17 SURVIVAL, PART 7: More Secrets…

As we woke up at around 8am, we packed up and started walking again. Kaleb and Ryan helped Jace walk as his leg was still hurting a little. He could walk, but he needed to lean on something. They were kind enough to lend him their shoulders. Chris couldn’t, as he had to lead the way for us.

As we walked through that forest, something felt odd. It was like I knew something would go wrong, only I didn’t know what. I walked right behind Chris, as usual, and holding Aayat’s hand as Jace was not in a state to look after her. We walked under the burning hot sun, hoping that maybe that day would be the last day where we would be lost.

According to Chris, it was. He had mentioned the day before that we only had one day walk left if we continue at the same rate, and of course, none of us would dare to discuss what Chris says. He knew his topic, and we trusted his knowledge.

Few hours passed, we were still walking. Nothing special had happened, and that scared me. It was too quiet, too peaceful. We had been so used to trouble lately, we could not adapt to walking calmly. We stayed on our guards at every step of the way, and kept watch. We looked around all the time.

Chris kept on warning me to stay careful; I guess he had the same bad feeling that I had. I looked back at the others a few times. Rebekah and Maya looked exhausted, as for Kayra, she walked beside Kaleb all the time, holding his other arm.

Something had changed between them since the night before, when I talked to Kayra. They seemed more at ease with each other, like they had talked. I hoped they had, and that they had realised what I have been seeing since the night they met.

As I was lost in my thoughts, I heard a sound, like someone falling. It wasn’t until I looked back in front of me that I noticed that Chris had fainted. I immediately noticed he had something in his neck, like a dart, and understood that he had been shot.

Before any of us could react, Jace, Kaleb and Ryan also fell flat on the ground, unconscious. It was not too long before I ended up on the ground myself, seeing my whole surrounding slowly turning dark, and feeling myself slipping away into unconsciousness. I made a vain attempt to fight it. Everything after that is blurred in my head.

So many years later I still cannot remember exactly what had happened during this small amount of time when everything went black. It’s like a hole in my head. All I can remember is waking up after that with my hands tied up at the back of a chair on which I was sitting. I could not understand what was going on, my vision still being blurred. It took a while for my vision to get clearer, my head to stop aching and for me to notice that we were in some kind of warehouse, I guess. I looked around hoping to find the others.

I saw Maya and Rebekah to my right, and Kayra and Aayat to my left, but I couldn’t find Jace, or anyone of the boys anywhere. I looked all around for Jace, going on and on, left and right so many times. I only forgot to look right in front of me.

I saw him, a few minutes later, along with the other boys, shirtless, their hands tied up with a rope hanging from the roof. Their arms were stretched up, as if the rope nearly lifted them from the ground.

Jace looked weak, like he had been hurt. He had bruises and marks everywhere. Behind him were two men with very long sticks beating him up like he had committed some crime. I could feel his pain, but he looked like he wasn’t feeling it.

“Jace…” I tried to call, my voice barely leaving my throat. I couldn’t speak, I could barely breathe. “Jace…” I tried again, a bit louder this time. Then he finally answered.

Jace - Quesiyah! Are you alright? Ques!!!

Me - I’m okay I guess. What’s going on?

Jace - Ques I’m so sorry. I should’ve told you the whole truth.

Me – What? What truth? What are you talking about?

I couldn’t understand. He kept saying that he should’ve told me the whole truth. Did he lie to me? Is there something he didn’t say? Questions filled my head as one man came in.

He was very big, muscular, and quite intimidating. He had the face of a tyrant, which scared me to death. Every time he would look at me from the corner of his eye, it felt like the room itself got cold when he was around. He came in looking at Jace, then at me. He told Jace, in a very domineering way, to tell me the reason why we were there, the reason why he had taken us. He told Jace to tell me the whole truth. “Will you tell her or should I?” he said repeatedly.

Me - Jace, what’s going on? What reason is he talking about?

I was desperately hoping for an answer, but he gave none. He looked down, stared at the floor, just like he did the first time when he found out I knew he was in foster care. I saw tears filling his eyes slowly.

From this moment, I knew something was up. There was something he was ashamed of, something he felt bad, almost guilty about, that he didn’t tell me. That was killing him on the inside. What secret could possibly be big enough for him to conceal it all this way? How did all this relate to what was happening, to why we were kidnapped?

A mystery that filled my head with doubt and my heart with fear. What I was about to find out would change everything.