Chapter 6: 6. Captivity

Morning came, and with morning came last night's revenge. My head throbbed and ached. My stomach was turning somersaults, and there was a taste in my mouth like I had been sucking on copper pennies since midnight.

Tessa's goons showed up around 7 a.m. to drag me from bed. With much pushing and prodding and not smiling, they got me in the shower. I stayed in there for nearly an hour. Coming out, I found my clothes gone. A query with the secret service resulted in me finding that my clothes had been thrown out. Mercy's assistant had sent her assistant out to shop for me. I found several changes of clothes laid out on the sofa. They all required that I wear a tie, but I did not wear ties. I informed the secret service agents guarding my room of this fact, and they surprised me by knowing me better than myself. After only a few moments of discussion, they had managed to correct my memory. I did in fact wear ties . . . now.

The shoes were tight, but they fit. I did not much care for the dress socks. When I was done, I asked my prison guards what they thought. Evidently, getting their opinion required a higher security clearance than I presently enjoyed. They said nothing.

If I said anything embarrassing last night or untoward, please know I'm sorry. It was the liquor talking. Just . . . don't get pissed, okay? I apologized so let’s just let bygones be bygones. I threw my thought at the ceiling. The Secret Service agents followed my gaze to the ceiling then looked back at me like I had lost my mind. Maybe I had.

So, where are you from? Is it nice? I asked, trying to make conversation. There was no answer. A knock at the door let me know it was time to leave*. I used to live near West Plains, Missouri. It's a nice place. A lot more rural than some people like, but I enjoyed it. There was good hunting in that area. Do you hunt? What about fishing? I really don't know anything about you. I don't know if you grew up on a planet or if you just live on that flying saucer thing of yours. You're kind of an enigma to me.*

Would you shut up? It was only four words, but it made me smile.

I followed the Secret Service agents down the hall, loaded into the elevator with them, and took it to the lobby. There were two more agents waiting. They led the way outside where a black limo waited. A younger version of the security detail opened the rear door for me. I tried to tip him. He dumped my tip on the drive. The three quarters bounced and rolled under the car. I considered retrieving them, then figured that might look strange considering the car and how I was dressed. I pantomimed a message of “blow me” to the man. He ignored me for the most part, though he did close the door a tad quicker than was necessary, pushing me forward into the car and nearly making me sprawl in some stranger's lap.

There were other people in the back already. I recognized Aaron from Homeland Security and Mercy from the White House, but the other person whom I had nearly sprawled on was a mystery to me. Her hair was drawn back in a tight ponytail, her skirt hugged her hips, stopping at her knees, and a pair of dark-framed glasses perched on her nose. She sat up painfully straight with her knees together and an open planner in her lap. A pen posed ready to record if necessary. I figured she was the personal assistant to one of the other two.

There was only one place for me to sit, and I took it. It was beside the woman with the planner. She gave me a cursory glance and returned to her attentive state, dismissing me out of hand. Our seat faced backwards so that we could face Aaron and Mercy. It was uncomfortable.

"Sleep well?" Mercy asked politely.

"Possibly," I replied back. "Thanks for the clothes," I told her plucking awkwardly at the suit jacket wearing me. Mercy nodded toward her assistant.

"Thank her," Mercy said. "She's the one who picked them out."

"My assistant picked them out," the woman corrected.

"They fit pretty good. How'd she know what size I wore?" I asked conversationally.

"She probably just guessed. Her father's fat as well. Probably looked in the fat section of wherever she got them," she replied callously. To Mercy, she asked, "Roger Wiiat wants to meet to discuss setting up a time to meet with the president. His stated purpose is that he wants to discuss the White House’s response to the alien attack. How is Thursday for a possible sit down, after your meeting with Hammond, but before your meeting with Senator Maccs?" Mercy seemed to consider it and nodded her approval.

I looked from Aaron to Mercy to the assistant. They were pretty much all ignoring me. I did not much care for not being the center of attention. It was my weakness and flaw.

"Why the suit?" I asked, plucking at the jacket.

"You're meeting with the president," Mercy's assistant supplied with indifference. She was penciling down Roger Wiiat for 9 a.m. Thursday. "This is respectful. What you were wearing was—"

"Comfortable," I supplied helpfully.

"Not respectful," she finished.

"I'm kind of a prisoner," I told her. "I'm not really big on showing respect after being kidnapped."

She went on as if I had not spoken. "The Oval Office doesn't have a boot scraper. There's no mini fridge filled with Coors Lite. They won't be serving you nachos or pigs in a blanket or whatever the hell you eat. It is the center of the free world. It deserves respect even from the likes of you. So, you wear a suit," she snapped waspishly.

"You're kind of a bitch," I told her bluntly. Evidently, she knew it. This was the first thing I said that made her smile and it was a smile of pride. Mercy turned her head away and tried to hide her amusement behind her hand. It was a wasted effort. I could see it reflected in the limo glass of her door.

"I'm afraid we still don't know your name," Aaron announced suddenly, breaking the silence, and turning serious. "You're obviously not the snowy-haired leader of Hogwarts, so who the hell are you?" I glanced toward Mercy. She had turned back and was curious as well.

"Names are overrated," I told him philosophically.

"Well, you're about to meet the president. With a name, you get to do that in person and with dignity. Without a name, you get to do it in another room via video while wearing handcuffs, and I won't guarantee the chains will ever come off once they're on. The choice is entirely yours though. Either way, we'll still run your prints and know your name before the day is out." Aaron crossed his legs with confidence, rested one arm on the door, and the other in his lap.

What do you think I should do? Should I give them my real name? I asked of Leia. She did not respond.

"What's it going to be? Option A or option B?" the man asked.

I gave Mercy an apologetic shrug. "I'll take option B." Aaron was not amused.

The assistant gave me a look of disgust. "You're an idiot." I shrugged and said nothing. I was not altogether sure she was wrong.

"I'm an idiot?" I asked indignantly. "You bought me a suit so I could sit in a jail cell. I look like a freaking senator."

"Oh please," she scoffed. "You hardly look like a senator. A used car salesman perhaps. Maybe an insurance salesman. You definitely don't look like anything remotely resembling a senator."

"Why? Do I look honest?" I quipped.

Mercy turned her head again. She needed to hide another smile. I grinned and wagged my eyebrows at her. This was a woman used to smiling.

When we arrived, it was not the entrance I expected. We did not arrive outside like it was a hotel. Instead, we passed through a few layers of security to reach an underground garage. Here we disembarked, and I was cuffed. Mercy was not pleased by this judging by the look of disapproval she gave Aaron. I was allowed to follow them into the building proper. Inside the metal door, I found myself in a cold cement-walled passage with frequent turns. I was with them for the first half-dozen turns, but then Aaron, Mercy, and their retinue stepped into an elevator and disappeared leaving me alone with the Secret Service.

I was led by three agents to a conference room. Before each seat was a camera, mic, and monitor. Three men in grey suits sat around it. The first was reclining comfortably with his legs stretched out and his ankles crossed. He was chewing on an ink pen and looking bored. The second man was turned sideways in his seat, leaning back with one arm laid on the table. A coffee cup filled that hand. The other man was set up with a laptop, which he was feverishly typing on. He wore a headset with a mic on it.

When I entered, there was a blue splash screen on every monitor, but as I took the seat the Secret Service pushed me into, an image of a long conference table populated with suited men and women appeared. There were a few men in uniform with very formidable looking medals and pins of rank. One wore oak leaves. I did not know what their ranks were, but I figured it high if they had a seat at the president's table. I had never served so I did not know.

I studied the three men in grey. They had a maverick look about them—bored and filled with unjustified self-importance. The lanyards around their neck sported security passes, but I could not make out who they were here to represent.

The one with the coffee leaned forward and came to his feet. He circled around behind me and took my hand in his. He splayed my fingers wide and pressed my palm to a digital scanner beside the laptop. A blue light moved from the bottom of the scanner to the top then back again. I struggled to retrieve my hand, but he held it there until the man with the laptop nodded.

The other man who had been lounging came around the other two. He carried a strange looking camera with him. The man who had scanned my hand turned my chair sideways and gripped my chin in one hand, pushing it up so the other man could take my picture. A green grid suddenly appeared on my face, projected by a light below the camera lens. I could not see the laptop screen, but I guessed it was a digital camera meant to aid in facial recognition.

They were there to determine my identity I surmised. I was curious to see if I was in their system. Judging by the cocky air of self-importance and the smug sense of entitlement, I figured them to be three of Tessa's goons. The NSA seemed the fastest way to identify someone out of all the alphabet agencies. I was curious what name it would find for me.

”So, what's your deal?" the photographer asked, fiddling with the buttons on the camera. He walked over to the laptop guy. That guy plugged a cable into the camera. "You some terrorist or what? What'd you do?" He set the camera down and went back to his seat.

"Shut up, Richie," the scanner guy snapped. "You know better than to ask. Do your shit and zip it." Richie grinned and flipped his buddy off, bobbing his head as he complied.

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"Him?" the laptop guy quipped. "He came in with Barnes," the wooly man seated behind the laptop announced, grinning. I studied him. He seemed more down to Earth. His beard was neatly trimmed, but thick and full. He wore square specs, no jacket, and wrinkled jeans. A tweed jacket hung from the back of his chair. This allowed me to notice that the holster on his hip was empty. They were guests in the White House.

"Woah," Richie declared, doubly interested in my story. "You were out there for that ET shit? Come on. Spill. What was it like? Did you see them? Were they covered in tentacles? Were they Ridley Scott style aliens or Jody Foster-looks-like-your-dead-dad type of alien?”

"Cut the shit, Richie," the second grey man snapped.

"You're not curious?" Richie asked of his companion. "They're going to conference upstairs, then they will spin this shit and tell us what they always tell us. This is our chance to get it firsthand. I mean," he turned back to me, "you were there, right?" I kept quiet. I had been warned in the car to keep my mouth shut and speak when cued by Mercy's assistant.

"Hey, tubby," he barked testily. "Answer the question. You were out there, right?" I stayed silent. "Did they touch you? Were you probed?" His grin was mocking. I had seen his type before. He was a jock showing off for the team. He was an untouchable. I tried to melt his face with my mind. He tried to bully me with small stinging slaps to the face. "Did they do things to you? Is that why you're quiet?" I tried to hit him in the head with my brain powers. He was unmolested by my efforts.

Why can't I move things like your brother? I demanded, sending my thoughts out to her. I accompanied it with my short-term memory of what was happening. I did not expect an answer, and at first there was not one.

You have to find something to focus it. Like a word, Leia replied haltingly. Focus on it, then use the word like a battering ram. It's hard to do. You have to practice. I was surprised she deigned to answer me.

How . . . How are you? When this is all done and stuff do you want to get— She didn't let me finish the thought.

Shut up! she snapped, sending a stinging little slap with the command. It smarted, but my vision was not blurry. She had held back. I smiled.

“How long until they're ready?" Richie asked of the bearded one. There was some typing behind me.

"Five minutes, maybe," the bearded one announced.

"Five minutes. You hear that? We want to know what happened out there in Kansas. Did you see the aliens?" he slapped me. I was generally jolly, but this was starting to get serious. "Answer me."

"I'm not supposed to talk about it," I replied, breaking my silence. "They said I'd be charged with treason if I did."

"Fine," Richie announced. "Don't say anything, but you know something?" He motioned to him and his two colleagues. "You don't want us as enemies. Do you have any idea what we could do to you? Do you know what we could do to the people you love? We just want a taste of what you're going to tell them upstairs. Did you see the aliens? Why are they here? Do they come in peace?”

I tried to push my mind into his. It was like trying to push wet spaghetti through a cement wall. I strained harder.

"I think he's going to shit himself," Richie told the others. He slapped my cheek again tauntingly. The other guys laughed. I had endured enough. I imagined that my mind was a hammer and his face was a nail. I threw everything I had into the image.

Suck it! I shouted silently, pushing at the words like they were a dam. At first there was nothing, no movement at all, then something slipped. In the next moment, the damn burst and a huge surge of will exploded forth aimed at his stupid grinning face. I felt weak watching what happened.

The force of my mind felt like a hurricane as it left me. It was now a force unto itself. I waited for him to fly backwards like Luke had done to Leia. He did not even blink, but three chairs back on the table, his empty Styrofoam coffee cup slid an inch and toppled. I gasped from the amount of strength it took to do even that. I mean, it was something to build on.

"Hey. Cut it out," the bearded one told them. "They're almost ready upstairs." He must have been right. Mercy's hateful assistant arrived just a moments later with her own assistants in tow. She looked at the three NSA agents, determined there were two too many and sent everyone but the bearded one from the room. They did not bother to protest. They were on loan. The moment they were out, she turned to me.

"Name," she demanded. I looked over at the bearded one. She followed my gaze. He looked up in confusion, first at me then her and shrugged.

"We don't know yet. I put his prints in AFIS and I'm running his head shot through our facial recognition system. I'm also running them through the NSA database. It could take a while. There's no hits yet." She turned back to me.

"Have you tried contacting his employer?" she asked. "He works in a quarry near . . ." she looked at me. "What was the name of that town you lived in?"

"Cherryville," I replied politely. She did not thank me. I was not sure she understood the concept. "See if you can find the quarry. Fax them a headshot and see if anyone knows him."

The bearded one went to work on the laptop. A few moments later, he pulled a cell phone and made a call. He got up and drifted toward the far end of the room for privacy.

"Name," she demanded again, as if her stern manner could sway me. I shrugged as if in defeat.

"My names Andre Cassanges," I relented. "I'm a recluse." She looked to the bearded one, snapping her fingers to get his attention.

"Andre Cassanges?" She gestured to the laptop, and he hurried back, putting the person on the other end on hold. He typed the name into his laptop and waited for a hit. A moment later, he was chuckling.

"What an honor," he told her dryly. "This man invented the Etch-a-sketch." She gave me a disgusted look of impotent rage.

"I recall the day the idea of the Etch-a-sketch came to me. Of course, back then I didn't call it an Etch-a-sketch. I just referred to it as the shaky box. The idea was more a philosophical foray into the human psyche. Think about it as I did. There you are, and your life is shit. Don't you wish you could just take life by the edges and shake out a new start. Well, I had these thoughts too, and I must tell you, I wish I had thought of this as a kid. Then it hit me. Boom! What if there was a toy children could play with that would let them—"

"Name," she demanded. She wasn't buying it.

"Fine, you unfriendly wench. My names Ayn Rand. I'm something of a nomad—a gypsy really," I told her facetiously. She looked to the bearded one. He was surprised by this. He didn't even have to type it in.

"It's an author. Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged," he told her in a bored sounding voice with a slight look of amusement.

"I don't have time for this," she demanded, checking her watch. "Give me a name that isn't tied to some book or invention. I don't care who you are. I just don't want you to embarrass me in front of this group," she told me in exasperation, pointing to the monitors. "Please?" she added plaintively. "You don't like the system. I get it. But this? It's my career you're messing with." I empathized with her.

"It's not my name, but you can call me Daniel—Daniel Sojourner," I said, grimacing. It was not my name, but it was a name I had used before. She looked to the bearded one. He typed it in. No hits came back. The bearded one shook his head and gave her a thumbs up, then picked up the call he had put on hold.

"Good enough," she declared. She turned me toward the camera and took her cue from the bearded one. Her assistants swarmed my person, adjusting my collar, smoothing my suit, straightening my tie, applying powder to the shiny parts of my face. When the bearded one declared my appearance good on screen, I was instructed to keep my cuffed hands in my lap for the duration of the interview. I fell back in my seat. Washington sucked, and I was tired of the whole ordeal.

When all was done, Mercy's assistant shooed the other assistants from the room, she collapsed into the seat next to me and swiveled so she could study me. Her lips were pursed in contemplation of my person. I could feel her eyes tickling me all over. There was a curiosity there, but it was not for me. I think she was curious why they wanted me to speak to them.

"Why you?" she blurted suddenly.

Nailed it, I gloated to no one in particular.

Nailed what? a voice replied without warning. The question startled me, but not as much as the speaker. I did not know them, but they felt close at hand.

Woah! Who the hell is this? I asked excitedly of the voice I had just heard. It was not Leia.

Shit! the voice exclaimed in fear, going silent.

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