Lucky went to the door and peered out into a dark hallway that was longer than he imagined the house to be. Maybe they had moved them to another location or the basement was a lot more extensive than the empty room they had first entered so many hours or days ago. Lucky did not know how long they had been here.
He ran down the hall as silently as he could, carrying the metal bar in his hand in case he ran into anyone else. He had no idea where Ginny was, but the place couldn’t be that big.
The hallway ended at a stairwell that went down. He descended two more floors and approached a door that had a window set into it. The light coming through it was brighter than the stairwell and Lucky could tell the room was lit by numerous fluorescent bulbs. He looked through the small window and saw a large room full of computers and what appeared to be cooling equipment. Piping snaked along the ceiling and walls and raced away through the wall into another section of the building Lucky could not yet see. He opened the door slowly and entered, his footsteps hidden by the hum of the computers and machinery as he crept along the wall to his right looking for any unsuspecting occupants.
Halfway through the empty room he noticed a door in the wall to his left and another door directly in front of him. Both doors were solid without windows. He stood for a second trying to decide which way to go. He decided the one to the left was probably a storage room or other ancillary cubicle and the door in front probably led to wherever the piping was supplying cooling to and that was probably where the other occupants were. Maybe they had Ginny in there. He approached the door in front of him cautiously and pressed his ear to it. He could hear muffled voices, but could not tell what they were saying. He tried the handle and it turned, so he pushed the door open a crack and peered inside. The room was larger than this one, lit just as brightly, and contained a chamber built entirely of what appeared to be the thick Plexiglass the contractor had told him and Ginny about. At least he now knew he was still in the house and not some other location. To the right was a console area with monitors and computer screens, and within this area, their hosts. Bart and Elise stood talking animatedly with each other but he could see no one else. Ginny was nowhere to be seen. He closed the door silently and moved away from it.
The only other choice was the door he had passed so he went to it and pressed his ear up against it and listened. A faint whimper came to him and he recognized the timber of the voice. Ginny. He tried the handle and felt it turn in his hand. He opened the door slowly into a dark room and should have known that his presence would immediately be detected. The handle was wrenched from his grasp as the door was yanked open from within. A man Lucky had not seen before stood holding the door, surprise and anger in his face and his mouth agape as if expecting to shout a protestation at someone different. His confusion at finding Lucky standing in front of him gave him pause and Lucky the necessary time to act before the man could react.
Lucky stepped forward and drove a fist into the man’s abdomen, stepping to the side as he bent over in pain. Lucky then drove the metal bar into the back of the man’s neck. He went down without another sound. He was out.
Lucky shut the door quickly and turned on the lights finding Ginny lying in a bed, her shirt pulled partially up around her waist and her face bleeding from several blows. The relief he saw in her face was only matched by his own. He rushed to her and took her in his arms.
“Oh God, you’re okay,” he said. “I thought I’d lost you.”
She sobbed into his shoulder and then looked into his eyes. “I can’t believe you’re here. Is it really you?” She reached up and touched his face as if to make sure it was him. He kissed her softly and then pulled away.
“Is that proof enough.”
She held him so tightly he wasn’t sure if he could get her to move. “We have to go. The other two are right next door.”
“Where’s Scarface? They sent him to get you. He’ll find that you’re missing and will tell the others.”
“He won’t be bothering anybody any longer,” he said.
“What happened?”
“Later. Come on. We have to move. Can you walk?”
She nodded and stood, holding his hand. It was as if she never wanted to let go of him again. What had they done to her?
“These people are fucked up, Lucky. They have a machine that can read your mind and they talk like they are immortals.”
“Well, one of them isn’t.”
She thought about that and seemed to come to a conclusion. “We have to get to Smith. He has to shut this place down.”
“I know. I’m working on it.” He opened the door slowly and peered into the cooling room. It appeared to be empty. He led the way, tugging on her hand and she followed, glancing briefly at the body in front of the door. She spat on him as she passed.
“Did you see any other ways out of here while they were moving you around? This place seems bigger than it appears.”
“Only a long hallway, some stairs, this room and the one through that door.” She gestured toward the door that led into the space with the Plexiglas chamber.
“The woman and the other man, Bart I think, are in there. It must be the only way out. You stay here while I check to see if they are still in there.”
“No way! I’m staying right with you.”
He stared at her for a moment and then pulled her to him. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she said and smiled. He was glad she was starting to act like her old self. He was afraid she was traumatized beyond repair there for a minute.
“I’ll hold you to it. Okay. Come on, but stay right behind me. They’re just on the other side of the door.”
Lucky kept her hand in his and put his ear to the door. Silence. Maybe they were gone. He put his hand to the handle and started to turn it slowly. Ginny’s hand was yanked from his grasp and a little squeal could be heard behind him. He turned quickly and found Scarface holding Ginny up off of the floor by her neck with a gloved hand. He had her at arm’s length, her hands scratching at his arm and her legs kicking like a trapped animal. Apparently he was still alive. The door opened behind Lucky and a pistol was pressed to his head.
“Nice of you to join us Mr. Cardmen.”
The voice behind his head dripped of sarcasm. He kept his eyes glued to Scarface as blood dripped from the gash in his head and the life slowly ebbed from Ginny’s body. He found his voice. “Let her go.”
“Fuck you!” Scarface spat and shook her like a ragdoll at the end of his grasp. She made strange whistling noises as she struggled to get air into her lungs.
Lucky saw two outcomes to this situation: Ginny dying slowly in front of him at the hands of some superhuman freak and then them torturing him until he broke; the other involved some superhuman feats of his own where he was able to disarm the man behind him and somehow wrestle Ginny from the monster. This went through his brain in a fraction of a second and he really had no choice. He took a deep breath. Faster than he could imagine, his right elbow came up into the gun arm of the man behind and then drove backward into his face. He heard a satisfying crunch and scream as the man’s nose was shattered. The monster’s face fell in surprise but he held tight to Ginny. He heard the gun clatter to the floor and bent to grab it but saw the woman’s leg coming forward toward his face. Too late. The blow caught him under the chin and the force of it drove him backward where he landed hard on his ass. Stars washed in and out of his vision as he tried to regain his advantage. The gun was still between him and the woman and he lunged for it, reaching it just before her, snatching it up and pointing it at her. He heard Scarface drop Ginny to the floor and turned to see him stepping toward him. Lucky pointed the gun at his chest and fired. He kept coming. Lucky fired three more times and the man wouldn’t stop. He crashed into Lucky on the floor and then fell to the side. What happened next Lucky could not explain.
A huge ripping sound tore through the air and the ground beneath Lucky’s fee
t began to vibrate. A gash of light erupted in front of him as he sat on the floor stunned and he crept backward away from it. A hole formed in mid air over Scarface’s body and Lucky could feel hot air flow from within the opening. A sound, like that of hundreds of musical instruments, rang out in the room and they were all playing different notes. They clashed in a cacophony of noise so overwhelming he saw the woman cover her ears with her hands. Scarface’s body began to vibrate and then it rose off of the ground and was pulled into the void above it. Slowly at first and then sucked into it like a vacuum. He disappeared inside. The hole clapped shut like thunder and Lucky ducked, hiding his face. Silence enveloped him and then he heard Ginny wheezing as she tried to get air moving back in through her strangled windpipe. Lucky lifted his head and looked.
Ginny sat sprawled on the floor trying to catch her breath. He turned back to see the woman next to him, another gun pointed at his head. He started to turn his pistol toward her but she pressed the barrel against his head and said, “Go ahead. You’re useless to us anyway.”
He paused and she reached for the gun. He relinquished it to her and went to Ginny who seemed to be regaining her color. Bart walked up with blood dripping from his face.
“You broke my nose! You fuck!” He kicked Lucky in the ribs and Lucky thought he felt one give. He bent over in pain but no more blows followed.
“Well, John’s gone.” Bart said to Elise. “Great. We’ll get him back soon enough. Here, give me my gun. Where’s Benjamin? Check the storage room.”
Elise walked to the door and opened it, turning on the light. “He’s here, but unconscious. He’s alive though.”
“See if you can revive him. We could use his help. You two, get up!” Bart gestured to Lucky and Ginny with the gun. Ginny stood, rubbing her hands on her neck and Lucky tried standing but couldn’t seem to stretch all the way up. His rib was screaming at him in protest. “Break something, Mr. Cardmen?”
“Fuck you.”
“Eye for an eye, my friend.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Lucky said with more bravado than he felt. Bart chuckled. Elise came out of the storage room holding Benjamin to steady him, but he was up and moving.
“What happened?” Benjamin said.
“Our friends here got the best of you,” Bart said.
Benjamin rubbed the back of his head and glared at Lucky. “Can I?” Benjamin said.
“Not just yet. We still need a little info from these two. We’re wasting valuable time as it is with all this nonsense, so let’s get him strapped into the machine and get things rolling. Can you help, Benjamin?”
“I guess so. My head is killing me.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“I probably have a concussion. I should see a doctor.”
“You’ll be fine,” Bart repeated and gestured to Ginny. “You make sure she behaves.”
Elise let Benjamin move away on his own, then went to Lucky and pushed him through the door into the room with the Plexiglas chamber. She continued to guide him into the chamber and to a chair that was fully reclined.
“They’re going to read your mind, Lucky!” Ginny shouted. “Think of other things because the machine can’t see everything.” Benjamin struck her in the face and then the door was slammed shut and Lucky lost sight of her again. He had promised he wouldn’t leave her again and now he had failed. His despair was a thing that sat in his gut seething and roiling. He had to get to her somehow.
Elise and Bart strapped him to the chair and made some electrical connections to his skin. He was curious as to why they both wore gloves and at first he thought they were clean freaks, but it was something else. They both seemed reluctant to touch his bare skin with theirs.
Some kind of sensing mold was lowered over his body and then they sealed him into the room. He noticed a camera above him and to the side, both with blinking red lights. They must be able to monitor everything remotely. He heard a speaker come on and then Bart’s voice through it.
“All right Eugene….”
“Lucky.”
“What?”
“I hate Eugene. Call me Lucky.”
“Right. What is it with you two and your names? You should be proud of what your parents have created, not ashamed of your heritage.”
Lucky said nothing. He could care less what this psycho projected as morally correct. The man was obviously skewed in his perceptions of what was considered normal. He wished he could still see his face as it brought some satisfaction seeing all that blood running from his busted nose. He only hoped for an opportunity to inflict more harm on the man.
“All right, Lucky. Let’s begin. Who is coming here and when?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lucky said.
“That’s peculiar, because I can see a picture in your mind of the same man that was in your partner’s mind. An Air Force General named Smith.”
How the hell could he know that? Lucky remembered Ginny saying this thing could read his mind but was it so sophisticated it provided images too? He’d have to be careful.
“When are they arriving, Lucky?”
He hoped soon, but of course, he really had no idea. He tried to empty his mind, but apparently it wasn’t working.
“You can’t hide everything from The Machine,” Bart said. “Today, tomorrow, next week? When will the team arrive?”
Lucky started reciting Air Force codes he had been required to memorize during his training, and he hoped this would be all they would get out of him. It was just mundane numbers and operating procedures, but it helped him to relax too. He smiled at what he heard next.
“Dammit you two! When are they coming? If you provide us the date and time, we will let you live, if not, you both die in front of each other, slowly.”
Lucky continued to smile to himself while he went through the whole manual in his head. It seemed this went on for 5 minutes without so much as a peep from Bart and then something happened he didn’t expect.
“Brace yourself, Mr. Cardmen. Maybe this will change your mind.”
Suddenly a vision appeared in his head. He had no idea how this could be, but he was seeing it as clear as any memory he possessed of his own life. Only this was not HIS memory. The scene was of a young boy being approached by an older boy with a pillow in his hands. The older boy was crying and mumbling to the younger one. And to Lucky, the younger one was now him. It was as if he were living through the younger boy’s experience.
“What is happening?” Lucky said. “What are you people doing to me?”
Silence followed this and Lucky saw and then felt the pillow cover his face. He couldn’t shake the image. Reciting the Air Force codes was not even possible now as his mind was not his own. There was still a small part of him that could separate itself from what was happening, but it was only a small part. The rest was living in another world.
He was struggling to breathe as the pillow pressed with more force to his face. His nose was being crushed and the pain became unbearable. He thought it would break. He thrashed and bucked against the older boy, but had no strength. The world was graying out and shrinking to just a pinpoint of light as he was suffocated by the boy he now knew to be his brother. The pain in his chest was something he could never imagine. His whole body was screaming to breathe, but he could move no air in and out of his lungs. He was dying and could not stop it. The small part of his mind that was still Lucky was only able to watch, mesmerized, as he (Benjamin) died at the hands of his older brother. It was the most terrifying thing Lucky had ever experienced. Suddenly it stopped.
Lucky found himself thrashing and gasping as the vision emptied from his head. He opened his eyes and could see the chamber’s ceiling again and the cameras around him. He was actually crying and felt the wet hot tears streaking down his cheeks as the terror of dying slowly left his mind and body. He sobbed uncontrollably as he realized this was some vision from the past of the man who was with Ginny right now. The same man who had tried to h
ave his way with her. The same man he had rendered unconscious. The sympathy he felt for what this killer had gone through didn’t jive with the feelings he had for wanting to bring the son-of-a-bitch’s life to an end only a half hour ago.
“I’ll ask you again, Lucky,” Bart drew his name out like it was a disease. “When are they coming?”
“Fuck you!”
“Are you sure you want to continue? We can stop this right now.”
Lucky said nothing and braced himself for what was coming. The vision slammed into his mind like a bolt of lightning and he screamed as he knew what was coming. The pillow, the muffled fighting, the pressure, the agonizing pain as death approached again. That small part of him that was himself kept saying over and over again, “This is not real—This is not real—This is not real.”
It ended again where it had before and as he gasped for air, sucking the sweet tasting oxygen into his starved lungs, he cried between gasps. “No more! No more!”
“This can end whenever you’d like,” Bart said. “Just tell us when they are coming.”
“I don’t know! They haven’t told us.”
“Bullshit! You must know something.”
“Our boss hasn’t told us when the team is arriving. We lost contact with them just before we entered your place.”
“Your mind shows otherwise. You seem to think we are idiots. I see a team of 12 men boarding aircraft. When did this occur?”
“I don’t know. I swear. You’re just seeing what I think will be happening. I do not have a timeline.”
“Feel like dying again, Lucky? All I have to do is flip a switch.”
“I swear. I do not know!”
The vision blasted its way into his mind again and it seemed even worse than before. More powerful. He sobbed the entire time and his mind screamed in agony. When it was over, he felt like his body was separating from his mind. Fractured like his broken rib. Floating in a watery sea of muscle and fluids, barely hanging on to reality. If they continued to blast this vision into his brain, he would surely become this Benjamin and maybe even perish with him. He felt on the verge of insanity.
Near Sighted (A Jake Townsend Science Fiction, Action and Adventure, Thriller Series Book 2) Page 17