Wild Card

by Mark Henwick

  Can’t have medics looking at me. Colonel Laine’s rules. Don’t work for the army any more. Still, probably a good rule.

  “It’s for your own good, Amber.”

  “Huh?”

  “I won’t let any cult take my sister away from me.”

  I understood the words, but nothing was making sense. I was still trying to process that and I barely registered the sharp jab in my arm.

  What the fuck!

  I tried reaching for anger, but there was nothing. Inside me, it was as woolly as the snow all around us.

  The world was tilting slowly upwards.

  “Straight to the center,” Kath was saying.

  “We understood there’d been a change—”

  “Listen, you’re working for me. I’m giving you instructions which you will follow to the letter if you don’t want your ass sued off. If he needs to move her later, that’s fine, he can talk to me. Not now. Not in this weather. Straight to the center.”

  “You got it, lady.”

  And everything went soft and white and blank.

  Chapter 62

  Lights. Noises. Warm and cold at the same time. Cold air on my naked skin. There’s a foul taste in my mouth and my head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton.

  I couldn’t see anything. I tried to sit up, but nothing worked, like one of those nightmares where you don’t have control over your body.

  That was okay. If it was a nightmare, I’d wake up soon, wouldn’t I?

  Instructor Ben-Haim is sitting beside me.

  Is this part of a dream?

  “Farrell. You’re in med. You’re experiencing what it’s like to be injected with some of the substances commonly used in interrogation. There is no training we can give you, just familiarity. Can you hear me?”

  My mouth won’t move. I can’t reply. I want to tell him I already know this feeling.

  He goes on as if I have answered him. “You’re feeling confusion. Disinhibition. Delirium. Hallucinations. You can’t trust your senses. Turn inward. Remember who you are.”

  I remembered this. I remembered crying. I remembered being sure Dad had sat next to my gurney. Like I had sat next to his bed.

  I remembered wanting to tell Dad everything and knowing I couldn’t. Because he wasn’t real. He was the enemy.

  This wasn’t happening. This was a memory. A memory of a hallucination. Ben-Haim wasn’t here. Dad had never been there.

  “Subject recovering consciousness at 10:43,” someone said.

  The voice was flat and emotionless; it triggered an avalanche of memories. This was a nightmare. A nightmare about Obs.

  My stomach heaved, but there was nothing to come up. I felt a tube in my throat. The name came to me from military med courses; endotracheal tube. What had happened to me?

  “Clear the room.” Another voice, speaking with authority.

  Not from Obs! I knew the voice, but there was something in my ears, distorting the sounds.

  I felt another injection in my arm. Or was that just the memory of one before?

  I couldn’t see. I tried getting up again. Nothing. Then I tried lifting just one hand, but I still couldn’t move. I was strapped down. Chest, wrist, hip, thigh, ankle.

  NO! NO! NO!

  I heard a sound like an old-fashioned kettle boiling on the stove; the thin sound of muffled screaming. I realized it was me. I forced myself to stop, tried to make words instead.

  I couldn’t even speak. My face was held in some sort of webbing. It ran across my mouth. Metal clamped my jaws.

  That sobbing. That sobbing couldn’t be me.

  I was sick with fear.

  Another memory avalanche churned up images that had been locked away. Screaming at the touch of cold metal plates against my head. The foul taste of plastic in my mouth, choking my screams. A sense of utter hopelessness as the first warning prickles began to stab at my temples.

  This couldn’t be happening to me again.

  My body was shuddering violently.

  Ben-Haim debriefing us. Asking us about the vulnerabilities we felt under chemical interrogation.

  “I felt compliant. Eager to please,” someone says.

  “Compliant. Eager. And this without effort on my part,” Ben-Haim replies. “In the hands of an experienced interrogator, under the effects of these chemicals, compliance will become the prisoner’s sole reason for existence. He or she will burn with desire to help. The interrogator will become God.”

  He looks around the silent room. “Not a good position to be in,” he says with his customary understatement.

  My mind went blank again.

  What had I been thinking about?

  Petersen! The name was like an electric shock. Somehow Petersen must have persuaded Kath to help kidnap me. How? Why?

  The room was very quiet.

  It’s always been quiet. A long time. I’m still in Obs. I’ve been here forever. It was all a dream. I never got away. I never will.

  “Amber.”

  I jerked in surprise, stiffening against the restraints. The whisper was very quiet, very close to my ear. A hand pressed on my shoulder. Warm. Comforting.

  “It’s Alex. I’ve come to help you escape.”

  Blinding tears of relief flooded out of my eyes. I wanted to say his name at least, but I couldn’t speak and my body shook in frustration.

  “Shhh! Not a sound. They’ll hear us.” His hand massaged my shoulder. “Shhh.”

  I tried to calm down. Alex was here. I was safe. He wouldn’t let anything happen to me.

  “Better,” he whispered. “Listen to me. This is very important.”

  I listened. It felt as if my whole body was listening. I wanted to hear him more than anything else in the world. I wanted to hear his voice clearly, without all the distortion in my ears. This was important. My kin.

  I cried; but I cried silently so I could hear him.

  “You’re all dosed up. I want to free you, but I can’t until I know you won’t go berserk. It’s very dangerous at this stage. While you haven’t changed yet. Can’t have you going wolf while we sneak out.”

  His hand continued to massage me gently. Yes, I was full of drugs. I had to relax.

  But I had changed, hadn’t I? I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t speak.

  “Listen, you do everything right and we’ll get out of here.”

  I would. I would do whatever he said. Kin. His desires were sacred to me. The rest wasn’t important.

  “Concentrate on my voice. Nothing else matters. Just my voice. The voice you want to hear.”

  He was right. Nothing else mattered.

  “I can’t set you free until you’re steady enough that I can trust you.”

  I wouldn’t do anything. He could trust me.

  “Try not to be sick.”

  He pulled the endotracheal tube out. My stomach tried one last heave, but I stopped it.

  See, I can do it.

  “That’s good.”

  I felt warmth, despite the cold. He was pleased with me. That was so important.

  “You mustn’t call out.”

  I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  He eased the strap across my mouth. The metal fixings released my jaws and then his hand went across to my other shoulder, massaged that as well.

  “I need to you to trust me. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. My throat was so sore. My own voice sounded strange as well, echoing in my head.

  “Good.” His hand came up to my face and tugged back the blindfold.

  The room was flooded with bright, colorless light. A screen surrounded us, like the ones they put around a hospital bed.

  Alex was bending over me, his finger on his lips. My eyes were still blurred by stupid tears. I wanted him to hold me. I wanted him to tell me that I hadn’t messed up with him. That it would be all right. He’d get me out of here, he’d save me.

  “Shhh. Everything’s fine. You trust me.”

  I nodded, as much
as the webbing would allow.

  “You have to show me I can trust you, too.”

  Both his hands moved to my shoulders. They were warm against my skin, almost hot. I was so cold.

  “In addition to the psychoactive effects, Benzilate will reduce your ability to control body temperature,” Ben-Haim says. “Recognizing purely physical effects like that will give you a connection to reality. An anchor.”

  Benzilate? Had I been given an interrogation drug?

  It wasn’t important. Alex was here. I had to trust him.

  His hands moved lower.

  I gasped.

  “Shhh. I have to know I can trust you. You understand that. Just relax. You’re feeling so good. Don’t worry about anything else.”

  His hands ran over my breasts, squeezed the nipples.

  Wrong!

  But how could it be? It was Alex.

  “Disinhibition doesn’t mean you’ll do things you don’t want to do. Just things it may not be appropriate to do.” Ben-Haim leans forward and the sunlight falls across his face, making distracting patterns, changing the whole shape of it.

  That’s stupid of me. It’s not Ben-Haim at all. It’s Alice. How could I have mistaken her?

  “Keep away from physical intimacy,” she says. “It lowers your mental barriers.”

  No. I’d been safe with Jen. She’d been safe with me. This is Alex! I trust him.

  “No aural sex.”

  A giggle threatens to burst out of me, but I have to stay quiet. My body is not into giggling at all. My back arches with pleasure against the straps. Alex’s hand is moving across my belly. Lower. If only he’d free me. It’s safe. I want his loving arms around me.

  “Relax. Let go all your concerns.”

  Bad. Shouldn’t. No auras. Alice said no auras. Shouldn’t.

  Just a peek.

  I felt my eukori unfold like a flag in the breeze, floating out toward Alex. Eagerly seeking the warm embrace of his eukori.

  Shocking, slimy, slithering, frozen NOTHING.

  SHIT!

  My body spasmed and went rigid with shock for a second, then I tried to push him away with my eukori. I started twisting and fighting against the straps. There was confusion on his face and suddenly it looked wrong. It was Alex’s face, but it moved in a different way. Like a plastic mask. How could I have mistaken it for him?

  The scream burst out of me.

  I turned inward. I could fight with the telergy. I had to reach that anger that I had hidden. It was buried and locked away. The strongbox was open. I thrust a hand down into the formless nightmares and I started to light up like a flare.

  My eukori stopped floating and hardened like an axe to strike.

  And the imposter flipped a valve on a stand next to me. The tube stretched down to my arm. I could feel snow mushroom inside me, like a soft cloud, blanketing everything.

  The strap was pressed across my mouth again, the metal forced inside, pushing my jaws apart and locking them.

  A door opened. “Everything all right, Doctor?” A voice came from the corridor, hesitant, uncertain about intruding. Not willing to come uninvited into the room, let alone pull the curtain back.

  I tried to scream again. The endotracheal tube was shoved violently back down my throat.

  “Yes. I’m afraid she’s quickly moving to a complete mental disintegration. I’m going to have to move her to my facilities and start treatment immediately.”

  The imposter grinned at me with Alex’s face. Completely confident, hidden behind the screen.

  “This IV is nearly finished,” he spoke calmly to the unseen nurse. “Prepare another one, please. The prescription form is on the side.”

  “Of course. Ahh…you do know, the weather’s getting much worse. They’re closing the roads.”

  “I know. I’ll arrange suitable transportation, but I’ll need to hurry.”

  “Okay. I don’t have these here, Doctor. I’ll need to go down to the pharmacy.”

  The sound of retreating footsteps was cut off suddenly by the door closing. Through the haze of drugs, I knew it was a solid door. No, not just solid, that wasn’t quite right, it was a secure door. This place was equipped for violent inmates.

  And wherever I got moved to would only be worse.

  He leaned forward, the imposter with Alex’s face, and whispered in my ear.

  “That was stupid. Me, for underestimating your ability and you, for trying to fight. It won’t change the outcome. I’ll take what I want from you anyway. This was your easy option—just lie there comfortably for a few minutes and let go.”

  His hand squeezed a breast and flicked the nipple painfully. I wanted to struggle, but my body lay there, unable to move even within the limits of the straps that held me.

  “You were enjoying it, weren’t you? Well, you won’t enjoy it next time. No more than your little spy did. But she had to die. You, I’ve got to try and keep alive. You’re my passport with your friends from the army.”

  He chuckled. “When I’ve finished with you, I may let you beg me to keep you instead of handing you over. Do you think you can do that, Amber? It’s something for you to think about while you wait. What can you do for me? How are you going to persuade me not to give you to Petersen?”

  The door opened behind the curtain, and he put his lips against my ear. “You wait right here for me. I’ll be back soon. I’m going to enjoy this so much.”

  He stood. There was the eye-twisting distortion of his face, just like a Were change, and then Doctor Noble was smiling sadly down at me, his face the picture of professional concern.

  He turned and pulled the curtain aside.

  “Be extremely careful,” he said to the male nurse who’d come in. “No release of restraints. Not even the gag. She once bit someone’s finger off.”

  “Ah, of course. Can I get you to sign the transfer authorization please, Doctor.” He held out a clipboard.

  There was a sound of scribbling before Noble went on. “I can’t take the time to fill in all this background information. I’ll call and explain in detail to the director tomorrow. But I’m going to have to rush tonight to get her moved before the roads close.”

  “I’ll pass that on.”

  Noble left.

  Only it couldn’t be Noble, any more than it could be Alex. He couldn’t be the rogue. He wasn’t anything like big enough to create a wolf that could produce the bite patterns we’d looked at.

  Another man came in. He was wearing a security uniform. He and the nurse spoke with their voices low.

  “I’m telling you, this isn’t standard treatment,” said the nurse. “I’ve never administered this stuff here. And this one, it’s too much, for too long. What’s he trying to do?”

  Blurred at the edge of my vision, I could see their heads bent over the forms.

  “He’s the doctor,” the guard said. “You want to get reprimanded for following his prescription or for not following it?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, look at that.” His finger jabbed at something. “For fuck’s sake, she’s not a horse.”

  “Not far from it.” The guard laughed. “Freaking physical nutcase. Look at her. Don’t get a body like that without serious work. So, maybe she has a super-high metabolism.”

  “Yeah, and maybe she’ll have cardiac arrest when I give her this.”

  “Hey! Look, buddy, we never had this conversation. I’m just doing my rounds. I see everything is normal in this room. I’m out of here.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” the nurse said as the door closed again.

  I struggled to make my brain work. The dosage would be high to overcome my Athanate metabolism. High enough? Whatever was in the IV was working at the moment.

  I remembered burning off the effects of alcohol. I’d been wandering drunk through an alley, and had been threatened by a gang. Elethesine, the Athanate equivalent of adrenaline, had pumped me up and I’d sobered up in seconds. I needed elethesine now. I needed to get these drugs out of my
system.

  Diana had said anger was my key. But I couldn’t reach the anger.

  No. Not quite right. She’d said anger was my key to my telergy, my paranormal mental capabilities.

  I needed something else. I wasn’t like Bian, who could turn it on and off when she wanted. I needed help. I needed a trigger.

  Was there just one key? Only anger?

  No. I’d stirred the Athanate up without anger.

  Alex. Jen. Think about kin.

  I squeezed my eyes shut.

  Those eyes. Jen’s depthless blue. Alex’s brightening to gold as the wolf stirred in him.

  Their voices. My kin’s voices.

  Alex teasing when I said I wanted to bite him. “Yeah, and? Knock yourself out, vamp.”

  The feel of Jen’s tongue on my fang. “We both want this.”

  My fangs throbbed. I didn’t push it back down, I welcomed it. The pleasure ran through my body. I didn’t feel so heavy. The drugs helped. They overcame my instinct to suppress it.

  I took a full breath, slow and concentrated instead of panting with fear.

  And the fog burned off like mist in the desert.

  My eyes cleared. My head cleared.

  Now, how the freaking hell to get out of the restraints? Houdini, I was not.

  You know what you can do, said Tara.

  Images flashed through my mind.

  The Were in the house at Glenmore Hills. Bound by adjustable shackles around his neck and stomach. Why?

  Because it’s not worth trying to put shackles on a Were’s wrist or ankle.

  The alley where I’d been ambushed by the punk street gang; my arm rippling, part-changing to wolf.

  I don’t dare. I can’t control it. I can’t go wolf. I can’t black out. What if I wake up looking at a dead orderly with his throat torn out? What if I don’t wake up at all? What if I turn and betray the existence of paranormals to the rest of the world?

  But there was no choice.

  I concentrated on my arms, on the feel of rippling.

  There was nothing.

  The orderly pushed the privacy curtain all the way back out of the way of his cart with a swish.

  He seemed startled that I was awake.