Rescue

I rested against the wall, my body sprawled out before me, relaxing as the time ticked by slowly. I had no way to tell the time, my bracelet's disablement meant none of its functions worked.

Nathaniel, the 8-year-old boy trapped here with me, was lying on the ground, his head on my legs, and he was sound asleep. After being assured of his mother's safety, he collapsed, presumably from stress, and so I let him rest peacefully.

The grape-like fruit he gave me was delicious but did little to quell my hunger.

'When are the police getting here?' I asked myself.

I knew that they would need time to validate my call, but with how much time they had taken, it felt as though they were stalling on purpose.

'Let's see. I called them at 67:00, and I was kidnapped at around 68:00, and I've probably been here for 2 hours, so it's 70:00. Yeah, that doesn't add up. How are they so slow.'

It seemed that police were always understaffed and terrible at coming on time, even in the universe.

Luckily for me though, my wait would be rewarded, for I heard a racket just in the distance. 

CRASH- BANG- crackle! SLAM-

I heard what I thought was a table crash into the wall, followed by a deafening bang that was accompanied by the sound of fire.

'Ah, they're here.' 

"Wake up Nathaniel, we're getting out of here." I gently prodded the boy's chubby cheeks, watching as his eyes flickered open.

"Ack, I'm sorry Arthur. I didn't mean to-"

"It's alright." He began to ramble, but a soft-spoken interruption from me and a flash of my smile to ensure that he knew he was fine stopped him. "Anyways the cops are here. Come, watch the door."

From the corner of the cell by the bars, we could see a wooden door, made of metal, and it had a dent on it, presumably from the slam I had heard.

"FUCK YOU!" A man with a gruff voice screamed.

BAM! SLAM- CRASH-

At that moment, the sound of flesh being hit with a shocking amount of force came into our ears, and we saw the door being forced open, and a man being flung through the air before landing with a skid.

"Hahaha!" I laughed at the display, encouraging Nathaniel to laugh, which was a good thing, for the boy had been through a lot in the past day.

The man with the bald head and gruff voice, the one who led me to the inn, looked at us after we laughed, and his face contorted in anger. He swiftly rose to his feet, running toward us, but there wasn't an ounce of fear in me, and Nathaniel was too busy releasing some pent-up emotion to care.

BAM-

Right as he grabbed the metal bars, a blast of fire sent him flying, which made me burst into a bigger tirade of laughter.

"Oh, that's funny!" I said, wiping my eyes from the tears that had formed. I turned to view the doorway and saw someone standing there, looking cold and unfeeling.

A man walked into the dungeon, his eyes scanning the room.

"Punishment for kidnapping, 20 years. Punishment for slave-trading, 20 years."

His eyes landed on us, but he focused more on the boy who was next to me.

"Punishment for the same crimes with minors, 60 years. Sentence? Death."

His voice was cold and emotionless, and with a flash the man disappeared from his spot, reappearing where the first one was, holding him by the neck.

CRUNCH!

With a loud crunch, he crushed the man's neck using only one hand, something I had to stop Nathaniel from seeing, censoring it with my hand, and then he looked back through the door, where 6 other men stood. Blood stained his face, but he seemed completely unbothered by it.

"Kill the ones we captured."

'Fuck, that was cold.' I thought, enraptured by the man's badassery.

The man then proceeded to unlock each cell, a hint of emotion on his face as he looked at each of them.

He got to the cell I was in last and helped Nathaniel out.

"Please, sir, help him find his mother." I asked politely. My time with the boy had been short, but I had grown to like the little kid. He reminded me of myself when I was just a bit younger than him, when I still had my parents.

The man gave me a nod and guided Nathaniel through the crowd of captured people. I watched from afar as the kid found his mother, and they embraced with tears in their eyes.

Nathaniel looked around for me, and when our eyes met he waved for me to come, but I shook my head, conveying without words that he should spend time with his family. He gave me a resolute nod in return, and I chuckled.

I walked out the door, back into the tavern, and headed up the stairs that would lead to the first floor, where I could take my leave.

I took my first step on the floor and a hand placed itself on my shoulder, the man from before standing in front of me.

'How in the-?'

"Are you the one who made the report? Come with me, we need to talk."

---

The man took me to the police station, and I took a seat where he gestured. The station looked just like a regular Earthen station, but the technology was more advanced, the place was clean, and the cells weren't likely to fail at any random second.

'It's odd how many similarities there are between Earth and this planet.' I thought.

The man took a seat in front of me and gestured for me to give him my right hand.

I complied, watching as he grabbed a tool that looked like a cross between a laser, wrench, and screwdriver all in one, that also acted as a scanner. He placed it on my wrist, and I soon felt a light, searing pain come from it, that was from the laser part.

"My name is Jake Balil, but you can call me Captain Balil. Now, please tell me how you knew about the kidnapping ring." He introduced himself and got straight to the point without any delay.

The answer I was about to give was one I had crafted whilst in the confines of the dungeon, so I was sure that he would find no fault in it.

"Well, I was in the city center, where I asked a random person for directions to a good inn, and he pointed to 'The Supria's Light'. That man was the bald man you fought before, by the way. Anyway, I followed his instructions and went to the inn, where I was greeted by a lady who I assume was in on it, she gave me a room key, and I paid the cost for it. It was only 1,000 UC, which made me suspicious since it was the high-class district, so when I was in my room I did some research and found that all the reviews were oddly similar to each other." 

I took a breather to pace myself, knowing that I needed to be clear about every detail.

"It was then that I looked at it objectively. A man guided me to an inn in the high-class sector, a relatively cheap inn, and one that was empty. That meant one of two things, either everybody in the inn was an introvert, or people were being taken. I mean, it was a rather high-class inn, and was extremely cheap for its location, so who wouldn't stay there? I was almost certain about my deduction, but not fully. It was then that I remembered a conversation with my friend, he had mentioned that in an auction he went to there were several slaves, all New-Worlders, who had come from the same spot. He hadn't been given the details, but he knew that they came from an inn. And, bam!-, deduction made."

His emotionless face shifted slightly when he heard 'auction' and 'slave' in the sentence, and about how my 'friend' was privy to some details. That implied that my 'friend' was an important businessman, or someone high-up in the government, so he knew that he wouldn't be able to get his name from my mouth.

Basically, I made some random bullshit up that could make sense, if you stretch your brain a bit, and then backed it up with a source that he wouldn't be able to verify, forcing him to take my word for it. Faultproof, right?

"Now, are you going to remove the fob or are you going to keep fiddling?" I asked, for that was what the man had been doing. The tool he was using could remove parts of a bracelet, but he had left it in one spot when I started my story, so he hadn't yet removed anything.

"My bad." He moved the tool across my wrist, and with a flash, a fob materialized in the wrench part of the tool. He grabbed it before putting it to the side and then came back to my bracelet, he placed an upgrade into it.

Since the bracelet was hacked, but he couldn't remove it, he would have to add an anti-virus to it to fix it, so it was a free upgrade for me.

"Done, now sir, you're free to go." He said to me.

"Thank you, Captain Balil, it was nice to meet you."

"Yes, it was." 

I left the station swiftly, and once I was outside a smirk formed on my face.

'Thank fuck that worked.'