Chapter Text
When Tommy opens his eyes for the first time that morning, it’s to a dim light on his face, and a musty smell that he can only associate with a damp basement.
He squints, lifting his head from his pillow and blinking at the square of light sitting in front of him, shining right into his eyes. A television screen—odd, he thinks through the cobwebs of sleep, considering he doesn’t even own a television. The screen shows only buzzing static, cut across by glitching lines of colour, and Tommy cocks his head curiously at it.
Beneath his hands is the rough texture of worn fabric, and he plucks at it, lifting it into the light and frowning. It’s a blanket, and one he doesn’t recognise, something brown and ratty and wholly unfamiliar. As he pulls it up, though, cool air floods beneath it and Tommy shivers, pressing it tight against his lap to contain the warmth.
…Where is he? Why does it smell like concrete and mould?
Carefully, he levers himself to his feet, wincing at the cold that bites at him even through his clothes. He shuffles around the light provided by the television until he can hardly see anymore, outstretching one hand to make sure he doesn’t bump into anything. Five steps, and his hand hits the chilly, rough wall, six until he’s standing right in front of it. Tommy slowly walks along the wall, careful of anything that might be sitting in the dark, and once he hits the corner, he turns right back around and counts his steps as he follows the wall again. It takes ten steps for him to find the other corner of the room.
In less than a minute he has a good idea of how large the room is, and he finds then that it’s distressingly small.
“Where the fuck am I?” Tommy asks aloud, continuing to strain his eyes in search of features in the room to find.
A click sounds from above his head, and then with a buzz, fluorescent lights come on, illuminating the room and blinding him instantly.
“Jesus Christ,” he swears, stumbling back into the centre of the room and yelping when his heel catches on the edge of the television. Plastic scrapes against the ground and he only barely manages to catch himself on the top of the box. He blinks the spots out of his eyes and finally, finally gets a good look around.
Tommy’s eyes go wide as his heart starts to kick faster, his breath catching in his throat. He doesn’t recognise a single inch of the concrete walls. They’re not his apartment, with its stained and water-damaged wallpaper, and the tiled floor is nothing like the creaky floorboards that he treads on every day. Frantically, he casts his gaze over his surroundings, spotting a thin mat on the floor, laid with the frayed brown blanket and a pillow that doesn’t even have a case on it.
And finally, the last detail that makes his chest constrict, he is well and truly boxed in.
There are no windows, nothing to provide light but the overhead lights and the boxy, still-lit television he half-leans against. There’s a door, set into the wall behind the television, but there is no knob, no latch, and certainly nothing to catch his fingers on to haul it open. Aside from Tommy, there is nothing else in the room.
He’s alone, and it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Tommy pulls in a frantic breath, fighting the way he can feel his features starting to pull and sharpen, and years of practice are probably the only thing making it possible to rein the change in.
“No,” Tommy breathes, casting about for the last thing he can remember, but nothing stands out. He’d finished his shift at the bakery, waited for Niki to finish closing so he could walk her to her bus stop, and then he walked home. There was nothing he’d noticed amiss on his path, no cars behind him, no people following him. But– Does he remember getting into his apartment? Even making it into the lobby of the building? He knows what it would look like, knows how it is every other night when he leaves work, but are his memories truly fresh, or are they just imprinted on his brain?
From beside him, there is a soft crackle, and his eyes are drawn to the television as the screen flickers, the screen fading from static to white to a blurry image, which gradually comes into focus.
The blond man shown on the screen is sitting, legs crossed, in a plush, overstuffed armchair, and the room behind him looks like some kind of sitting room, with a fireplace lit behind him, shelves of books covering the walls to either side of the hearth, and a small, round side table next to him, set only with a slender vase holding a single, spindly red flower.
Something about the gentle smile that spreads across the man’s face is wrong and unnerving, and Tommy’s shoulders pull up as he leans away from the screen. Still, he cannot look away as the man’s head tilts to the side, almost as if he’s studying Tommy.
“Hello,” the man says, voice echoing out of the television. It’s almost too quiet, and Tommy finds his ears straining to hear properly. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, you’re not at home.”
There’s something familiar about him, something about his voice that picks at the back of Tommy’s brain, but it doesn’t come to mind immediately, and the video continues on without giving him time to think longer.
“Don’t worry, for now you’re perfectly safe,” comes the serene voice. “Currently, you’ve been placed in a secure bunker on my estate, and in a few minutes, you will be released to participate in a little game I like to call Hunter, Hunted."
What?
The man uncrosses his legs then, leaning just so slightly forward as something lights in his eyes, fever bright. “Fear not, I’ll gladly explain the game. First, as I have said, you are in a bunker on my estate. You have been specially selected to play this game with me and my sons, chosen from amongst many others. I hope you appreciate the gesture. Now, as the name implies, this is a game of predator and prey, and you, of course, are the prey.”
Tommy swallows hard past the lump growing in his throat, and he fists his hands against his jeans to keep his hands from shaking. There’s no way—this is insane, it has to be some kind of joke. There’s no way he’s been kidnapped for some– some game.
“When you are released, the door in front of you will open, and you will make your way outside. I advise you to not refuse to leave, since I doubt you’ll enjoy the consequences that come with that particular refusal. So, you will make your way outside, and there you will find yourself on our hunting grounds. This hunting ground covers a few dozen acres of land, and it is fully enclosed. What you do in the enclosure is up to you entirely, but we do recommend that you try to survive for as long as possible.” The man smiles wider, and there are too many teeth, something manic twisting his expression. “Once you are free, you will have exactly one hour before your opponents arrive—namely, my sons and I. From the moment your time is up, we will be tracking you down. Trust me, we will have no more advantages than you do. There are no trackers on your person, nor any cameras throughout the hunting grounds. We like to do our hunting rather… traditionally, if you will.”
“What the fuck,” Tommy whispers, although he knows there is no one to hear him. What the fuck. There’s no way this is happening. There’s no way some rich fuck has kidnapped him and plans to hunt him like an animal with his sons.
The smile falls from the man’s face, and his expression grows sober then. “There will be traps laid by us, and we will be bearing weapons. When you are caught, and you will be caught, you will be killed. What happens to you after you are killed is none of your concern, of course. But in the time between your release and your death, I do ask you to be kind enough to be entertaining. It always is so disappointing when those we select give up early in our game. It’s terribly boring.”
Terribly boring.
This man is abducting people to hunt them down and murder them on his own property and he calls them ‘terribly boring’. And still the video keeps playing, leaving Tommy biting his tongue so hard that it draws blood, although only then does he realise his teeth have grown sharper, leaving metallic tang on his taste buds.
“Now, with all that said, your hour starts now,” the man says, lifting one hand and gesturing backwards with his thumb, just as a hydraulic hiss sounds, and the door in the wall slides slowly open. Through the opening is so much green, trees and grass stretching on further than his eye can see. The smile returns to the man’s face, except this time it’s much, much more pleasant. “Thank you for indulging my explanation, although you certainly had no other option. Go ahead and leave the bunker now, and do your best to last as long as you can.”
The video cuts out, the screen going dark, leaving Tommy alone in the room with an open door waiting for him to walk through it.
For a moment, he considers staying, waiting to see what happens if he just doesn’t leave, but clearly this man is batshit insane, and he has no doubt in his mind that someone would come in with a crowbar to bust his knees before they’d let him go. A part of him still wonders if this is a joke, if someone is going to walk through the door and laugh at him, but there are few people he knows who are cruel enough to play a prank so sinister on him.
Tommy pushes himself upright and navigates his way around the television, stumbling on legs weak with nerves through the doorway. The grass is almost a blinding shade of green, but Tommy has a single hour to use to his advantage, and so he gets his feet properly under him and takes off running.
Here’s the thing, and the only real upper hand Tommy has if this game is to continue the way that he thinks it is: what these psychopaths don’t know about him is that he doesn’t have to stay human, unlike what their other victims had to do. Tommy doesn’t hesitate to let the change come this time, his face elongating, his body shortening, fur sprouting over his skin. He hits the ground running on all four paws, ducking low beneath the underbrush with his ears pinned back against his skull.
No one will think anything of a fox in a forest, and so he slips into the woods, ready to play the rich man’s game.