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Ten years after his nephew and foster son Oz was murdered by the few remaining Baskervilles, Oscar Vessalius got a link to a private Google Drive containing two videos along with a short message.
Your nephew needs you. He’s a good kid. I hope you’re a good man. —Charlotte Baskerville
Oscar stared at the message for a long time before picking up his laptop, walking from his office to Oz’s old bedroom, still kept exactly as he’d left it all those years ago. He sat on Oz’s bed, where he always sat, where he used to sit while tucking Oz in when he was young enough to still want such things, and he connected earbuds to his laptop, and he tucked them in his ears, and he clicked on the first video.
It was the recording of a livestream from about a decade prior of the sort of fighting ring that Oscar had thought Pandora should have been working to put a stop to ages ago. In the ring, which was a repurposed basketball court, a woman with long, rose-gold hair in an extremely revealing minidress and long red coat was putting on a show of boredom before a small blonde teenager stumbled out, looking around fearfully for long enough for Oscar to recognize with horror that the boy was Oz, before his little boy sat down on the floor of the basketball court and curled into a tiny ball. Oscar’s heart ached, and he leaned forward, watching in abject horror, as the woman walked over, circled Oz once or twice like a predator, and then kicked him hard in the side.
Oz curled tighter in on himself, and the woman stared down at him for a moment before ruthlessly kicking him again and again and again until Oz was sprawled on the ground, doing his best to protect his head, doing nothing else to fight back or protect himself no matter how desperately Oscar wished he’d do something. Then the woman stopped, and knelt down by Oz, placing a hand on his arm and speaking to him softly until something offscreen caught her attention and she stood, glaring, and stepped over Oz, shouting about how she didn’t want to fight a child.
Then she stepped offscreen, and her voice cut off, and then someone whose entire body was blurred out strode over to Oz, grabbed him by the hair, and began dragging him away as the video ended. Oscar stared in horror at the screen before clicking on the next video.
This one was far more recent, though the woman standing in the center of the makeshift arena didn’t appear to have aged at all. She was clearly furious, but her anger was tightly controlled as she waited on one half of the repurposed basketball court.
On the other half lay Oz, also no older than the last video, and Oscar checked the timestamp hysterically—barely a week ago, what the hell ?—before pausing the video and zooming in on Oz’s face. It was completely blank of all emotion, and he looked most of all as though he had totally given up on life and no longer knew or cared what was happening to him. Though he wasn’t at all sure if this was real or not, Oscar’s heart ached, and he found himself growing furious over what had been done to his boy.
On the video, a horn blared; the woman gave someone offscreen the finger as Oz rolled to his feet. His face was still completely dead as he began walking towards her; she turned to face him, looking somewhat surprised, and then Oz lept at her. What followed was a fight much too quick for the camera to keep up; Oz and the woman were both moving at superhuman speeds, all over the basketball court, and every time Oscar paused the video to zoom in on them, to try and get a handle on how the fight was going for his poor Oz, his boy was wearing the same blank, empty look on his face regardless of what was going on.
The fight finally ended when the woman transformed into a lion, somehow, and pinned Oz down, and spoke to him in a voice too quiet for the cameras to pick up. Whatever she said, though, got Oz to stop struggling, and he lay still on the ground as she turned back into a human, picked his head up, and slammed it into the floor until he was bleeding profusely enough that she was slipping on his blood. Then the woman stood and walked off the screen, flipping off the camera one more time, and it remained focused on Oz lying limply on the ground before the video stopped.
Hands shaking, Oscar exited out of the Google Drive and opened up a response to Charlotte Baskerville’s email. He stared at the screen for a couple of moments, trying to think of what to write, before finally sending his response.
Dear Ms. Baskerville,
Those videos were genuinely horrifying, but my nephew died ten years ago. Do you have any proof that what you claim is true?
Oscar Vessalius
There was a moment, and then he got a response with a phone number and the words, FaceTime me. Oscar hesitated, and then typed the number in his phone and pressed the call button, and, within moments, the woman from the videos had picked up.
“Is that seriously a kid’s room?” she said. “Mr. Vessalius, what I’m going to show you probably isn’t appropriate for children.”
“This is Oz’s old bedroom,” Oscar said, his voice cold. “I left it as it was, after his death.”
“He didn’t die,” said the woman. “At least—not physically, he didn’t. It’s…look. There are more things in heaven and earth…”
“I know my Shakespeare. Ms. Baskerville,” Oscar said, voice shaking. “I’m asking for proof that my son is alive. ”
“—Your son?” said Charlotte Baskerville. “I was under the impression that you were little Oz’s uncle.”
“...I am,” said Oscar. “I…was. I just—I raised him. To me…he was my precious son, all but legally. Nobody else acted as a parent to him. And then he died, and all evidence pointed to you Baskervilles, as an act of revenge for Sablier. I’m sure you can understand why I’m suspicious.”
“Alright,” said Charlotte, “then—well, I’ll get you your proof. Though I would like to inform you that the jackass who did this to him—and unfortunately, I can’t share his name, my tongue is contractually bound— did manage to lock me in the fucking Abyss for a decade the last time I tried to get your kid out—I think you heard when that happened, in the first video?—so if this fails, don’t blame me.”
Oscar nodded, and Charlotte started walking through the halls of the dingy sports stadium she was in, eventually coming to a locked door and starting to fiddle with the lock. There was a moment, and then she popped it open, flipped the camera so that it was facing forward, and stepped inside.
Oz was curled against the fall, bloodied and bruised, his eyes open, though dull and broken. A girl about a year or two younger than him was asleep in his lap, and as Charlotte stepped inside he held the girl tighter against him and looked up at her, face completely hopeless.
“...Lottie,” he whispered. “Why are you—”
“Filming a video for TikTok, I’m like way too out of date on my social media,” Lottie said flippantly. “No need to tell your boss I was here, okay, little boy?”
“If—he asks,” Oz said, and his voice was the same, if completely without affect, “I can’t lie to him, Onee-san.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said Charlotte—Lottie?—her hand appearing in the video feed to ruffle Oz’s hair. “You’re a good boy.”
“...What do you want?”
“What, can’t I just pop in and say hello to my boy just because I feel like it?” she said. “We did make a deal, you know!”
For the first time, a bit of light entered Oz’s eyes. “—My uncle,” he said unsteadily. “Uncle Oscar…is he doing well?”
“Who can say?” said Lottie flippantly. “By the by, could you tell me what day it is?”
“I don’t know.”
“Piss,” said Lottie. “Hm…then, how about…say something that makes it obvious you’re a real, live, human person in here with me, okay?”
“I’m not a person, I’m a weapon,” Oz said, voice dull again. “You know this, Onee-san. I’ve told you half a dozen times since that day.”
Lottie huffed. “Boring, boring,” she said. “...Hey. Oz.”
“Yeah?”
“If he made you kill your Uncle Oscar, would you do it?”
Oz was quiet for a little bit. “What do you mean by made?” he said.
“Told you, ‘kill your uncle’. What would you do?”
“I would kill myself,” Oz said without hesitation. “I would kill myself unless he was physically controlling my movements.”
“You’ve thought about this,” said Lottie.
“Uncle Oscar wouldn’t be the first of his investors he made me kill,” Oz said, looking down again. “I’ve…thought about this plenty.”
“My boy has a nice, sharp mind there, doesn’t he?” Lottie said. “Was your boss the one who said your uncle was working with him?”
Oz nodded.
“A trustworthy source indeed,” said Lottie. “Of course you would never question.”
“I questioned,” Oz said. “I was given proof. I did not…question anything else.”
“Gotcha,” said Lottie. “Well! Gotta blast now…it was good to see you again, little boy. Until next time!”
“Bye, Lottie.”
She put her phone in her pocket; Oscar heard her close the door and re-lock the cell, and tried to dry his eyes as the woman hurried down the hallway. Once her face was visible on the call once more, all of the mirth was gone from it.
“Do you believe me now?” she said.
“Yes, I…God,” Oscar said. “My poor Oz…”
“Believe me when I tell you that’s just the tip of the tip of the iceberg of horrific,” Lottie told him, eyes flashing. “Oz was kidnapped—he never signed a contract to be here, so unlike me and the rest of the idiots who signed up, he can be gotten out of here. What are you going to do about it?”
“What’s your address?” Oscar said.
Lottie told him, grinning like a shark.
“I’ll get him out,” he said.
“Don’t use Vessalius money or people to do it,” she warned him. “Your brother’s a shithead, you know? Keep your tracks covered.”
“I will, Ms. Baskerville,” Oscar said. “Thank you—so much. I owe you something I can’t ever repay.”
“Hey,” said Lottie. “I lost my family too. You don’t owe me anything.”
She hung up, then, and Oscar sat there for a moment before tapping another contact on his phone and raising it to his ear.
“Hello, Xerxes?” he said, when he got a response. “I have a favor to ask of you…”