But that hope burned hotter and hotter as they got him to the first gate leading him out of De-Seg and back into the main complex.
Pain wound through him as he thought of seeing her there, even though he knew she’d be fucking horrified by how he probably looked. He didn’t care. Some part of him was reaching for her with every part of his being, almost compulsively now.
He reached too much. The collar activated, reminding him it was there.
It shocked him hard enough to snap him out of where he’d gone at the thought of seeing his wife on the other side of that bulletproof glass.
They stopped him outside the door to the visitor cubicle and un-cuffed one of his wrists, re-cuffing it with the other one in front of his body the instant they got it free. Again every movement hurt, but Black had gone into a kind of lockdown mode with the pain that was also familiar, and related in some way to the borderline-animal feeling that rose in him as the guards paraded him though the De-Seg block.
When they opened the door to the visitor cubicle and shoved him inside, Black nearly fell again, but managed to keep his feet by catching hold of the wall.
He didn’t change expression. He also didn’t move right away.
He just stood there for a few seconds, breathing hard.
The person waiting for him wasn’t Miri, of course.
The man sitting on the other side of that glass was a total stranger to him.
He’d expected that, but even so, the sheer fact of not seeing her there brought him up short, briefly paralyzing his mind. Separation pain tried to rise, to force him to feel it, to deal with her absence. He shoved it back violently, but even that flickering taste cost him the ability to block the physical pain in the rest of his body, for a few seconds at least.
The combination kept him by the door, panting, fighting to regain control.
He stared at the man who sat there, watching that same man look at him.
He took in the spotless black suit, which had to be seriously off-rack from the cut and the diamond accents around the edges of the mandarin-style collar. He noted the crisp black shirt underneath, also likely tailored, and the leather shoes. The man was fit, but in an understated way, with a strong jaw off-set by large eyes and a full mouth. Well-cut dark brown hair matched a face that appeared utterly without blemish.
His eyes themselves were eerily pale, almost clear when they reflected the overhead lights, but with a dramatic, scarlet tinge dead in the center, around the pupil.
Like at the Los Angeles Port, Black didn’t feel like he was looking at a fellow seer.
This man had a few feature traits in common with seers, but the similarity was superficial only, and didn’t live anywhere in how the man moved, how he held himself, even in his facial expressions.
He wasn’t seer. Black would have bet money on it.
“Who the fuck are you? Johnny Cash?” His voice came out harsher than he expected, and thicker, more like a snarl.
The man didn’t flinch, or even look particularly surprised.
“What the hell am I doing here?” Black said. “If you’re the reason I’m in here, you’re fucking dead. You... and whoever the fuck hired you.”
The man looked him over, a faint smile touching his bloodless lips.
He seemed to assess Black with even more care than Black had taken in looking over him. Black saw a strange kind of appreciation in the lingering looks, along with humor, which struck him as condescending, in spite of the clear admiration in his eyes. In the end, Black felt like he was being admired the way one might admire a particularly fine specimen of horse... or even a full-bred dog one planned to show competitively.
“Interesting, that you would take that approach,” the man said, after he’d finished his appraisal. He smiled up at Black, in a friendly but somehow overdone way.
He had a thick American accent. Southern.
New Orleans, to be precise.
Black intended to learn everything he could about this fucker.
“...Most coming out of the ordeal with which we’ve saddled you over the past seventy-two hours,” the man continued, still smiling. “...likely would not wish to lead their first discourse with obviously dangerous captors by making death threats. Interesting choice, as I said. Gutsy.”
He might have been complimenting Black on his choice of shoes.
“Who the fuck are you?” Black repeated. “What am I doing here?”
The man smiled, brushing imaginary dust off the lapels of his suit jacket. “We have a business proposal for you, Mr. Black. I am here to convey it.”
“No,” Black cut in. “You don’t have a business proposal for me. A business proposal implies free agents coming together to negotiate terms that are mutually acceptable to both, even if one of them is massively disadvantaged by those terms. The only terms that would be acceptable to me is if you let me out of here... now... and compensated me for the damage you’ve already done. I’m thinking about ten million might cover it. Each. For myself and my wife.”
The man didn’t blink.
He just sat there, continuing to smile.
He looked Black over in the pause as if he found him a mildly entertaining diversion but was growing tired of him now and merely being polite.
“So call this what this is,” Black said. “I’ve been kidnapped. Tortured. And now you want to use my fear of both things continuing to extort some kind of service or payment out of me. One I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to of my own free will.”
“Are you quite finished, Mr. Black?” The man checked his watch. “As fascinating as I find it to watch your emotional reactions, I am afraid we are on a tight schedule, you and I.” He flashed him another of those over-wide smiles that didn’t touch the flat affect of his eyes. “...And as you rightly pointed out, there will be no negotiations here. You will do what we say, when we say it. You will do it precisely as we require, or what happened to you in the yard the other day will happen next to your wife.”
He paused a beat, letting his words sink in.
His face slid into another of those wolf-like smiles.
“To be totally frank with you, there were some who thought we should lead with her. They thought, given your race’s inherent irrationality when it comes to their sexual partners, that it would impress the seriousness of our intent upon you more forcibly.” He winked at Black, his eyes still flat. “I think that was just an excuse though, personally. She’s quite an attractive woman, your wife. Even for one of your species...”
Black’s voice came out in a dense-throated growl.
“If you touch my goddamned wife––”
“Yes, yes.” The man cut him off with a wave of one manicured hand. “I am quite sure I know how the rest of that speech goes, Mr. Black. No need to tax yourself by spelling out all the particulars. This isn’t my first rodeo with members of your kind, I’m afraid.”
When Black continued to stand there by the wall, breathing harder from the threat, the man motioned towards him with one hand, indicating the chair that sat on the other side of the bulletproof glass.
For the first time, it occurred to Black that they were speaking through an intercom system of some kind, rather than the phones he’d encountered in most prison visiting booths.
“Sit down, Mr. Black,” the man said, his voice a touch firmer. “I am truly not certain you would survive us doing another round of persuasion on you... which means we’d have no choice but to bring your wife into this. I know you do not want that. Neither do I.”
Black stared at him, feeling hatred course through his light, intense enough to spark the collar at his neck. He winced from the hardest of those shocks but didn’t lower his gaze.
The man only sat there, smiling one of those flat smiles.
“I really do not wish to harm your wife, Mr. Black,” he reiterated. “I am a pragmatist... not a sadist. Well...” He smiled wider, as if rethinking his words. “Perhaps that’s not entirely true, but I mean my words sincerely, noneth
eless.”
He went on in that thick New Orleans drawl when Black didn’t speak.
“No, Mr. Black... in this area, my decisions are pure expediency. I chose to go extreme in your first encounter with us because I would prefer not to waste time with these back and forth threats, these childish bickerings and postures. I simply wish to obtain the cooperation I require as quickly as possible.” Those scarlet-tinted eyes grew colder, more inhuman. “Be assured, though, Mr. Black... I will obtain that cooperation. Even if I have to bring a different piece of your wife with me, every time I visit you in here, in order to obtain it.”
Black felt his heart slow, beating harder in his chest as he stared at the other man.
He didn’t have to look long to know he meant it.
He pushed his weight off the wall, wincing as he found his full height.
Walking slowly and carefully to the chair bolted into the floor in front of the two-way glass, he used the small counter in front of the window to hold his weight on his palms as he lowered himself to a seated position. He fought his expression still as he rested his weight, but knew he must have grimaced at the end.
Once seated, he stared through the glass at the other man. Waiting.
“There!” The man in the tailored suit beamed, holding out his hands in approval. “You see? This is so much easier. I have your attention now. We can begin.”
Black’s jaw hardened so much it hurt, but he didn’t speak.
Leaning back with obvious discomfort in the metal folding chair, the man with the scarlet eyes made his voice abruptly businesslike, bordering on curt.
“There now, I won’t waste your time, since you’ve opted not to waste mine. So I’ll just dive right in, assuming that is acceptable to you?”
Black nodded, once.
“Good,” the man said. “Well, here it is. This lovely institution in which you currently find yourself is a fully owned and operated private correctional facility that contracts with the federal government of these here United States. In doing so, they quite effectively and securely house dangerous and unrepentant federal prisoners, Mr. Black.” He smiled at him through that lazy drawl. “...Some would say they take in the worst of the worst, Mr. Black. And that they set the facility up for that very purpose.”
That wolflike smile touched the edges of his lips, right before he plowed on.
“In addition to the monies they receive from the Federal Department of Corrections for this invaluable service, they additionally have contracts with several other private and governmental organizations as part of their various ‘work-share’ and ‘rehabilitation’ programs, to teach these poor human beings job and life skills, as well as a much-needed lesson in repentance and contrition. It is the belief of this noble institution that hard work serves to better their fellow man’s minds, bodies, and souls. It also makes them better citizens, in the unlikely event they ever walk our country’s fine streets as free men again.”
He smiled, his reddish eyes clearly showing that harder, more predatory stare.
“...This is mainly horseshit, of course,” he added pleasantly, folding his hands in his lap. “A way to farm out cheap labor without relocating companies overseas, and a source of a great deal of money for the corporation owning this facility and others like it throughout this fair land. It is also yet another bone thrown by the federal government to pay back political favors owed on the hill. But you don’t care about any of that, do you, Mr. Black?”
His wolfish smile returned.
“Like you, I am a capitalist, Mr. Black. I did not bring you here to reform the modern prison system, of which I wholeheartedly approve. Being of a practical mindset, as I’ve already said, I actually contract extensively with the parent corporation that owns this institution. I do that in part to secure inexpensive labor for my own financial holdings... thus my ability to take some liberties while I am here.”
Smiling at Black again, he refolded his hands in his lap, tilting his head.
“No, my interests lie in a different type of facility altogether, I’m afraid. One with which this prison also contracts on a semi-regular basis, but one in which I have no influence whatsoever. Namely, a government-funded scientific laboratory that pays the owners of your new home for the use of nominally consenting felons in their scientific experiments.”
Black stared at him, unmoving.
He didn’t speak, but his mind drank up every word.
“In case you are wondering... if the sight-restraint collar we’ve provided didn’t tip you off, or my hints in that area weren’t clear enough... I am very aware that you are not human, Mr. Black.” He smiled another of those wolf-like grins. “Frankly, that is why we need you for this task, versus simply coercing a human to do it for us.”
“Why?” Black’s voice came out low, deadened. “Why can’t you use a human?”
The man in the Johnny Cash suit sighed in mock regret.
“I am sorry to tell you, this particular laboratory has a shockingly high mortality rate among its test subjects, Mr. Black. Those it doesn’t kill outright, it has a tendency to... damage, in various ways. It should go without saying, but perhaps it doesn’t, that those test subjects up until now have been 100% human being.”
“You want me to go somewhere I’m likely to die?” Black said. “That’s the pitch?”
“I want you to go somewhere that has a tendency to kill humans, Mr. Black. Not seers.”
Black stared at the wall, his expression unmoving as his mind turned over the other’s words. Then, almost involuntarily, he let out an incredulous laugh.
“Bullshit.” Contempt dripped from the word as he turned. “They don’t just kill prisoners indiscriminately by conducting experiments on live human test subjects. The press would have a fucking field day, if they ever caught wind of it. They’d have exposés on every goddamned cable station and news site in existence. I don’t care who you are... you’d never get away with it.”
“Not me, Mr. Black. Them. And yes, they are getting away with it.” For the first time, those glass-like eyes held real anger. “If this was our company, we would not need you to infiltrate it, now would we? And in terms of the protests you are voicing about human rights and the like, perhaps you do not realize the stakes involved, from the point of view of the humans conducting these experiments. This is not run-of-the-mill scientific work we are talking about, Mr. Black. Those funding these experiments hand-to-Bible believe the very fate of the human race rests upon their outcome.”
He shrugged, his odd-colored eyes still flat.
“...Which is why, of course, they have created such a covert facility, one that does not abide by normal rules of decency and humanitarianism. One in which the Geneva Convention holds absolutely no sway.”
“What do the experiments entail?” Black said.
Frowning delicately, the other man inclined his head, then shook it.
“We will get to that in due time, Mr. Black. For now, I would prefer you to go in cold, so to speak. I would not wish for your impressions to be biased.”
Black frowned, but the other man continued speaking, not waiting for a response.
“In terms of the how they get away with it... well, that happens for a number of reasons. Being the federal government, they have very good lawyers, Mr. Black. They also fall under certain seldom-activated national security provisions that make their activities totally off the grid and under the radar of the Congress and most of the usual accountability safeguards. In addition to certain types of black ops work, the procedures for which you’re undoubtedly familiar, the federal government has other operations in place covering areas they deem vital to national security. Including a few scientific explorations, such as this one.”
Pausing, as if waiting for Black to absorb this, too, he adjusted his seat.
“In terms of the logistics of that, the deal that the test subjects sign includes provisions detailing their disappearance once the experiment has run its course. The prisoner volunteers
sign these affidavits with the understanding that their loved ones will never know the truth about what happened to them. And that they will be re-incarcerated if they break this part of the agreement in any way. Of course, what is not stated but is implied, is that they might also simply be killed. Disappeared permanently, as it were.”
“Bullshit,” Black said, again incredulous. “Who the hell would agree to that?”
The man shrugged, but the wolf-like smile returned.
“Why have you agreed to listen to me, Mr. Black?” he said politely. “There are always means of persuasion at one’s disposal, if one is willing to find such vulnerabilities and exploit them. But the most obvious answer should come from your current surroundings. Many prisoners in this particular institution have no hope of ever being granted parole. Those with no hope of ever seeing the outside of these prison walls might consider a great many extreme things in the hopes of changing their fortunes, Mr. Black. Providing they agree to the contracts’ terms, they are given a very generous compensation package in the event they survive the procedure itself. A new identity, yes... they cannot ever return to their old life, or even the United States, but freedom is still freedom, Mr. Black. A clean slate, as it were... regardless of sentence.”
Pausing, he made another motion with one hand.
“...As a result, certain high-profile criminals are exempt, of course. They prefer candidates whose pictures have never made it to the papers in a real way. They also prefer volunteers who are unmarried and childless... preferably without living parents. Coincidentally, the exact same profile we’ve created for you, Mr. Black. Which was more or less accurate for you already, by the way, apart from the new wife you’re still keeping a secret for reasons I find I am quite curious about. Quite curious indeed.”
Black clenched his jaw, still staring off to the side.
After another pause, he heard the other man smile again.
“Freedom is a powerful motivator, Mr. Black. Speaking of which, now we come to carrot, since I’ve already liberally employed the stick to get your attention. If you do this job in its entirety for us, Mr. Black... meaning, if the outcome we seek is successful in the end... then you and your wife are free to go. No strings attached. No further attempts to blackmail, kidnap or coerce you. Perhaps I’ll even feel moved to deliver a heartfelt apology for being forced to resort to such extreme means in obtaining your help for this endeavor.”
Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) Page 16