The Lore of Prometheus

by Graham Austin-King

  Sunglasses shook his head and muttered something over one shoulder at the other three, and made his way down to where McCourt knelt in the rubble.

  “Where did you get your information?” he barked down at McCourt.

  McCourt didn’t look good. I don’t know if he’d been hurt in the fall, or if he was just shitting himself. Whatever it was, I think if he’d had anything to tell, he’d have spilled his guts to the guy at that point.

  “Satellites,” he muttered.

  Sunglasses reached down and grabbed him, holding him by the hair at the base of his neck as he jammed the barrel of his weapon into his face. “Do not lie to me, kafir.”

  He glanced over at me as he shoved McCourt down to the ground. Turner never had a chance. The AK-47 swept around and sent a round through his head. Turner dropped, toppling sideways into the rubble as the red mess dripped off the wall.

  For a few moments everything was chaos. The sound of the gunshot still felt like it filled my ears. Johnson was screaming something at Sunglasses while Richards and Yates were shouting at him, trying to get him to shut up. Only Pearson, McCourt, and I were quiet and somehow that drew us together, pulling our eyes until our gazes met.

  You can say a lot with a look. McCourt was a broken man, resigned to his fate. Pearson was on the edge of panic, his eyes begging, pleading with me to do something, anything. And I had nothing to give him.

  “Who told you?” Sunglasses was looking at me again. “We know how to avoid your satellites and your spies. Someone must have told you we would be here.”

  “We weren’t looking for him,” Johnson blurted. “We were looking for The Gatherer. For Azzat bin Shah.”

  Sunglasses spun around to face him, barking something to the men behind him. The shortest of the four of them stepped forward again, speaking to Sunglasses in a low voice. Sunglasses, by the looks of things, was having none of it. He shook his head and snapped something that sounded suspiciously like “shut the hell up,” in Pashto.

  He held his weapon ready as he walked the five steps to Johnson.

  “Do you think I am stupid?” he demanded. “bin Shah is nothing. He is a supplier, nothing more. Why would you send eight men for a merchant?”

  He spun on his heel, stalking back to me and ripping his sunglasses off as he grabbed hold of my face with the other hand. He bent close, close enough that I would have been tempted to headbutt him if the other three hadn’t had guns on us.

  “Do I look like I want to play games?” he hissed at me.

  The shot was one-handed, the kind of cowboy bullshit that you see on television. It’s a miracle he managed to hit anything. If Johnson had been turned even slightly towards me the round would have hit the front-plate of his body armour. Instead it managed to find a gap between the plates, burying itself in his side. He managed to clap a hand over the wound, but the blood was already spilling out between his fingers. He coughed, an ugly tearing sound that sent a bloody froth out between his lips, and then sank back against the wall, sliding down with a confused look on his face

  Pearson went next, a bullet to the head before anyone could even react. It went straight through his helmet, blood streaming down his face as he fell.

  I was a dead man.

  I knew it then. The next bullet was mine and Sunglasses was already turning to face me. The bastard grinned as he levelled the gun at me and I was suddenly furious.

  This was bullshit.

  We weren’t even here for these guys. My anger passed through rage and into something I couldn’t even put a name to; a white-hot fury that burned all other thought from my mind.

  And then he pulled the trigger. I stared at the barrel of the gun, as the bullet erupted from it, carving a path through the air towards my flesh.

  It was the gasps and the utter silence that brought me back to myself. The bullet had stopped midway between the gun and my head. It hung in the air, flattened out as if it had struck a metal plate and somehow forgotten how to fall.

  I realised then that my hands were free, as blood dripped from my wrists.

  I don’t know what happened to the plastic ties, but I was crouched, one hand on the floor and the other outstretched towards the bullet, as if warding it away.

  Sunglasses gaped, lifting his gaze from the bullet and up to my face. A gun clattered to the ground and the first of his men fled.

  He glanced back as another man muttered. “Sehr! Jahdoo!”

  The bullet fell as I rose to my feet, and they ran. The words echoing along the hallway.

  Sehr. Jahdoo.

  Witchcraft. Sorcery.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The drugs were wearing off again. She knew the stages by now. First, the pain would drift in; little slivers that stabbed at her through the fog like tiny needles of hate. Then, the nausea would begin. It had been the same for days, as she’d woken first whimpering, and then crying out, until she vomited.

  She blinked hard against the light, twisting her head to reach for the water tube.

  “Here, let me help you.” Mackenzie’s head shot around as the man came closer. He wasn’t dressed like the others in their surgical scrubs or lab coats; instead he wore a suit and tie that fit him too well to have been anything other than tailored.

  “Who are you?” she croaked at him.

  He smiled. “I’m the man with the water, Mackenzie.”

  He reached out and held the tube closer to her mouth so she could drink. He smelled of something she recognized, a scent. A deodorant? An aftershave? It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  There was an IV pole standing behind her arm, the line running down to a cannula taped in place on the back of her hand. When had they hooked her up to an IV?

  She swallowed and moved her head back, letting the water tube drop. “Who are you?” she repeated.

  The man ignored her question, pacing across the room as he spoke. “Do you believe in magic, Mackenzie?”

  She shook her head, trying to make sense of words that had no relevance. “What?”

  He carried on, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Did you know, Mackenzie, that there is not a single country or people in this world that doesn’t have some legend involving magic or witchcraft?”

  His eyes shone as he spoke, like a child counting down the days to Christmas. “It’s true. Every country on the planet has their tale, from witches to sorcerers, shamans to wizards—every one of them has its legend of people with powers that cannot be explained.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, Mackenzie, all of these tales take place in the distant past. There is this assumption that they are just stories, or myths or fables—superstitious nonsense. Yet, if you look at the news there are so often stories with fantastical elements. Men and women performing acts of superhuman strength, lifting cars off the injured, surviving falls with no explanation. I do not believe the powers of these ancient sorcerers ever left us, we simply stopped taking notice—or we dismissed it. And now you, Mackenzie. You are living proof I was right.”

  The man was insane, she realised. “What are you talking about. I’ve never done anything like that.”

  He laughed—a delighted, child-like sound. “But you have, don’t you see? The fire in your home when you were a child? And then just yesterday, when you put out the candle. You reached out to the flame and it danced to your tune. I watched you raise it to a raging torrent with your mind before you extinguished it. You simply need to learn how to control it, how to summon the power without the need for the Cocktail.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He frowned. “Do you really not remember? You had a mild sedative, and another combination of drugs in your system as well—the Cocktail, but surely you must remember some of it?”

  Mackenzie closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  He shook his head with a small smile as he fished out a phone, swiping through images on the screen. “Look.”

>   She frowned at the small screen as the images played across it, saw herself bound naked to the frame, and then gasped as the flame of the candle in front of her shot skyward, surging up in a column of fire that licked at the white tiles of the ceiling.

  She looked past him, eyes searching for, and then finding, the blackened section of ceiling tiles.

  “You see?” the man in the suit said with a broad grin, pointing at the screen. “You see what you did? This power is in you, Mackenzie. With our help you have unlocked it. It is simply a matter of learning to control it now.”

  “Please?” Her plea was barely a whisper, but it was enough to give him pause. “Please, just let me go?”

  He froze, looking at her curiously. “You want to leave? Even now that I have shown you this?”

  Her voice cracked as she spoke. “I don’t remember it, any of it. I just want to go home.”

  His smile fell, the child-like enthusiasm fading away, and for a moment there was a look of genuine sorrow on his face before it drifted into something cold and jagged, and his eyes turned hard.

  “I’m sorry, Mackenzie. I can’t let you go just yet. Not until I have discovered how you do this.” He turned towards the door and waved the technicians into the room. “Show me how you put out the candle, Mackenzie.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

  He looked at her again and even the memory of the smile had faded from his face. “There is a long way between ‘cannot’ and ‘will not’, Mackenzie. Do not test me on this.”

  They put the candle closer this time and fixed a clear screen between her and the flame. Some kind of tempered glass or plastic, she couldn’t tell, but it would be enough to keep her from blowing it out.

  She watched as the door swung back into place, pneumatics hissing. She waited until there were no human eyes to see her before she let the tears fall. They were never going to let her go. She would die in this cage as surely as a lab rat in a cancer research trial.

  “Put out the candle, Mackenzie.” That same voice through the speakers. A different man to the one she’d just spoken to. This voice held none of his passion. It was cold and clinical.

  She’d taken to giving names to the people she’d seen. The Man in the Suit, the Technician Twins, Bored Microphone Man. It was something to anchor her. She had no windows, no idea if it was day or night, or even if the time-cycle of the lights meant a day had passed. She needed something, so names and silly stories about the people she saw was what she worked with.

  She blocked out the sound of the nagging voice and sucked the grainy sludge from the food tube, forcing it down. She leant forward, straining against the restraints. She could just see the bruise on her hand where the IV had been inserted. It had already faded to a greenish yellow. How long had she been unconscious?

  “Armond?” her voice sounded weak and feeble even to herself. She tried again, it was easier the second time but there was no response. That didn’t mean anything, she’d grown accustomed to him going silent for days at a time.

  She looked at the candle burning in its stand. Had she really controlled the flame? Her memory of it was brittle, made hazy by whatever drugs they’d had her on. The Cocktail, The Man in the Suit had called it. God only knows what they’d been pumping her full of, or what damage it was doing to her brain or her organs.

  “Put out the candle, Mackenzie.”

  Christ, didn’t he ever get sick of saying that? It wasn’t even as if it were a recording; the inflection changed occasionally. He was probably torturing himself far more with it than he was her by now.

  She took a deep breath and sighed as she looked at the candle. Maybe it was time to try. She’d spent so long telling them she couldn’t do it, that she’d never actually stopped to wonder if she could. The laughter bubbled out of her, high and nervous as it flirted with hysteria.

  The candle flame sat in front of her, calling her. Taunting her. She looked at it, concentrating on the colour, on the minute movements of the flame. She willed it to move. Nothing. She stared at it, straining with her eyes until she felt a pushing sensation in her forehead. Slowly she began to develop a headache.

  *

  They brought fresh candles in over what she thought were the next four days, scraping away the wax that built up in a little stalagmite beneath the stand.

  “What’s your name?” she asked a technician on the fifth day. She didn’t recognize him. Was he new? Or was her memory just failing her? He jumped, staring at her as if she’d spat or shrieked at him, then gave the door a nervous glance as worry lurked in his dark eyes.

  “I am not really supposed to speak with you.”

  “But you just did, didn’t you?” Mackenzie smiled into his worried expression. “So, you might as well tell me your name now.”

  “Kareem,” he said, with another quick look at the door.

  “There are others here, aren’t there?” she asked him. “Like me, I mean.”

  Kareem nodded, tightening something on the candle’s stand.

  “Can any of them do things like this? Miracles?”

  Kareem looked up at the glass wall, to where she’d so often seen the red light of the camera and shrugged. “Some have, yes. But not like you.”

  She frowned. What did that mean?

  “What do you—” but he was already headed for the door.

  He paused in the doorway. “I should not have spoken to you.”

  *

  The candle came along with a syringe the next day. Mackenzie watched without comment as the technician injected the contents into the IV line.

  “You do not need this drug, Mackenzie.” The voice came through the speakers as the technician left. “This Cocktail, it is a catalyst. A beginning. You have already moved beyond where this drug can take you. At this point it is little more than a sedative, it just allows you to forget what is and isn’t possible. Now, put out the candle.”

  They left the wax this time, perhaps as a reminder of what she’d done. It had pooled out in a misshapen circle beneath the stand, an undeniable reminder. She’d melted it so quickly that it hadn’t had the chance to build up into a mound but instead had ran out over the floor in a shallow puddle until the concrete leeched the heat out and it solidified.

  Mackenzie stared at the white pool. She had done that. Somehow, God only knew how, but somehow, she had done that. Unless they were lying to her, then the drug didn’t do much. This power, this ability, was in her—not in the syringe. And yet each day they brought a fresh candle, and each day she failed to make it do more than burn down slowly.

  Over the days she began to realise something was changing in this place. There was a tension growing in the bored voice when he instructed her to put out the candle. The technicians cast nervous glances over their shoulders at the camera and the door as they worked. It was nothing more than that, nothing overt, and yet she could feel it, a tension building, like the charge in the air before a storm.

  *

  The Man in the Suit came the next time the lights flicked on. She’d decided that the hours of light and darkness couldn’t be a full day. If that were true, then she must have been here for months already and that was something she wasn’t prepared to accept.

  She hadn’t had a period. The thought came out of nowhere and she gasped aloud. Were they feeding her a contraceptive somehow? Or was her body so traumatised that her cycles had simply stopped? She’d always been as regular as clockwork, but this was the only time in her life she’d ever found herself wanting one.

  Her eyes opened slowly as the door hissed open; it was so easy to slip into a doze without really realising. The Man in the Suit stood in the doorway, watching her as she roused herself. He stepped into the cell, making his way over to the pool of wax and crouching to inspect it.

  He didn’t look up at her as he spoke. “You understand what it is that is expected of you, do you not? There is no confusion over this?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He st
ood, adjusting his suit as he turned to look at her. For the first time in ages she felt her nakedness. His gaze passed over her body like a stranger’s caress—cold and unwelcome, as he moved closer. “I am not a man who enjoys being toyed with, Mackenzie. You do not need the sedative. Put out the candle.”

  “I can’t—” she cut off as he grabbed her face, squeezing her cheeks together between thumb and fingers.

  “Do not tell me what it is you cannot do,” he told her in a low voice. “I am not interested in what you think you cannot do. The Cocktail that was given to you tells me that you have no idea what you can or cannot do. You do not need it now.”

  He let go of her face, shoving her head roughly back against the padding on the frame as he began to pace.

  “Perhaps what you need is more of an incentive.” He made his way back to the stand that held the candle and looked down at his feet, stepping heel to toe as he paced out the distance to her hand.

  “Excellent!” he glanced at her with that same look of child-like exuberance. “Ten feet, literally.” He broke off in a delighted laugh. “Every hour we will move the candle a foot closer. If you have not put it out by the time it reaches your skin, then you will have your incentive as your flesh burns along with the candle.”

  “No, please!” Her begging became a piteous wail as he lit the candle and withdrew.

  She stared at the flame for the first hour solid, willing it to go out, to change, or even just to flicker, anything to acknowledge her existence.

  The Technicians ignored her as they moved the stand closer and withdrew as swiftly as the Man in the Suit had.

  “Come on, you bastard. Go out!” she hissed from between clenched teeth. The candle ignored her, burning down slowly as the wax began to drip onto the floor.

  By the eighth hour she was pleading with it, as if the flame might somehow hear her and obey. The clear screen fixed in front of it worked to block her attempts to blow it out.

  She was crying before the door eventually opened. Instead of the expected technicians in their surgical scrubs, the Man in the Suit came in slowly, dressed as immaculately as the first time she’d seen him.