind of alien plants or something?”

  Ywain opens his mouth to speak, pauses, then scratches the copper stubble on his chin and turns to Marshal. “Uhh, well…” he says. “I, uhh… I don’t know exactly what planet you were on… I mean, surely it wasn’t Earth but—“

  “What the fuck, Ywain, I thought you were going to tell me everything, ‘spill the beans’ as you said. Now it’s all ‘I don’t know’ and shit? I thought you knew details.”

  “I do know details,” Ywain says. “Generally at least.”

  Sasha rolls her eyes. “Oh, wow, you know general details, like, lemme guess, the fact that I was kidnapped and stranded on another planet and that some ‘unfathomably rich’ people came to watch me get eaten by some tentacle monster… well guess what, Ywain? I know all that too! So unless you can tell me some fucking specifics, I think I’d prefer to just go back to sleep.”

  “Well…” Ywain sucks his teeth again and looks to Marshal. “I personally don’t know which planet they had you on—there’s quite a few I’m told—and I don’t know what tentacle monster you’re talking about—there’s a few kinds of those too—one of the techs might be able to tell you all that in their down time” —he turns back to her, head down, frowning— “but what if I told you” —he looks up, a shark’s smile parts his lips— “that we had names, addresses, lists of where they go and when and with whom, psychological profiles, catalogues of their social habits, a whole litany of files on their security’s probable blind spots, the whole nine yards.”

  She stares at him blankly. “Names, addresses, they,” she repeats mechanically. “Who is th—“ In her mind the pieces suddenly slot into place, and for the first time since she’s been awake, a smile creeps across her face. “Well Ywain,” she says. “I’d say that sounds like pretty useful information for someone wanting to get even.”

  Ywain’s smile broadens. “Damn right it is.” He turns to Marshal. “See that? I got through to her!”

  Marshal grunts in acknowledgment.

  When Ywain turns back to her and crouches next to the gurney, all pretense is gone from his face, leaving only an emotionless husk. Sasha thinks for a moment that she sees a sadness in those eyes, but no, she decides, those too are dead and empty.

  “Look,” he says. “I don’t know how everything works, and frankly I don’t care. Human trafficking ring plus a snuff exhibition cult mixed in with some weird physics shit, that’s enough information for me. If you really want more details, I’m sure Salinger or someone will fill you in, but me” —she sees his eyes glaze over as they gaze into that beyond place— “I’m past caring about all that though. I have a name and a promise, that’s all I care about.”

  “A promise?”

  “An assurance, from our… what could I call them… our benefactors. The ones who are facilitating this whole… this whole…”

  “Kidnapping?” she says with a smirk.

  “Rescue,” he replies.

  She snorts. Shaking her head she looks around the sterile metal inside of the cargo van. “Right,” she says at last. “Okay, so these benefactors, who are they? Government? Private citizens? What? You’re being pretty cryptic here, Ywain.”

  “Not government… not exactly. The people me and Marsh here are working with have enough pull that those distinctions wouldn’t really mean anything anyway.”

  “Of course,” she sighs. “A shady maybe-government-maybe-not organization at odds with the shady human-trafficking-in-fucking-outer-space organization.”

  She lies back against the gurney and closes her eyes. This is all too fucking much, and she’s long since given up hope that any second now she would wake up in her bed and realize it all to have been a terrible dream.

  After a time she looks back to Ywain still standing there. “So why is it that your bosses are helping you ‘rescue’ me, and why are they supposedly going to help me ‘get even’… assuming I even want to” —oh I fucking want to alright— “what’s in it for them? Why should I trust them?”

  “They want the tech,” he says matter-of-factly.

  “The tech?”

  “Yeah, you know, the tech that lets you jump to other fucking planets? Sail between the stars?—or, I guess, swim in your case…”

  She remembers the funny-mirror blotches on the horizons.

  “Portals, right?” she says. “That’s what they are, portals to other planets?”

  “Sure, whatever.” He shrugs. “Portals, Wormholes, Gates—Omar calls them Einstein-Rosen Bridges—whatever they are, they seem to allow instantaneous travel between distances on the order of lightyears.”

  “…a lightyear is…”

  “I don’t know, really fucking far. Way farther than we can go without a Gate.”

  “Okay, so your bosses want this… this Gate tech… that the other guys have, and in return for helping them do… whatever it is that they have you do, they’re gonna help you—“

  Ywain has raises his hands and waves them at her. “Wait, wait,” he says. “Hold up, I’m oversimplifying just a bit. Don’t get the wrong idea, this isn’t a Lesser Of Two Evils type thing, my ‘bosses’—if you wanna call them that even though they aren’t—they aren’t secretly Al Queda or anything like that. Sure, lots of them are mostly interested in the fuckin’ Gates, but others, believe it or not, actually just want to stop the whole kidnapping and torturing and raping and killing part too.”

  “Sounds like a real humanitarian effort you’ve got going.”

  “Whatever, you’ll see it for yourself soon enough.”

  She sighs. “So you work for—excuse me, with—people who want to stop the fucks who took me to that fucking beach for some kind of one-of-a-kind snuff viewing, and they just have you two, what, going around rescuing victims?” —she remembers Allison— “Coulda used you about three days ago, surely whatshername up there knows how to drive a fucking boat.”

  “Well, no, ahh…” he says, focusing, carefully hunting for his words, before finally giving up. “You’re the first, actually. We’ve never ‘rescued’ anyone before. You’re the first, ahh, victim—as far as we know—to have made it back.”

  “What, so… so you were just staking out one of the Gates and happened to see me swi—“

  “Like I said, you’ll get all the details you want later, but no, we weren’t ‘staking out’ anything, we were on our way to Manhattan to gather intelligence on some east coast targets. We didn’t see you swim out. Our benefactors know the locations of a handful of the Gates, they’ve got eyes set up on them—you know, cameras and shit—relaying everything back to Central. One of the cams spotted you coming back outta that Gate last week, so Central re-routed me, Marsh, and Tiff up there, to come get you.”

  He stands before her, arms akimbo, head cocked to the side. “You’re extremely lucky actually. Had we not already been so close, Central’d prob’ly have lost you on the feed before we got close enough to send the drone up. Those fishermen woulda picked you up and that’d’ve been tha—“

  Her gut wrenches, her eyes go wide, before she can speak, Ywain calms her. “Don’t worry, they’re okay, Roy and his wife and whatshisname their buddy. We’ve got someone watching them fo—“

  “I swear to god, if you hurt them, I’ll fuc—“

  “Hey! Cool it, would ya?” Ywain massages his brow. “Jesus Christ, lady, how many times I gotta tell you: we’re on the same fucking side. We got someone watching them to see if anyone who oughtn’t be around starts bein’ around them, dig? You know, you really oughta thank whatever god you pray to that we got to you. What the hell were you planning to tell the docs during intake, huh? You really think word wouldn’t have gotten around? That you wouldn’t have been found out by the people you were running from—that you’re still running from? How long you think it would’ve been before you were discharged into the care of your charming and well-to-do father, or uncle, or grandmother, or whichever character they’d have sent to pick you up? Or just ‘disappeared’ one night by some ‘orderlies’ and taken to some Black Site? How long you think you would’ve gone before you cracked and gave up ol’ Roy and the rest? How long til the three of them had an unfortunate boating accident, huh? Or maybe the pair would go as a murder-suicide and for the other guy it’d be a gas leak while he was aslee—“

  And just like that, the tears are streaming down her face. She sobs and chokes, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuck!”Trying to ball up sideways she finds her hands restrained. “Just fucking kill me!” she screams. “Please just fucking kill me!”

  Ywain flinches back, mouth agape.

  “You’re a fucking asshole,” Marshal says from behind him.

  “No—I—I—I just…” Ywain looks frantically between the two. “I was just saying that… that she was lucky and—“

  “Dude, just sit the fuck down and shut up,” Marshal says shaking his head. “Just leave her alone, she’s been through enough.”

  Ywain staggers back to the bench and sits down heavily.

  Sasha wails at the ceiling.

  ***