Going through the motions, Keagan repeated the process of asking if Abir knew what a picana was, explaining the kind of pain the man could expect, and brandishing the weapon. The kid looked terrified and opened his mouth, probably to give the same confession Franklin had given about Marshall and Dean conspiring within the camp.
Keagan shushed him. Abir clamped his mouth shut.
“What would life be like in this camp,” Keagan asked, “if you couldn’t see at all?”
Rising off the stool—the guard lifting the battery and its connecting cord to accommodate Keagan—he raised the tip of the wand to Abir’s eye, the only one he had left.
“I know you want to confess,” Keagan said, aware he was channeling Halsidier—using the same kind of vile tactic he had witnessed the general use on the prisoner named Jason. “I know you want to tell me what really happened, not what you’ve been trained to say. Because if it’s true, then it doesn’t really matter anyway. I’m going to find them. You shouldn’t have to pay for their sins. You shouldn’t have to live the rest of your life in darkness.”
Panicking now, Abir’s good eye rolled up as if to get away from the picana’s tip. His entire body shook with each breath.
“They’re still in the camp,” Abir said.
“Who?” Keagan roared.
“Michael and Dean! They’re… they…”
My God. Keagan’s breath caught in his throat.
Oh, my God…
Weeping now, Abir let his head drop. Keagan passed the picana back to the guard, then clamped his hands around Abir’s neck as if to plant a kiss on his forehead.
“Abir, listen to me,” Keagan said, tilting the young man’s head back. He was more boy than man, really. Just a kid like the one Andrea had watched eat shit in her dream. Except this kid had gone through something much worse, having lost an eye to Camp Brazen.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was.
Whimpering like a child, Abir met Keagan’s gaze.
“It’s okay,” Keagan soothed. “You made a mistake. You called him Michael instead of Marshall. I know that’s his real name. A man like him—a telepathic spy—wouldn’t use his real name with the rest of us, right? Not if he was undercover.”
Weakly, Abir nodded. He sniffled when liquid dripped from his nose and ran over his upper lip. Keagan wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“Good, Abir,” Keagan said. “Very good. Now, I want you to tell me about Arielle. Tell me about the dreams. How are they doing it?”
Keagan no longer had to hold up the boy’s head. Seemingly stunned at what he had just heard, Abir stiffened, his good eye widening all the way.
“You know,” he whispered.
“I know,” Keagan assured him. “In fact, I know they’re probably listening right now. But they won’t blame you because I already know what’s going on. I just want to hear it from you.”
“My dreams…” Abir said.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Keagan said, smiling. “Did you ever think such a thing was possible?”
“No, sir,” Abir said, clearly seeming more confident, maybe even pleased to be able to share his experience—his brush with such incredible power.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Keagan glanced over his shoulder at the guard. “Leave us, Private.”
“Sir?”
“Get the hell out of here. Take the bag. That’s an order.”
Once the cell door clicked shut and they were alone, Keagan uncuffed the boy’s wrists and wrapped his arms around him to prevent a fall. He eased him onto the stool and returned his shirt, which Abir quickly slid over his shivering body.
“What happened in the dreams?” Keagan asked. “What did they show you, Abir?”
Abir’s expression took on the distant, sentimental expression of a boy recounting a visit to his beloved grandparent’s estate in the countryside. He told Keagan about a beautiful town surrounded by mountains, and a girl—just as beautiful, if not more so—named Arielle, who had promised to take him there.
Then he described an even more incredible dream, which had not been a dream at all—not exactly.
It was a place.
“The Dreamscape,” Abir called it. “We meet there every night, with Michael and his friends. He promised to protect us. He told us we could leave with him. Get away from Camp Brazen to stay with him in that little town until we’re rested and ready to go back to New Dallas.”
“Where is this town?” Keagan asked.
“No one knows. But we’ve all seen it the same way. In the mountains. Like it’s our hometown, and we all grew up there. We’ve just forgotten how to get back, that’s all.”
“Does it have a name?”
Abir shook his head. “Not one we know. Not yet, anyway.”
“Very good. And they promised to take you there,” Keagan said, to which Abir nodded. Was that a hint of a smile on his lips? Had he forgotten who he was speaking to?
Must be one hell of a gorgeous town.
“How?” Keagan asked. “What needs to happen first, before you’re all ready to take this trip to the mountains?”
Abir’s sudden discomfort was obvious. Angling his gaze down at the floor, he gave a meek shrug.
“We need to have hope and not be afraid,” he said, then he was nodding, a steely, determined look coming into his eyes. “We have to earn it.”
10
Keagan walked more confidently—with a light spring in his step of which he wasn’t sure he approved—toward the mess hall.
From now on, he would take his meals in the dining area. Abir and Franklin always sat with the same group of prisoners—a group Dean Hampton and Michael had once been included in—and it was worth memorizing their faces and names.
The interrogations weren’t over, but now Keagan had a tool better than a picana or any sort of torture device.
The truth.
Camp Brazen was being hijacked.
As he took a seat at the officer’s dining table, he thought he saw Marshall’s face—no, Michael’s face—being worn like a mask by every prisoner in the room. Part of him wanted to get up and join them, take a seat among those bearded, dirty men, so he could better understand what they must have been thinking.
The thought excited him.
You’re not the bad guy.
(Andrea’s words, playing on repeat in his mind.)
You’re the solution.
Lost in thought, he picked at a boring plate of dry chicken breast, lumpy mashed potatoes, and vinegar-soaked spinach.
The solution…
But the solution to what, Andrea?
If he could have the answer to any question, it would be that one.
Suddenly, as he searched the officer’s table, another question struck him.
Where the hell is Halsidier?
“Have you seen the general lately?” he asked the officer seated to his right.
Officer Moriarty was shoveling food into his mouth. Without glancing at Keagan, he shrugged and spoke around a mouthful of potatoes.
“No, sir. Beats me. Doesn’t usually miss dinner, though.”
It was then Keagan heard the gunshot—a loud, echoing crack like the one he’d heard the night before. Leaping to his feet, he felt his training immediately take over.
“You three, with me.” He pointed at a trio of stunned officers. “The rest of you, guns out and eyes on the prisoners. Don’t let them out of your sight.”
Another crack of a pistol being fired sent Keagan sprinting out of the mess hall, his men on his heels.
Strangely, the prisoners continued eating as if nothing unusual had taken place—as if the gunshots were no more than the harmless noise of construction going on outside.
A blast of hot, humid air hit him in the face as he threw the door open. Gun in one hand, he used the other to shield his eyes from the sun. The stretch of barren land between the mess hall and the huts was empty.
“What do you think it was?” an officer asked.
Keagan waited.
This was no accident. Whatever they were meant to see, it was only a matter of time.
“There.” Keagan pointed, spotting something in the distance. “Be ready.”
A naked man was sprinting wildly toward them, waving a gun in the air. Portlier than the other officers and soldiers, his belly shook above hairy, swinging genitals.
“He’s one of ours,” an officer said.
“Jim Roth,” another exclaimed. “But why is he… I’ll be damned, what the wrath is he doing?”
As Officer Roth neared, shouting something incoherent at the top of his lungs. Keagan studied the area behind him. No sign of anyone giving chase, except maybe the phantoms in his own mind. Keagan sighed in frustration. This was getting embarrassing.
“Holster your guns,” he ordered his men, putting his own away.
Raising his hands, palms forward, Keagan approached Roth in hopes of slowing him down and shutting him up before every goddamned prisoner in the mess hall heard him.
“The walls have been breached,” Roth shouted, practically shrieking the last word. “They’re pouring in from all sides!”
Keagan took his gun out again, searching the walls in the distance.
Nothing—that he could see, anyway. But maybe Roth had spotted something that wasn’t there? An illusion…
“Who?” Keagan asked. “Who’s coming? And why the hell are you naked, Officer Roth?”
Completely winded, Roth stopped several feet in front of Keagan. He bent over to collect his breath.
“The… they’re…aliens!” Spinning suddenly on his heels, he fired into the distance. “Got one!”
He turned to face Keagan and the other officers.
“What the hell are you dummies waiting for? They’re invading! Shoot them!”
Keagan was about to order Roth to shut his mouth when another shot rang out, this time from his right. He ducked instinctively. For a split-second, it seemed the camp might truly be under attack.
Roth was hit.
His neck seemed to snap as his head slammed against his right shoulder, his body already beginning to tilt. Blood mist still hung in the air as his heavy frame slammed against the ground and rolled slightly, settling.
Keagan immediately turned to his right. His arm flew up to aim his pistol at his enemy.
Expecting to see a prisoner—Dean Hampton came to mind, for some reason—Keagan would have fired a fatal shot without hesitation, consequences be damned. No one killed an officer in Camp Brazen, not under his watch.
The shock of what he saw next caused his entire body to seize, his finger flying off the trigger.
“Don’t shoot him,” Keagan shouted, aware his men had also raised their guns. At the last second, he sprang forward to fling an officer’s arm away, causing him to shoot up at the sky instead.
“Christ, don’t shoot him,” Keagan said again, getting between them and their intended target. The officers stared past him in openmouthed shock. “That’s the general!”
Amazingly, Halsidier seemed unfazed by what had almost happened—as if he hadn’t noticed the four men pointing guns at him. Keagan got the sense Halsidier hadn’t even flinched at the accidental misfire.
Standing perfectly still in an expert gunslinger’s pose—one arm extended, the pistol trained on the dead man, body slightly turned to decrease visible mass—the general seemed as if he were waiting to have his picture taken, to preserve the moment.
He was even smiling.
“Sir,” Keagan called. “General Halsidier.”
Lowering his arm, Halsidier spun the weapon on one finger before stuffing it into its holster. Then he turned his back on his men before striding casually toward headquarters.
In the dead silence of Camp Brazen, Keagan heard the general whistling a cheerful tune, a light bounce in each step.
11
At breakfast the next morning, Keagan set down a plate of scummy eggs, cornbread, and a glass of water—none of which he felt like consuming. Not that he was having any problem with the food, which was just as bland and repetitive as any other meal he’d consumed at Camp Brazen. He was used to it.
The cause for his lack of appetite was the taste of Officer Roth’s blood. Unable to wipe away the coppery taste of it on his lips, he felt as if the blood mist from the man’s corpse had infiltrated every cell in his body.
General Halsidier wasn’t present—a relief, as always, but more so on this day than any other. The previous evening, Keagan had ordered Officer Roth’s body wrapped in the WDPRA flag and delivered by truck to the Republic, where it belonged.
Officially, Roth had been shot in the head after having his gun wrested out of his hands by a suicidal prisoner, who then turned the gun on himself. One of the officers suggested they kill a random prisoner and hang his body in the camp as a warning to the others, which would have been standard protocol if the official version of Roth’s death had been the reality. To make it look right, the officer had claimed.
Offering no explanation, Keagan demoted him on the spot and sent him to clean the HQ bathrooms as punishment.
Picking at his eggs and cornbread, Keagan sighed and got up, taking his plate with him. There were more interrogations to be conducted. He had already wasted the entire morning prepping his men in the event of an investigation by the Republic into Roth’s death. Unsurprisingly, such an investigation would probably never happen. Out here, they were mostly on their own, Harris Kole’s ministers having made it loud and clear Camp Brazen wasn’t worth the effort of allocating funds even for the most basic essentials, like security cameras and all-terrain vehicles.
Before he could move away from the table, Keagan noticed something strange—more an absence of a thing rather than the thing itself.
Aside from the occasional sounds being made by the officers, the mess hall was dead silent—nothing to indicate the scraping of plastic forks across trays, cups being lifted and set back down, or even the occasional throat clearing or slurp as the meals were consumed.
Scanning the mess hall, Keagan saw why.
The prisoners were sitting perfectly still above their untouched meals with spines erect, hands on their laps, and eyes staring blankly forward. Keagan couldn’t even be certain they were still breathing.
“Men, look alive,” he said, barely glancing at the other officers as he addressed them.
Met only with the most chilling silence he had ever experienced—the mess hall was now tomblike—Keagan turned to face the officer’s table.
His tray slipped from his weakened grasp.
It hit the floor with a clatter. Food scattered all over his shoes, though he barely noticed.
It had to be a dream. Not a single one of his men had responded to the banging of the tray against the floor. As still as wax sculptures, they sat in various poses of eating—forks frozen midway toward mouths, hands caught in the act of wiping napkins across faces, one officer even sitting perfectly still as the cup he’d tilted against his lips spilled water down the sides of his face, soaking his shirt. The guards standing against the walls had become statues.
“If you’re listening to me, Michael,” Keagan said, addressing the incomprehensible layer of brain waves he pictured as watery ripples above the prisoner’s heads, “then I want you to hear my next words carefully. I won’t be your puppet, and I won’t sit around waiting for you to make your move. If I have to, I’ll call Harris Kole and have him send the entire Fatherland Security Department to flush you out of hiding.”
A man’s voice filled the room. Keagan flinched at the sudden sound, which felt like a bomb exploding, shattering the silence, seeming to come from all directions at once.
“You know that’s not a good idea, Simon.”
The creak of a bench came from over by the main entrance.
Suddenly as frozen as the men around him, Keagan watched Dean Hampton rise from a seat at one of the tables—had he been there the entire time?—and walk calmly toward him.
Finding the will to move again, Kea
gan yanked his pistol out of its holster and aimed it squarely at Dean’s chest.
“Don’t come any closer,” he said.
Dean Hampton stopped, though he didn’t put his hands up or duck to get away. He didn’t seem afraid at all.
If Keagan emptied his clip at the man, would he hit an actual human body? Or would the bullets fly straight through an illusion like lead through a ghost?
Ghosts, Keagan mused. They’ve finally come for me. The ones I always knew would pay me a visit.
“You won’t shoot me,” Dean said.
“Oh?” Keagan aimed down the sights. “And why not, Hampton? I hold you personally responsible for the death of that officer.”
“And yet,” Dean said, “you lack the courage to confront the man who actually shot him. The general.”
“Wouldn’t have happened if you and your boy hadn’t stirred things up.”
Dean nodded, a secretive smile bending his cracked lips. Despite likely being an illusion, he appeared the same as he always had—a skinny, ragged, bearded prisoner who desperately needed extra portions at mealtime.
“What do you want?” Keagan asked.
His gun didn’t waver. Hampton didn’t seem to care.
“You’re not the bad guy here…” Hampton said.
Keagan finished for him. “No, I’m the solution, right? Like the junk you and Arielle have been filtering into my wife’s head? I’ve had enough of scripted answers to my questions and bullshit tidbits of wisdom about changing the world. This is a spiteful prison camp, and we’re in the business of imprisoning enemy soldiers. We signed up for this when we joined the ranks, so if you have a problem with the morality of warfare, take it up with Harris Kole—or God Himself.”
His amusement painfully obvious, Hampton tapped the side of his forehead.
“And you said you wouldn’t be a puppet, Simon.”
Keagan fired a shot above the ghost’s head. Hampton didn’t flinch—didn’t even blink. The soldiers around him remained as still as before.
Hampton grinned. “The warden I knew was a better shot than that.”
“I know shooting you might be futile,” Keagan said, lowering the weapon slightly. Hampton was unarmed, after all—illusion or not. “But I won’t hesitate to shoot one of your men, unless you tell me what the hell you want.”
Bloodcrier: The Complete Two-Book Series Page 56