by Sam Sisavath
“That’s rude,” Xiao said.
“I’m not here to be nice.”
“What are you here for?”
Another chuckle. “You’re going to have to try better than that. How is it pronounced, by the way?”
“Rude? Rhymes with dude. As in, dude, what’s up with this place?”
“Your first name. I know Chen is Chen. Is it ‘chow,’ like to chow down? Or with a heavier sh sound?”
“Tell me your name, and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Hofheinz,” the man said.
Now where do I know that name from—
Right. Quinn.
Looks like I found your bogeyman, girl.
“Sh, but go lighter,” Xiao said.
“Xiao,” Hofheinz said, pronouncing it correctly. “It’s an elegant name.”
“It’s a boy’s name.”
“Oh?”
“It means ‘early morning.’ My parents were early risers. And they wanted a boy.”
“Sounds like you had quite the complicated childhood.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I don’t think you know how this works,” Hofheinz said. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen, which only made her more curious about what was on it. “You’re supposed to tell me all about it, not the other way around.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Again, I ask the questions, you provide the answers.”
“How about some quid pro quo, then?”
“Quid no-no.”
Xiao snorted. “A comedian, huh?”
“I’m practicing a different type of bedside manner. Apparently my old one wasn’t very endearing. People kept trying to run away.”
“I’m guessing you holding them here against their will probably had a little something to do with it, too.”
“Perhaps.”
Hofheinz finally pushed the computer away, and it turned slightly as it moved back on its metal bracket, allowing her to glimpse rows of white text on the screen. Not that it did much good, because she couldn’t make out actual words no matter how hard she squinted. And that was all she could do since she couldn’t move anything other than her eyeballs, and even that was starting to hurt from all the straining.
Hofheinz picked up a chair from the corner and walked over. He took his time and she thought, Why rush? It’s not like I’m going anywhere.
The man sat down a few feet away, draping one leg over one knee and smiling. It was like looking at a Komodo dragon trying to trick her into relaxing before it bit off a piece of her neck.
No way you’re tricking me, Mr. Dragon. You’ll have to wake up earlier than that to get one over me!
“You’ve been here before,” he said.
“Here?” She peered left and right for dramatic effect. “Looks familiar…”
“Not this particular location.” He took a tablet out of his coat pocket and tapped on it. “One of the London branches.” He scrolled through the device and she could just barely make out text flickering across his eyeballs. “You’ve been a busy girl. Like Johnny Cash would say, you’ve been everywhere, man.”
“Johnny who?”
“Johnny Cash?”
“I know a Johnny IOU, but afraid I don’t know a Johnny Cash. He owes me money, by the way. Bit of advice? Never let someone named Johnny IOU borrow money.”
Hofheinz chuckled again. She couldn’t tell if that was genuine or just his attempt to humor her.
Who are you kidding? All of this is funny to him.
And why wouldn’t it be? You’re in the chair. The chair. And he can do whatever he wants to you.
She might have shivered slightly at the thought and was glad Hofheinz hadn’t noticed. Or he didn’t act as if he had, but the fact that he hadn’t looked up from his tablet was a good indicator that he hadn’t. Probably.
“They want to know about the boy,” Hofheinz said.
“What boy?”
“Aaron Langston.”
Hofheinz turned the tablet around, revealing a picture of Aaron on the screen. The image was taken from a high angle—some kind of security camera showing Aaron waiting in line at a cash register in a grocery store while holding a couple of bags of Funyuns. He was looking up at the camera, and Xiao recognized the Oh, shit expression on his face.
Dammit, Aaron, I told you never to leave the safe house, or go anywhere without me or Trevor unless you absolutely had to. And buying Funyuns doesn’t qualify as “had to.”
“He’s missing,” Hofheinz said. “The last of your posse.”
“Posse?” Xiao said, smiling.
“The kids aren’t using that word anymore?”
“The kids prefer crew, I think.”
He shrugged indifferently. “The last of your crew, then.”
Xiao’s smile faded as Hofheinz’s words registered.
Aaron was still out there. He was still out there!
…alone…
“They want the boy,” Hofheinz said again.
“Have you checked the local Foot Locker? The kid’s got a bit of a shoe fetish. Can’t ever say no to a new pair of Converse. Has about a dozen of them squirreled all over the city. It’s kind of a disease, really.”
Hofheinz raised both eyebrows, and she thought, Interesting response.
“They tried using your phone to track him,” the man said. “But apparently it short-circuited from the inside and melted the whole thing.”
“If you guys had talked to me first, I would have told you that you need to punch in a secret code or it self-destructs. It’s totally Mission: Impossible. Kinda cool, actually.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“But if you want, give me a phone and I’ll call him for you. Maybe you guys can convince him to come in.”
“You’d do that?”
“Oh, sure.” She peered down at her paralyzed right hand. “I need one of my hands free to do that, though. You know, just as a sign of trust.”
Hofheinz smiled.
“No?” Xiao said.
“No,” Hofheinz said, shaking his head.
“Then I guess we’ll never become friends.”
“That’s an unnecessary entanglement neither one of us needs, I’m sure.” He stood up. “You’re lucky they brought you here. The tools currently available in some of the other places aren’t quite as elegant. We’re not up to speed yet here, but we’re getting there.”
“Lucky me.”
He walked back to the computer. “You have no idea. You truly don’t, Xiao. Do you know what it feels like to have rods inserted into your forehead?”
“Can’t say I ever had the privilege.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to find out.”
“Oh, I do trust you.”
“You’ve been in the chair before, and I bet you think you know what it can do.” He flicked at the monitor. “But according to your file, they only put you through the first few levels. The truth is, it can do so, so much more.”
Not again, Xiao thought. Not again.
The chair did things to her, things she couldn’t explain. She was aware of screaming and wondered who was making such a ruckus before realizing it was her. Except the sounds seemed to come from the other side of the planet, which didn’t make any sense, but then nothing about the chair did.
Her skin was on fire and freezing at the same time. Her body froze, then heated up, then cooled again. And all the while, her head spun and was twisted inside out, and she had the very real sensation of ripping the flesh off her face with her own hands. Except her arms were immobilized and she couldn’t have possibly done that.
Could she?
Through it all, Hofheinz asked her questions, and she answered because she craved sanity, and only by answering could she get there. Or hope to. She forgot what he asked her, forgot how long she sat in the chair, and forgot how time worked.
Seconds? Minutes? Hours?
Days? Weeks? Months?
Years?
He
r mind was in flames, her brain congested with thoughts and possibilities that were too jumbled to get a handle on. Her lips moved of their own accord, responding to Hofheinz without her permission.
Or were they?
She didn’t know. Reality was an elusive thing, dangling at the tip of her fingers—always seemingly within reach but never quite.
The pain was overwhelming. But so was the joy and the weightlessness that came with answering Hofheinz’s questions.
Back and forth, over and over again, and whenever she thought she would die from the intense sensations, she didn’t.
And Hofheinz kept asking her questions. At least, she thought it was him. Her vision had begun blurring a long time ago (Seconds? Days? Years?) and her white surrounding gave way to colors.
Yellow and red and white.
Flowers. She loved flowers.
She was in a field, walking in a simple print dress, and the pain was gone. She couldn’t even remember having felt them. Had she ever felt them?
She was so unsure.
It was easier to focus on the serenity inside and outside and all around her. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, but she didn’t care. Hofheinz’s words floated down from the crisp, clear air, like the voice of God—calming and giving and precious.
Questions. So many questions.
She answered them even as she walked through the fields, the caressing air against her exposed skin, her flustered cheeks. She’d never been in this state of tranquility in her life, and she wanted it to continue for as long as possible. She clung desperately to it, trying to prolong every second.
When was the last time she had been this content? Not since she was a child and her mother doted on her and her father came home every night, before it all changed. Before everything changed.
No, don’t think about the past. Don’t relive all the miseries that she had pushed deep, deep down all those years ago. There was no point. Concentrate on the moment. Stay in the present.
Here, in this field, with the flowers.
So many flowers.
She plucked them by their stems and sniffed them and smiled. She might have begun to hum as she walked.
She hadn’t hummed since she was a child…
“Where’s the kid?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“Is it possible she’s lying? To protect him?”
“She’s not. She made sure she didn’t know where he was going before they parted ways. Told him not to tell her before she detonated the explosives in the classroom.”
“So it was a trick. She lured us to her and the ex-cop so the kid could sneak out of the school with the rest of the classroom. He was there the whole time.”
“That seems to be the case.”
“Smart. Real smart.”
“Didn’t it occur to you to search the class for the boy?”
“Things were chaotic. There were too many people. It was hard enough getting them out of there before the locals got a good look at the bodies.”
“Excuses.”
“Good excuses.”
“Still just excuses.”
A snort. “I guess I’m going to have to do this the old-fashioned way after all.” A pause, then, “How sure are you she’s not lying?”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“One hundred percent.”
“You were pretty sure with Quinn, too. I hate to break it to you, but that chair isn’t nearly as infallible as you think it is.”
“Quinn doesn’t have anything to do with this. She had help escaping.”
“So you keep saying, but there’s still no evidence of it.”
“Because someone tampered with the surveillance.”
“And the computers, too?”
“Yes. I ran diagnostics on the chair a dozen times. She didn’t get out of it by herself. Someone let her out.”
“If you say so.”
Xiao couldn’t open her eyes, but she could hear them just fine. Two men, somewhere in front of her. One of them was Hofheinz. The other…sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place the voice.
“Is she awake?” the stranger asked. “She looks awake.”
“She’s conscious,” Hofheinz said.
“So she’s awake.”
“No.”
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s a difference.”
A sigh of frustration. “Can’t you just give me a simple answer for once? Anyway, why are her eyes still closed if she’s conscious?”
“She’s returning, but it’ll be a while before she can regain her senses. The episodes can be tiring. Sometimes they don’t want to come back.”
“So she can’t hear us right now?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Hofheinz said, the irritation in his voice obvious.
He’s lying. I can hear them just fine.
Why is he lying?
“All right,” the stranger said. “If she doesn’t know where the kid is, then she’s of no use to us. What are they going to do with her?”
“You don’t need to know,” Hofheinz said.
“Does it have anything do with Porter?”
Porter? Did he just say Porter?
“What happens to her is beyond your pay grade,” Hofheinz said. “Try to actually do your job this time. It’s just one kid, after all. How hard can it be to find one kid?”
“You’d be surprised. He knows how to hide. He’s been doing it for years.”
“You found him at the grocery store.”
“After he left.”
“So try to find him faster this time.”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”
There were footsteps, followed by a door opening, then clicking as it closed seconds later.
Then there was just Hofheinz’s voice, except it was closer this time, his warm breath against her unresponsive face. “I know you can hear me. You can’t move your head or open your eyes, but there’s nothing wrong with your ears.”
She wanted to respond but couldn’t. She had no control over any part of her body, not even her eyelids.
“But our guest didn’t need to know that,” Hofheinz said. “I would have had to spend precious time explaining to him how it works, and I’m just so bored of talking to grunts like him. They can’t appreciate what I do down here.”
Cold, clammy hands touched her cheeks and moved her head slightly from right to left, then back again.
“Don’t worry; we’re not just going to throw you away. The Rhim has room for talented people like you. I’ve read our very extensive file on you, Xiao. You are going to be very, very useful.”
A brief moment of silence, where the only sound was Xiao’s quickening heartbeat. It was pulsating so fast she was afraid it might explode out of her chest.
“You might even thank me after this,” Hofheinz said. “If you survive, I mean.”
A new humming sound, starting low then gradually increasing, until it dominated her senses. Her heartbeat began slamming away, pounding faster and faster, and faster still…
Chapter 12
Zoe
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?”
“I asked first.”
“I asked second. We can do this all day. In fact, I have all day.” At least until ten tonight, Zoe thought, but didn’t think what her new phone buddy didn’t know would hurt her. “Tell me your name, and I’ll tell you mine.”
“Marcy,” the woman on the phone said.
Yeah right.
“Janet,” Zoe said.
“What are you doing with this phone, Janet?” the woman asked.
“It’s my phone.”
“No, it’s not. It belongs to a friend of mine. Where is he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are we going to play that game?”
“What game? This is my phone. You called
me.”
“Yeah, right.”
That’s what I said.
Zoe sat down on a bench and watched a cavalcade of people walk by. Young, old, and from all walks of life. But they were just blurs because she was focused almost entirely on the phone.
“Who’s Aaron?” Zoe asked. “Your brother?”
“The person who owns this phone,” the woman who called herself Marcy said.
“I told you, this is my phone.”
“Is he okay?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
Zoe glanced around the second floor of Pine Creek Mall. What were the chances Aaron, a.k.a. Converse, had snuck back up here in an attempt to locate his phone? She had seen him looking around for it earlier so he definitely knew he had dropped it, probably when someone jostled it out of his hand while he was fleeing her.
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument I picked up this phone,” Zoe said. “Then how would I go about giving it back to its owner?”
“I would tell you to call him, but that’s not exactly possible anymore, is it?” the woman said.
“Maybe you’re overthinking it.” Zoe paused, then, “Are you in a car?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can hear traffic in the background.”
“You’re hearing things.”
“Am I?”
“Definitely.”
Zoe smiled. “It’s been known to happen.”
“Is he okay?” the woman asked again, and Zoe thought she detected real genuine worry in Marcy’s voice.
She’s not faking it. She’s really worried about him.
“Again, for the sake of argument, let’s just say I know who you’re talking about—then the answer would be—as far as I know, he’s fine for now,” Zoe said.
She might have heard a sigh of relief from the other side of the connection. Maybe.
“You’re not one of them, are you?” the woman asked.
“That depends,” Zoe said. “Who is ‘them?’”
“No. You’re not one of them.”
“Again, who—”
But Marcy had already hung up on her.
“Shit,” Zoe said.
She lowered the phone and stared at it.
Jesus, this thing’s older than my mom.
She tried bringing up the phone’s recent calls list, but it didn’t matter which button she pushed; nothing happened. She couldn’t locate contacts or anything resembling what she was used to. The damn thing didn’t even have a brand logo to indicate who made it. If she hadn’t picked it up when Converse dropped it, Zoe wasn’t sure if any of the kids walking and talking (and more than a few staring at their almost-thousand-dollar smartphones) would have bothered to give it a second look.