by Jason Brant
Bree stood there for several seconds, waiting. Nelson had given the order, but the horrific idea of leaving a man behind cemented her feet. He hadn’t outright said they were pulling out, but if they fled even a few blocks, they might lose Benson for good.
“Regroup with Shea,” Nelson repeated a moment later. “We’re getting our surveillance back online to see if we can locate him.”
Hearing that, Bree turned and ran for the stairs. She hoped she wasn’t abandoning Benson to torment and murder.
31 – In the Buff
I slowly came out of a fog. My thoughts were jumbled and sluggish. Heavy weights hung from my eyelids, keeping them from opening. The back of my head and the side of my face throbbed every time my heart beat.
My tongue and throat were parched. Dehydration had taken hold to the point that I couldn’t even swallow.
It took several minutes before my faculties returned enough to realize I was sitting up. My ass and back were cold. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if I were sitting in a metal chair.
Naked.
Normally, that would be what I considered a fun Saturday night.
But I had a feeling my company wasn’t a tall, sexy blonde.
My chin rested against my chest, my neck so weak that the idea of lifting my head seemed impossible. Silence surrounded me. All I could sense was the cool metal of whatever I sat on.
Slowly, I raised my head, straining against a fresh burst of agony at the base of my neck. My eyes opened next, the lids stuck from dried eye goop. White light forced me to squint for several seconds until my sight adjusted.
I sat in a small room with plain walls and a smooth, shiny floor. A door was cut into the wall in front of me, a tiny window placed in the upper third of it.
Bindings held my wrists, ankles, and waist to the chair.
A bright light sat about five feet in front of me, shining directly into my face.
And yeah—I was stark naked. Watch out, ladies.
My tongue resembled sandpaper as I ran it over chapped lips. Where I was, and how long I’d been out, I didn’t know. My brain felt like mush as I tried to recall what had happened in the street. I remembered hitting Stumpy and then tussling with the guy holding Christie. Then I woke up here.
You would think that being tied to a chair with little, I mean big, Asher Benson hanging freely would scare the shit out of me. But I felt strangely emotionless. It was as if I’d overdosed on anti-depressants.
I tried to let my consciousness wander out, to feel around for other minds, but my ability had been retarded. Sorting through my own thoughts proved difficult enough at the moment, let alone wrangling with someone else’s.
Smith’s clowns had obviously captured me. That much I could deduce with my mashed potatoes for brains. Where they’d taken me and what would happen next were the real mysteries.
The bindings around my hands and ankles held tight as I struggled against them. My strength hadn’t fully returned yet, but I hoped I could wiggle my way free. They didn’t even budge. The odds of me getting loose were slim to none.
A wide strap ran around my stomach, holding my back against the chair. I swiveled my head around, grimacing at the massive headache Riverdancing in my brain, and inspected the metal I sat on.
Looked like plain old stainless steel—maybe iron. I couldn’t see anything important about it, but the entire back of it was hidden from my view. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what monstrosities they had hooked up to the rear of it.
Off to the left of the chair, I spotted a tray.
Tin snips, knives, and other assorted pleasantries sat atop it.
That didn’t look good.
And yet, I wasn’t too worried about them. My blood pressure went up a tick, but that was all. They must have dosed me with the good stuff.
To the right of the cutlery sat an odd object. It appeared to be an all-metal helmet of some kind. It had wires attached to it at various points that combined into a large cable jutting from the back.
The cable ran to a machine on the second shelf of the cart. Whatever it was didn’t have any flashing lights on it or whirring fans inside. It might have been a computer, but if it was, no one had turned it on yet as far as I could tell.
Then again, I could barely tell the difference between a computer and a banana.
Beside the helmet thingamajig was a cordless drill.
I had a feeling that my day wasn’t going to end in the most pleasant way. Thinking about what would probably happen to me when someone opened that door made a butterfly flutter in my stomach. Just a single one, but it was more emotion than I’d had since waking up.
The drugs might have been wearing off a bit. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing. Having full use of my faculties would help me get out of there, but it also meant I would be completely aware of the horrible things that were likely to go down soon.
A security camera was installed in the upper right-hand corner of the room. I gave it the best smile I could, chapped lips and all. Hopefully, someone had noticed I’d woken up, because I had to piss like a horse.
It took nearly twenty minutes for the door in front of me to open.
Smith stepped inside.
It had been a long time since I’d seen ol’ Scarface. He looked every bit the asshole I remembered. Like the rest of his posse, he wore a suit, though his was more of a navy blue. Very fashionable.
“Mr. Benson. Glad to see that you’re awake.” He stood a few feet in front of me, leaving the door open behind him. “Are the drugs wearing off yet?”
I opened my mouth, tried to speak. Only a grunt and a whisper came out. I licked my lips.
“Water,” I managed to eke out. “Water”
“Oh, yes. Of course. My apologies.” Smith stepped back to the door and stuck his head out. “Roberts—bring a bottle of water when you come in here.”
For some reason, the casual manner in which Smith spoke freaked me out more than anything else had. I was tied to a chair in front of him, naked as a newborn, and there were torture instruments laid out beside me, but Smith might as well have been ordering his morning coffee.
Nothing seemed to get his dander up.
We would see how he calm he stayed when I was punching a hole in his chest.
Smith came back, frowned down at me. “We lost some men today. That’s quite unfortunate. It’s difficult to recruit good soldiers when you’re wanted by almost every major government in the world. We can’t exactly put out ads for mercenaries.” His eyes focused on mine. “But getting our hands on you changes the game, doesn’t it?”
I stayed silent, hoping the water was actually coming. The dryness in my throat bothered me more than anything else at the moment.
“Things didn’t quite go as planned this morning.” He walked over to the cart and picked up a pair of tin snips. “The betrayal we suffered almost undid everything we’ve fought so hard for. That thumb drive would have been our downfall. We weren’t even aware he had stolen it until the Tolbert woman actually tried to use it. The device phoned home when she plugged it into her computer. We knew that our man had defected, but we didn’t know he had confiscated information with him.”
Smith put the snips down and gently touched the helmet thing. “And imagine our surprise when you showed up with a team at the same time we were recovering our property. We expected resistance from you at some point, but not so quickly.”
Not being able to speak was probably the best thing at the moment. With any luck, I hoped he’d keep talking and spill his master plan just like a moronic Bond villain. My penchant for snark might have gotten in the way if I could have replied.
Instead, I attempted to latch onto his thoughts, to pry everything the bastard knew out of his stupid, scarred head. Unfortunately, whatever they’d given me didn’t allow that to happen. Not having my ability for a little while almost made me feel like a normal person again.
A normal person strapped to a chair while naked with instruments o
f torture beside him.
“We’re going to need to know everything about your operation, of course.” Smith turned back to me. “But we have some other research to do first. By the end of that, you’ll be much more willing to cooperate.”
I glared at the man I hated more than I hated anything.
Even more than light beer.
“I understand your contempt for me, Mr. Benson. You think I’m evil. In your eyes, I’m a monster, a mass murderer. You truly have no idea what’s going on, do you?” He leaned forward, his face less than a foot from mine. “Of course you don’t. You wouldn’t be working with them if you did. Is Thomas keeping you at arm’s length? Starving you of the information and resources that would really help you find me?”
I would have nailed him with a head-butt, but he stayed just out of range.
“They want you to kill me, of course, but they don’t want you knowing the true scope of their machinations. I imagine your orders are to assassinate me, not to capture. Correct?”
He nailed that one. I’d gone along with that directive willingly, wanting revenge for all the horror he had caused. For Sammy. Even if I could have spoken at the moment, I wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of telling him he was right.
You have to die, Sammy whispered. That’s the only revenge that matters. You killed me, Asher. You.
I shifted uncomfortably. My abilities wouldn’t work, but of course, I could still hear Sammy. Life was a real kick in the nads sometimes.
A man walked into the room, a bottle of water in one hand, a large battery in the other. He didn’t even look at me. Having naked men tied up at his job site must have been a normal occurrence around there. He had the same wiry, strong build as most of the other men under Smith’s employ. Like the rest, he wore a suit, but he didn’t have the jacket on at the moment.
“Give Mr. Benson a few gulps of water. He’ll need his strength.” Smith moved by the door and faced me. “We’ll begin shortly.”
The man nodded, placing the battery on the cart. He opened the water bottle and held it toward me. “If you try anything, I’ll take one of your eyes.”
I gave him a small nod.
After placing the mouth of the battle against my lips, he tilted it back. Cool water filled my mouth, coated my throat. It tasted like heaven. I guzzled as much of it as I could, not knowing when I would get another chance.
The whole bottle was empty in a matter of seconds.
He pulled it from my mouth and stepped back, looking at it with mild surprise.
I licked my lips with my wet tongue, relishing the feel. The expression on the guy’s face almost made me laugh. If there was one thing alcoholics were good at, it was chugging drinks. I could hang with the best of them.
“Better?” Smith asked.
“Much.” I turned my attention to him. “Do you mind undoing the shackles? I need to use the little boy’s room.”
“Always with the quip.”
“Things will get messy soon if you don’t. My back teeth are floating.”
Smith said, “I have two offers for you, Mr. Benson. There are two, because I’m sure you’ll refuse the first.”
“Seems kind of stupid to even offer it then.”
“Join us.”
That shocked me to the point of silence. It took a lot to do that. Of all the things I expected him to offer, a job wasn’t one of them. He might as well have told me that everything I’d experienced wasn’t real and that the Matrix had me. Maybe he’d offer me a couple of colored pills next.
After the surprise wore off, I laughed. Hard. Guffawed is probably more accurate.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? I came here to kill you, asshole. You murdered an entire town, and you think I would help you?” My laughs slowed to chuckles. “I knew you were crazy, but this is just too much.”
“I did what I had to do.” Smith’s expression never changed. “One small town is better than the entire nation.”
I stopped laughing. “What?”
“Did you ever step back and think about the true consequences of Arthur’s Creek?”
“The consequences? Hundreds of families were wiped out. Kids, kids, were slaughtered.” I looked at the ceiling dramatically. “Let’s see here. What else happened... oh yeah. The entire nation went into a full-blown panic. The economy tanked. People stopped using technology for a while. And now, they’re destroying half of Washington, D.C. I guess you could say I’ve thought about it a bit.”
“I expected better from you.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“For a man of your unique talents, you somehow only observe the surface. Yes, what had to be done was awful, but to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. The entire cell phone network from coast to coast will soon be protected against just such an attack, will it not? You must know about the work done by CAIS.”
Nami had tested the newest work by that government contractor just that morning. And it had worked. The signal Smith had used in Arthur’s Creek couldn’t be broadcast over the cell phone networks once everything was in place.
“I know about it. It’ll keep everyone safe from your psycho ass.”
“Not from me, Mr. Benson.” Smith watched me intently. A fire had finally lit in his eyes. “We didn’t invent the weapon. We found and stole it from a foreign entity. Unfortunately, our nation was wide open to it. The men you now work for had zero interest in setting up a defensive network to protect against its effects. So we had to provide a little test.”
I squirmed in my seat, pulling at the bindings around my wrists. Veins bulged in my arms from the strain. “You’re telling me you did that to protect us? Screw you. You can’t talk your way around the fact that you killed thousands of people.”
“I’ll have to live with that decision for the rest of my life. Of that, there is no question. But we’ve now provided an incredible blanket of security for everyone else. The nation is secure from a massive attack.”
The crap spewing from his mouth made me sick. I didn’t believe for a second that he hadn’t developed the weapon. But even if he had found it, there were better ways of getting the government’s attention than killing an entire town.
“You really don’t get it? Perhaps I should have made my offer to your detective friend. He seems much more observant.” Smith pushed away from the wall. “President Thomas, Senator McArthur, and everyone else who knew of the Psych Ward wanted the weapon for themselves. They didn’t want to protect anyone from it—they wanted to wield it. By using it against them, we forced their hand. We shined a light on it for the world to see.”
“Bullshit.”
“Is it? Did you ever wonder why they attempted to shut us down? Why they left Murdock in that hellhole?”
“They did it because you’re a power-hungry megalomaniac.”
Smith frowned, shook his head. “I knew you would refuse, but I hoped that wouldn’t be the case.”
“I can’t believe you actually think you’re the good guy.”
He stayed silent for a moment, looking down at the floor.
I turned toward the other man who had put the battery into the electric drill on the cart. “I really do have to take a leak. I’d hate to get your shoes all messy.”
Neither one of them responded to me. Tough crowd.
“The second offer is one of mercy.” Smith moved over to the cart. “If you cooperate with our tests, your suffering will be greatly minimized. If you refuse, well, you’re going to have a very rough time.”
“I didn’t hear an offer in there, just a threat. The hard way it is.”
“You’re defiant even in the face of indescribable pain. I truly wish we’d discovered you a few years ago. You would have made a great ally.”
“Seriously, guys. My bladder is about to rupture.” I turned to the security camera in the corner of the room. “If the janitor is listening, I just want to apologize. I had asparagus for dinner last night, and I doubt it’s out of my system yet.<
br />
With a sigh, Smith plucked the helmet off the cart. He pulled on the cable hanging from the back of it, creating a few feet of slack.
“Is that one of those futuristic-looking hairdryers they have in salons?” My mouth was really going. The drugs were wearing off by the second, and the hopelessness of my situation was setting in.
They meant to do something awful to me.
So I yammered. It was what I did.
“Can I sew his mouth shut?” the other man asked. “He’s annoying.”
Smith brought the helmet to me. “He won’t be saying much in a few moments. Turn the system on.”
The man bent down in front of the computer thing on the cart. He hit a button on the front, and then fiddled with something on the side that I couldn’t see.
“Oh wait,” I said. “That’s from the X-Men, right? It’s that thing Professor X wears so he can do... whatever it is he does.”
“You’re not as far off as you might expect.” Smith circled behind me, disappearing from my field of view. “This monitors your brain activity in a manner of speaking. You see, Mr. Benson, you’ve demonstrated a telekinetic ability that we haven’t encountered before. We’re quite excited to run some tests on you.”
I heard him shuffling around back there.
A strap wrapped around my throat, tightening instantly. My head snapped back against the metal chair. The airflow in my throat died.
I gasped, tried to fight. The more I struggled, the worse it got.
“Relax.” Smith’s voice came from directly above me. “You’ll pass out if you don’t stop struggling. I’ll release the strap when the helmet is secure. We can’t have you squirming while we’re attaching it.”
I stopped fighting, though something he said hit me like a kick to the ol’ boys.
He’d said attaching. Not placing or putting it on. No, he’d said they were attaching it to me. No one ever accused me of being the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that sounded less than appealing.
My face was hot from struggling, my throat already sore from the strap. I focused on staying calm, sucking in what little air I could manage. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t get out more than a croak.