Ch24. Scent of fear

"I mean, you did a great number with Mason," the man with the red hair and beard said, and when Johan looked at him, he saw that the guy was smiling.

It was such a genuine, infectious smile that Johan himself felt like smiling, but held back.

'This is no place to make friends, you idiot!

"But you'll need a lot more than that if you want to survive in Hollowood..."

Even with that infectious smile permeating every word he said, Johan could still feel the darkness, the death sentence that lurked at the bottom of that simple sentence.

Meanwhile, the bus had already left the police station's vehicle yard and was speeding down the highway.

'We're leaving the island...' Johan let himself ramble on about where on the map of the country his final destination was marked.

The other part of Johan, however, looked deep into the brown eyes of the man next to him.

"And what do you suggest I do, shake your hand and ask if we can be friends...?" Johan tilted his head very slightly, raising an eyebrow and casting a crooked smile at his seatmate.

"First, let me introduce myself. My name is Isaac, and I'm very good with my fists... If you-"

"No."

The man, Isaac, tilted his head, letting his jaw drop.

"What?"

Johan smiled internally, delighting in Isaac's bewilderment, while he just watched Johan, looking like he'd been caught in a prank.

"I said no." Johan replied, turning back to face the outside of the bus, watching the cars, motorcycles and buses passing by on the highway.

Each vehicle going in its own direction, following its own path, with a different final destination for itself.

Free.

While Johan stood there, inside that bus full of people much more dangerous than him.

People who wouldn't think twice about making him the main course if he showed even a drop of fear.

"You were about to say that if I wanted, you could put your fists at my service, for a price. Right?"

Isaac's eyes widened, and his mouth opened and closed a few times before he could answer.

"Uh... Yes?"

"What's my name?"

Johan had a very simple goal with that question, even more so when he realized that Isaac wasn't the only one watching him on that bus.

Everyone there was staring at Johan, or at least looking at him out of the corner of their eye.

So Johan mustered all his courage and desperation in one move to show everyone there that he wasn't afraid of them.

'Even if I have to die fighting.

"Your name is Erick." Isaac replied, and Johan smiled.

"That's not what I asked, Isaac. I asked what. Is. My. Name."

A shiver ran down Isaac's spine as he looked into Erick's eyes and noticed the expression on his face.

Johan had a cold, calculatingly dead, emotionless look on his face.

Isaac's voice quivered as he answered Erick's question.

"Vaughn... Your name is Erick... Vaughn."

Johan clicked his tongue, smiling again.

"Exactly. Do you think what I did to Mason was a show?" Johan's expression tightened, a cruel smile forming on his lips. "I was drugged, basically hungover. So just think, now... I'm sane. And I have some of my best subordinates just waiting for my arrival in Hollowood. So, if you want to serve me... find better terms, and maybe we can negotiate some other time..."

Johan knew that this might not have been the best of answers, but it was the one he needed to give at the moment.

Sometimes it's necessary to make enemies, so that someone can prove they're not just prey in a world of hunters.

And Johan had succeeded in his endeavor, leaving a dumbfounded Isaac speechless as he turned back to the window.

He realized that all the other inmates on the bus had gone back to their daydreams and side conversations.

The journey went a little more smoothly and quietly.

***

A few hours later, the bus entered an area of dense, dark forest, with the sun already beginning to hide on the horizon.

The approaching night only added to the feeling of tightness in Johan's chest, as he saw the landscape like something out of a gothic werewolf movie.

And two hours later, Johan laid eyes on the shape of Hollowood for the first time.

At the end of the uphill road, in the middle of that dense, dark forest, rested the edge of a precipice that Johan couldn't even begin to imagine how deep it was.

Over that edge, however, it was as if God himself had erected a massive, dark stone cube.

The stone cube had several indentations on its sides, which Johan imagined were windows, and around that construction, a series of five walls running from one side of the edge of that precipice to the other, protected the huge cube from any outside threat.

Or perhaps those walls actually protected the outside world from whatever was trapped inside.

A shiver ran down Johan's spine as the bus came closer and closer to the first wall.

Even from outside the outermost wall, it was still possible to see the top of the stone cube.

And the wall itself was higher than one of the middle mansions in the Vaughn villa.

Guards boarded the bus and carried out a thorough inspection of both the vehicle and each of the prisoners, and only then did the guards at the first gate open the way.

The process was the same for all four of the remaining walls, with the only difference being that at the last one, Johan gritted his teeth and forced himself to maintain every drop of coolness he possessed in order to tolerate the much more thorough search process that each of the prisoners was forced to go through.

It didn't look like anything was going to get much better after that, but at least Johan had finally reached the final destination of his journey.

When he got off the bus, he looked at the gargantuan black stone building, swallowed, and thought.

'So this is where I'll spend ten years of my life...'

A guard approached them and urged them to form a line.

When the newcomers did as they were told, the guard told them to walk, and they crossed the threshold of the enormous gate, with Johan at the end of the line, watching as the landscape changed from stone to metal.

Metal which that was going to separate him from the rest of the world for a very long time...