The headlights carved twin lanes of illumination into the humid darkness outside. The road noise was a dull and steady drone inside the quiet of the squad car. It was neatly kept, almost pristine. The kind of environment that spoke to being either brand new, or maintained by someone especially fastidious. Likely the second, based on the woman in the driver’s seat. Everything about her communicated poise, experience, and attention to detail. She sat with the rigid but confident posture of someone long accustomed to rigorous mastery of her body. Her hands sat at a perfect ten and two on the wheel. When the car passed beneath the occasional streetlight, the shine gleamed on a recently-polished badge affixed in the perfect position on her chest. Her uniform was spotless and creased in all the right places. She watched the road ahead with the attentive eye of someone who didn’t miss much, if anything.

The man in her backseat was her visible opposite in many ways. He slouched. He sat with one shoulder against the seatback, one foot up on the seat, half-reclined. His posture was the picture of insouciance and casual disregard for his situation. He looked more like a libertine on a divan than a perp travelling to police HQ in the middle of the night. His hair – brownish, thick, and just slightly wavy – was tousled nicely. He had just enough of a five o’clock shadow to make one question whether or not it was intentional. His jacket was rumpled just a touch. The casual observer might take him for a drunken indigent, given his situation, picked up by the police and all. But anyone looking more closely would note the sharp quickness of his gaze, the faux-carelessness of his movements. This more cautious observer would have to conclude the man was right where he wanted to be.

The two drove in silence. On the long, straight roads of the backcountry, with no other cars around, there was very little way to tell exactly how long it was before he spoke.

“You know that this is unnecessary, right?”

His voice was low. The rumble of the tires on the asphalt was almost enough to swallow it up, but not quite. He inspected a fingernail as he spoke.

“Tara. The woman I was talking to back there. She just got worked up. Nothing bad happened. You know that, right?”

Officer Samantha Holt – six years on the force, qualified in hand-to-hand combat, expert in pistol marksmanship, certified in emergency vehicle operations and crisis intervention – put all of her expertise into a measured and calculated response.

“Uh huh.”

“I mean it,” the man said. “We were just talking. There’s nothing wrong with talking, is there, Officer?”

“There is not,” Officer Holt replied. “Though apparently she thought there was more than just talking going on, because she called the police. And apparently you aren’t the best judge of how a conversation’s going, because when I ran your ID, it turns out this is the sixth time in eight months that a woman’s called the authorities because you were ‘just talking’. I know they’ve let you off with warnings before, but tonight, you’re coming down to the station with me so you can explain to us why this keeps happening. Just a little conversation to clear things up.” She paused, the car rumbling over the road. “There’s nothing wrong with talking, is there?”

He laughed. Smug fucker.

“What can I say, Officer?” He spread his hands, palms up to the night sky. “You’re in charge.”

Not for the first time, Officer Holt reflected on her choice to work in a community with a police HQ that somehow seemed to be a full hour from everywhere. A true geographical oddity. No matter where she was making her returns from, she always seemed to end up on this long, poorly-lit roads, stretching for miles. Her squad car rumbled its lonely way along the isolated road, nothing but darkness and tall trees to be seen around them. She kept the siren off but the blue lights flashing, casting their illumination out into the empty wooded expanses on either side.

“Do you have the time, Officer?”

The man’s voice was so smooth and low that it didn’t startle Samantha so much as just softly bump her back into awareness of the moment. She raised an eyebrow. “Got somewhere to be tonight, do you?”

A little chuckle, rumbling faintly from the other side of the partition. “I just like to know. It’s easy to lose track of yourself out here in the dark, you know? Feels like we could’ve been driving for five minutes or five hundred. Can’t really say.”

Sam sniffed lightly. She’d been having similar thoughts herself but wasn’t looking to bond with a perp about travel through liminal spaces and the unmoored timelessness of night.

“It’s about ten thirty. Settle in. We have a ways to go.”

He didn’t respond, and Holt could hear him shifting around in the backseat. Making himself comfortable.

Another impossible-to-define batch of minutes marched on, and the near-silence of the drive was broken by his voice again. Just enough to get her attention, not loud or sudden enough to quite be a surprise.

“Are you sure you have the right guy, by the way?”

Sam exhaled through her nose sharply, the kind of sound that’s adjacent to a laugh but doesn’t actually have any familiarity with humor. The kind of sound that had made dozens of perps in that backseat wither. The kind of sound that says ‘that’s the stupidest thing anyone in this state has said today’ without deigning to actually use the energy to say it aloud.

“I’m serious. You glance at my ID, tell me I’ve got a history, throw me in a car. How do I know you ran the right person?”

A long and weary sigh from the driver’s seat. “Let me guess. Your twin brother did it, maybe? I’ve heard that before, you know.”

“I’m just saying, mistaken identities happen. You could have the wrong guy. It’s possible. You know it is. What’s my name, Officer Holt?”

Sam blinked. The man’s voice had changed there, just a bit. With his attempts at casual chat, she’d gotten used to the sound of it. Not quite sonorous, but low and full. Quiet. A hint of gravel to it on certain vowel sounds. Pleasant enough, in another context. But that last question, that had something else riding on it. Not an edge so much as a weight. Like… she couldn’t have explained this feeling, but it was like the words had more pressure to them. Heft. Like they were more solid.

She shook it off.

“Your name is Elias Mercer,” she said. “I ran your name along with your DOB and got back info that perfectly matched what was reported tonight. I’m sure you don’t want the reputation of being a man who harasses random women, but that’s really not my problem. If you want to play it-wasn’t-me, you can knock yourself out during the interview at the station. But regardless of what you say, that’s where I’m bringing you. So maybe save your breath.”

He chuckled at that, but didn’t reply. It was a grating sound, and Holt squeezed the wheel a little tighter as she heard it. A couple of deep breaths and the repetitive thumping drone of road noise helped settle her pulse rate back down.

Minutes passed.

“It is Officer Holt, right?”

Inside the car, the illumination was faint. Dead electric glows from the dashboard, the screen of the mobile data terminal. A murky greenish light that cast itself onto every surface, sticking weakly in the dark. Sam wanted to keep her focus out there, in the warm serenity of the night. He wanted to be under her skin. He wouldn’t let her get lost in the dark, apparently. So instead she had to focus on the faint contours of light and the feel of the steering wheel in her hands. Grounding sensations, thankfully.

“That’s correct,” she replied. She could feel in the way Elias asked that he wanted her to ask why. He wanted her to engage. Probably he was just bored. It was a long, dark drive, and this was a man burdened by a need to verbally harass women. Not likely he’d overcome that impulse just because the setting was a moving cop car and the only available woman was armed, annoyed, and vested with the power of the law. So she opted to simply keep quiet and deny him the opportunity to be a nuisance.

“What’s your badge number?”

She sighed. Inane questions were the driving game of the night, it seemed. “Why?” she asked, immediately failing at her previous commitment to not engage more than necessary.

“Just wanted to know. Isn’t that something you’re required to give out if asked? For the safety of the citizenry and all that.”

She tensed. Of course this creep would pick up on her by-the-book fastidiousness and try and twist a knife there. “My commanding officer is Lieutenant Daniels, if you’re looking to make a complaint about how you’ve been treated-“

“No, no, come on. Nothing like that. You’ve been great,” he said, a cloying note of humor creeping into his voice. A patronizing laugh hiding behind the words, talking to her like she was a waitress or flight attendant or something. She could imagine the smirk on his face, leering at her from the backseat. “I just want to know. Tell me your badge number, Officer.”

Again something with the voice. Like it was – this made no sense to Sam – brighter somehow. More vivid. She thought of the dim glow of the dashboard clock. Small, faint. Weak little diodes endlessly pushing out against the night. But always there, pulling at the edge of her vision, like his voice seemed to be always there.

She tried to distract herself. Thought of the car driving through the streetlights. Long stretches of darkness and then a moment of light. Again, like his voice. It was one thing, stretching out and inhabiting that form, until… it was another thing.

“Badge number 6174,” she said. This was a stupid thing to fight about. Just tell him the number, Sam. Maybe then he’ll shut up.

“Sorry – I didn’t get that. A little slower?”

She grit her teeth, the little muscles in her jaw and neck flexing. “Six. One. Seven. Four.”

“Great. Thank you. Was that so hard?”

Holt felt a flicker of real anger cross through her. It had been just irritation so far, and that was common enough. Most perps were some form of irritating. She could deal with irritating. But this guy had crossed over into something past that, something more solid and immediate. She squeezed the wheel, hard. A streetlight poured its dim gold over the car and her knuckles shone white at her, before sinking back down to the dull greenish of the dashboard lights. She took a breath. This kind of anger didn’t serve anything while on duty. She knew better. She needed to just breathe and be calm.

It was easy enough to get back there, to a more tranquil mind. The car was quiet. She watched the flickering blue lights break into the shadows around her for a moment, the lights throwing color out into the night. And she breathed, and she drove, and she felt herself calm down. More quickly than expected, in fact. Something about this night drive was calming, despite the company.

“Officer Holt, what time is it?”

Samantha blinked. She’d spaced out a little. Her efforts to calm herself were perhaps a little too effective, and she had to reorient herself. Her attention collapsed back into the small territory of the car, rather than the empty dark of the night around them. Her eyes flicked to the dashboard clock, and she spoke before she thought about it. “It’s ten forty-three.”

She tried to recall what time it was when he asked before. It seemed like quite a long time. The numbers didn’t seem to add up. Things weren’t moving correctly, out here in the dark. Samantha had a brief image of herself, driving this car in an endless straight line forever. A man in the backseat speaking to her, his words too low to hear. Flashes of light in staccato signals, brief moments of clarity before the dark drank her up again and again.

She gave her head a little shake. Stop daydreaming. That kind of frivolity wasn’t like her and had no place on the job. Focus was required here. Attention. Clarity.

“You need to keep quiet,” she said. “You’re distracting me while I’m driving.”

A low chuckle, rumbling, blending with the rolling road noise. Again anger bubbled in Samantha’s chest, and again she shoved it down.

“What was your badge number again?”

The tone of his voice. Like a heaviness in the air. Not the loud crash of a gong, but the hanging reverberation that sticks to your chest in the quiet seconds after it. Another streetlight, shining over them. The combination – light and pressure, illumination and voice – Sam couldn’t explain it but that somehow just made the words come out of her, like they were pressurized in her chest.

“6174.”

Elias didn’t respond. He just sort of… hummed. A very low thrumming sound from his chest and throat, a noise of recognition and appreciation and approval. It bent the air around Sam, and it seemed to just end the interaction somehow. He was quiet now, and that was good, so she didn’t want to pipe up and get him talking again. It was more than that, though. If she was to say anything more about it, it’d be… not wrong, certainly, but strange. That discussion was over. Now they drove in the quiet.

A streetlight splashed the car with light as they passed beneath it. Momentary brightness, then dark. Out here on the long unbending county roads, the lights were few and far between. While traveling between them, the headlights made so little impact against so much dark. Such a small protectorate of light, dimming so quickly into invading black. Samantha kept her foot on the gas, steadily pressing forward into that same dark unknown.

Officer Holt absorbed the quiet like it recharged her. These interactions had left her a little spent, and like a withered plant drinking up water, Samantha took in the quiet and allowed it to revitalize her. Thankfully the drive was nearly half over, and-

“What color are my eyes, Officer Holt?”

A flash of anger, and a reflexive reaction to press it back down into herself. Was a few minutes of quiet so much to ask?

She considered asking why he wanted to know. What on earth could be the relevance of this? But really – did it matter? Every question she asked just led to more words from him. Every mile she drove just meant more darkness, more streetlights. This road might go on forever.

“They’re… blue,” she said, partially guessing but mostly remembering. Sam had a great memory and a strong eye for detail. She saw them while sorting out what went down between him and Tara. She saw them when she put him into the backseat. Noted the mirthful gleam they had as she shut the door, like something about being taken into custody was deeply amusing to him. He had blue eyes.

“How sure are you?” That same amusement in his tone. This whole thing was a mind game, wasn’t it? Just trying to get reactions. Just saying things to keep her off balance. Playing with her. Smirking in her backseat as she drove him through the darkness.

“Does it matter?”

“Probably not. But now you want to know, don’t you? Smart, successful officer like you. Maybe even a detective someday. Things like noticing somebody’s eye color, that’s helpful, right? Noticing everything. So it matters to you a little, I think. You care if you’re right. It’d annoy you to be wrong, wouldn’t it? Wrong about a simple thing. What color are my eyes? Adjust the rearview, take a look. See if you’re right.”

Holt felt her fingertips twitch. Nearly reached for the mirror. But something inside her, some protective thing, reached out and stopped her. An ancient part of the brain, something keen and instinctual, something that could taste threats and sniff out danger. That reptilian, self-preserving instinct spoke to her through spiking adrenaline and waves of norepinephrine and cortisol, used that primal language to tell her that adjusting the mirror was like pressing her palm onto a stovetop.

“I don’t care,” she said. Why did her voice sound so thin? Was it because his was somehow fuller? More… solid, somehow. There was no air in it, no space for anything. His voice took up space and it squeezed hers out, maybe. Words as a wall, blocking her in. Words as water, filling the car. He wasn’t loud, just so very present somehow.

“I know you don’t. But still. See if you were right. Adjust the mirror so you can see me.”

Sam’s throat was tight. Her heart was beating way too fast. Her right hand ached from how hard she was squeezing the wheel. The speedometer crept up, just a hair, the tension making her accelerate just slightly. The tires rumbled their low song a bit more rapidly.

It’d be so easy to move the mirror.

It’d be zero effort, and then this awful choking tension would be gone. Her hand lifted off the wheel, just an inch. She slapped it back down into place so hard that the car swerved a little.

“What’s my name, Officer?”

His voice lurched into her, heavy. So much focus on her hand, she can’t control her tongue.

“Elias,” she said. It’s almost a grunt. Exertion coloring her syllables. She could feel a strain in the muscles of her neck.

“What’s your badge number?”

“Six. One. Seven. F-four.” Each number feeling like a foot on her chest. It got harder to focus the more she talked. The fingers of her right hand uncurled.

“What time is it?”

Her glance moved to the clock. Little blueish lights glowing softly in the dark. So much dark. Even with her headlights and the flashing blues, the dark around her was endless. Every bit of light she put out just creates a new circumference of darkness, a new border of the unknown she had to protect.

“It’s… ten forty-nine.” It’d barely been five minutes since the last time he asked. Or maybe it’d been a full day. The sun rose and fell and Samantha drove through an all-dark day, trapped here with Elias. It felt possible. Her hand was off the wheel. She was going too fast. The tires whine.

“Adjust the mirror.”

Her eyes went to it. Peering out the back windshield. Back into darkness, faintly tinted red by her taillights. Flickers of blue.

She grabbed the mirror. The glass tilted. His face was there.

He wasn’t lying back anymore, lounging comfortably. He was sitting up. Attentive. A silhouette against the darkness outside, shadow against shadow. His eyes were in fact blue, and pinned onto Samantha’s.

“Good job, Officer. You were right. Very attentive. Eyes on the road, now.”

Sam’s hand snapped back onto the wheel, and she looked straight ahead. Into the oncoming dark. Her shoulders ached. She got the car under control, steadying everything. Silence fell again as Elias watched her in the mirror, and Samantha tried to let her breathing settle. It took a long, long time to get it back.

The car eventually came upon a junction. One blank dark state highway crossing the other.

Samantha’s body felt spent, twisted up, shaky. This drive has nothing but straight lines and uninhabited roads, but inside she’s gone through the wringer. Since she adjusted the mirror, Elias has been mostly quiet, but for the occasional question. Always a repeat of something he’s asked before.

“What time is it, Officer?”

“Eleven oh-two.”

She just answered now. She figured the only way to win this bizarre power struggle is to not play. Bickering about answering or not is really just accepting his premise, which is that it means something to answer. It doesn’t. It’s just an automatic response. Asked, answered. There’s no content to it, no symbolism.

“What is my name, Officer?”

“Elias.”

Darkness, then brief light, then darkness. One streetlight for every thousand miles of empty black. Silence, then words, then silence. One exchange for every ten years of soundless driving. Sam wondered, briefly, if she’s had a slight psychotic break. She figured her driving might be a little more erratic if that were the case.

“What is your badge number, Officer?”

“6174.”

Her eyes don’t leave the road at any time. Her posture is stiff and upright. A road sign that they pass describes the upcoming intersection – the number of the highway they’re crossing, the towns it connects to. Mileage. It might as well be hieroglyphics to Samantha right now. Her brain felt fritzed, fried, flustered. She knew how to get to the station from here but anything more complex felt exhausting. Just… just get there, get this guy out of her car. That’s the goal.

In a week this would be a funny story. The creep who talked so much and so annoyingly that it made her think she was going crazy. The guy who almost got the famously icy Samantha Holt to scream, and did it just by asking the time so many goddamn times that she snapped. She pictured the other officers bent with laughter as she described wanting to tear her hair out rather than listen to this fucking perp ask her badge number a fiftieth time. They’d love it. It would be funny. It wouldn’t be a story of being lost in the dark. It wouldn’t be a nightmare anymore.

The road was flat and steady, the car’s pace inexorable and unchanging. It was only in her mind that Sam was gaining speed, no brakes down an endless dark incline.

Up ahead there was an underpass. Some other road, going some other dark place, crossing over Sam and Elias and the car they shared. The space where he had been confined, where she was confined with him. They rolled under the bridge, pulled to a stop at the stop sign there.

A bus stop sat next to them. A small enclosure was there, though it didn’t look active. A route that wasn’t serviced anymore. The wear on the metal and the years-old bus schedules sitting there made it clear once again to Samantha that nobody else was out here. In this darkness, it felt possible that Elias was the only other person in the world. The blue lights flashed merrily above them, reflecting off of the glass of the bus stop enclosure. Elias sniffed.

“That’s really bright. Turn those lights off.”

Samantha’s hand lifted from the wheel to the switch above her. One quick snap and the blue vanished. The darkness was able to hold a bit more closely to them now, nestling and nuzzling itself to the roof of the car. She accelerated away from the stop sign, driving again into the warm night. Elias rumbled that low approving noise and Samantha felt her shoulders square.

Why on earth did she do that?

It didn’t really matter, did it? They hadn’t seen another car all night. They were all alone. It was protocol to keep the lights on when safe while transporting a prisoner, yes. And protocol was important, obviously. But this was a problem prisoner, one who’d created issues for her already. If doing this one little thing kept him quiet – kept him appeased – it was worth it.

“Say my name, Officer.”

“Elias.”

The lack of blue light flicking against the darkness made Samantha somehow more aware of her predicament. That ancient part of her, the protector in her brain stem, spoke again. It grabbed at her stomach with icy, reptilian fingers, forcing her into awareness. Lack of engagement was a good strategy but the enemy had adapted. He advanced while she waited for him to exhaust or bore himself, and that hadn’t happened. She needed to fight.

“I know that you’re doing something to me,” she said. She would have preferred it to be spoken with more backbone. She had made grown men cower with just her voice while driving this car before. Where was that woman now? “Something with your voice.”

“Is that so?” Amusement in his tone. Surprise, maybe, but nothing like fear or trepidation.

“Yes. It’s not going to work.”

“Adjust the mirror, Officer. Look me in the eye.”

A clench in her muscles. Her jaw clenched. Thunder in her ears, blood from her soaring heart rate crashing against a new dull roar of bruxism. She wouldn’t do it. It was time to fight back.

“I see your fingers moving. Stop being childish. Move the mirror and look at me.”

She didn’t say no. She didn’t say anything. Words were his weapon and talking to him was just engaging on his chosen battlefield. ‘Childish’ hit a nerve, though. That was the first time he’d called her out like that, criticized her. There was less warmth in his tone then. It was more oppressive, even a bit stony. Her fingertips flinched, unclenching the wheel for less than a second. He saw it, rumbled happily. Samantha felt her face flush at that sound. Hearing his satisfaction made her angry and nervous and – and a third emotion that she wouldn’t let herself consciously admit to, even as it made her blood course faster.

“It’s alright. You’ll do it in a minute, I can see that. What time is it?”

“Eleven oh-nine.”

A small spasm of shame caressed her stomach. It had been a mistake to give ground on those questions. She couldn’t stop herself now, couldn’t seem to simply not answer. And maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe it did mean something. Maybe each time she told him what he wanted to hear like that she handed over some very tiny piece of something. Something so small it weighed nothing, reflected no light. But give over enough weightless formless pieces from inside, and they started to add up. Started to matter.

“You say I’m doing something with my voice. What’s my voice sound like?”

Adjectives suggested themselves in rapid succession and Sam choked on them, refusing to let them take on sound and speech. She wasn’t going to answer him. She remembered a training exercise from years ago – defending and escaping multiple attackers. They’d taught her to put a wall to her back, force the group to stay in her field of vision. Never develop tunnel vision on one threat – gun up, moving rapidly and in a changing order from one threat to another. Breathe, protect your flank, and find an escape route. Samantha felt like she had in the early moments of that training. Overwhelmed, tired, unsure how to keep herself safe. The various words she wanted to say felt like they were about to move en masse and swarm her. She’d failed to secure an exit route. She was trapped in this car. Elias was the one locked in the backseat, secured behind the partition, but she felt like a prisoner. She felt like she was never going to get out of this dark.

Elias waited for her response. When it didn’t come, he spoke again. How did he make his voice do that? How could just words be a vice on her chest, an ice-cold clamp over her brain?

“Describe my voice, Officer.”

“Deep,” she said, the word an acrid bolt that seared her coming out. The words came fast but clumsy, clanging against each other as they fought their way up her throat. “Low. Heavy. Oppressive. Warm. Full. Commanding.”

There was no rumble of pleasure this time. He just kept speaking.

“Tell me your badge number.”

“6174,” she said.

“Say my name.”

“Elias.”

“Tell me the time.”

“Eleven ten,” she said, again struck with an image of herself driving forever. No light. No sound. Unblinking and unswerving. Elias behind her, whispering in her ear. Sound swallowed up in road noise but still she knew she took in every word.

“Badge number.”

“6174,” she pleaded.

“Adjust the mirror and look at me.”

Her hand moved. Against her will? She had no idea. Was she in control at all anymore? It was difficult to remember what that meant. She twisted the mirror, centering Elias fully in her vision there.

“Good girl.”

His eyes were steady. How were they so bright in so much darkness? They were light blue, darker at the edge of the iris. Not deep so much as reflective. Shining.

“Watch the road, Officer Holt.”

Her eyes snapped from his, released from the hold. She stared into the darkness, looming like a black hole.

They drove quietly. Drove for… it didn’t matter how long.

But then, a miracle. A light, a hope, a flicker of an oasis for the weary traveler. They passed a sign. An indicator that the station was ahead. Just a few miles. Just a few miles! This drive had gone from strange to frightening to existentially dreadful. Sam tried to remember how much vacation time she had booked. She was going to use all of it, starting tomorrow. She needed to get this drive off of her psyche. She needed to sit in a nice bright space and speak to normal people, people whose words weren’t weighted chains.

And all she had to do was drive a few more miles and then she’d be able to do it.

She focused on her breathing. It helped, a little. She tried to forget about the rearview mirror. If she looked at it, she knew his eyes would be there. She could feel him in the backseat, watching her. Waiting. He was like an animal. A wolf stalking her in the forest. A shark circling in the depths. The monster under her bed as a child. Her parents swore there was no such thing, but they were wrong. It was real and it was patient and it took until tonight to find her.

But in a few miles he couldn’t touch her. She had always hated the fluorescents of the station, the sallow grim lighting there. Tonight it would be the most beautiful thing in the world. Elias’ words couldn’t strangle her in that light, she just knew it. Just a few more miles. She could do it. She might be crazy now, and it might take days to wash the feeling of Elias out of this car, but in a few more miles she would –

“Take this turn, Officer.”

Something sour filled Sam’s mouth. She thought she might vomit. Ahead, a small single-lane road extended out to the left. Perpendicular to the last few miles that led to her salvation.

“No,” she said, the word dry.

She put her blinker on.

“It’s a shortcut,” Elias said. His voice was the most reasonable thing in the world. No taunting in it now, no humor. Not even the rock-dense oppressiveness that it had before. Now it was just… simple. He was telling her to do it and it made sense. It didn’t make sense, but it did. The world overlaid with another one, one he wanted her to see, one that she couldn’t turn her eyes away from because he controlled the mirror.

“It’s not,” she said. What she meant was ‘stop this’. What she meant was ‘please don’t make me do this’. What she meant was wordless fearful begging, because nothing else had worked. But all she could say was “It’s not” and he didn’t bother to reply.

She came to the intersection. She bit down on her tongue, hard. Tasted blood. Didn’t help.

She took the turn.

The road was narrow, and it curved in a gentle slope out into the trees. The asphalt cracked apart on the sides, grass growing up through it. It was somehow darker here.

“Good girl. Just keep driving.”

And Sam just kept driving.

Sam did not know where she was.

The road twisted through the woods, down hills. Always deeper, always down, always darker. This was unfamiliar territory.

“You’re doing good, Officer. Say my name.”

“Elias.”

There wasn’t hesitation in her voice anymore. Sam just spoke when Elias told her to. Pretending otherwise was… well, childish.

“Your breathing is a little different now. Slower, more measured. I can hear the difference, Officer. You sound like you’re back in control of yourself. You’re a good cop. You appreciate control, don’t you?”

It felt like a taunt. Control? Hardly.

“Yes. I appreciate control.”

It was true. Even if it wasn’t, Sam thought she would likely have said it anyway. Words were losing color, losing meaning. Her words, at least. His were as violently vibrant as ever. But what did it matter what she said? She was holding the wheel but couldn’t steer where she wanted to go. She had her foot on the gas but couldn’t find the brake. Why on earth would her words matter?

But it was true. She liked order. Discipline. She enjoyed following procedure. Knowing the right thing to do, knowing there was a book. The book had considered what might happen, had plans made. Whatever came out of the dark, going by the book meant you could rely on training and experience and the years of wisdom of those who came before to navigate it. The book, the rules, the procedure – these promised safety.

The book didn’t have a page about any of this.

Samantha was alone. Worse, Samantha was not alone – she was with Elias.

“I know you do,” he said, his words buzzing like a cloud of flies, infesting the car she’d kept so clean and tidy for years. It would never be the same. Neither it nor she. “It’s all you want. That sense of certainty, of knowing what to do next. That’s why you need to listen to me. Squeeze the wheel and accelerate.”

Her fingers clenched. Her foot depressed. The car gained speed. Not wise, in these conditions. Out on a narrow road, unfamiliar, in the dark. But wisdom wasn’t something Sam was armed with right now.

“That’s enough. Slow back down. That’s my good little Officer.”

There was a pleased chuckle that accompanied those words, and Samantha was enraged and disgusted to find flickers of satisfaction in her heart at hearing his praise. She swallowed it, all of it. Every emotion, just crushed together into a brittle ball of broken things that she gulped down, buried in her body. She couldn’t feel right now. She just drove.

“Hold your breath.”

Sam inhaled.

She didn’t know if she decided to do it or not. She’d worked hard to disassociate, to remove her mind from the things happening to her. To disconnect her self from her body. She wasn’t in control, obviously, and so the only thing that made sense was to just turn off everything. Sever the connections, break the tethers. Her mind was one thing and her body was another. She wanted to encase her consciousness and let it separate from all of what was happening. And so was it her that drew in air, held it in her lungs, chose not to breathe?

Or was it Elias?

His words had physical form. They were hands on her body. Ropes on her limbs. They were electrical surges that wound into her brain and made her move. His choices controlled what she did.

The seconds dragged on. Samantha could hear him breathing. She was very aware of his breaths. Every breath he took was one she didn’t.

God, it was so dark.

A little burn began to creep into Samantha’s chest. She blinked twice, feeling the slight ache from lack of oxygen. She wondered vaguely how long it was possible to hold one’s breath. Surely you’d fail before passing out. There was no way it was possible to exert that much muscle control over your own instinctual need to breathe.

How did that change when a maniac with a magical voice told you not to breathe, though?

Could Elias make her simply… never breathe again? Just from saying so? It didn’t feel possible. Not much of what had happened tonight would have felt possible.

A little bit of gray crept in at the edges of Samantha’s vision.

As panic began to scratch at her, Elias spoke again.

“You can breathe.”

A ragged cough. Sputtering. Fire in her lungs. Rapid inhalations, each making her feel sick, but still grateful for the relief. The air felt sandy in her throat, like grit abrading her lungs and mouth as she sucked it down needily. Her shoulders shook and her chest inflated and deflated rapidly.

“Pull the car over, Officer.”

Panting, eyes watering, Sam obeyed.

The ground here was soft and a little damp. Loamy, thick earth, with a layer of moss interspersed here and there. A rich and heady smell in the humid night air. The bit of dirt Sam was kneeling on felt like a vaguely wet cushion under her knees. Elias looked down at her, leaning on the driver’s door of her squad car. Her knees were together and her hands rested palms-down on her thighs. The headlights were still on, illuminating a wall of trees. Samantha knelt in the dark at the side of the road.

“Do you understand now, Officer Holt?”

“Yes, Elias.”

She didn’t, not really. She didn’t know exactly what he meant. But at the same time, she understood a great deal right now.

“Do you trust me, Officer?”

“Yes, Elias.”

Of course she didn’t. Not in the sense of thinking he had her best interests at heart, or that she could believe what he said. But she did trust him. She knew she could rely on him to do what she expected – to manipulate her, control her. There was something in that. Something to be said for reliability. Solidity. She was lost in the dark and he was a light. The light of an anglerfish, perhaps, but a light nonetheless.

“Take out your gun.”

She lifted a hand. It felt like a balloon was tied to her wrist, moving the muscles for her. She didn’t have control. Not over anything. She unsnapped her holster, pulled out her service weapon. It was incredibly heavy. Had it always been so heavy? Elias extended his hand, palm out.

She passed him the gun.

He held it casually. Turned it one way and then the other, inspecting it. Pulled back the slide almost thoughtfully. He held it up at arm’s length, pointing it out into the woods. Looked through the sight. Sam watched. His form wasn’t great, but he was clearly comfortable enough with a weapon.

He swung his arm down, pointing it at Sam’s face.

“You belong to me, Officer. Do you understand that?”

Samantha would have loved to resist. The version of herself she’d always believed in would have fought against this kind of treatment. She believed she was a woman who’d battle like an animal against submitting to a man like this, and even if it meant a bullet, she’d die with his blood under her nails at least.

It turned out that was wrong. He’d taken that belief from her. She simply let him point her weapon at her and agreed with him. No fight left. Nothing left. She belonged to him now.

“Yes, Elias.”

He set the gun down on the roof of the car. His eyes were as blue as ever, but a new fire was there. “Stand up,” he ordered, his voice thick now. Different than it had been, but no less compelling. Sam rose to her feet. “And give me your handcuffs.”

Elias was still speaking, but it had become difficult for Samantha to listen.

The heat of the metal was distracting. Her cheek was pressed to the hood of the car, and the engine was still cooling down from their long drive. It didn’t burn her, but it was hot enough to steal some of her focus. Not just her face, either. Her uniform was unbuttoned, her bra removed. Her bare breasts were pressed into the hood. Her pants were down around her ankles. Her panties had ripped a bit when Elias bent her over and shoved them aside. Her hands, meanwhile, were behind her back. Cuffed. And Elias himself was buried inside of her, hilting himself repeatedly in her pussy.

With how dissociated and lost she’d become, Sam wouldn’t have guessed this would be pleasurable. But Elias had held her up after she was cuffed, pressing himself behind her. One hand wrapped around her throat, the other wound in her hair. He hissed in her ear. His voice didn’t have the looming thrum of power it did in the car, but it did gain a sort of serpentine hiss of immediacy, being right in her ear like this. In the car his words were a fortress. Out here they were a rapier.

“I’m going to fuck you now, Sam,” he whispered to her. She idly realized it was the first time he’d used her first name. “I’m going to use your body like you’re a whore. You’re going to bend over and take it and you’re going to thank me. You’re going to love it, in fact. Nobody’s ever fucked you the way I’m about to. You’re gonna fall in love with getting used by my cock. You’re going to leak for me, dripping like a stupid slut. You’re gonna bend over and offer your holes because you’re that desperate for me. You’re going to do that every time I want, as often as I want. Because you don’t get to say no to me. Ever, about anything. I’m not even going to ask if you understand, because I don’t give a fuck if you do. You’re going to do it whether you understand why or not. You fucking cunt. You dumb fucking cop. This is what you fucking get for interrupting my fun tonight, bitch. Now bend. Over.”

He'd shoved her head down at that point, and Sam let him. The things he’d said – a new side of him, savage and impatient, demanding after all his time carefully crafting his control – those things crept into her brain like vines. Poisonous tendrils digging into the soil of her mind, like her knees had dug into the earth on the side of the road.

He was still talking. Only fragments got through.

“-gonna do it, no matter what it is, because you’re nothing but-“

“-for my cock. My cock is your whole world. Pleasing me makes-“

“-ohhh that’s fucking good. Good girl, Sam. Your cunt is so nice and-“

“-more will. No more thinking. No more choices. No more-“

“-owner, your master, your king. Everything you do is to serve-“

They didn’t bury her in their oppressive force like the words inside the car had, but their sheer volume built up around her. There was so much. And the pressure built inside as well, the heat of her traitorous body warming with every so-deep stroke of his cock. Her legs were quaking and sweat poured down the front of her body, the heat of her arousal starting to match the heat of the metal he fucked her against.

She heard herself speaking as well. She didn’t know what the words coming out of her were. She was speaking in tongues, an acolyte reduced to gibberish by coming in too-close contact with the divine unknowable. Elias’ cock was as insatiable and unyielding as the rest of him. Sam found herself flexing up onto her toes, throwing her hips back to match his thrusts. He was rough, and it hurt, and she wanted it to hurt. She’d spent the night drowning in dark dissociation, and this now at last was hot and bright and real. It seared her, and she savored it. She needed more. She needed.

Elias grunted, a noise that had the same heavy ominous rumble as his sounds in the car. Sam instinctively knew what it meant. She was so in tune with him now. Shaped by him. She flattened her torso to the hood of her squad car, ass up. Steadied her legs. She felt him grab the chain of the cuffs that bound her as he gave one last enormous thrust into her. Like a knight burying his sword in the dragon he was slaying, Elias impaled her there. He erupted inside of her, and she felt explosions rack her body. A series of successive detonations, demolishing her like a condemned building. Her eyes went wide. Sam saw white, blinding light, then pure dark.

The car was truly silent now.

Samantha sat in the driver’s seat, waiting patiently. Her uniform was buttoned up again, and she’d fixed her hair. Mostly. Anyone who knew her well would see how disheveled she was compared to her usual. Changed.

They would not be able to see that she was no longer wearing her panties, torn into disuse there at the side of the road. They wouldn’t be able to see what she was feeling in that moment, the slow oozy creep of Elias leaking out of her, down her thigh. Still, she didn’t move.

He’d told her to sit still and wait here.

She was parked outside a familiar house. Small, relatively isolated. She’d been here earlier tonight. It was where she’d first met Elias, where she was called to respond to a man harassing a woman. Tara, her name was.

She’d driven Elias back here to talk to her again. He was inside now. He’d told her to wait here, and she did. A good little chauffeur. His private police escort.

She wondered about the future. Would she keep this job? It could be useful to Elias. He had a tendency to get himself in trouble. She could help mitigate that. Destroy evidence. Intimidate witnesses. Whatever he needed. In fact, there were some six other women out there who’d called law enforcement on him, weren’t there? Perhaps he’d want to visit them as well. Perhaps a police escort would help. She could do that for him.

She’d quit for him if wanted, too, of course. Her job only mattered to her now as far as it was helpful to Elias. Everything in her life was recentering around him. He was the sun, the nucleus, the central pillar of her life.

Maybe she’d stay a cop until she did enough things wrong on his behalf that they fired her. Then she could come home to him and the harem she’d helped him build and join it, serving him that way.

The night was extremely dark but her future felt bright with possibilities of service.

From inside the house, Samantha could hear noises. Sounded like a disturbance. An argument. Possibly even something being thrown? It was hard to be sure. Pretty quiet from here. Regardless, she didn’t move. Elias would tell her when he wanted her to move, if at all. Until then, she held her position.

Things got quieter. She could still hear the occasional voice, but it was mostly just his words now. That felt right. She thought of how Tara must have been feeling. She related.

Some time later, the front door opened. Elias stepped out. He had his arm around Tara, who looked exhausted and confused and afraid. She followed with him, though, leaning her weight on him. She looked like she’d collapse if he moved away. They walked down the front steps and up towards the squad car.

Samantha got out, moving to the backseat door. She opened it for them, helped Elias load Tara up. The other girl half-poured across the backseat, visibly addled and confused. She looked at Sam with glassy, frightened eyes.

“You have to help me. He’s – doing something? I don’t want…”

Samantha fixed her eyes on the girl, watched her sluggish struggles. She used her officious cop-voice, authoritarian and cold. “Quiet.” Tara blanched, hands balling into loose, useless fists.

Elias turned to Sam, a crooked smile across his face. “Get back in the car, Officer.”

Samantha obeyed. There was a glow low in her belly from doing so. Now that her resistance was broken and gone, it simply felt good to follow Elias’ orders. She always did like orders. Liked being by the book. Elias wrote the book now, and Samantha followed procedure perfectly every time. Following felt good. Felt right. There was no more need to fight or fear. Elias was in command.

She looked in the rearview once she was settled into her seat. Elias was framed perfectly there, head turned to the side. He held Tara by the chin, whispering in her ear. He paused, glanced up to the mirror. Met Sam’s eyes.

“I’m ready to go, Sam.”

She turned the key, put the car in gear.

“Yes, Sir,” she said as she pulled out onto the road.

Out in the dark, Samantha drove. She drove for quite a long time. There were noises from the backseat. For most of the drive, Elias had simply whispered to Tara. She had protested from time to time. Once, he spoke more loudly. Threatened to have Samantha pull over and hold the girl down if she didn’t listen. It didn’t come to that, but Sam never doubted she’d have done it.

Gradually Elias’ whispers did their work. Tara murmured back fewer refusals and more assents. And now there were simply soft wet sounds and occasional moans.

Samantha kept her eyes on the road. Tara had her job to do, and Sam had hers. For now, hers was driving.

She looked into the rearview mirror, and he was smiling at her. Tara’s head bobbed into view a few times, rising and falling from his lap, but Sam was focused only on him.

Her radio crackled. The warm voice of the dispatcher came through across it.

“Car 33, just checking in. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Hopefully that means a quiet night. Sam, you doing okay out there, girl? Everything five by five?”

Samantha held eye contact with Elias as she picked up the mic and answered, smiling as the car sped off into the dark.

“This is Officer Holt. Everything’s under control.”