Hostile Takeover

The end of his life as Elaine Sparrow's property did not come with a dramatic farewell, but with the sterile efficiency of a cargo shipment. He was led from the grand house not through the front door, but through a service entrance into a cold, concrete loading bay. A large, upright wooden crate, like a sarcophagus for a standing man, waited in the center of the room.

"Inside," Alistair commanded, his voice devoid of its usual punitive edge. He was simply overseeing a procedure.

Joshua stepped into the box. It was a tight fit, just wide enough for his shoulders. His back rested against a padded panel. A thick leather belt was wrapped around his waist, and his wrists were locked into cuffs attached to it at his sides, holding his hands immobile. His ankles were cuffed and secured together, leaving him utterly helpless.

A blindfold was tied over his eyes, plunging him into darkness. Then, a rubber mask was strapped over his face, covering his nose and mouth. A tube that felt like a breathing apparatus was inserted into his mouth. Panic, cold and sharp, pricked at him. He was being entombed.

He heard the sound of a heavy door being closed in front of him, followed by the thud of latches being thrown into place. The air around him grew still, then heavy. A loud hiss filled his ears, and he felt a strange pressure against his skin. The walls of the crate were contracting, not of wood but of a thick, heavy rubber that was rapidly inflating. It pressed against his legs, his chest, his arms, cocooning him in a tight, suffocating embrace. He was immobilized, sealed in a rubber womb.

As he struggled to draw a breath through the tube in his mouth, a strange sweetness filled his lungs. The air was drugged. His thoughts began to swim, the edges of his consciousness blurring. A high-pitched ringing started in his ears, drowning out all other sound. His body, already conditioned to accept the unacceptable, went limp. The last vestiges of the man named Joshua Robinson, the CEO, the fighter, dissolved into the chemical haze. The next time he would be conscious, he would be a stranger in a strange land, his past a distant, irrelevant dream.

He knew nothing of the journey. Not of the silent, unmarked truck that carried his crate to a private airfield. Not of the diplomatic airplane, its cabin pressurized and sterile, where his crate was loaded with other precious cargo. Not of the long flight across continents and oceans, a piece of freight in transit. He knew nothing of the arrival at a private airport near Tokyo, or the drive into the mountains, up winding roads to a secluded, traditional property hidden behind high stone walls. He was an object in transit, his humanity packed away in a crate somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.