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When someone has kidnapped your best friend twice, and poisoned your other best friend less than a week ago, you really should be careful when you are alone at night. You should definitely always walk with someone else, should stay in public areas, and should absolutely, obviously avoid going through dark alleyways entirely alone.
So Zack feels a twinge of nerves as he walks, alone, into a dark alleyway. It isn’t exactly night, but late evening. If he could, he would stay with Melissa all night, but promised his parents that he would be home by dark, and that he would let Milo’s mom give him a lift. He promised all of that, but he is walking home by himself, and the world is certainly very dim.
His parents, like Milo’s, like Melissa’s, are extremely worried about him. Are worried that Sally and Penelope might target him, as a hostage or blackmail, like they did to Melissa. He understands that, because he is also scared. And Milo even suggested it as a possibility, although Milo seemed more worried about the possibility of the evil maniac enacting revenge on them for outwitting her to save Melissa without betraying Dakota.
But plans fell through, and here he is. Walking home alone. And it’ll be fine, obviously it’ll be fine. It’s just one night, and he has walked this way hundreds of times (he visits Milo in hospital a lot), so he’ll be fine. What could go wrong?
He has been friends with Milo for long enough to know how stupid thinking that is.
A dark figure appears in front of him. Logically, he knows that they must have jumped from a window or the rooftop, but he feels like they just appeared like a ghost. “Ahh!” And he jumps like he just saw one too.
The only distinguishing feature of the dark figure is a metallic glint. Immediately he starts backing away as quickly as possible. “Sorry, kiddo, that’s not gonna work.”
He jumps again, spinning around to see the speaker behind him, who he nearly collided with while trying to back away. A woman with curly brown hair and a satisfied smile. “Good to see you again!”
Zack’s breath catches in his throat as he stares at the woman. “Sally?”
“That’s right!”
Ok. Ok, this is bad. This is very, very bad. This is going about as wrong as it could. He feels frozen, only able to stare at the woman who has done so much to hurt his friends. His hands are trembling, and when he tries to step away from Sally her hand shoots out to grab his wrist.
The touch is light, it doesn’t even hurt. But it completely freezes him, because the statement behind the movement is clear. So he tries something else. He reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone, clicking on the first contact he can. It’s Milo. And thankfully, he picks up. “Zack?” He sounds unconcerned.
“Milo, I-“
Sally shoves him backwards, and he falls roughly. He braces himself for a collision with the hard floor of the alley. Instead he is caught, held tightly by a pair of strong arms. Sally threw him and Penelope caught him. Great.
“Zack, what’s going on?” Milo sounds worried now. Zack really wishes that he could reassure him.
“Your friend shouldn’t have walked home alone.” Sally bends down to pick up Zack’s phone, which now has several impressive cracks in it. “Hi, kiddo.”
Zack can imagine the horror on Milo’s face, the colour draining away as he realises what is going on. He can hear that horror in his voice when he answers. “What? What’s going on?!”
“You shouldn’t have tried to get around me, kiddo. Did you think that you won when you saved the girl? Because you didn’t. And I’m afraid that your friend is going to pay the price.” Sally’s voice is as smooth and sweet as honey, but the core of the honey is frozen solid.
“Milo, call-“ Zack is cut off by being roughly shoved into the stone wall of the alley. He cries out as pain shoots through him. He hears Milo’s own cry, him desperately asking if Zack is alright. He tries to answer, tries to reassure his friend, but this time he is thrown to the floor. The air is knocked out of his lungs and all he can do is lie crumpled on the floor, frozen.
“Zack?!” Milo’s voice again, even more scared. It’s always weird hearing Milo scared, it feels like an oxymoron.
“‘m fine.” He manages to say, and his voice is pained and shaken and everything hurts and footsteps are coming closer but Milo has to know that he’s alright even though he isn’t and his mind is racing too fast he can’t think straight and someone grabs his arm.
“He’s fine, see?” Sally says cheerfully as he yanks Zack up by the arm. He tries to struggle, but she is deceptively strong. “Or he will be. I hope you kept that device!”
“No, wai-“ Milo’s panicked plea is cut off by Sally hanging up, before she tosses the phone against the wall. It shatters. Man, his parents are going to kill him. If he survives. If he survives. Which right now, as he hangs limply in the grip of an absolute maniac, with bruises blooming all over his body, seems frighteningly unlikely.
“He doesn’t have the device anymore.” He admits. There is a funny metallic taste in his mouth. Blood? Probably. “We threw it in the river.”
“Really? Oh, what a shame.” Sally doesn’t look particularly upset. Or even surprised. Zack gets the idea that Milo was right, that this is more about revenge than about her getting what she wants. “Well, he’d better figure it out.”
He manages to get his legs underneath him, and keeps trying to struggle. He nearly gets away, but Penelope once again appears like a ghost to grab his arms and bend them painfully behind him. He winces, biting the inside of his mouth to stop himself from whimpering. His bruises throb, and his head his spinning.
“Can we go now?” Penelope asks, sounding bored. Somehow, that makes it worse. He is terrified out of his mind, and his kidnapper doesn’t even want to be here. “We’ve got the kid, if you want to mess with him you can do it when I’m allowed to go have a coffee.”
“We can go.” Sally confirms. “We don’t want to hang around here, someone might show up to play hero.” They both laugh. Zack realises with a jolt that he definitely does not want to let himself be taken. Milo can probably guess where he is, he could call the police, but if he is taken somewhere else, somewhere else in time…
Yeah, he definitely wants to avoid that.
With renewed determination, he starts struggling fiercely. He fights like his life depends on it, because he has realised that it might. He yanks his arms and kicks his legs and throws his head back, and altogether is as irritating as possible.
“For goodness sake!” Penelope exclaims. Her fingernails dig into his arms so much that he whimpers, but he keeps struggling. “Oh, we should’ve just drugged this one too. Are you sure that you didn’t bring any with you?”
“We can handle him.” Sally rolls her eyes, and she comes to help Penelope. Zack fights and struggles as much as he can, but with the two of them holding him he can’t do much. He is held tightly in a bruising grip, one on either side, bent over so he can’t struggle as effectively. Which doesn’t stop him from trying. “Fierce little one, isn’t he?”
“Don’t sound so pleased. He ripped my skirt.” Penelope remarks. Zack can’t stop himself from smiling at that, which earns him a rough push downwards. He yelps as he clatters onto the floor, before being hauled up and held even more securely.
“You’re the one who wanted to leave.” Sally points out.
“Yes, yes, let’s go.” Penelope agrees. They start dragging him through the alleyway. He tries to dig his feet into the ground, but they drag him like a rag doll with barely any successful resistance. He is just so tired, and everything hurts…
Their time vehicle is a car, a surprisingly old fashioned and battered looking one. He doesn’t know what he imagined it looking like. Black and red with devil horns and bat wings, maybe. One of the back doors is opened, and a jolt of fright allows him to start struggling again. He can’t go in there. He can’t go in there.
He is roughly pushed in there. All of his bruises cry out again when he hits the ground, and before he can try to move a foot is planted into his back. It digs in, and he whimpers, screwing up his face and curling up a bit. He doesn’t want to go with them, but he can’t seem to stop it. He hates being so helpless. He is so frightened, in so much pain, and he just wants to go home.
He hears shouting. Loud and angry, and familiar. Sirens, maybe? What sounds like a struggle, then the foot on his back is removed. He immediately scrambles up and tries to run, but a hand grabs his arm and he starts struggling violently, kicking and hitting and yanking himself away.
He is surprised by the lack of resistance to his fighting, so he falls backwards and slams into the side of the car. He crumples to the floor, his body throbbing, and as footsteps approach all he can do his squeeze his eyes shut and wait.
“Zack! Zack, it’s me!”
He opens his eyes, and sure enough Milo is standing there. With a nasty looking bruise blooming on his arm, and an expression that is worried but also extremely relieved. “It’s me. You’re safe.”
Oh. Zack figures out what just happens, and his face heats with embarrassment. “Sorry Milo.”
“Don’t apologise!” Milo exclaims, coming closer and squatting down next to him now that Zack is unlikely to try and punch his lights out. “I’m so glad you’re ok.” Milo looks him up and down, taking in the bruises, and the look in his eyes as he takes in his sorry state hurts Zack.
“I’m ok.” Zack promises, shuffling forward and opening his arms up for a hug. “I knew that you’d get to me if I just delayed her.”
Milo hugs him, but gently. So, so careful and gentle, he knows that Zack is hurting and he doesn’t want to make it worse. “It was close though. We came as quickly as we could, I was so scared that we would be too late.”
“But you weren’t.” Zack squeezes as much as he can with all of his injuries.
Suddenly, Milo stands and moves as if to protect Zack, arms spread wide. Zack soon sees why when he sees Sally and Penelope rushing in their direction. He squeezes his eyes shut and looks away.
But Sally and Penelope are only focusing on evading capture. They dive into their time vehicle and are gone. Gone. Zack can hardly believe it. They evaded them again.
Milo immediately sits back down to hug him again. “They’re gone.” He says, although Zack saw. Zack knows it is partly to reassure himself, knows how terrified Milo is of those two women after everything they put him through, and yet he still was willing to put himself between them and Zack. Even though his legs were shaking and and heart pounding so much that Zack can still feel it.
Behind Milo, he can see Cavendish and Dakota, and quite a few police officers. Which explains why the women were running. So they evaded them, but they are still out there. Still free, free to try again or do something worse.
Milo pulls away, although he still lingers protectively close. His expression is odd. Milo doesn’t dislike many people, he brushes off personal insults like mud on his clothes. But the last time Zack saw this expression on him, it was just after they saved Melissa.
Milo is furious. Terrified, traumatised, and furious.