Rats.
The other kids stopped spasming and wrenched their way free from their restraints, leaving bloody handprints on the wall as they stood. I found myself face to face with a line of vermin ready to tear me limb from limb. The fear which made me want to run was also the thing that kept me rooted to the spot, and I could do nothing but watch as they staggered towards me.
Something exploded in my ear, the noise so loud that my heart missed a beat. It came again, the blast of a shot, then again and again as bullets tore through the air and punched into the transformed boys. In a heartbeat the room was full of smoke and the kids were nothing but corpses.
A voice replaced the gunshots, a language I didn’t speak but a tone I could easily understand. I felt the sting of the hot gun barrel against my temple and closed my eyes, praying for silence once again so that I wouldn’t hear the shot that killed me.
When I woke the sensation of being executed was almost real. The front of my face burned as it had when I was lying in the incinerator, a pressure in my eyes that felt like something was trying to crawl into my head. My arms were still locked tight, and there was nothing to stop the panic spewing up from my gut – until I realised that instead of darkness I was bathed in a halo of weak light.
I snatched in a long breath, tried to clamp down on the fear. I blinked, hoping that the fuzzy glow before me would focus into something recognisable. It didn’t, remaining a featureless cloud of milky grey. I scrunched up my face, feeling something tied tight around my head, and suddenly knew what had happened.
When they took off my bandages I would have eyes of cold silver.
I wanted to cry, but the warden’s poison – what had he called it, nectar? – still lay heavy across my thoughts and stopped the emotions breaking free. Even so, the image of myself with the eyes of a blacksuit, of a rat, danced against a backdrop of smoke and shadow and it was all I could do not to scream. I’d rather be blind.
It was the first thing they did to you, I knew that much. I thought back to when I’d gone into the infirmary and found Gary lying in a bed the same way I was now, bandages strapped to his face and dark stains spreading out from his eyes. Next they would butcher my body, my face, stuffing me with muscles until I was big enough to fill one of their black suits. And by that time the nectar would have done its job, destroying my brain just as the scalpels had destroyed my body. Making me one of them.
And all I could do was lie here and dream. Nightmares when I slept, nightmares when I woke.
As if trying to distract me from my thoughts a weak groan fluttered up over the beep of my heart monitor, hanging in the air for a second before dying. Someone else repeated it, closer this time, ending in a choked sob. I opened my mouth, flexed my jaw, took as deep a breath as the pain would let me.
‘Zee?’ I whispered, a word as dry as my throat. I tried again, managed a hiss. ‘Zee?’
The only response I got was a wheezer’s song, a tuneless squeal like a broken engine. There was a shuffle of boots on stone, the clink of needles as it walked my way. I blinked again, the pain a pressure that threatened to crack my skull. Being here was even worse than being locked in the darkness of the hole. At least I knew I was alone there.
‘Zee?’ I said, distress giving strength to my cry. ‘Simon?’
‘Hush.’ The reply was so soft that I wondered if I’d imagined it. Only it came again, close enough to be from the next compartment. ‘Alex, if that’s you you’ve got to stay quiet. They’ll kill you if they hear you talking.’
‘Zee?’ I asked, quieter this time. The voice was too soft to place it, even with Zee’s accent. There was no answer, only the clink of curtain rails as the screen by my bed was pulled aside. I heard the wheezer right above me, that grotesque purr like it was gargling blood. For what seemed like an eternity nothing happened, then I felt a stabbing pain in my arm. Before I could even cry out I felt something rush into my veins like cold smoke, the poison flushing every last thought from my mind.
I called out again, yet this time it was nothing but an echo in my head which pulled me back into the boundless night.
SECOND SIGHT
‘Why do you fight it?’
It was words that had pulled me under, now it was words wrenching me back up. Even as I woke from more nightmares – the same visions of boys becoming monsters – I recognised his voice. The way it hung in the air made me realise we weren’t in the infirmary any more, that and the absence of any other sound.
‘Why do you resist it? What I’m offering you is power, something you’ve never had before. Open your eyes.’
I realised I was sitting up, my arms and legs still bound. The pain was now a dull throb, the light streaming through my eyelids still a featureless fog. I shook my head, knowing that to obey the warden would only bring more agony.
‘Open your eyes,’ he repeated, and this time his voice carried the promise of something worse than pain. I swallowed hard, taking down nothing but air, then tried to open my eyes. For a second nothing happened, then with a sickly sound the lids parted. It felt like somebody was holding a welding iron to my retinas and I screwed them shut again.
‘It only hurts for a moment,’ the warden said, and the compassion in his tone threw me. I opened my eyes a crack, gritting my teeth as the torture became discomfort, then discomfort became nothing more than an itch. Gradually the world swam into focus, and I saw to my surprise that what I thought had been light turned out to be something else entirely.
I was in a room made up of silver lines. It reminded me of one of those pictures you got when you were a kid and you had to scratch off the black layer to reveal the metal underneath. Only this picture was three-dimensional and laid out in intricate detail. I squinted, making out every scratch on the stone walls, every crack in the low ceiling, every mote of dust on the floor. There was too much information to take in and I gagged, although there was nothing in my stomach to come up.
‘Take it easy,’ the warden said from behind me, his voice still laced with a kindness that I never thought I would hear. ‘It’s a lot to get used to.’
He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, then walked round until he entered my field of vision. To my new eyes he resembled an angel, his skin radiating a platinum glow, every stitch of fabric in his suit as large and as clear as the Grand Canyon. Even though I still couldn’t look him in the eye I could see what lay there – two portals of cold fire which cast light onto the room and made everything appear to be made from molten lead.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, wishing I could lift a hand to shield myself from the intensity of his glare.
‘I told you,’ he said, his words appearing as a light mist which hung in the air before him like breath on a cold morning. ‘I’m offering you power. Power you never could have imagined.’
I shook my head, knowing that he was lying, trying to lower my defences.
‘There is no trick,’ he went on with a laugh. ‘Don’t you trust your own eyes?’
‘They’re not mine,’ I spat back, screwing them shut.
‘Oh, but they are,’ he said, and I felt his smooth fingers grab my chin, turning my head to face him. ‘It’s only natural to fight, but think about what I am offering. Did you ever dream you would be able to see in the dark?’
I snapped my eyes open and this time my quickening pulse had nothing to do with fear. I looked again at the walls and their network of silver veins, saw the pores on the hand that held me.
‘Lights,’ the warden said, and instantly the room turned inside out – silver becoming substance, shadows blasted away by colour. I felt the world spin but the warden’s fingers on my flesh kept me steady. Only when my vision had settled did he let go, pacing back and forth as if deep in thought. I took in my surroundings, a small room with the chair I was sitting in and a screen on the wall in front of me. Everything still seemed to carry far more detail than was possible, as if seen through a magnifying glass.
‘This is just the beginning,’ th
e warden continued. ‘You’ll soon see what true power is. Tell me, is there not a part of you that hates the world for what it has done? That hates being the child who can be pushed around, treated like dirt, who has no control over his life?’
I knew what the warden was doing, knew he was trying to manipulate me, but something in his words struck home with a force I couldn’t deny. He was right. The world had forgotten me, locked me up and thrown away the key. I thought about all the times I’d dreamed of being able to fight my way out of Furnace, destroying everything in my path until I broke into the sunlight.
‘No,’ I said, trying to recover my thoughts. It was the warden who had taken my life, him and his blacksuits. If they hadn’t killed Toby and framed me for his murder then I could have taken control, I could have straightened out. ‘No, this is your doing. You did this to me.’
The warden stopped pacing and turned to face me once again. In the cold light of the room his gaze was sickening, and even though I closed my eyes and turned away I could feel his thoughts inside my own. He began to tut like a mother scolding her child.
‘I know, I know. It is because of me that you are here. But think about what I am offering you. If you surrender to me then nobody up there’ – he almost spat those two words – ‘can ever tell you what to do again. The world is changing, and is it not better to be with those who wield power than those who are subjects to it?’
‘I won’t let you turn me into one of them,’ I shouted back. But again the warden’s words burrowed into my heart, made it pound not with terror but with something else. Excitement.
‘Everything you have ever wished for, and all we ask is that you forget your old life. Think about it, think long and hard. What are you giving up? A history of weakness, of crime, of being told what to do. Would you really miss it?’
‘But, my parents …’ I tried, causing him to bark with laughter.
‘Your parents? The ones who abandoned you when you needed them most, who left you here to rot without even fighting for an appeal against your sentence. They are part of the disease that was your old life. Give it up, give it all up, and embrace something new.’
‘It’s who I am,’ I said. ‘I won’t let you have it.’
‘How can you stop me unless you surrender to me? Without my help you are powerless. There is nothing for you in your past. Forget it, forget who you were, and give yourself to me.’
For a horrible instant I almost succumbed. Something in my blood bubbled up in response to his words. I could see myself as one of them, too strong to be told what to do, too fast to be caught. An unstoppable force that could take revenge on anyone who wronged me.
But it wouldn’t be me. It wouldn’t be me.
I thought about Donovan, who must have been put through this same process. I saw him fighting it again and again until he had no strength left. And I saw what he had become, his soulless grin, his overstuffed body, his dead eyes.
‘Never!’ I screamed, wrenching at the straps which held me to the chair. ‘My name is Alex Sawyer. My name is Alex Sawyer. Alex Sawyer, Alex Sawyer, Alex Sawyer.’
And I kept saying it, over and over, even when the warden’s fury erupted, even when the wheezer that had been standing silently behind me jabbed another needle in my arm. I kept saying it until the poison once again smothered my voice, and even then it burned through my mind chasing every other thought into the darkness.
‘So be it,’ said the warden. ‘We can do this the hard way. Pin his eyes, start the reel.’
I fought the hands that grabbed me, but what could I do? I felt my head clamped to the back of the chair, felt something jab into the flesh around my eyes. And when the screen in front of me came to life in a blur of reds I discovered that I couldn’t blink, couldn’t turn away.
‘Everyone wants power, whether they admit it or not. Let’s see how you feel after a day in here.’
Then, with a clatter of bars and the squeal of a door, they were gone, leaving me alone with the worst sights of the world.
It started with animals, somewhere on the open plains of Africa, I guessed. The footage was scarred and faded, as though the reel had been played a million times before, but it couldn’t hide the violence displayed on screen. Lions chased springboks, claws through tendons to bring them down then teeth in throats to make sure they couldn’t get back up. Packs of wild dogs ganged up on baby wildebeest, charging in with drooling jaws for the kill. Gazelles were slaughtered in high-speed chases by cheetahs, the muzzles of their killers caked in blood.
It could have been something from the Discovery Channel, a highlight reel of nature’s most ferocious kills. I almost laughed at how ridiculous it was. Except I could feel something inside me churning at the sights. At first I thought it was pity for the creatures that died. When I watched shows like this as a kid I rooted for the quarry, prayed that it would make it to safety. I used to hate it when the predators won, hated their smug expressions as they feasted on raw flesh. I was always on the side of the chased.
But now, bolted to a chair with the whole world pinning me down, I no longer felt pity for the prey. Every time I saw a wide-eyed antelope tumble into the dirt, the flurry of white and red as the lion literally tore its life away, I grinned with sick satisfaction. My stomach clenched like it used to do when I’d robbed a house. Goosebumps broke out on my skin and I felt my pulse beat a little bit faster. When I saw the light ebb from the eyes of a rabbit, crushed beneath a giant paw, I felt nothing but hatred for the creature’s weakness, and nothing but admiration for the beast that had bettered it.
The sensation was so intense that it soon made me forget about the pain in my eyes. For the first few minutes they had burned, but as kill followed kill followed kill the agony seemed to become a part of me, a small sacrifice I had to make to grow into a stronger person – the same way lions and cheetahs and wild dogs had to go through hell and back each day just to survive. I don’t know how much time had passed, and how much blood had flowed, before I admitted to myself I wouldn’t have looked away even if I’d had the option.
I tried to tell myself that it was the poison in my blood which had altered my thoughts. And there was some truth in that – I could feel the nectar push its way around my body with every beat of my heart, the dark liquid alive inside my veins as though the footage on screen was calling to it.
Deep down, though, I knew why I savoured the slaughter before me with such relish. The warden was right, I was powerless. I was one of the pathetic grazers of the Serengeti, a rabbit or an antelope too cowardly to do anything but run when danger threatened. Every moment of my life I had been tense, ready to bolt – when I was breaking into houses, when I was framed for Toby’s murder, when I found myself face to face with the gangs in general population. I was always the prey, never the predator.
And this was never more true than when I was chased by the blacksuits. Fast, powerful and fearless they were the ultimate hunters, the true kings of this underground jungle. I could never be anything other than the quarry caught helpless and screaming beneath their shoes.
Unless I became one of them.
I wasn’t sure if the voice in my head was mine or the warden’s, and the shock of it brought me back. I tried to blink, to twist my head, but the movements only gave the pain a fresh hold on me. Desperate to escape any way I could, I let my vision swim out of focus so that the pictures on screen became blurs. But my new eyes were too efficient to lose sight of the world so easily, and with each sick detail they took in I found myself drawn further into the warden’s trap.
It might have been an hour later, maybe two or three, that the reel ended and a new one began. This time there were no animals, only people, but the raw violence was the same. I could do nothing but watch as gangs of police clubbed their victims into the tarmac, as thugs overwhelmed smaller opponents with dull laughter, as endless lines of soldiers marched in perfect time through ruined city streets, their conquered enemies cowering beneath them.
Again an
d again and again the strong beat down the weak, the powerful overcame the powerless. My horror soon became excitement once more, which then became envy. By the time I blacked out, ushered into restless sleep by the rhythm of steel boots, my envy had become a hunger for power far greater than any found in nature. And the hollow shriek of my own laughter sent chills down my spine as this new nightmare swallowed me.
VOICES
I drifted in and out of consciousness while the endless film played on, unable to tell which of the horrors I’d seen on the screen and which had life only in my dreams. Once, when I woke, I could feel the warden standing beside me. I couldn’t turn to look at him, but I could sense the smile on his face as he watched a platoon of black-jacketed soldiers throw an emaciated corpse onto a pile of bodies.
‘The world has always worked this way,’ he said. ‘And it always will. Most people don’t get to choose whether they can take the side of the predators or the prey, but you can.’ He leant in closer, the stench of his breath the perfect accompaniment to the horror projected before my eyes. ‘I know you feel it. It’s impossible not to. For far too long now you’ve been the victim.’
Grainy footage in shades of grey showed a ghostly teenager, not much older than me, escorted in front of a firing squad. Even past the snowstorm of scratches and burns on screen I could see that he was terrified, and there was no hood to hide his screams as the anonymous riflemen raised their weapons and fired.
‘I’m offering you the chance to be something so much more,’ the warden went on, his dry whisper against my ear. ‘You don’t have to let them trample all over you any longer. You can be in charge of your own destiny, too powerful to let anyone tell you what to do. Anyone but me, that is.’ His words hit home with the same horrible temptation, and by the time I remembered to open my mouth to fight him he was already gone.
Furnace 3 - Death Sentence Page 2