Jaden Baker Read online

  But he didn’t open his eyes. He concentrated with his ears, listening for barking dogs, birds chirping, for the occasional car. If the two men were not real, and his imagination had outdone itself, he would hear a bird or a bark—a realistic and boring signifier of suburbia.

  He heard no such noise, not even the sound of plumbing, or of windows settling in their frames. Instead he made out a low buzzing and nothing else.

  Awareness came gradually. The skin on his right forearm was raw, like he’d scraped it on asphalt. When he swallowed, he felt constricted, as if he wore a too tight turtleneck. His palms were stiff and sore.

  A wave of nausea punched him.

  Jaden opened his eyes, tossed off a blanket, swung his legs out of bed, but stumbled and fell, his legs collapsing underneath him. His stomach churned but the fall had not hurt him: the floor was padded.

  Groaning, he lift his head.

  This wasn’t his room in Napa.

  He was in a large space. The padded walls and floor were almost gray. Ahead of him was an alcove with a toilet inside. Jaden reached his hands and crawled toward it, like a dying cockroach missing some legs. The nausea worsened, the toilet loomed further away.

  A loud clanking sound made him slap his hands to his ears. He turned his head toward the noise but the edge of the bed blocked his view. Two seconds later shiny shoes came toward him. They stopped a foot from his face. Dark gray trousers stretched up, revealing black socks and skinny ankles. A man squatted.

  Jaden dropped his hands and craned his neck.

  The man’s face came into focus as Jaden looked up at him.

  His gently wrinkled skin was well tanned. He had reddish brown and somewhat wavy hair with flecks of blonde and gray. Eyes of bright electric blue crinkled into a smile. He laughed under his breath, heaved Jaden up by the armpits, and helped him to the bathroom.

  The moment Jaden’s knees hit the floor, his chest constricted and he vomited into the toilet bowl. He gripped it and hurled until the imaginary fist pushing his chest released him.

  Jaden slid away and rest on the wall. He was sweating, or maybe he had always been sweating and just noticed it. Water was running. He opened his eyes. The shiny shoed man was wetting a wash cloth in the sink. Jaden felt frail, his arms and legs tingly.

  “The nausea and sweating is expected,” he said, his voice rich and smooth. “The drugs we gave you are lingering in your system. You should feel better soon.” He rung the cloth and kneeled down to wipe Jaden’s forehead.

  Jaden pushed him away and scooted into a corner.

  “I’m sure you have questions. It’s okay to be scared, but I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Jaden’s brain was finally catching up with him, and his body reacted appropriately. He was rendered deaf, the pounding in his ears unbearable, his breath short and quick. His hands shook.

  “Calm down,” the stranger said in a soft voice. “Just take it easy, Jaden.”

  Hearing his name caused a reaction. As the stranger offered a hand to help him stand, Jaden leapt off the padded floor and lunged past the man. But his legs were weak, and he tripped and fell once he was in the main room. He gathered his limbs under him, and pushed himself off the floor, staggering as he stood.

  The door the stranger had come through was tall and made of solid steel. It had no knob, window, or any way of exit. Jaden ran unsteadily to it and pounded it with his fists. The door was cold. When he struck it, there was neither a gong nor thud.

  He used the wall for support and felt his way to the left, pushing for a way out.

  He came to a mirror—a double sided mirror, no doubt—and was confronted with his startled and altered reflection.

  Jaden’s head was bald, no trace of his black hair remained. His face showed every sign of terror. Gray eyes wide, face shiny with sweat; he saw his pulse throbbing in his neck.

  His neck. Jaden put his hands around it. There was a collar: a series of small black disks pressed on his skin. Three rubber tubes were strung through the disks and encircled his neck, keeping them there. Jaden felt the rubber tubes, but the rubber was a casing for something hard inside. He tried digging his fingers under the collar, but only got his pinky through the tubing.

  As he struggled, he saw why his forearm felt scraped. There was a tattoo, a large tri-colored pyramid with a barcode above the point and upside down numbers. It was upside down to his view. The skin around the tattoo was red and shiny.

  “It shouldn’t hurt much now,” said the stranger.

  Jaden, who’d forgotten the man was there, spun so fast his legs tangled and he fell. He pushed himself into a corner as the stranger approached him.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said again, stopping some five feet from where Jaden sat. He had his knees pulled to his chest, his body trembled.

  “Get away from me!” Jaden meant to yell, but it came out feebly.

  “I won’t come closer,” the stranger said, raising his hands.

  “Where am I?” Jaden cried, the tears dripping freely down his cheeks. “Where the hell am I?”

  “It’s like a research facility.” The stranger put his hands in the pockets of his white coat.

  “Who are you?” Jaden asked, his eyes bouncing around the room, back to the stranger’s face, the high ceiling, to the long florescent lights covered with a grate. “Who are you?” he whispered to himself.

  “I’m Dr. Chad Dalton. You can call me ‘Dr. Dalton’ or just ‘Doctor’ if you’d like. I’ll be handling you while you’re here.” Dr. Dalton’s face was calm and plain as he gazed at Jaden. His tone of voice never wavered.

  “Let me out of here,” Jaden said. He steadied himself and stood, holding the wall for support. “Let me out!”

  Dr. Dalton exhaled. “I can’t do that.”

  Jaden wiped at his eyes then screamed: “HELP ME! Help me, please!” He pounded on the mirror and yelled until his throat ripped. “HELP! Please, let me out!” He screamed over and over, hitting the mirror as hard as he could, but no one came.

  “Let me out!” he screamed hoarsely at Dalton. “Let me out!”

  “No,” Dalton said. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” he yelled.

  “You need to stop screaming,” he replied serenely.

  “Fuck you,” Jaden said.

  A crease formed between Dalton’s eyebrows and his shoulders stiffened. “I won’t be spoken to like that, especially by a child.”

  Jaden took a deep breath. “Fuck. You.”

  Dalton raised his chin, looking past his nose at Jaden. “I said I wasn’t going to hurt you. I should have said I don’t want to hurt you. Please, do not use language like that again.”

  Jaden laughed. He couldn’t help it. Nothing about the situation was funny, but he laughed at Dalton, and his voice hardly sounded like his own. He laughed harder than he ever had, his throat constricted, his arm burning, his head bald. Tears streamed down his grin-split face, dripping into the creases of his dimples.

  This couldn’t be happening. None of this was real. How could he have been in a house moments ago, and end up here, wherever here was, trapped inside a rubber room with a man claiming to be a doctor, a collar locked around his neck? There was no way this was real.

  After several minutes of false mirth, Jaden steadied himself, and wiped the tears with his left hand.

  “Well, I apologize then, doctor,” Jaden said, grinning. “I thought it was okay to use words like that. I didn’t know I wasn’t being polite. But now I know you can hurt me, I will think before I call you a shit-eating, pus-licking, mother-fu—”

  A painful shock so sudden and powerful it knocked Jaden backwards, coursed through his body. He was on his back shrieking when the pain stopped as quickly as it had begun. His limbs trembled and there was ringing in his ears.

  He rolled on his stomach, face on the soft, cool floor, and shook.

  “It’s an electric shock collar,” Dalton said, standing over Jaden. “I didn’t want to use
it, but you forced me. It comes in bursts so it won’t cause too much long term damage, but I know it’s painful. Please don’t make me use it again.”

  Dalton put out his hand for Jaden to grab, presumably to help him up. He hesitated, then grabbed Dalton’s hand, allowing Dalton to lift him. Jaden lunged for the hand in Dalton’s pocket, delivering a kick to Dalton’s knee.

  The doctor pushed Jaden. He landed on the floor, howling in pain as the electricity shot through his body again. He panted for breath and grabbed at the collar, trying to pull it off, scratching at his neck, digging at his skin to get his fingers underneath the disks. His fingernails were trimmed to nubs.

  The door clanked, and Jaden jumped and ran for it as the doctor slipped through, the door shutting and locking behind him.

  Jaden banged his fists but nothing happened. The room was silent except for his ragged, tired breathing and the buzzing florescent light, which cast an unnatural white glow on the room.

  Jaden put his back to the door and studied his surroundings. It was large and rectangular, the size and shape of a spacious living room. The door, against which he currently leaned, was in the corner. The bed was cemented to the wall diagonal from him. He noticed something odd. Everything was cemented and padded. The bed frame was a block that came out of the floor and wall. He crawled into the alcove with the toilet and observed a shower head jutting from the wall. The shower area was not padded, but it was small. A sink was opposite the shower, with no mirror above it like a regular bathroom. Here too, the sink came out of the wall, with no crack between it. The toilet had a padded lip around the base. It was as if whoever constructed this room was afraid the whole floor would tip and everything in it would fall.

  Even the high ceilings, where he couldn’t possibly reach or bang his head, were padded. The only surface not covered was an air vent; the grate was solid iron and welded into the wall.

  His reflection stared at him. The mirror was the only real opening, and it was as solid as everything else. He wondered if Dalton watched as Jaden analyzed the room for weaknesses.

  The thumping of his heart in his ears, and the gelatin feel of his legs, did not go away. Of all the disastrous situations he had been in, this was the worst. He couldn’t see any way out.

  He still didn’t know where he was. His initial fear and panic had been replaced by a more constant, but less urgent, trepidation. Jaden’s brain would not turn off. He thought of how to escape, but also wondered why he was here, and where the hell here was. Jaden’s legs, too fragile to hold him, folded, and he slid to the floor. The pumping of his heart, constant and rapid, made him light-headed and feverish. Jaden put his head between his knees and thought.

  Most likely this place was underground. Dalton let Jaden scream, knowing no one would hear. So he was either exceptionally high or low. The last he remembered was getting a drink of water and being tackled by two men wearing black. They could have taken him anywhere. The Kauffmans lived in Napa...

  The Kauffmans. The thought of them left Jaden cold. One of the intruders had come from upstairs. Had he hurt them? Had he killed them?

  His mind scrambled. He’d dropped a glass, but neither man cared about the noise: Because Derek and Jenny couldn’t hear.

  Jaden’s stomach was nauseous again. Derek and Jenny had been so kind and generous. And now they were dead?

  Unless they had been kidnapped, too. Maybe the intruders took them first, stashed them in the van or SUV or whatever they used to kidnap him, and now Derek and Jenny were here, in another part of the facility.

  Why, though? Why were they here? Dalton had not mentioned them. It was some kind of research facility. Were they going to do experiments on Jaden, Derek and Jenny? Test diseases? Remove their organs and give them to dying people? Clone them?

  Jaden looked down at the fresh tattoo on his forearm. A barcode. Like he was bread at the local store. What did the pyramid mean? He examined it with more skepticism. The pyramid was three colors: one side black, one white, and the bottom, the base, was gray. Right side up, the pyramid was upside down.

  They, Dalton and whoever else, branded him and put a collar around his neck to control him. His eyes flickered over the room and landed on the odd bed.

  Nothing could be moved.

  The door slid into and out of the wall. No joints, no hinges. It was impossible to open from the inside.

  His chest constricted again, not out of sickness, but as if the walls were shrinking in on him.

  There was no way out except through this door, and whoever constructed this room knew Jaden could not get out of it. It had been designed to keep him in. To keep Jaden in. Nothing could be moved, not even the toilet had a lever to flush. It was automatic.

  The Kauffmans were not here.

  They know the secret.

  How? He hadn’t told anyone except Derek and Jenny, and they swore secrecy. Unless they were the ones who told...

  No. Someone else confessed, there were plenty of people who knew Jaden was strange. The family Jaden had lived with before the Kauffmans had taken matters into their own hands. They made a connection that Jaden did weird things. It could be them.

  Whoever told, that’s why he was here. Dalton and whoever else, wanted to study him to learn why he was the way he was.

  Jaden’s situation was dark, yet his mind was strangely focused. He would have to play dumb. That much was obvious. Somehow he’d have to force his ability down and keep it from cropping up. If he wasn’t special, if he was just like any other nine year old, they’d let him go. Why waste time on a nobody?

  Or they would kill him instead, so he wouldn’t talk.

  Jaden grabbed his knees to his chest and rested his head on them, rocking back and forth, thinking, worrying about what would happen if he could not think of a way out of this.

  It was a nightmare. A real one.

  There was no clock. No window to see outside. No calendar, no electronic devices, nothing at all. Nothing told him the time, weather, ambient temperature, or whether it was night or day.

  The air was neither hot nor cold.

  His gray clothes were like nurses’ uniforms. Scrubs. He wore thick socks instead of shoes. His nails were trimmed short, so he couldn’t use them to scratch.

  A shelf under the sink in the bathroom held a small toothbrush and tube of toothpaste. No floss and no comb for his hair. But there was no need, for even his hair was gone.

  His throat was constricted every time he swallowed. He tried yanking and prying the collar off, but it would not come loose. As long as it was there, he could not hope to break free.

  It felt like hours since Dalton introduced himself. The drugs’ effects were gone, as Dalton had predicted: no more nausea. Despite his anxiety, exhaustion set in. Fear kept him alert. Uninterested in current events, his stomach ached and growled with hunger.

  What was he supposed to do? There was no way to communicate, and what would he say if there was? Jaden was helpless.

  Finally the door opened. Jaden concentrated on its sound, trying to hear how it operated, as if that would somehow help him escape, but he could only hear the clanking. He stood and watched Dalton enter, taking three steps inside. There was a second door behind the first. Before the door to his room would open, the other had to be closed and locked. Double security.

  “Hello, Jaden,” Dalton said, smiling.

  Jaden kept his mouth closed and watched Dalton carefully. Dalton kept his hands in his pockets. One gripped the remote control, no doubt. Dalton was tall and slender. His dark trousers were pleatedironed. Underneath the white coat was a white collared shirt with a red and gray striped tie. Dalton did not have a watch, though a white tan line around his left wrist suggested he did.

  “I thought we could talk,” Dalton continued. “If you’re ready.”

  Jaden had questions. Derek and Jenny were his first concern. Were they still alive, or victims of collateral damage?

  “Where are the Kauffmans?” he asked.

 
; Dalton nodded. “They’re fine. They’re home in Napa, happy as can be.”

  Jaden frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Dalton smiled in false sadness. “They got some happy news. They were chosen for a baby.”

  “What?” he mumbled, his lips numb.

  Dalton sat on the bed’s edge, crossed his leg on his knee, and held his skinny ankle. “They’ve been on a list for a long time, but like so many hopeful and qualified parents, they were glossed over. They got a call shortly after you ran away with the good news. They’ll be adopting a baby in a few months.”

  No, that wasn’t right. “I didn’t run away, you took me,” Jaden said, his voice quivering. He felt pressure and heat behind his eyes, but stifled his emotion.

  “Well, yes,” Dalton said, “that’s how you saw it. But the police report says you ran away. Your backpack was missing from the house along with some clothes and food. Since there were no signs of forced entry, and because you have a long history of running, the police concluded you packed and left.”

  Jaden found himself shaking his head and staring at the floor. “But I didn’t.”

  “You already ran away from them once. Why not do it again? Foster children can be so unpredictable and rash,” Dalton said as Jaden stared at him. “They won’t look for you.”

  Jaden broke his gaze, turned his back to Dalton, and cried quietly.

  “They always wanted a baby. You were a last resort. I think they liked you, but they’d only known you a week. They hadn’t even formally adopted you yet,” Dalton added. “It would be best for you to move on and not think about them. They’re probably not thinking about you. Last I heard they bought a crib and paint for a nursery.”

  Dalton knew exactly where to aim. His words left Jaden winded. They were more paralyzing than anything Dalton had done thus far. Jaden had liked the Kauffmans and their home, only now did he realize just how much. He wiped his eyes and faced Dalton again.