REKT - Chapter 27

Tarmac United

Ten minutes later, I’m in Joe’s jet on the tarmac at San Antonio International Airport. It feels good to be back among the living. To be in a safe place that has the ability to fly away and go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Joe’s security guards are here. They’ve been by my side since the parking garage. I can’t go to pee without them following me to the door. Kevin and James. I feel bad about all the Kevin James jokes I’ve made at their expense.

Niko sits by my side. She’s got her hand in mind. Andy sits opposite me. Joe is close to him. There’s a table in between our tan leather seats. We are having a meeting right after I’ve been freed. There’s been no letup while I’ve been gone. The tunnel in the bubble is contracting, flow is increasing, things are shooting through it at an accelerated rate. You can smell the stink. More and more of the flow is filth, sewage, and garbage from the bubble. This is what I can tell, not only from being kidnapped, but from the mood at the table. The tension is terrible. People should be happier that I’m free, but something is off, something is wrong here. More wrong than us hating each other, more wrong than the fact that I was just kidnapped, more wrong than whatever it cost to get me back. There’s a new problem at work.

“What’s going on?” I break the silence. “Come on guys, tell me why you are all so weird.”

“Bull God sold you.” Nikola says.

“Sold me?” I ask.

Andy puts his hands on the table, he leans in and gives me the no fucking around look. “Bull God went missing right before you did. We can’t find him. We think he sold you to a cartel or someone.”

I look out the window, watch the planes queue up for departure. I’d feel better if we were in that line, if we were getting out of here, heading into the skies where no one can pull off the road and take you.

The cartel?

“How much did they get for me?”

“Fifty.” Andy answers low.

“Fifty what?” I ask.

“Million.” Andy answers.

“You didn’t pay fifty million dollars for me. That’s impossible.”

Andy hasn’t taken his eyes off of me. He’s really not fucking around here. “Why do you think you were in there for six days? It’s hard to free up that much money, convert it into bitcoin and then move it into a bunch of wallets. We had to do it piecemeal. The network is so slow that it took two days just to transfer the coins into the couple hundred wallets they gave us.”

“Fifty million dollars for me?”

I’m astonished by the number. I’m astonished that they paid it out. None of this seems real. Bull God sells me to a Mexican cartel who kidnaps me for fifty million dollars paid in bitcoin.

“Sorry Ryan, we could have gotten you a little sooner, but we didn’t have enough to spring you and cover Icarus. I had to make ten million while you were there. They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Niko has her hand on my face, her fingers tracing light over the scab on my cheek.

“What you see. I tried to get out when I was in the car. There was an accident. The airbag burst. A concussion too. I got whacked in the head with a gun until I blacked out. That hurt real bad.”

I want to say more. I want to tell her that it didn’t hurt as bad as what she did to me, but it is not the time for that. She looks terrible. She must have felt like the biggest piece of shit while I was gone. I was snatched up by a guy she recruited who only knew how much money we had because she pulled our customer’s money out of the bank, but I’m not saying any of that now. I want to be a bigger man in this situation. What I really want is to feel loved again. I want someone to take the pain away even if what’s underneath isn’t real. I want to pretend that Niko loves me again.

I don’t want to talk about the stainless-steel room. I may never talk about that. I don’t know. One thing at a time.

“Bull God sold me to a Mexican cartel for fifty million?” I ask again.

“As far as we know.” Joe answers.

“Why do you think that?” I ask.

Joe points at Kevin and James. “These guys. They are the real deal. Ex-military, lots of contacts in law enforcement. This is their theory based on the information they were able to gather.”

“Thanks guys. I mean it.” I get up to hug them. They are stiff and awkward as I do, but I don’t care. My appreciation is strong. Whatever they did, I’m here now and I’m safe among them.

“Now what aren’t you telling me?” I ask. “Something else is off here. Are we short on Icarus?”

“No.” Andy answers.

“What then?”

“Erskine is blackmailing Andy and me.” Joe says matter of fact.

More blackmail? Is there a sign around us that says suckers? Why is everybody taking a swing at us? “How does he even know about this?” I ask.

“Joe here made national news with that speech last week. Everyone knows about Joe’s utopian scheme to devalue Blockstar. BSTR is down to sixteen bucks a coin.” Andy answers.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. “What’s the blackmail?” I ask.

“Salome. He has pictures of her and I from Colorado.”

Salome. Joe wouldn’t tell me who Salome was, but he knew when I asked him a couple weeks back. “Joe, you didn’t?”

“Of course not, Ryan. I’m devoted to my cause. When we went downstairs, the room was dark. These two women came out of the shadows, wrapped themselves around us and then the lights came on. They weren’t women and they worked fast. Nothing happened but it doesn’t look good. There are real pictures that don’t look good and there’s some top-notch fakes. It looks bad man, really bad.”

“Erskine wants him to back off the Blockstar Gives project. He wants Joe to pull the proposal. He’s going to buy a ton of it right before Joe calls the project off. The coin will rebound, and he’ll make a killing.” Nikola says.

I give Andy a look. The depths I think this man is capable of.

“Joe, you know Andy here was going to talk you out of it too. He was going to buy BSTR up and get you to change your mind.” I throw it out there, trying to fluster the table to see if anything spills out. Joe laughs, “I know, and he tried. Don’t think it, Ryan. You can’t live thinking things like that. He’s blackmailing Andy too.”

“You too?” I ask.

“Yeah, Erskine thinks I can get Joe to change his mind. Turns out I can’t.”

“Whoa, hold on. You aren’t going to pull the proposal? You’re going to let people think you are a pedo? Joe, you can’t do that. That’s suicide,” I say.

“I’m not going to let money destroy my principles.” Joe answers.

“This is not about principles. This is about destroying your life. It will destroy Blockstar too.”

“And my life too.” Andy adds.

“What else have I missed this week?” So many fucking questions from me. I’m afraid to ask this one. “Bitcoin doubled again. We paid off MercuryOne. Kelvin has been trying to get a hold of you to say thanks. You should call him. You should call your parents too. I um, made up a story about you getting Niko pregnant, having a disagreement about keeping the child, and disappearing on a bender.” Andy says.

“What? You couldn’t have come up with a better story? How am I going to explain that one to my mother?”

“Would you rather I told her the truth?” Andy asks.

“No. God, that’s going to be difficult.” I say.

“Anyway, we are getting out of here in twenty minutes. Going back to Miami. We need to figure out a way to get to Erskine. We need to stunt on him before he releases those pictures.” Joe says.

“I can’t go to Miami. That’s not a safe city. Take me to Phoenix. I want to go home. Nikola, can you come home with me? I need you to tell my parents we are keeping our fake baby. You can miscarry later.” The words sound atrocious as they come out of my mouth. She looks at me in horror. I cannot believe I just said that. The lying is so slippery, so insidious. We are tumbling down a mountain of immorality. “I didn’t say that. That was the shock speaking. I didn’t say that. I’d never put them or you through that. What the fuck? I need help. I need help. Jesus Christ this is all so fucked up.”

I’m sobbing. I’m shaking and I’m sobbing. The entire ordeal, the kidnapping, the scheming, the complicity, the layers of lies upon lies upon lies. Why won’t this be over? Why is it snowballing? This fucking bubble. Niko tries to touch me. I lash out at her. I get up from my seat, I run to the back of the plane. I curl up in the fetal position and shake and cry and sob like a fucking baby. I cannot handle this anymore. I’m losing it. I’m losing my shit.

“I need to get out of this. I can’t do it anymore. I need out. I’m broken.”

“Here, take this Ryan. It will help you cope.”

Andy hands me a pill. I swallow it down with some water.

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