Subject Seven

Chapter Thirteen
Hunter Harrison

Hunter looked at the diner up ahead and felt his stomach kick and roar. He’d been walking for hours, never slowing, never stopping because if he did, he might disappear again and he couldn’t stand that thought anymore.

He’d lost the bloody button-up shirt, using one sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face for a while before he tossed it into the trash can in front of the diner. His wrists were still red, but not nearly as bad looking as they’d seemed earlier.

The restaurant was covered in chrome and neon, which seemed to be a state law for the way diners had to look in Jersey. He hiked his oversized pants a little higher, reached into the pocket and found a wad of bills that had no reason to be there. So be it. At least he could eat.

The place was crowded and smelled like heaven must, full of food and coffee. He didn’t even know when he started liking the stuff, but these days he was happier if he got his caffeine. He ordered a burger, rare, and a cup of his favorite drink. He’d knocked back two cups before his burger showed up. After that the coffee didn’t matter nearly as much as feeding his face a ton of hot fries and grilled cow.

The waitress looked a few years older than him, maybe eighteen, with heavily dyed red hair and light makeup. She smiled when she looked at his plate. “Somebody was hungry.”

“Still am. Can I get another?”

“Of course you can! Keep it up, you’re gonna fit into those pants real soon.” She laughed and looked him in the eyes. He wasn’t used to that.

“Well, that’s the idea. Need to build up my body.” He flexed, meaning the gesture as a joke, and was shocked by the size of his arms. No matter how much time had passed, he still had trouble with the changes. Muscles flexed and rippled smoothly and his bicep bulged. It looked damned near as big as his thigh used to be before his world went crazy. He could remember looking in the mirror and brushing his teeth while Mom watched him, her eyes smiling, and went over his homework answers with him.

The waitress laughed again and patted his arm, her fingers lingering for a second and her eyes taking on a different light. “Don’t change too much, hon. You’re looking pretty good to me.”

She left to take care of his order before he could open his mouth and say something stupid. The way things were going, he’d never get good with talking to girls. He couldn’t even find his way home.

He felt the skin on his scalp crawl and looked around at all the tables. People laughed, they talked, they snuck fries from each other’s plates, hell, one couple sat together and read different books as they ate, but they were together. He envied them for that.

At a few tables other people ate alone, but even they seemed more relaxed than he did. Every nerve in his body was telling him that he was being watched by someone nearby. He looked everywhere, even shifting around enough to see the people behind him, but there was nothing, no one. They couldn’t have cared less about him. He might as well have been invisible.

Was it someone outside, maybe? He looked out the window, but all he could see was a line of cars with the sun flashing from the windows and windshields. The day was too perfect, and the resulting glare made seeing anything in the cars around him impossible. They could be staring at him and there would be no way he could prove it.

He could be staring, the bastard who’d locked him away. Or had he? His heart raced at the thought.

He rose on shaky legs and moved toward the men’s room as the waitress was bringing his next burger. He had to get away, now, before something horrible happened. Before someone broke down the doors or the police came swarming in or something even worse.

He pushed into the men’s room, drawing in the chemical smell of air fresheners trying to hide the stench of what happened in toilets, and almost knocked a man over in the process.

“Hey!” the older man squawked, indignant.

“Sorry.” He mumbled the word, already too busy to even acknowledge the man. His voice shook, sounded stranger than ever.

“You need to watch where the hell you’re going. You almost knocked my teeth out.” The man’s voice grew softer and his face lost its angry edge and grew worried. “Say, are you okay?”

No! He wasn’t okay! His heart was hammering crazily, his throat was dry and his skin felt like it was baking in an oven.

He opened his mouth to warn the stranger away because that feeling, it was worse than ever and something was happening, something bad.

“Mister-”

The darkness swallowed him whole, ate his mind and tore him into shreds, and something else came with the darkness, ripping him apart and throwing away the pieces.

He tried to speak and His head hurt, throbbed with each pulse of his heart, and he knew without even opening his eyes that it had happened again.

Hunter opened his eyes and stared at the stucco ceiling above him, studying the cracks in the plaster and the water stains that ran in odd patterns from a few different locations.

“No. Not again.” His voice broke, sounding more like it was supposed to than it had in a long, long time. “Not again, please. Just let me have my life back, okay? Just, please, God, let me have my mom and dad and everything else again.”

He didn’t cry, exactly, but his vision broke up as the tears ran to the edges of his eyelids and stuck there. He closed his eyes and wiped them angrily, hating it when he felt like crying. His dad had always looked at him like he was a loser when he cried, and he hated disappointing the man.

At least he thought he did. He couldn’t remember for sure, but it felt right to think that way.

Hunter sat up and listened to the mattress under him creak and groan. His head throbbed and he clutched it, holding on and hoping it wouldn’t shatter.

There was a new, clean and starched white shirtsleeve covering each arm to the wrist. He looked himself over for a moment and saw the charcoal gray slacks, the polished black dress shoes. He didn’t know anything about suits.

There was a wallet on the dresser in front of him. It was stuffed with bills and a driver’s license that had the name William Carter, along with an address for an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

He looked at the picture on the ID. It looked nothing like him.

“Okay, this is just crazy now…”

There was a suitcase on the battered dresser in front of the bed. Above the suitcase, there was a message written on the stationery pad he saw to the left of the suitcase and taped in place.

It said: BEHAVE YOURSELF. NO MORE GAMES.

A lot of things had changed in Hunter’s life. Okay, almost everything had changed, but at least one thing was the same. He recognized the handwriting. It was the same as he’d seen on hotel mirrors and the occasional note for a long time now.

Oh, the rage that seared his mind was huge. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and tried his best not to let the anger out again.

“How do you keep doing it? How are you finding me, you bastard?”

No one answered. No one could. He was all alone. Again.