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Everything was heavy when Isaac awoke.
His body felt like it was made of lead, weighing him down to some unknown depths. It took him a hazy moment to realize there was a physical aspect to that, too, around his wrists and ankles.
The room he was in was poorly-lit, and it took a moment of blinking before he realized his glasses were gone, too, making everything blurry. Everything about the room screamed stereotypical serial killer basement--brick walls, a flickering overhead light, and a singular table in the back corner with nothing else.
Shoot. The word floated heavy in his brain for several foggy moments as he dragged himself into the waking world, mouth dry and vision blurry. What happened?
The last thing he remembered was the fight. Storming out into the evening light. The brief stop at the gas station and…
Was I… kidnapped? Isaac felt his heart jump into his throat at this statement, panic beginning to swell in his veins as the situation slowly began to dawn upon him. Shoot. Not good, not good, not good at all.
He tried to sit up, but realized a moment later his hands were bound behind his back in what felt like either handcuffs or chains, and swayed for a moment before gravity forced him down. Isaac could feel his breath coming in quicker and quicker as he looked around, trying to gain any sense of his bearings whatsoever.
“H-hello?” Isaac croaks out, looking around. “Wh- what’s the- the meaning of this?”
No response.
“L-Luke? Hello? A- anyone?”
Silence, except for his gasping breaths. His mind felt jumbled as he replayed what he last remembered, trying desperately to think of any cause behind this. The only thing he could really think of, though, was a villain attack—one directed at Luke specifically. His partner had made no shortage of enemies over the years. It wouldn’t be inconceivable to think one might want revenge.
But who?
Isaac didn’t have to wait long to get his answer. After maybe ten minutes, the door creaked open, and he freezes as three figures walk in.
“So, you’re awake,” says the figure at the front, a busty-looking woman in a dark blue suit. She’s flanked by another woman and a man whom he can only assume are guards, including…
I recognize her, Isaac thinks, eyes settling on the short, choppy blue hair. The lady who bumped into me at the convenience store last night. Except, now, she was wearing a mask of some kind, covering the lower half of her face. All of them were, actually, were wearing various kinds of masks that cover part of their face.
His throat bobs as he swallows thickly, eyes glancing between the three figures standing in front of him. “W-who are you? W-what do you want from me?”
“Isaac Finch,” the lead woman says, as though she hadn’t heard him. “Age, thirty-two. Occupation is an investigative journalist for the Blacklight News agency. Lives at twenty-one-fifty-three Scathewick street with your partner, Luke Moonett.”
The woman says the words as though reciting some sort of book, and with such ease that it gives Isaac a chill. “H-how do - how do you know who I- I am?”
"My name is Mimicry, and it's my job to know these things."
She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand, and the male guard steps forward, holding out an item that Isaac recognizes as his messenger bag. The woman takes the bag, slipping it over her shoulder and opening it up, pulling out a few sheets of paper bound together by binder clips.
“Power Surges and Power Supplements -- Three Years of Illegal Drug Smuggling in Prism Port, and the Agency’s Binding Connection to it.”
That was his article, Isaac realizes as she tosses the papers into the back corner, where they land with a thump. The one he’s nearly done with writing. The one which had caused half a dozen fights with Luke over. He had a habit of keeping his important articles on his person as well as his notes, so that way he could easily add to it if needed.
“As unpleasant as this is, I must commend you on your work Mr. Finch. You’ve clearly done your work. It’s no one you’re lauded as one of the best reporters that the Blacklight agency has.”
Before he can even figure out how to think about that, the woman--Mimicry--grabs him by his shirt, hauling Isaac up to his feet and shoving him against the wall. It doesn't hurt, but he yelps, heart pounding in his chest as his back hits the stone bricks behind him.
“You’ve been digging into some things you shouldn’t,” Mimicry says, her voice low and dangerous as he squirms in her grip. “I suppose that’s to be expected, what with your profession, but we can’t exactly allow civilians to go digging into affairs that shouldn’t concern them.”
Isaac’s job is built around seeing connections. It’s something he’s been good at ever since he was a kid, and it’s served him well in his chosen field. He makes observations and sees connections, drawing conclusions between things that seem unrelated but actually are.
The pieces click together in a second. It’s not some random villain that’s captured him, but members of the Prism Port Hero Agency.
“W-what do you w-want f-from me?” Isaac asks haltingly, hating the way his voice trembles as Mimicry glares holes into his skull. It feels as though she’s trying to kill him with her gaze alone.
He wishes Luke was here. Luke would know what to do. Luke would get him out of this.
Over the years, he’s done a lot of research into the Hero Agency. It had seemed logical that, even in the Prism Port Agency, there would be a few bad eggs. Almost every ‘upstanding’ company has them. But before, it had only been a vague sense of suspicion, nothing concrete. Now, though, a sinking feeling begins to form in his chest.
“It’s simple,” Mimicry says, letting Isaac go, and he falls to the ground as his knees give out beneath him. “Plain and simple, you’re a threat. Not a dangerous one, but a threat nonetheless. We can’t exactly let civilians run around and besmirch our good name, can we? If your little article got out, it would cause people to start asking questions for answers they wouldn’t understand the reasoning behind.”
Threat. The Hero Agency considers him a threat. Isaac’s heart does something complicated and uneasy in his chest at the thought, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. He feels lightheaded.
Somehow, though, he manages to get his next words out. “A-are you going to kill me?”
“Oh, no, that would only cause more problems.” That did little to reassure him. “Even if your boyfriend wasn’t a member of the Agency, you’re well known enough that if anything happened to you--especially with that article you’re writing--it would only seem suspicious.”
The mention of Luke made his heart stop in his chest, breath coming out in short, shallow gasps. While he doubted his boyfriend would have anything to do with this… “I-is- Luke, is- is he-?”
“Don’t worry your little head about him, he doesn’t know a thing.” Mimicry tits her head, observing Isaac in such a way that makes him feel like a prized animal in a cage. “Well, I suspect that he suspects, but he had nothing to do with this.”
That, at least, gives Isaac a little confidence. “Then… then if I’m… he’ll know something’s wrong. He believes me.”
Well, he doesn’t… but if he didn’t before, he should now.
From one of her pockets, Mimicry pulls out what appears to be a knife, spinning it idly in her hands, heedless of the way Isaac freezes at the sight. “Oh, we’ll take care of him. He won’t be a problem.”
Another catching of the breath, and Isaac jerks forward, panic rising in his chest. “Don’t- don’t touch him!” He says, trying to appear intimidating but knowing it’s only coming out as pathetic. Panicked.
Mimicry’s face is covered by the mask, but her eyes crinkle, as though she’s smiling under it, and she kneels down in front of him. “A word of advice, Mr. Finch…”
For a second time, Isaac is seized, this time by the throat and dragged upwards, with Mimicry slamming him against the wall. His head knocks against the brick and he lets out a gasping cry of pain, trying and failing to grab the arm choking the air out of him.
“I realize that this may be hard for you to understand as a reporter,” the hero says, her voice low, fingers squeezing around his throat and making him gag. “But as long as you’re with us, you’d do well to keep your mouth shut and stop asking the questions that got you here in the first place. If you behave, we might very well let you back into civilization again.”
Spots dance in Isaac’s vision as he kicks uselessly against Mimicry, gasping for air that just won’t come, panic making his breaths come out shorter and shorter. Vaguely, somehow, in the back of his mind he recalls trying something like this with Luke back when they were figuring out the aspects of being in a relationship. It feels just as bad now as it did back then.
“For now, though, you’ll stay right here. And for the duration of that time, you’ll keep quiet if you know what’s good for you. We won't kill you--but we can certainly make things very painful for you.”
And, as if to prove her point, Mimicry's other hand entangles into his hair, and she slams Isaac’s head against the wall. Stars explode in his vision. The pain is enough to make him go still, still gasping for air that won’t quite come.
“P-please,” he finds himself gasping out with what little air he has. Something hot and wet runs down the back of his head. “D-don’t- don- hurt…”
“I think I’ve proved my point.” The hand around his throat released him, and Isaac drops to the cold floor under him, gasping for air. His head spins. “We’ll be back. Until then, I suggest you consider the position you’ve found yourself in. You would do well to remember it.”
They left him there, on the ground in the dimly-lit room, cold seeping into his bones and blood seeping out of his head.
He sits there, mind spinning with all the information he learned, trying to categorize all of it into something comprehensible. This--whatever this was--it wasn’t what Isaac was expecting when he first started his investigations three years ago.
Originally, Isaac had been following up on the last big article he had done, investigating illegal drug smuggling. Around that same time, there had been a notable uptick in what the Agency called “power surges,” or people whose powers suddenly went haywire.
It was his job to keep up on things like that, and as Isaac continued tracing the movement of drug smuggling, he had started to notice a curious link between those who had been detained for power surges and those with known drug problems, and he began to dig deeper, using his contacts to dredge up information as needed.
Could it be true? Isaac thinks to himself through the haze of pain in his mind. He stares up at the ceiling, eyes tracing the industrial pipes and beams sprawling across it. Is the Prism Port Agency actually pushing illegal drugs into the city? But if so, why?
The overhead light flickers, and he grimaces, closing his eyes against it. Though the blood caking the back of his head from where he’d been slammed against the wall had dried, the impact still made him lightheaded and dizzy if he moved too quickly. Isaac wonders idly if he’d been slammed hard enough to have a concussion. Luke had gotten them, occasionally, during the fights and battles he was in, but at least the Hero Agency had a doctor on hand that could mitigate most of the effects.
When he wasn’t thinking about the heroes and his article, his mind inevitably found himself thinking about Luke. Mimicry said that his partner had nothing to do with this… this kidnapping, not to mention whatever secrets might be hiding in the Agency, but the words did little to reassure him.
Would they tell Luke what happened? Did he even know what happened? He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d been taken, aside from a gut feeling that at the very least, the night had passed. Would they threaten them into complacency? That seemed to be the most logical decision.
The worst part about this, Isaac reasoned, was that he didn’t know what was going to happen to him next, and the uncertainty of it made his skin crawl. Mimicry said they wouldn’t kill him, but her words had the implication that he’d be here for some time. But for what purpose?
If they wanted his articles, they got them, Mimicry taking both the thrown papers out with her when she left, though she had dropped the messenger bag on the table.
You still know about it, though, the logical part of his brain reasons. Even if they destroy the papers, you still know the truth. You’re the one who did the research. It would make sense to keep you here.
It felt too heavy to comprehend. Kidnapped and held hostage by the very same organization that was meant to protect the people. And what about Luke? How did his partner factor into this?
The thoughts swirled around his mind for a long, long time.