Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 3 - Peter Bancain

Perhaps Peter had misjudged this cruise before he'd boarded: where he'd expected smooth sailing, there's been nothing but rough handling, be it passengers with one another (consensually, of course), or powerful Helius employees with, well, his fragile stick body, for lack of a better description. Non-consensually.

His spine struck the backing of the chair with so much force he heard a crack, but he couldn't discern whether it came from the chair itself or his own bones. It hurt, that much was certain, and he voiced as much. "What the fuck? I haven't done anything! I am a law-abiding citizen, I pay my taxes the same way I paid for my ticket on this fine establishment, now I demand you let me go, or I will be writing a very angry letter to your manager-"

A grim snicker comes from the tall man in the middle of two other, burlier men, both of whom had lifted him by the armpits with too much ease and thrown him into this chair to begin with. "I am the manager."

Peter nodded profusely, refusing to blink. Shit. "Right. Well. I have lots of complaints which I'm sure you're going to listen to and note on that little notepad of yours there. Go on, uncap the pen. The sooner I get these things off my chest the sooner I can leave."

With a flourish, the man uncapped the pen with his teeth, but he didn't ask for Peter to go on. Instead, he fits the pen between his fingers and his fingers twitch and the inky tip smacks the paper, over and over, leaving little marks and overpowering the sound of Peter's ragged breaths. It grated on him after just a few seconds. "Can I go?"

"You may not, Bancain. See, when you run a very powerful corporation, there's always heightened risk. You, my good friend, are going to sit here while we run a mandatory risk assessment. Nothing more, nothing less. If you're clear, then you may leave."

"And if I'm not?"

"Then you're a risk, and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." A beat of silence. He stopped tapping the pen and pointed the tip in his general direction. "You missed a camera. Tiny hidden one. I see it poking through the button on his chest. Strip him down to his briefs."

A terror ran through him, and he wrapped himself up in his own arms defensively, not for the sake of him being exposed, but because this was the last thread holding him together, this small camera documenting the entire experience. They'd never give him his other camera back. If they did, it'd be wiped clean. Everything - the whole truth and nothing but the truth, those twisted, mutated screaming bodies down below - will die at his lips. Maybe a few particularly gullible nutjobs would believe him, but without proof, his theories were nothing but theories. To all but him. Helius would get away with whatever sick, twisted shit they were up to, and Peter would have to live life knowing he could've stopped it if he were just more careful.

It put a chatter into his teeth, a furious, grinding chatter. Beads of sweat built up on his back and he smelled his own heat. "Don't touch me."

A valiant effort, really. They didn't care how angry and defensive or happy and docile he was: they stripped him down regardless and threw him back against the chair. That time, that time was definitely his back. He groaned out at the ache. "You can't be any gentler?"

"You spy types get cocky with gentle. So no. We can't."

"Spy? Do you hear yourself? Is it crack? Is crack what you do, because that is just about...the most wild shit I've heard in all my days."

Peter himself cocked a grin, though rough and forced - he feared the entire time that they saw through it, straight down to the deep and swirling tremble in his gut - but the other man only seared him with a flat, dead-panned expression. "You'd be surprised," the man said, "of all the things I've had to deal with. Some personally. Some not. Spies are nothing new to me and nor is dealing with them. Nevertheless, I'm positive that last statement of yours is a lie. From what we've trudged up, your profession is all about 'wild shit', isn't it, Bancain?"

A laugh, tight and hoarse, leapt out of his throat. "What?"

The man snapped his fingers, and one of the men lifted a laptop from a desk pushed off to the side, handing it to the man's waiting hands. He turned the screen around and lo and behold, Peter saw himself. They chose an awful place to pause the video. It was not a flattering frame.

Peter cleared his throat. Shrugged. "So I make videos. I make guesses. Is that a crime?"

"Not inherently, no," the man said, slapping the laptop shut. He held it fast to his lap and began to tap his pen against that instead. The repetitive clatter made Peter inhale sharply. "What is a crime, however, is trespassing."

"I was asked to deliver a case to the storage-"

"Yes, yes. Lincoln gave me the spiel already. But you weren't in the storage room, were you? You went a tad too deep. Missed the mark. Something tells me that wasn't an accident."

Another shrug. A cough. "I'm bad at directions." Flippant came poorly from him, he knew it. The excuse was slim and see-through.

They stared one another down, but Peter's eye twitched, and that's what damned him. With a brief nod to one of the other men, he dove for Peter. The latter screeched, threw his arms out to block the man, but he was too slow, and the pinch to his nipple came faster than he could process. It stayed for much longer.

"That's enough, Connor."

"Yeah!" Peter shrieked. "That's enough, Connor!"

The burly man stepped back and Peter immediately drew his knees up to his chin, both to guard his stinging chest and, well, it offered some degree of comfort. Call him a big baby if you must. He was built for sneaking around and not getting caught. Not sneaking around and actually experiencing consequences beyond "get out of here and never come back, you loon."

This...this was something else entirely. Disney was powerful, but they were also kid-friendly, so they'd never dare do something this provocative. It wasn't good for their target audience if something got out like "Man Found Decapitated in Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse." That wouldn't be very PG-13 of them. Helius was another entity. They were doing human experimentation, for fuck's sake. They certainly had no qualms about things like, uh, torture, or long-term detainment without anyone else knowing, or even murder. This fresh terror dawned on him then. Was he going to die on this ship?

He needed another strategy. Fuck the camera at that point. It was sad, sure, but a handful would believe him, and if his story lacked enough holes, maybe someone at a big journalism agency would take him seriously and then Twitter would get ahold of it and, well, everyone knows how Twitter is. Helius, say hello to "cancel culture." For now, life.

"Tell me why we shouldn't have Connor do that to you again. Tell me why we shouldn't do worse to make sure you keep quiet about whatever it was you saw down there. Should we bring your mother into it? I think that's a definite option."

A gasp. He reeled it back in as fast as possible. He couldn't let them know it was a sore spot, that they were on the exact right path. Instead, he tried another smile, the same he'd tried on Lincoln more than once before. "You want a reason and I have one."

The man leaned forward. Peter dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward too. He reached out and took the pen from his hands to stop the aggressive tapping. He brought the ink to the back of his hand and began to scribble. "I have two words for you: Elon Musk. What I am drawing is a map of Boca Chica, and-"

Someone, he couldn't tell who, smacked him so hard upside the head he saw stars. "There's no game, no negotiation you can play at here. Just tell us what you saw and what you'll choose to forget."

With a rough sigh, Peter gripped the pen tight. He had to figure out how to win them over and keep his life - just saying what he saw wouldn't be enough, he knew that. Dead men tell no tales and it was quite fitting they were on a ship because Pirates of the Caribbean was quite the master of the phrase and, oh, fuck.

No. Fuck. An idea. He just had to get the word out somehow, online. The laptop was right there, inches away. If he got the word out, he had fans. They'd say something. Call the authorities if they couldn't come themselves. The coast guard would come save his ass. That was his ticket out. His ticket to life, his ticket to truth. He could have all of it. He just had to get the fucking laptop.

With a heavy breath in his chest, he began to tap the pen against the desk beside him.