Page 67 of Savagely Mated

“Okay, so can you add one thing to that message I asked you to give Einar before?”

“Sure.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

I go to D2G, because there’s nowhere else in Eclipse I’d rather be. Clint is still behind the desk. I don’t think he ever leaves the office. I wonder if he can leave.

“You’re late. Days late,” he grunts.

I feel a little special that he noticed. That’s probably indicative of some deep-seated trauma, but I’ll take a pleasant interaction where I can find it.

“Sorry, boss, got kidnapped.”

He shrugs, pulls open a filing cabinet, which he reaches without getting up from his chair, rifles through some dog-eared manila folders, and hands me a form. It has the D2G logo at the top of it, and then a heading at the top:

In Case of Kidnapping

By whom were you kidnapped?

The first question blares at me from the paper. What’s interesting is that there isn’t a blank line or anything to fill out. Instead, there’s multiple choice.

A) Yes

B) No

C) IDK (I don’t know)

“There’s a form for being kidnapped?”

“There’s a form for everything,” he answers, turning his gaze back to his digital book.

“This form doesn’t really seem to make sense,” I note as I look at the second question.

Why were you kidnapped?

A) Ransom

B) Vengeance

C) IDK (I don’t know)

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “They just like to have things on file.”

“Okay,” I say, picking up the greasy pen that has been chained to his desk since before I was born. Having been raised in a military establishment, I know a thing or two about box ticking.

“Is there a form for a spare bike, because mine is being held by the kidnappers? I think they might be terrorists.”

Clint sighs and rifles through the same file drawer, before slapping another paper down in front of me. This one reads:

So You’ve Lost Your Bike to a Terrorist Syndicate

Is your bike gone?

1. Yes

2. Yup

3. Mhm