In The Blood (Book 2): The Blood Lies

by Lee Isserow

  Ben didn't know what to say. He didn't trust Steve any more, not now that he knew he was once with the group, that he betrayed them, and took great pleasure in killing them right in front of his eyes.

  Then again, he had betrayed the group too. Left breadcrumbs for Steve and the Tacks to follow, that lead them right to the group's door.

  “No,” he said, his tone steely, adamant. He wasn't turned by anyone, he was just told the truth for once.

  He slumped down on the floor, sinking in to the foam, and let out a deep sigh. All he could think about was Luke, a boy so much like him, seeing his mother die at such a young age. And Kat, the woman who loved that boy as if he were her own.

  Then Ben remembered something, Blood infects via contact, and Luke was born infected. Maybe that meant it could be passed through the placenta. If it could, then did that mean Luke's mother was infected too – and if so, why didn't her blood lash out or fight when it was devoured by Luke's 'goblin. 'Blood knows blood', that's what Luke kept saying. The words rung in his head. That phrase was so familiar, but he couldn't say where from. His father, maybe. Long ago, when he was a child, when he was given basic biology lessons at bedtime.

  “Is that right?” Steve asked, his words travelling on a bed of angry static that brought Ben back to the issue at hand, his current, awful predicament. “I've got a nasty feeling you've been... irrevocably contaminated...” A chuckle crackled through the speakers, sounding even more ominous with the intercom's whines and screeches. “You're going to have to prove you're not, prove that you still know which side you're on.”

  Ben had a nasty feeling in his gut, a tumultuous twisting and turning, an angry tide that was washing up against the shore of his stomach lining, sending bile back up into his mouth. A hot, acidic taste lingering on his bruised and bitten tongue as he tried to swallow it back down. His throat felt burned, scarred as he swallowed again, waiting in fearful anticipation of Steve's next words. Almost certain that he knew exactly how they would want him to prove his commitment to the Blood Squad.

  20

  As with in his previous cell, Ben couldn't tell the passage of time. It wasn't longer than an hour or two, her` was certain of that. His tongue was still tender, he could taste the blood that lingered on the wound. It clung to the bite marks, just as wet blood clung to his self-inflicted injuries from blades.

  He heard sounds outside the door, and readied himself, prepared to bite through his tongue again and attack whoever might be on the other side.

  “Don't be an idiot, Graham.” said a voice on the intercom system in the walls. Ailes. Ben could picture the grimace on his face as he said the words. “We're not going to hurt you... not if you're still playing for the right team.”

  Ben took a deep breath, exhaled slow and long, and let his guard down. The message seemed to go through to those on the other side of the door. The lock clunked, and it swung open with a wail. Two Tacks stood in the hallway, shotguns aimed directly at his head. A third came from behind the door and lifted his shotgun to join the others. There was no way out of this, not yet. Ben resolved himself to do as they wished of him, for now.

  Walking with one Tack next to him, and two behind, Ben was taken to the elevator, up to the Operations level, and to the door of the white room. The Tack that walked next to him signalled for him to stop, and unlocked the door. The two behind nudged him with the barrels of the shotguns to enter, and the door was slammed behind him, bolted shut.

  Ben looked to the shelf of blades. Above it, the mirror. He knew that Steve and Ailes would be standing behind it. Perhaps even Tess. He wanted to tell her everything, explain what he discovered whilst with the group, the lies told to them by MacGaulty, Ailes, and everyone else that worked under the remit of the Blood Squad. He prepared a speech, a tirade of truths, and then realised he was not alone in the room. There was a figure, behind him in the mirror, standing in the corner by the door. It was Kat, her cheeks stained with tears, anger in her blue eyes, the pupils so tiny in all that light, whites shot with red. And, Ben couldn't help but notice, she had a scalpel in her hand, the blade pointed at her wrist.

  “You betrayed us!” she screamed, bringing the gleaming silver edge closer to her skin.

  “I...” Ben struggled for words, struggled for breath. He wouldn't dare hurt her, he knew that for certain. The idea of killing her, of leaving Luke all alone in the world, it was abhorrent. “I... did,” he confessed.

  Kat pushed the blade harder against her wrist, not deep enough to cut yet, but enough force to turn the skin under it pale. She stared at him with eyes thick with tears ready to shed all over again. A look of devastation on her face, that he felt so awful for causing.

  “But I didn't mean to...” His own eyes were welling with tears. “I never meant to hurt any of you, let alone be responsible for the deaths of your friends, you've got to believe me!”

  She didn't, it seemed, the skin around the blade getting even paler as she laid more pressure behind the scalpel. She stared at him, her lips parted, letting out a soft exhale. She withdrew some of the pressure from the blade, as if she was starting to believe him. Perhaps, Ben thought, she was even seeing what Luke saw in him, that he wasn't like the others.

  Her grip on the scalpel loosened, it fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. No blood shed, just a thin line on her wrist from the pressure.

  “They want us to kill each other,” she said. “This is all a game to them. A sick game!”

  There was the mechanical whine of the intercom, followed by an all too familiar chuckle. “Oh, it's not a game,” said Steve, with another chuckle. His laughter, which Ben once took as good natured, now seemed to have a much darker, more sadistic tone. “But if it were a game, the two most important pieces are now under our control... after all, your boy is the most remarkable infected anyone has ever seen.” Another chuckle. “And you, my friend, we believe you are patient zero.

  21

  Back in his cell, Steve's words went round and round in Ben's head. He couldn't stop thinking about it. He had specifically said 'your boy'. Kat was Luke's mother. She was infected now, and must have been before he was born. That's why she wasn't killed, whilst her sister and the GP were.

  He wondered if Luke knew. The child was always saying 'blood knows blood', perhaps that was what he meant. He wondered how it were possible that Luke could have been born at all, with the 'goblins flowing through her veins. Maybe she didn't give birth in a hospital, knowing that anyone uninfected who came near her during the birth was likely going to be devoured by the demons in her blood.

  This line of thought was a distraction, and Ben knew it. Playing out their family drama in his mind, rather than dealing with the implications of Steve's other statement, that he was patient zero. The origin of the condition.

  He heard a breath over the speakers in the walls. “So they turned you...” It was MacGaulty, but these words had no chuckle attached. His tone was low, words slow, solemn, sounding as though he was disappointed.

  “Did the government turn you?” Ben spat back, staring at the ceiling. “Or were you always working for them, undercover.”

  That brought on a chuckle from Steve, but his tone didn't change. “Bit from column A, bit from column B.”

  “Luke was a catalyst for you to leave, wasn't he. You saw him, saw what he could do, and you wanted that for yourself.” Ben found himself talking as if on automatic pilot. He hadn't dwelled on any of this, the words coming out two steps ahead of his thoughts. “But he wouldn't teach you, would he? Blood knows blood, that's what he says, isn't it? I bet he could tell right off the bat that your blood was rotten to the core. The only way you were going to learn what he could do was by capturing him, forcing him. Using his mother as collateral. That's why they're the only two of the group still alive, isn't it? That was always the plan, joining back up with the Squad, hunting them down. Does Ailes know that, that you're using his division just so you can have more power, more control over your 'goblins?�
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  There was a scoff over the speakers. “Ailes knows full well what I want the lad for. The lab is having a gay old time seeing how he works, and it's going quite marvellously.”

  Ben wasn't sure whether to believe him or not. He didn't trust anything coming out of the man's mouth, not any more, not now he knew how much of it was false.

  “But, I'm not here to talk about him,” Steve continued. “I'm here to talk about you, or more specifically, your father.”

  It was Ben's turn to scoff.. “Haven't heard back from him in years. And he's a neurologist, what the hell does he have to do with you?”

  A chuckle came though the speakers, a real chuckle, long and hard. “Is that what he told you? His minor was in neurology, he was a haematologist by trade. He studied blood, treated blood, and you were the bi-product of his greatest endeavour. ”

  There was no voice in Ben's throat. He knew he couldn't trust a word MacGaulty said to him, but there was something about the statement that rang true, and he just couldn't shake it.

  “Now be a good lad, and tell us where the old bastard is. I've got a lot of questions that need answering...”

  “You know what? He was a crappy father at the best of times, and this is nothing close to the best of times! You seem to know more about him than I do – he was barely there when I was growing up. These days, he doesn't even answer my damn emails... how do you expect me to know where the hell he is?” As the words left his mouth, Ben found himself wondering if it wasn't distraction that had kept his father from replying. He knew full well that the old man had a habit of sleeping with his research grads as a way to pass the time, but what if that wasn't why he hadn't responded. He might know that MacGaulty was after him, and be hiding out somewhere. Wherever his father was, the Squad had no clue how to track him down. So he was safe, for now.

  “I don't know anything,” Ben said, insistent.

  “Well,” Steve said, Ben could picture the smile on his lips. “Do you know that you killed your mother?”

  A chill rocketed down his spine, the same chill he felt when he learned of Luke's story.

  “There was a break in, that much is true, and you walked down the stairs as you remember, picked up a shard of glass like an idiot, cut yourself open, let the 'goblins out. And they sunk sixteen teeth into her gut and kidneys, sucked the bitch dry!”

  The nightmare was true, all of it. And the man he almost killed – the man his blood killed – was just a man. Ben was the monster, the one he had wished vengeance on for all these years. He had been ever since that night, since before that night, and somewhere deep down he believed what he was being told, that his father was the one responsible for setting him on this path.

  Tears were welling in his eyes. He reminded himself of all of Steve's lies. It couldn't be true, it just couldn't. He tried to think back, struggled to remember times he had scratched or cut himself as a child, shed blood from any scrapes or skinned knees, but no examples came to him. If what he was being told was true, that meant the creatures, the 'goblins, had been in his blood this whole time. It meant MacGaulty wasn't lying. He was patient zero.

  “Maybe you know where he is,” Steve continued. “Maybe you don't. Either way, we're gonna have a fun ol' time finding out!”

  Ben didn't know what that meant, but he knew he would do whatever it took to escape and find his father. These people had lied to him about the condition, the infection, the blood driven, and as far as he was concerned, he couldn't trust a damn word any of them said. The only person he could trust was his father, and even that 'could' felt uneasy. But if anyone would know the truth, at the very least about what happened that night, the night of his nightmares, it would be him.

  But to get to him, to find him, he'd have to break out of the Blood Squad's headquarters. And he promised himself, then and there, he wouldn't be leaving alone.

  22

  Ben woke up to found himself sitting in a chair. His hands and legs were restrained. Some kind of soft, chewy plastic had been put in his mouth, to stop him from biting through his lips or tongue. He was no longer in the padded room. At some point they must have flooded the room with gas, knocked him out, and relocated him whilst he was unconscious.

  A Tack, in full uniform and mask stood over him, a baton in his hands. He smiled through the visor, an unnerving and cruel smile. He raised the baton, bringing it down into Ben's gut, knocking the wind out of him. He raised the baton again, and dealt another blow, then a third. He seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to beat seven shades out of Ben, and as long as he only injured his prisoner internally, he had nothing to fear.

  After his beating, Ben was taken back to his cell, door slammed and locked behind him. Being underground for the duration of the short walk from torture chamber to padded room, Ben couldn't tell if it was night or day. The Squad seemed to want him disoriented, keeping the lights on, as bright as they could be in his cell whenever he was in there. Slade's 'Do They Know It's Christmas' played over and over on top volume and on repeat. If Ben didn't already know the lyrics through and through, he would have done after the first day of his interrogation.

  No sleep, no food, no water. He fondly recalled the way the 'blood-driven' had treated him. Being their prisoner didn't seem so bad in comparison. Whenever the memory came to him, it felt like halcyon days, which brought a slim, albeit temporary smile to his face.

  His mistreatment went on and on. No way to tell how long they were putting him through the same routine. Ben's thoughts were increasingly clouded, basic functions became hard to process. But he wouldn't give in, wouldn't become soft or weak, wouldn't let them win. By threatening the lives of Kat and Luke, by bringing up his father, they had inadvertently given him a reason to fight. The man he was before all of this, that Ben would have given in on day one, with the first baton to the gut. They had created this new version of him, through the training, through the deceit. They had made him stronger than he ever would have been without their intervention.

  Over those days, however many days it was, he never saw Kat, nor Luke. And he wouldn't let himself ask about them. That would only show them that he cared about their well-being, and that would give them a card they could use against him.

  He feared that the two of them would be going through the same torture. Ben couldn't imagine the Tacks would actually take a baton to a five year old's tiny belly, but that didn't stop him picturing it.

  The torture continued. Each time in the chair carefully planned, scheduled according to the time it would take his 'goblins to almost fix the previous session's damage. Ben's mind was becoming fractured, his body a dead weight. But one thought rose to the surface as they made him suffer over and over again. One thought that would change everything; blood knows blood.

  23

  Malnourishment and sleep deprivation did not treat Ben kindly. He had become a pale refraction of the man he was when the Squad captured him. Thin, weak, frail. The very thought of sitting up, let alone standing was enough to exhaust him.

  He began to sink inwards, talking without words to his own blood, pleading with the 'goblins, begging them for help with achingly slow thoughts.

  Luke had managed to control it, the blood, in a way unlike anyone Ben had ever seen. If that was because, as he had been told, the boy was born infected, he was starting to question his own point of infection. If what Steve had said was true, that he was infected at a young age, then perhaps he was just as connected. He could feel the familiar feeling of pressure under his skull, a subtle pounding in his head as the thoughts made their way across his neural tissue. His frontal lobe was tingling, motor cortex pulsating. He had always thought of that feeling as a psychosomatic condition, it had been with him for as long as he could recall. But what if it wasn't psychosomatic, what if it wasn't a result of his father's bedtime stories. What if that was the blood, communicating with him.

  The lock on the door clunked aggressively, and was swung open with force, the Tack's looking forward to their upcoming
torture session. As they grabbed Ben's body, he wasn't present, he didn't even hear the door open or feel their gloved hands wrap round his skeletal frame. He was deep in his mind, listening to the pulse of the 'goblins in his head, trying to parlez with them.

  Ben could feel the blood swirling through his body as they tortured him again. This time the session only began with a beating, followed by his trousers being removed. The Tacks attached a grounding wire to his toes, and a live wire to his testicles, feeding voltage through his genitals in violet bursts, shocks ricochetting through his fragile body. But their attempts at destroying Ben's will were useless. His consciousness had drifted off, focussing on the plasma winding and weaving its way through his arteries, veins and capillaries. He could hear the sounds it made, not the sloshing and swirling of liquid through his body, but whispers that rippled under his skin.

  He knew it could have just been a hallucination, a delusion, caused by lack of sleep and sustenance, but he chose to believe it was real. It was his only hope. So, he pleaded with it, begged it, with words unspoken, for it to rescue him from this cycle of violence. But it was not to be Ben's blood that would be his saviour.

  24

  Ben's consciousness was no longer present in the torture sessions. This brought displeasure to the Tacks, who had been taking turns in dealing the blows. The ones that came late to the torture party, who did not garner a satisfying reaction from their blows and mistreatment of Ben, did not seem satisfied with batons to the gut, and started taking to smacking at his bones, cracking his skull, dislocating his knees and arms. When that still did not bring the visible signs of pain they desired, they began choking him. That too barely brought any cries to stop, and so they took to water boarding him. When even that proved fruitless, they began coming up with new ways to make him suffer.