He left the school library at seven. It was a small miracle any of the doors were unlocked. But there was something going on in the gymnasium tonight, he wasn’t sure exactly what. One of his quirks was how much he hated doing any schoolwork at home.

It was complicated, but he’d rather stay at school late a few hours once or twice a week rather than bring any of it home. He even hid his finished assignments and papers in a very thick encyclopedia on the library shelves. One that he was confident no other middle schooler would bother looking in.

The librarian gave him a small nod which he returned.

It would be a long walk home tonight. By the flip of a coin, his route could take fifteen minutes, or it could take close to an hour. If the stream that ran toward his neighborhood was running low, then he could pick his way across safely and cut off more than half the journey.

But tonight was not one of those. He would have to walk half a mile to reach the closest foot bridge. No sense going slow then.

He didn’t jog or run; he was wearing a backpack. It would flop around. But he walked as swiftly as he could without tipping over. The path that ran parallel to the stream crunched underfoot, dust swirling up where he stepped.

The dust was odd tonight. It swirled across the path in strange eddies like tiny invisible tornadoes were picking at the ground. Even the rough grass on the side of the path whipped around.

What on earth was going on?

Titus came to a stop, a sliver of fear crept through him at the prospect of the unknown.

Fear confirmed itself when he first heard the sound. The air itself began humming, like the drone of a model airplane. It didn’t stay a steady drone. The hum shifted all around him as its source drew closer.

The child whirled around in a panic, trying to figure out what direction to run. But it seemed to come from every side.

He caught a glimpse of someone through the illuminated window of the closest house, on the other side of the stream. They didn’t see him in the dark like this, they didn’t hear the thundering sound either somehow.

Titus realized they wouldn’t see him at all in the moment before his feet came off the ground.

He went skyward, pulled upward by his whole body all at once. A scream ripped out of his mouth, and he tumbled as he rose.

There was a single moment that he saw the utterly black figure above him, perfectly melded with the dark of the night clouds. A perfectly dark gap in the stars that swallowed him up. Metal closed around his screaming body and the sounds of the evening below him were cut off.

He was gone.

Further

Daniel fought the urge to look at his phone. The battery wouldn’t last much longer. It had been twelve hours already, how long could he last in this fucking box?

The first thing he’d tried had been to call 911. But he hadn’t connected.

It was so cramped in here. There wasn’t enough space to sit down, and he couldn’t stay on his feet forever. At a certain point he was eventually going to keel over from exhaustion, but that wouldn’t magically create more room. He’d just slump down in the box and get himself stuck in the bottom half.

Stress was keeping him awake so far. The raw panic of being yanked off the ground had worn down over the last few hours and given way to something even worse.

When your heart was beating faster and the adrenaline was pumping, it wasn’t so easy for your mind to wander. You didn’t ask questions or think about much more than exactly what was in front of you.

But hours on hours in a pitch-black box and the mind tended to wander.

Where was he being taken? What was going to happen to him?

None of the answers that came to mind were comforting.

“Dios ten piedad…” he said and instantly regretted it. His words bounced around inside the darkness with an ethereal echo to them. It made his skin crawl, and with what had already happened, that bar was rather high.

The moments before Daniel had been pulled into the air, there had been some impossible sounds, ones he still couldn’t explain. But they had ceased completely when he’d been sealed inside this cage.

Stress wasn’t the only thing keeping him awake. Silence was too.

It was chillingly silent inside. Unless he spoke aloud or put his ear directly against the metal, nothing could be heard but his own breathing and heartbeat.

Daniel wriggled his arm up in front of his face, wincing involuntarily when he bumped it against the metal walls. How long had he banged his fists against the walls? They were still sore, probably would be for days.

He might have even broken something.

The temptation became too much, and he clicked the button on his phone, briefly illuminating the screen. It read 11AM. He’d been awake all night stuck like this. His parents would have noticed he was gone hours ago. His gut twisted again.

The phone’s battery level read just 2%. But the device was a few years old, and he didn’t trust the charge when it was in single digits. Any second now, the device would die.

Then what?

·····

It was the noise that stirred Daniel.

His eyes opened with a start, only to see nothing. For a few moments, he thrashed in any direction before he realized why he couldn’t move.

He’d fallen unconscious, slipped down.

But the noise! It was the first sound he’d heard from beyond the metal box. Daniel was engulfed in the sound of machinery grinding against itself.

Clicking the button on his phone didn’t make any light. It was dead.

I need to get back on my feet, he thought. With no clock, he couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out for. He didn’t feel rested, but something was happening now, so this was no time for sleep.

Daniel’s heart pounded faster and faster as he listened to the cacophony of metal. Was he about to die?

“ Fuck, I hope not…”

Before he could cuss at himself for saying that out loud, something impacted against his metal container, far closer than every other sound. The sound scraped against metal just a few inches away from him, and it gave Daniel an idea of how large the exterior of the box he was in was.

Something clicked on the side of the box, and one of the sides of the box shifted. Daniel hadn’t managed to right himself just yet, so he was still squeezed against that very side of the box.

He awkwardly found space to get his feet under him and stand up again. Every joint in his body was sore, but as uncomfortable as he was, things could be seconds away from getting worse.

So when he found that part of the box could move, Daniel was stunned.

Something had been unlocked, and one of the sides to the crate was revealed to be a door or lid. It slid aside like a garage door but with a few dozen slats instead of six or seven.

Light filled the enclosed space, and he threw his hands up shielding his eyes.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t actually that bright, but since he was coming from utter darkness, even the faint illumination was blinding.

Daniel stumbled out of the upright container and found himself standing in some kind of tiny hangar. The floor was some kind of dense epoxy like his family had in their garage and there was a metal framework attached to the ceiling.

He’d been released into the middle of the room, where seven other tall metal boxes stood. Just like the one he’d just emerged from.

His was on the end, and there was sound coming from the one right next to his.

Someone was banging faintly on the inside!

“Hey!” Daniel shouted, voice hoarse. He ran over and pulled at the sliding door. The slats slid aside into one of the box’s adjacent walls.

Inside was a guy not much younger than Daniel, and he came out swinging.

Daniel leapt back, unable to avoid one of the kid’s flailing hands.

“Fuck, stop! Stop!” Daniel croaked.

The kid looked around bewildered before locking on to Daniel again. He eyed him warily. “-ho are yo-” The guy’s voice was worse than Daniel’s.

“Hang on,” Daniel said, and looked behind him. He’d taken his backpack off, and it was still lying in the bottom of his box. There was a water bottle inside with maybe a quarter of the contents remaining.

“Here.”

The kid saw the box Daniel had emerged from and then looked at his own, and he seemed to shift some of his wariness off Daniel. They were in the same boat.

Daniel handed him what remained of his water bottle, and he drank it. The kid stopped himself from downing the whole thing in one gulp, and took careful slow sips.

“Who—who are you?” he asked, handing the water bottle back.

“Daniel.”

“Caleb,” the kid replied, “what’s happen…” He trailed off.

“Yeah, I’ve got no clue either,” Daniel said.

“How long has it been?” Caleb asked, “I passed out there, I… I don’t know,”

“At least twelve hours. My phone died, but the last time I checked it was almost noon on Saturday.”

“That’s insane! People—” Caleb coughed dryly from trying to speak too hard, “— people, must have noticed we’re gone by now.”

Daniel nodded in agreement, trying to stay calm. Thinking about how his parents were probably panicking made it all the easier to lose it here.

“What do we do though?” Daniel asked. “Where the fuck are we?”

It seemed like Caleb might have objected to his language, but the kid didn’t say anything. He must have thought better of it.

“You were in that one?” Caleb asked, nodding to Daniel’s container.

“Yeah.”

“What about these then?” Caleb pointed toward the other six metal boxes standing upright in the middle of the room.

“Shit!” Daniel cursed and bolted toward the next one in the line.

With no hesitation, he pulled open the sliding panel and a person fell out. Daniel and Caleb both let out yelps in surprise at the third person.

They were completely limp, and didn’t try to catch their fall at all. Daniel almost fell over trying to catch him. He eased him to the ground and Daniel felt how cold the kid’s skin was. And it was a kid, couldn’t have been older than fifteen.

“Look at his lips,” Daniel said, “Oh God, they’re blue.”

“He isn’t breathing,” Caleb said, barely whispering. “P—pulse, check for a pulse.”

“Shit, shit, shit… fuck!” Daniel pressed his fingers against the kid’s neck and felt nothing. He was totally still. Dead.

“Puta madre! ” Daniel shouted angrily. The kid was dead! Had he suffocated in the box? What were they supposed to do?

The rest. What about the rest of them?

“The others,” Daniel croaked, getting to his feet. “What about—” He went to the next one, but when he reached to slide the door aside, he hesitated. Another body might fall right out on him.

“They could be dead already.” Daniel muttered, feeling half delirious.

Caleb tapped his knuckles against the metal box, “Hey!”

Daniel caught a glimpse of the other kid’s hands. They were bloody and bruised from pounding on the inside of his cage.

“We have to open it.” Daniel said, trying to muster himself. “They could be passed out.”

This door didn’t open so easily. There was a person slumped down putting tension on the door from the inside. Their face was pale and their lips blue. Like the other one, he was totally unresponsive.

“Fuck,” Daniel swore again. “Come on,” he beckoned to Caleb to move on to the next one with him. “Every second could count.”

One by one they opened them, and each one had a dead kid inside. Daniel’s gut turned. Some of these kids were young enough to be his baby brother. Carlos wasn’t such a baby anymore, but it was hard for Daniel not to see him that way.

It was harder to look at this though. Just by looking at each of them, Daniel could tell he was the oldest of them and that made it all the worse. There was no one to turn to right now, no one to go to.

It was so hard to ignore the urge to pull out his phone and try to call for help. What the hell was happening?

All six of them held dead kids.

“What the fuck…” Daniel said, looking at the last one. He couldn’t even bring himself to open it the whole way. Just a glance inside was enough to tell them there were no other survivors.

He shut the last container, keeping the body inside. Even just the one body being visible was too much.

Caleb was also too shocked to speak. Caleb might have passed out, but neither of them had any rest. The sight of the first body, still sprawled on the floor, made Daniel’s knees go weak. He had to sit down, or else he was going to collapse on the spot.

He was so lost, so overwhelmed, so in over his head. How had they even gotten here? What was the last thing Daniel remembered?

Camping… his father and brother were going on a camping trip for the weekend. Daniel had slipped ahead, to jump out and try to spook them… then he’d been taken.

What kind of kidnapper struck in a remote area like that?

Then again, what kind of kidnapper struck where everyone could see?

His brain was fried. Too much of the wrong things dialed to the max in his head. Every single thing he set his eyes on brought up all the wrong questions, brought up all the reasons he had to panic even more.

“Respira!” Daniel hissed to himself.

“What?” Caleb asked. Seeing the other kid just as much on the edge as himself actually helped the tiniest fraction. They were stuck in this shit, but they weren’t alone.

“It means breathe,” Daniel clarified. “We’re not solving shit if we lose it here. Cooler heads prevail.”

“They’re dead!” Caleb shouted. “How is any of this solv—”

“Just breathe,” Daniel said. “Slow down and just breathe, even just for a minute.”

Caleb looked like he might say something further, but Daniel held up a hand preemptively.

“ Just… breathe…”

The other kid seemed to take the advice, at least long enough to take the edge off the adrenaline. Both of them sat on the floor just trying to take it all in without screaming. With how long he’d been stuck in the box, getting off his feet was sweet relief.

Daniel’s gut gave another twist when he looked at the corpse still on the ground. How could he think about relief now? People were dead.

“We should put him back,” Daniel said, breaking the silence. “Shouldn’t just leave him on the ground.”

Caleb at least seemed to be calmer, but Daniel got the impression he was still reeling. It was impossible not to feel the same way.

The two of them got to their feet and Daniel hoisted the poor kid’s body up by the shoulders. It sickened him to his core to have to slump him over in the metal container. But it was the only way to slide the hatch closed.

They’re coffins , Daniel realized.

Sure, they were standing up on end, but they were the right general size and shape. Even the contents.

“We should be dead,” Caleb said shakily, “like them. Why aren’t we dead?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“What do we do? I couldn’t call anyone, but this is insane! What the—”

Daniel held up a hand to stop him. “Breathe, hermano,” he said. “We need to stay cool and quiet right now.”

Caleb looked at him quizzically, “Quiet?”

“I’m trying to keep my lid on too, because I’m fucking losing it too. But the way I see it, the two of us are alive. They’re dead,” he nodded toward the six coffins beside their two. “Seems to me like it should be all of us dead, or all of us alive. So something is fucked, even past how fucked this whole thing already is.”

Daniel took a shaky breath, ready to bite his lip bloody if that was what it took to keep from spiraling. “And when things are fucked, someone involved usually pokes in, sees what’s up.”

Caleb stilled at the prospect.

“So let’s try not to advertise ourselves. Keep things as quiet as possible, for both of our sakes.”

·····

They took to looking around this ‘hangar’ they were in. It was a fairly large space, a few dozen meters across, probably the width of a whole house if you picked the right one. The ceiling was oddly low though. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet, probably less. The ceiling was clearly higher than in an ordinary room, but it still felt low somehow. It didn’t match the scale of the rest of the room’s features.

Metal shelving was stacked in three layers and there were several heavy crates that neither Daniel nor Caleb could move. But before they could combine their efforts, something caught their eye.

It was a set of pipes running up the hangar wall with one smaller pipe shooting off toward a valve and what looked like a spout. There was even a hose coiled on the wall next to it.

“It could be water,” Caleb said and reached for the valve’s lever.

“Why would it be water?” Daniel asked.

“No clue, but even if it’s not, we can shut it off. If we can’t find water, we’re going to die fast anyway,” Caleb said.

He couldn’t really argue with that quickly enough to stop Caleb from turning the valve. At first nothing came, but after a second there was a sputter and a stream of clear liquid.

It spoke to hours of accumulated thirst that Caleb was willing to take the risk of drinking it directly.

“Just because it seems like water, doesn’t mean it is! It could be acid, or poison.”

“No, it’s definitely just water,” Caleb asserted, after drinking some. “Someone took us, and they either wanted us all dead or all alive. Water proves we were supposed to live, which means we were probably supposed to be let out.”

“It’s still reckless to just drink out of a pipe like that. You don’t know what could be in it.”

“I know that I was going on twenty-four hours without water. You die after seventy-two, but trust me nasty stuff starts happening a lot sooner than that.”

Daniel saw that what water spilled onto the hangar floor was quickly sucked up by the seemingly rubber surface. That was odd. Wasn’t the whole point of something like this that it didn’t absorb moisture?

It was hard to believe how loud the water actually was as it flowed through the pipes. But looking up at where the pipe seemed to run… Daniel saw a ladder further down the wall of the hangar.

“Is that a hatch?” he asked.

“Shhh!” Caleb said.

“What?”

“Shhh! ” Caleb repeated, “…listen.”

Daniel stopped, humoring the other kidnappee. And he heard the sound.

Thum. Thum. Thum.

It was slow, rhythmic, and barely audible. But it was unmistakable.

Daniel’s hand trembled as he remembered pounding on the inside of the coffin not hours ago. There was someone else. Where?

The eight coffins were standing upright in the middle of the hangar, between the two large shelving units on either side, but higher up, rigged to mechanical clamps that held them off the ground were another set of eight coffins.

Daniel frowned, none of them seemed to be the source of the sound. But Caleb had found it, another set of eight coffins hanging symmetrically from the ceiling of the hangar.

“Someone’s still alive in there!” Caleb said, but Daniel was already moving, ready to climb up the shelving to try and reach the coffins. Twenty-four kidnappees stuffed into coffins. Six of them were already dead.

Daniel clenched his teeth, trying to ignore the obvious question. It didn’t matter, at least one of them was still alive. He’d break open every single one if he had to.

He might have had no way of knowing what had happened to them yet, but he knew he wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing while someone suffocated in a box .