The Captive
Chapter 1: The Chase
As I woke up in a dark room with my hands tied to a small chair and feeling pain in my side, my legs, and my head I couldn’t see anything. I was afraid. My head was heavy and I was overwhelmed with dizziness. Darkness was all around me, I couldn’t see a single light as my eyes got used to the darkness. I felt droplets of a dense liquid running through my forehead, not sure if it was blood or sweat. I was confused for a moment. “Why am I here?”
I started to remember what had happened. The pain I felt running through my nerves was unbearable, it was a deep muscular pain. I could taste a salty and tangy liquid in my mouth, it almost tasted like copper; it was blood! My left eye was swollen while I felt a deep pain in my cornea. I realized the blood was coming mostly from my nose; gasping for air felt like catching an elusive mouse. That must be how drowning feels like.
“Fuck, my nose must be broken, how the hell did I get here?” A sudden rush of flashbacks stroke my mind. “I remember now!” This is my story.
I grew up with the passion for programming, and with the dream to become a software engineer. I guess this came from my gaming addiction. Ever since I discovered League of Legends I got into gaming and PCs. The desire for a better gaming experience led me to build my own PC when I was 10. I started coding when I was just 11 years old. I always wanted to create my own game. So I started experimenting with different algorithms and this woke a passion inside me, I turned out to be pretty good at programming with different languages but my true expertise were with C++ and python; I created a useful algorithm with infinite applications that got security organizations and militaries interested. I don’t want to bore you with the details but it was a big deal and it led to various awards and a scholarship at MIT where I was to continue to develop my algorithm so the US military could use it. This was my last summer in Mexico before going to my new life, and this was the first day of the rest of my life. I guess I was part of a brain drain in my country; the Mexican government is not quite supportive of science development, and there is a lack of opportunities for people like me.
How did I end up in a dark room all beaten up?
It was the last day of high school, in a small city in the North of Mexico where I lived. I was driving my pickup truck out of school, going home was a short 15 minute drive, it was basically routine. It was a sunny summer day. I felt happy, mostly due to the fact that I had no worries in the world and I was ready to spend my last summer with my friends, partying, relaxing, meeting girls, so at the end I could go to college and make a difference in the world, maybe even become rich in the process. As I was driving in my Ford pickup truck, I looked in the mirror and noticed a white Dodge pickup truck. It looked a little suspicious. I felt I had seen this truck before. It was very sketchy, it had no plates, and the windows were tinted darker than midnight. I started getting nervous by this situation, people usually talked about this type of cars as being an instantaneous red flag, so I decided to take a different route home. I did a “U” turn to take the alternative route and see if the truck went away, but it did exactly the same as me, it followed! Naturally, I started to get worried. “What if they are following me? What the hell do they want?” I had heard stories of how people could get kidnapped and were followed by criminals; Organized crime was a considerable problem in Mexico and people were constantly scared by these crooks, but I never imagined this could happen to me. We hear people talking about dangerous situations, they even make it seem like “common” stuff. But it rarely happens to us, and we are never prepared for an actual situation where our safety is threatened. I panicked and stepped on the gas all the way. They did the same. There was no doubt anymore, they were following me!
“Why is this happening to me?”
I was so nervous I could barely drive, I started to hyperventilate, I could literally hear my own breathing, and my vision was cloudy; almost as if I was fainting. I was zigzagging through cars in the main road; this road had no traffic lights, instead there was a lot of small bridges in the cross roads, but there was still a lot of cars at this time. I had to get away, so I turned into a small street so I could escape. I couldn’t see the truck anymore. “Maybe I lost it.” I felt all the worries and fear leaving, I calmed down for a couple of seconds.
“I got scared for nothing.”
I looked to my right and a similar truck, but black, was already hitting my truck. I felt a strong blow to my head. My ears popped and I could hear a low rumble. The truck flipped. It got blurry, I was blacking out, but I was fighting to stay conscious; crawling my way in through the street full of shattered glass that hurt my arms as I moved in the floor. I faded away. Two men were walking towards me, “Shit, this cannot be happening to me!” With a quick swing to my head the man sent me to a deep unconsciousness. This is how it all started.
To be continued…
Publications on the story every Wednesday.
