Silver

by Steven Savile

  "There is no such beast in this game, Quentin. There are those that can help us and those that stand against us. I want my boy back, and I will do anything to make it happen. So, I say again, make the call, bring him home."

  "If I do this, and that's by no means a given, Charles, if I do this, you're through. I want everything you've got on this operation turned over to my people in the morning. I'll close you down. You understand just what is you are asking?"

  The old man didn't answer him.

  He hung up.

  28

  In Chains Time lost all meaning in the dark of the dungeon. Occasionally Orla heard something. Sometimes it would be the skitter and scratch of rats scurrying along the edge of the cell wall; other times it would be a whimper in the blackness, a voice, a sob, a cry. And then there were the nightmares as her head went down and she thought she'd slipped into the dark for real, only to hear him whispering in her ear, goading her, "Tomorrow you die."

  How could he not understand that tomorrow was all she wanted,> The cuffs dug into her wrists, cutting the balls of her palms bloody. She had hung herself, putting all of her weight onto them, only for the steel to bite deeper and the blood to run hotter, but it didn't matter how deep the cuffs sliced, she couldn't wriggle free of them. She twisted, pushing off the wall. The cold stone was damp against her back.

  She had seen what had happened to the girl, how they had taken her head as a trophy and thrown it at the camera.

  She knew that was her fate if she didn't get out of this dark country.

  She was going to get out.

  It was as simple as that.

  She was going to get out.

  She said it over and over, like a mantra.

  Somehow she'd let herself be turned into a victim. It wasn't her. She was stronger than that. She'd been to hell and back and survived. She would survive again.

  She was alone in the dark. She stood on her toes when she could no longer bear the agony of hanging, and hung from her wrists when she could no longer bear the torture of trying to stand.

  Every ninth heartbeat a single drop of water dripped onto her skin from the damp ceiling. Sometimes it hit her shoulder and ran down through the valley between her breasts. Sometimes it her cheek and ran down her neck. And sometimes she tried to catch it with her tongue. It was never enough to slake her thirst.

  She felt the rats brush up against her bare feet. They sniffed at her ankles. She knew they were drawn to the heat of her body, her blood and her bones, but they wouldn't feast while she was alive. Every inch of her skin crawled. Every ounce of her flesh burned. She shifted her weight and kicked out at the curious rat. The kick lacked any strength, but it was enough to send the rat scurrying away again.

  There was a bucket in the corner. The rats liked to sniff around that, too. They made her wait for it, adding humiliation to the torture, bringing the bucket once a day, once every two days--it was hard to tell in the dark. They wanted her to degrade herself and then to have to hang in her own feces and urine. It was another step to robbing her of her humanity. She refused to give them the satisfaction. She didn't care if they made her crouch naked over a pot and laughed. She made them fight for every little victory they won, that way she didn't just give up and let those little victories become big victories. That bucket was her key to salvation. There as some leeway on the chain depending upon how her captors secured it against the wall. There was enough play for her to squat with her hands by her side for support, which meant, if the chain was played out to its longest, there was enough room for her to bring her hands down to her waist while standing, and almost all the way to the floor when she crouched.

  Orla heard other sounds then. Footsteps in the darkness.

  He was coming back.

  She closed her eyes, steeling herself. Her first instinct was fear. Fear would get her killed. She needed to survive. That was the only thing she needed. Uzzi Sokol and his friends could rape and torture her, she would survive. Her body could take the abuse. So could her mind. They could try to break her, she was strong. They could demean her, beat her, spit at her, lash her, they could do all of that. She had suffered worse. There was nothing they could do to her that hadn't been done before. That was the truth of Israel. There was no torment the country could inflict upon her that it hadn't done already.

  She heard the rattle of keys, and the door opened. The tiniest slither of light spilled into the cell. Her eyes had become so accustomed to the sensory deprivation of the dark that even that was enough to burn them. She twisted, trying to see her torturer. He was dressed head-to-toe in black, a hood over his face like an executioner. He had a pistol in his right hand, a Jericho 941. It was a standard issue Israeli security services handgun known as a Baby Eagle. She felt her breathing change, suddenly shallow and short. If she didn't get control of herself, she was going to hyperventilate. She struggled to slow the frantic rise and fall of her chest, to catch her breath.

  He walked toward her, each footstep deliberately slow and measured. They were deafening in the silence.

  "I told you I'd come back," Sokol said. She felt his rancid breath against the nape of her neck. She knew it was him despite the hood. His voice was imprinted on her soul. She closed her eyes. She felt his hand touch her. She didn't flinch. Somehow his breath was worse than his touch. Orla stifled the urge to twist away as his hand cupped her breast and pulled her toward him. She knew better than to move. He would only hit her if she did. So she let him touch her despite the revulsion she felt at his hands. "I would never deny you your time in the spotlight. You're going to shine. I'm going to make you a movie star, like Marilyn, bigger even. By the end of today everyone will know your name. Would you like that, Orla? Would you like to be a star?"

  He came in close, sloppily so, but he still had the sense to keep his gun hand away from her. She tasted his fetid breath in the back of her throat as she inhaled it. It stank of stale cigarettes. He let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck then caressed all the way down the ladder of her spine bone by bone to the soft swell of her buttocks. He hooked a foot around her ankle and forced her legs apart. There was nothing sexual about it. Sokol was showing her he had all of the power now.

  Unbalanced, Orla stumbled slightly to the left, allowing his cold fingers to touch her. She winced despite herself.

  "Did you miss me?"

  She didn't say a word.

  He stepped back and slapped her hard across the face.

  "I asked you a question, woman. Didn't your mother teach you anything? When I ask you a question, you answer me. It isn't difficult. Let's try again. Did you miss me?"

  She said nothing.

  He backhanded her again, straight across the face. She turned her cheek with the blow. It made her eyes water.

  "One more time. Did you miss me?"

  Her mouth was painfully dry, but she managed to work up enough saliva to spit in Sokol's face. The wad of phlegm hit the black hood. He didn't wipe it away.

  "You disappoint me, Orla. Such a pointless thing to do." He leaned in again, close enough that the saliva smeared across her cheek. He was anything but gentle as he reached back between her legs. "Why should I care about a little bodily fluid when I can do this? It doesn't make any sense, Orla. I thought you were a smart girl."

  It was a brutal invasion.

  She arched her back and twisted her head, but there was nowhere she could go, nowhere she could hide from his vile touch. But she had no intention of hiding. She wanted him to come in closer. She needed his lust to rise. She needed him to forget about power. Her mind went cold, as though part of her soul detached elf and another creature, a harder one, took over to save her from the horror of what was happening. This other her waited for the single moment of sloppiness when his lust outweighed his sense.

  It would come.

  It had to.

  Her life depended upon it.

  She twisted around on the chains so she could look into his hooded face. His eyes were the only pa
rt of him she could see through the hood. They were wide. His breathing was shallow. She tried to hold his gaze, to draw him into hers, but couldn't bear the intensity of his eyes as they stared into her. She moved her lips as though to say something. He wanted to hear. She knew he would. That was why there were no words. She wanted him in closer.

  He turned his back on her and walked away, taunting her. She counted his footsteps. Six. Eight was the magic number. Eight would take him to the brace on the wall where her chain was tied off. Eight would mean he thought he was in control.

  He came back to her and slapped her hard across the face.

  Her pain brought a smile from him.

  "You don't want to make me angry, Orla," Sokol said. She hated the sound of his voice. She finished the line in her head: You wouldn't like me when I am angry. She didn't laugh. She didn't want him to think she was laughing at him. Sokol needed to think she was broken. She focused on that instead. She had survived before. She had survived worse. She would live through this.

  Uzzi Sokol wouldn't.

  She promised herself that much.

  He turned his back on her. He walked away. Seven steps. She counted each of them, willing him to take the eighth, willing him to release the chain so it played out another four feet. Four feet meant she would live.

  He didn't. He walked slowly back to her, tracing the muzzle of the Jericho from her cheek, slowly down her neck, following the artery that pulsed beneath the skin, over her collarbone and down around the swell of her breast. The metal was cold.

  "Why are you doing this?" she said, barely a whisper.

  Sokol's hand stopped moving. He looked at her as though he had forgotten she could speak. "Because I can," he said, and it was as simple as that. "Because in a few minutes the others are going to join us. They're going to drag you into the center of the room, and they are going to cut your head off with a sword while the world watches on the internet. Until then you are still beautiful. And if I can make your last few minutes pleasurable, then what is the crime in that?"

  She wanted to claw his eyes out. Instead she said, "Thank you."

  He hadn't expected that. He thought it was the ultimate act of submission. She was giving herself to him. He kissed her then, in the soft hollow at the nape where her throat met her body, and it was almost tender. She closed her eyes. She let herself seem to sag against the chains. He felt her move and touched her again, like lovers do. It was all she could do not to lunge forward and bite his throat out with her teeth. She couldn't do that. Not while her hands were still trussed above her head. She needed to be able to move her arms.

  Uzzi Sokol touched her belly, pressing his palm flat against the taut muscle. It was a hideously intimate gesture, worse in some ways than all of the other invasions, because of the tenderness in it. She wanted the brutality because it made it easier to hate him. She waited out his touch. He had said the others were coming soon; that meant it was now or never, and never wasn't an option.

  She arched her back, then came forward, pressing herself up against him. She leaned in, her lips tasting the salt of passion in his skin.

  He backed away into the darkness of the cell.

  He didn't like losing control. He didn't want her dictating their dance, even in chains. He wanted to orchestrate every twist and shudder. He was sick. He walked away from her, five, six, seven, eight steps. She felt the chain go slack. Her arms fell to her sides. Almost immediately she felt the rush of her blood beginning to circulate properly. It was like a drug. She closed her eyes. She had one chance. She needed to stay calm. If this went wrong--if he balked or she sent the gun spinning out of reach--she was dead.

  He walked toward her, pulling the black hood off so she could see his face. He dropped it on the ground. His face was a mockery of handsome, twisted by lust. Whatever shred of decency had lived inside Uzzi Sokol was gone. All that remained was this creature driven by primal instincts.

  Orla tensed every muscle in her lower body, ready to explode into motion.

  She surrendered to her other senses, listening as he neared, listening as his breath sounded ragged and aroused in her ear, and as he came forward, losing control, Orla arched her back and drove her head forward into the middle of his face. She felt his nose explode in a spray of blood and blinding pain. Sokol staggered away from her, stunned. She heard the clatter as he dropped the Jericho and brought his hands up to his face. He screamed over and over, "You bitch! You miserable bitch!" as he stumbled backward, looking for the safety of the darkness. Orla dropped down into a crouch, praying the gun had fallen within reach. For one heart-stopping moment she couldn't see where it had fallen. She looked about frantically. Then she saw it. It had fallen right on the edge of the darkness, out of reach. She stretched out a foot, trying to hook it with her toes.

  The barrel spun away from her.

  Orla stretched, the steel cuffs cutting deep into her wrists. The blinding agony gave her another inch. She dragged the Jericho toward her.

  Sokol came lurching out of the darkness, his ruined face like something out of a nightmare. He could barely stand. He staggered two steps sideways for every two forward. Orla reached down for the gun, the chain grating as it slid through the coupling. She gripped it with both hands and squeezed the trigger. The gunshot was deafening in the close confines of the cell. The bullet took Sokol in the shoulder, jerking him back a zombie-step. She fired again. The second shot took him in the other shoulder. He roared in agony. Blind rage drove him forward two more steps until he was close enough she could feel his erection die as the third slug pierced his skull. He collapsed at her feet.

  Gasping, Orla leaned back and tried to put a bullet into the coupling in the ceiling. She missed with the fourth. The fifth split it.

  The Jericho 941 shipped with different barrels, a 9x19mm parabellum and a .41 "hot cartridge." The difference was three shots. She either had ten shots left or seven, depending if Sokol had kept the gun fully loaded. She prayed she wouldn't have to find out the hard way.

  Orla put her left hand against the wall and blew out the cuff's coupling. She didn't bother wasting a bullet on the right cuff. Nine or six left. She kept a running count. She fed the loose chain through the cuff and padded over to the open door. The gunshots had made a lot of noise. Anyone inside the building would have heard them. She willed them on. She had a gun and a need to strike back. She wanted to hurt them for what they'd done to her. She wanted to kill them for what they had done to the girl before her, and for making her watch as they did it.

  She ran the numbers. Schnur had claimed the Shrieks worked as blind cells, one person connected to two others, the guy below them and the guy above them in the chain. They would never risk having more than two operatives in the same place, as it exposed an extra link in the chain; and extra links weakened the chain. That was the whole point of blind cells. But Sokol had said the others would be here soon, and others was plural. The guy below Sokol in the chain, and Gavrel Schnur. Schnur had said Mabus liked to be a part of the beheadings when they filmed them. He had told her that in his office in the IDF HQ.

  Schnur was Mabus. She was sure of that. It was the only explanation that made sense. He had fed her a bullshit story about Solomon being Mabus, but that is all it was, a bullshit story. Schnur was Mabus. And if Schnur was Mabus, he not only knew who Akim Caspi really was, he was the only person who did, because Caspi was the man above him in the chain. She had had time to think about it while they hung her up like a chicken waiting for the slaughter. Akim Caspi was the man who had recruited Schnur. He had to be. There was no other scenario that made sense. Mabus was only ever the herald, the piper at the gates of dawn. Solomon, though, Solomon was the Antichrist to Schnur's herald, the real evil--and Schnur had given them his name.

  It was a mistake.

  A slip.

  He had said more than he should have.

  And she was in the mood to make him pay for that.

  She looked down the narrow passageway but didn't see a
nyone coming. There was a single naked bulb at the far end, and beneath it, the first stair leading up. She ran back to Uzzi Sokol's corpse and took the shirt from his back. He had no need for it, and she didn't want to step out into the middle of Tel Aviv buck naked with a gun if she didn't have to. She'd be drawing enough attention to herself even with the shirt.

  She checked his pockets for a spare ammo clip. He didn't have one. She could have popped the magazine and counted out the bullets, but she didn't want to take the time--not here. She wasn't out of the woods yet, and any extra seconds were wasted seconds.

  She buttoned the shirt up quickly and then ran down the narrow passage. There was a door at the bottom, just before the stairs, a rusty iron thing that appeared to have been welded shut. She checked it just in case. Ipasst give. That was enough for her. She ran barefoot up the stairs, slowing just before she reached the top. She checked left and right. There was no one there. Sokol had come planning to play. He'd known he was alone and would be for a while.

  She was on the ground floor now. To the right she could see the interior of a small grocery store. There were no groceries on the shelves. It had been bombed out during the hostilities. To the left was the store room. It was a perfect place to hide someone. The entire strip mall was probably deserted. She went for the door.

  The shop floor was thick with dust and broken glass. The windows had been boarded up. It was convenient. It meant no one could see inside. She walked over the broken glass, cutting the souls of her feet. She barely felt the thin shards as they dug in deep. Behind her Orla left a trail of bloody footprints.

  She looked back over her shoulder to be sure no one was following and that no one was lurking in the shelves to jump out at her. She reached the door. It was locked and chained. She didn't hesitate. She put a single shot into the center of the lock's hasp and unthreaded the chain as it splintered and the tongue came loose. The door itself was locked. She realized then the stupidity of shooting out the lock. The door being chained on the inside meant Sokol and the others had a different way of coming and going. Probably an old goods door around the back of the shop. She couldn't worry about it now. She had eight or five left. Another one into the lock would make it seven or four if the gun had been fully loaded when Sokol came to torment her. Less if not. The numbers were getting a little low for her liking.