by Ari Bach
SHE AWOKE tied to a thick pipe with heavy-duty plastic cord. Her link was active but jammed. When her eyes refocused, she could see one man standing before her. At first she thought he was one of Wulfgar’s men, someone sent to represent him. But the man looked just like Wulfgar. She reasoned that it was Wulfgar, but the idea didn’t take hold. The man didn’t fit her notions of who he would be. She knew he was thinner and cleaner than his brother, but his demeanor was completely reversed. Hrothgar had been a thug from eyes to heart. This man might have fit in at a wine tasting or a play. He had an expression like Alf’s, smart but not smug, wise and mature, but above all reserved. Restrained. He crouched down to her level. When she looked closer at his eyes, she doubted his identity again. His eyes were those of a kind man, the eyes of a child’s doll or nanny program. His voice matched when he spoke. He sounded nothing like his twin. He even hid his accent.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Kray,” she muttered. She didn’t want to say more until she knew she was back in character. She convinced herself she was doomed, not in control. It wasn’t a hard role to play.
“Yes, and do you remember what you did to me?”
If she had been scared, she’d have hidden it. She wouldn’t have sounded scared. “I fried your brother’s head off.”
“Yes, yes, Violet, you did. You killed my brother.”
“He killed my family. We’re even.”
“Were justice not blind, she might have seen it that way.” He put a hand to his lips, a gesture of bemused consideration. “But justice has no power here. I have all the power here. And I see a sad, frightened little girl who tries to talk tough, who knows she has no way out, who knows what I am going to do to her. You may act now with some pride, some degree of hope that somehow someone will save you. But you will not leave this room alive. And you will not die fast. No, Violet, you will feel pain like no girl has felt before.”
She allowed herself a subtle laugh. “And you’ll talk and talk about it so long you’ll die of old age before you get around to it,” she said. It wasn’t too far from how she might act if she were really cornered, and it would egg him on. Best to get tortured to death quickly so she could get back to work.
He stood again, his face more serious. A hint of his brother’s cruelty seeped into his eyes and a tinge of Dansk into his voice. “Sad little runt, I’m going to peel you. Peel you like… like a—” His mouth formed a vicious grin, half snarl. “—like some kind of fruit.”
He produced a knife. She activated an analgesic capsule. It dissolved into her blood and deadened her pain receptors. She suddenly wondered why she had done it. She had gone through so much in injury training, she could surely survive this, or at least try. Violet almost felt guilty for a moment, as if she had faked something that should have been more genuine, as if she owed Wulfgar that much.
That brief oddity of mind disappeared as soon as she felt the knife entering her fingertip, under the nail. She tried to act like it hurt. She remembered from training that losing a fingernail hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she expected, so she might have underacted a bit. “Oh. Ow. How terrible, it hurts, kill me now,” she muttered, realizing instantly that she might have given away that she was feeling nothing. He looked at her, amused by her lack of misery.
“Well, I suppose your time playing soldier must have toughened you up?”
She played into it. “You’re a stuffed animal compared to the Camerons.”
He laughed. “Then I’ll skip the foreplay.” He flipped a switch on his knife, and the blade grew red hot. Violet didn’t make the same mistake twice. When he pushed it into her next finger, she gave a yelp. Not too much but something to convince him she felt it. It worked. He continued with her fingernails, then toenails.
She let out a few crocodile tears and acted half-defeated. “You’re sick,” she said. “You’re a sick fuck.”
“Yes,” he admitted proudly, “yes I am.” He began cutting off her fingers. She acted better. He bought it. Without the pain, the sight of what he was doing still got to her, as did the silence. Balder had said she could get under his skin, that she could rot away the foundations of his mind. By the time she was five fingers down, she decided it was a good time to begin. She gave a couple of shrieks and spoke with a shaky, pained voice.
“I didn’t torture your brother, you know. I just flushed his head like the shit he was.”
“That was a toothpick, Violet. A toothpick against a tank. I am a tank.” He took her other hand.
“You are. He was a moron. What kind of mobster gets killed by a teenager?” She made sure to give a waver to her voice.
He cut off her thumb. “The careless kind.” Her index finger. “The kind given too much power without earning it.” Her middle finger. “My brother wasn’t a great man; I won’t try to claim it.” Her ring finger. “But knowing one’s family to be beneath him doesn’t make their death any easier.” Her pinky. “And it doesn’t make this pile of digits any less rewarding.”
Through it all she let him do his work, whimpering and wincing as she thought she might have done half a year ago. Back before injury training, before Achnacarry. If Hrothgar had done her in back on that day. Wulfgar tried to pull her right foot toward him. She kicked with it, not enough to hit him but enough to free it for a moment. She used her toe to push at the pile of her fingers. She poked one of her middle fingers upward in an obscene gesture and gave a pained laugh. Wulfgar laughed too.
“Keep it up! I like spirit in my prey. I’m enjoying this so much more than I thought I would.”
He leaned close to her face. She thought he was about to kiss her. She recoiled. He could hack off any part he liked, but that would be going too far. It would be wrong, incestuous, she thought, then became concerned that she thought it. How twisted is my mind if a kiss is worse than loss of limbs? But she was right; it was wrong, deeply wrong. She was relieved when he went for her neck and bit.
It wasn’t as wrong as a kiss, but it wasn’t exactly proper. He bit very hard, breaking the skin and doing severe damage to her left sternocleidomastoid muscle. His teeth were unnaturally sharp, cutting almost as cleanly as razors. Like an animal, she thought, like a predator evolved to rip meat from bone. She was bleeding badly when he withdrew. His face had lost its gentle appearance once dripping with blood. He wore an obscene expression of pleasure and relief, as if he had just enjoyed the bite more than he’d expected to. Violet was offended by the look. It was the sort of look one expected from a lover, not a biter. She forgot she was supposed to be in pain. She was enraged.
“You sick old fuck,” she said. “I knew your brother was a pervert, but you take the fucking cake!”
For a second he looked hurt. She had hit the right nerve. Wulfgar didn’t want to be his brother, and then and there, he was. He was the worst of his brother. He felt ashamed, she could see it. So terribly ashamed that he would have done anything to wipe that revelation from his mind. In his desperation he fled into vice. He fled into the love he had for Hrothgar and called it respect. He fled into the pleasure of the flesh before him. “Cake,” he muttered, caressing her neck wound.
“Eat me,” she barked. He did. He gnawed on her neck, nibbled at her shoulder, and started biting her hard enough to take off skin. Violet was utterly disappointed. The man chewing on her had lost all decorum, all sensibility, and gone animalistic. Despite the detachment of the analgia and presence of mind she had cultivated, Violet felt a sharp prick of terror. To fear being eaten alive was so deeply ingrained in her mammalian brain that it tried to break in on her. She beat it back down and kept her mind on her devourer.
He showed the sort of bestial disgrace that a man can only show to a victim he knows he’ll soon kill. The shame would be too deep otherwise. He looked pathetic, desperate, starved. Violet didn’t know how much lower a man could get than sucking on her arm wounds, a far cry from his first impression. All the better, she thought. When he sees me alive, he’ll bear the shame of it. It
will be like a mirror held up to him at his ugliest. He bit through the tendons in her wrist. She screamed out in false pain to hide a laugh within.
Then she grew woozy. Blood loss. It was time to pass out and continue another day. She expected him to doctor her up, keep her alive for some time, and enjoy more torture. He surprised her, though. Just before she passed out, she could see something click behind his eyes. He collected himself, stood up covered in blood, and swallowed the bit of arm meat he had just torn off. Her arm was wrecked utterly, chewed through. Her hand fell off from the damage. And Wulfgar, covered in blood, looked ashamed of it.
Violet had won this little encounter. Both knew it. The destroyed body held a victorious mind. In her last moments of consciousness came clarity, a spotless window into the man: He was afraid of what the broken girl had turned him into, and he didn’t want another day of it, not another second.
Violet passed out. Wulfgar wouldn’t let her do it again. Torturing her was beneath him. The pleasure of it degraded him. No more. He picked up his knife and stabbed her in the heart, then walked away.
That made Varg very happy. He didn’t like his role, but he still carried it out with skill and composure. After Dr. Niide had grown a brainless Violet body. Varg took the lifeless double to Plockton, where he watched the Orange Gang kidnap her. He followed them stealthily to Jylland, where they unloaded her at a gang warehouse. He snuck in, watched them tie her up, and monitored their link to Wulfgar to come and get her. He analyzed the link and found Wulfgar must have been about ninety kilometers away, so Varg had time, and his part proved uncomplicated.
He ran into the warehouse and took note of the surroundings. It was a messy place, one with few security measures. He brought the fake Violet in and arranged some crates and junk into a good hiding place from which he could see his real teammate. Wulfgar arrived and woke her. Varg took out his medical tools and prepared himself for the ugly task to be done. As Wulfgar vivisected the real Violet, Varg matched every act on the facsimile, thankfully not with his teeth. He stood ready to intervene should Wulfgar try to damage her brain, but luckily he just stabbed her in the heart, and that was satisfactory. When Kray left the room to inform the garbage detail, Varg made his move. Within seconds he had freed Violet, and taking care not to drip blood in the wrong places, he set the wolf’s leavings on a cushioning field and pushed her into his hiding place, replacing her with the fake.
Men in orange suits came for the corpse and left with it just as quickly. Varg took his deceased comrade to the pogo and flew her to a temporary Jylland med bay. There she was repaired and restarted with great ease. Dr. Niide was on site with new skin, limbs, and a new heart. He did not need to use any of them, Wulfgar’s techniques were old-fashioned and did little real damage, aside from mutilating and killing her. The doctor even complimented Varg for keeping her severed fingers and toes in order. Violet woke up with Varg standing over her intensive-care bed. He had tears on his cheeks. She wiped them away.
Violet spent little time checking over her repaired form. She wanted to get on with the mission. Niide had done a fine job; only her left pinky was a bit stiff, and the doctor repaired that with a pinprick. He reopened her Tikari port and removed the monitoring chips. Her Tikari was happy to get out after seeing Wulfgar’s blade pass right beside it to kill its owner. Dr. Niide insisted that a Tikari could not be traumatized. Violet knew better.
The medical pogo headed north. Varg left Jylland for København to rescue Veikko should his part in the venture be compromised. As per the plan, Varg headed first to a statue of a little mermaid on the shore. He took a fluff bomb designed for a big blast and minimal damage and set it to blow the statue a few centimeters off its rock. He headed for cover and set off the blast.
The instant Veikko was at home in his new Orange Gang apartment, he opened up a news link. His new gang roommates watched, though none questioned why. The man would surely want to see if his actions had been newsworthy. But he only looked as far as an article stating that a local mermaid had survived a small explosion. To Veikko that item meant the survival of someone else entirely, and he was most relieved.
Vibeke met Violet with a tight hug as soon as she got back. That hug was worth every second of torture. But something was amiss back at home. There was no celebration. Violet knew that the first combat death on a team was usually celebrated like a sort of birthday, but nobody seemed to give her a second glance. As N team walked by, she asked about the lack of festivities.
“Oh, you didn’t really die. You planned it,” shouted Neurosis.
“Yeah, we all saw the plan,” seconded Nails. “You should have died in Udachnaya when you had the chance.”
“Oooh, look at me,” mocked Necrosis. “I’m mutilated!” He ejected his Tikari and made it cut off his hand. “I’m tortured!” he jeered as he kept the bug slicing up his arm like a cucumber. “I’m dead, celebrate me!” He dramatically raised his remaining arm. The Tikari stabbed him in the heart. Violet was shocked at the lengths he had just gone to for the joke.
“Damn, Violet,” said Neurosis, annoyed at her, “now look what you made him do. He does this every damn time.”
“Every time,” agreed Nails. “Loves attention. Come on, let’s gather him up.”
N team dragged his parts off toward med bay, and Violet sighed a frustrated sigh. She had been proud of her sacrificial act and now felt utterly deflated. She was tempted to steal a slice of Necrosis’s arm so it would come back short, but Vibeke held her back.
“Well, I thought it was impressive,” she said. Then she kissed Violet on the cheek. The torture, death, and disappointment were suddenly a distant memory, and Violet was the happiest girl in the north. They headed to the cafeteria for a postmortem snack.
Over the next week, Violet and Vibeke spent their time in the safety of Valhalla, getting reports relayed from Varg, who was never far from Veikko. The team had never discovered exactly how Dorian’s link had been caught, so they elected to play it safe with Veikko’s communication. With several hundred forms of link cryptography out of the running, they resorted to dead drops across København, or when Veikko could manage it, a note sent by “post,” an ancient occult system of text transfer unknown to all but the most cunning spies. When the reports came by paper, Vibeke would read them to Violet, which Violet saw as an unexpected benefit of her illiteracy. The first report came a week and a half after Violet’s death, by which time, Veikko boasted, he was already Wulfgar’s right-hand man.
“All goes well. Herr Kray welcomed me with promises of wealth and power. He offered me work with the gang to compensate for the loss of my police job, though they still call me “Little Pig.” I proved myself trustworthy by murdering several of my former police buddies, a task for which I used the cold-flame setting on my trusty Valhalla microwave, ensuring their survival and a good show of fireworks.
“As per the plan, Varg ambushed us shortly after and tried to kill Wulfgar with a fluff bomb. I gallantly jumped on the bomb and disarmed it. Varg gave them quite a chase—the man loves his grenades. That, along with my extraordinary charm and good looks, has allowed me to cuddle up with the big bad wolf. Even from the start, he stated and restated his gratitude and regaled me with the story of how Violet died—the highlight, of course, being when she finally stopped speaking, a moment I sorely missed seeing.
“From this raw material, I forged a grand friendship with Wulfgar. He lets me call him Wolfy, Big W, or my favorite, Growly Magoo. Lies aside, I really have grown close to the fellow, or so he thinks. At all times I use this favoritism to sow distrust, envy, and low morale among his men. One of his advisors has become so annoyed by my candor (I’m sure you can sympathize, Vi) that he spoke back to Herr Kray quite rudely and has been sent to ‘manage distant interests’ for the gang on Venus. I have not yet learned about said distant interests, because I’ve been too busy collecting intel on the deepest secrets of the gang. I have done so, because I am awesome.
“So now, let me tell
you ladies, safe as you are in the north, all that I have uncovered at great risk to myself.”
The first note and all after were chock-full of gang plans and acts of cruelty and illegality. In weeks he had more info on the gang’s intents than D team had gained in years. Factoring the new information into Alopex revealed that the gang was both smaller and crueler than previous estimates. Veikko continued embellishing his reports with more quips about how much Wulfgar claimed to enjoy torturing Violet to death.
She and Vibeke looked over the reports and condensed them for Alf and Balder, made their notes well into the night, and analyzed the intel in the bunks, reclining together on Veikko’s empty bed or in the gym. Nothing helped to break up the monotony of analysis like a good sparring match. The two watched the sun set for the last time that year on October 26, sitting out on Austfonna, one of the last ice caps. Vibeke said it was a good place to avoid the bustle of the ravine floor and told Violet how, when she first moved to Tromsø with her father, the polar days and nights had driven her insane, though not nearly as much as he had.
Violet asked, “That’s the one you killed?”
“Yes,” she said. “Quite a terrible guy. I only have two really clear memories of him before I stabbed him to death. In the first, he couldn’t be bothered or approached. He was working hard on something online, not immersed but intent and busy. I remembered thinking that this is what grown-ups are—they do work, they do important things and have no time to play with kids. I hacked into his vision with a trick I’d learned from a girl named Angela in school and saw he was playing Tetris. It was funny.”
The sun passed the horizon. Vibeke continued. “The other memory was when I invited Angela over for the first time. She came over and we played for a while, but after a few minutes he asked to see her in his room. I thought she might have done something wrong because of his voice, but I didn’t know what. But she went to his room, and I thought I heard them talking for a while, but then they stopped. In a couple minutes I went into the room, and I saw them…. I closed the door partway so they wouldn’t see me, but I kept watching. I couldn’t stop. She didn’t cry, but he did, and I could swear he said my name.” Vibs thought for a long time. Violet had nothing to say, nothing to compare.