Damon lay across the broad body of Reynard, as they lay together on the couch. Both were naked, Damon basking in the afterglow.
Reynard ran his hand up and down Damon’s back. “You are very good,” said Reynard.
Damon smiled, kissing Reynard. “I’ve practiced.”
“Reynard raised an eybrow. “Oh?”
Damon nuzzled and licked his chest hair, worrying at his nipple. “Scott came over.”
“I see,” said Reynard, as his hand came up and tugged at his necklace. “Take this off.”
Grinning, Damon lifted his head, as Reynard used both hands and lifted it over Damon’s head. The ankh dropped onto Reynard’s chest.
Damon crawled up Reynard’s body and went to kiss him again.
Reynard shoved Damon off of him.
Damon landed hard on the floor. “What–”
A side panel in the wall opened. A man in a dark suit, almost black, stood there. His eyes were glowing green, and he was bald.
Reynard held the necklace, which glowed in his hand. “Amazing. It’s all in here.”
Damon struggled up. The man in the suit moved faster, as Reynard took a couple of strides away from Damon’s reach. The man in the suit grabbed Damon roughly and held his arms behind his back.
“Rey, what – ”
Reynard still held the necklace. He let it dangle from his hand. “Erase everything,” he said, and held up the ankh. “Erase it all.”
Damon frantically looked from Reynard to the man, who started to drag him to the open panel. “Rey! Don’t do this! Don’t!” The last thing he saw through his tears was Reynard’s smirk as the panel shut. Damon tried to collapse, but the man held him up, yanking him down a ramp to an elevator. He felt something wrap around his wrists, something cold and metallic.
When he got in the elevator, the man dropped him. He crashed to the metal floor of the elevator onto his knees, and cried out in pain. He pitched forward slightly, but the man grabbed his hair and yanked him to a kneeling position. “What’re you going to do with me?”
“What the ‘mancer says,” said the man in a gravelly voice.
“Don’t kill me.”
“We don’t kill people here,” he replied. That didn’t reassure Damon. He tried to stand, and the man helped him, grabbing him roughly under his armpit and yanking him up. The man was strong, probably an enforcer of some type. Damon looked closer at the man’s suit. It was a deep, dark crimson, not black. The eyes were glowing and unseeing, focusing on the doors of the elevator and not on Damon at all.
“What did I do wrong?”
The man said nothing. A small smile crept across his face, and then the doors opened. He was forced through, into a white corridor. Doors similar to the R&D area – metal doors with tiny holes of chicken-wired windows – populated the corridor. He couldn’t see inside any of them, but he suspected they were covered with one-way glass.
The man knocked once, then twice more on a door. The door opened and a small woman, her long hair pulled back in a headband, stood at the door. She didn’t seem to notice Damon’s nakedness.
She held open the door and the man yanked him inside. “In the center of the room was a chair, not unlike a dentist’s chair, one that he could recline in. A set of lights was above his head, shining harshly on the chair.
The woman tore the paper that was on the chair, and unrolled some new paper. “Is he docile?”
The man in the red suit whipped Damon around. The woman said, “Place him in the chair.”
As soon as one hand was undonje, he jerked forward and tried to run around the man. However, the man still had a hold of his wrist and pulled him toward him. He kicked at the man’s legs, as the man physically lifted him from the ground, bringing him over to the chair. He threw him face-first into the chair, hard enough to knock the wind out of him. The man grabbed him by the shoulders and flipped him over, giving him a punch for good measure. Damon was shocked at the hit – no one had ever hit him like that before. He felt the fire in his belly, the fire that he got before the ghosts would come – but he didn’t have the necklace anymore. The ghosts would no longer come.
Someone strapped his arms onto the arms of the chair, his ankles onto the bottom. He felt the strap go around his shoulders, keeping his upper body still, but not his head.
“Everything having to do with an ankh necklace,” said the man. “In addition to the usual.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
The man stepped back, out of his range of vision, but Damon knew the man was still there. The chair moved to a sitting-up position.
“It will be less painful if you relax,” she said.
Damon glared at her. She shrugged, and got a small skullcap, placing it on his head. He tried to move, but she put an elastic around his head so it kept still. He heard little clicks, that she was attaching some things to him. Something else was stuck behind his ears.
She walked over to a bank of television screens that were against the wall. A few of the TV’s lit up. He couldn’t see what was on the TV’s, only that about half the bank was full. Underneath the TVs was a console. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but he could see that some of the banks on the TV went blank or snowy.
That’s when the pain hit. He thrashed in the chair, screaming, knowing now what she was doing, because he could not longer remember Reynard, or how he looked naked, or what his own job was, or where he lived…
And the man to the side smiled, drinking it all in.