by Andy Remic
Jam coughed, and pain from his ribcage filled him with molten fire.
How many broken ribs?
He suddenly became aware of a figure standing behind him. He could tell by the shadows against the wall up ahead, and he tensed, waiting for the blows to rain down again. But they did not come, and Jam groaned from a dry throat as he rolled himself over and looked up at the slender dark shape in the gloom.
The figure was dressed completely in black, but instead of the trade-mark Nex balaclava, the face was bare and visible and gleaming in the flickering orange glow. It was deformed - only a little, but the evidence was still there. The Nex was not entirely human.
‘You are the one known as Jam, Spiral operative on the TSAD Division?’
‘Not me, pal,’ said Jam slowly, his voice little more than a slurred croak. ‘You’ve got the wrong guy.’
‘Indeed, you have been responsible for the deaths of many of my colleagues.’
‘Sorry, mate.’ Jam forced a smile through cracked and bloodstained teeth. ‘I was just out walking my fucking poodle when your thugs picked me up.’
‘This is yours.’
The Nex produced Jam’s ECube and held it up for him to see. Jam said nothing, and the Nex smiled, a gentle upturning at the corners of his slightly disfigured face. And then Jam realised what was wrong - the eyes were not quite right, slightly offset, and the nose a bit too low, and the teeth too ... pointed.
‘My name is Mace.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Jam, huskily through his pain. ‘I’d shake your hand but your men have broken my fingers, so I’ll just have to wait until I can put a bullet in the back of your insect skull.’
‘Tut, tut,’ said the slender Nex. ‘Such aggression is unnecessary.’
‘Like the aggression your men have shown me?’
‘An eye for an eye ...’ The Nex smiled softly. ‘Do not think because we have been altered that we do not have feelings, do not have friends, do not have loved ones. Your people are responsible for the deaths of many Nex ... there were a few retributions being sought.’
‘Yeah, fucking great.’ Jam went silent, his mind working. ‘What do you want? Why haven’t you killed me?’
‘Bright, as well, for a non-Nex. As I was saying, my name is Mace and I will be your interrogator, your torturer, and ultimately your friend. We will spend many, many long hours together, you and I, Mr Jam. You will tell me everything that you know. Everything. And we will learn from one another - yes, you and I will learn one another’s deepest and most intimate secrets.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Now who is showing open aggression?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Really, Mr Jam, you should learn more respect for those who dangle you from a thread, those who have the power to crush you like a -’ he chuckled with dark humour, ‘- like an insect. Those who hold the power between your life and - ultimately - your death.’
‘Fuck you.’
Mace moved closer, lowering himself to a crouch. Jam realised then that his hands were bound, with serrated titanium wire that dug through his flesh and ground jaggedly against the bones of his wrists.
‘I won’t tell you anything,’ said Jam calmly, his stare fixed on the bright copper orbs of the Nex.
‘On the contrary,’ said Mace, his voice soft and hypnotic as he pulled free a leather pouch and removed a long, slender hypodermic. The syringe was filled with something silver - like the brightest of mercury.
The needle slid in.
The injection filled Jam’s veins and flowed with every pulse of his heart.
His eyes went wide, and suddenly he screamed a scream so long and loud that he thought his lungs would bleed. Mace smiled, nodding understandingly as Jam writhed on the floor, knowing that the pain that the Spiral man had felt so far was as a tickle to a child, a brush of feather against skin, a mere inconsequence.
‘On the contrary, Mr Jam, you will tell me everything.’
Leviathan Fuels: Premium Grade LVA
— Go on, make the switch, because you know your children deserve a better future ...
Charlotte smiled her sweetest smile, her all-winning smile, the smile that was guaranteed always to get her exactly what she wanted. She tossed back her dark curls and moved towards Freddy, one hand coming to rest lightly on his shoulder, her gaze meeting his, seeing the longing there, inherently understanding the bright lust lurking like a tiny flame within their amorphous depths. I have you, she thought. I have you eating from the palm of my hand. And you will do whatever I desire.
‘I think we should make the switch,’ she purred with alacrity.
‘What?’ Freddy’s eyes went wide, not quite understanding, confused at Charlotte’s sudden change of direction from lust monster to base domestic conversation.
‘The switch. To LVA. It’s all the rage - every news report on the TV is bleating on about how wonderful this new fuel is. It’s revolutionising the oil industry, you know.’
‘Is it?’ Freddy pulled away, dropping onto the settee with its floral pattern which he truly hated. The floral pattern was a concession he had made for a night’s good hard sex, with a digitalVid showing Charlotte performing all manner of disgusting and perverse acts on his body - with her tongue stud - thrown into the bargain. He sighed at the thought, hating the fucking awful shifting couch, and was dragged back to the present. ‘I don’t think so,’ he mouthed, slowly, uneasily, unable to meet her gaze.
‘But LVA is all the rage! Everybody’s doing it!’
‘We’re not.’ Freddy smiled his false skull smile, transferring his gaze from Charlotte’s supple form to the TV beyond. This was what he hated: the constant domestic chit-chat. It tortured his brain. Couldn’t she see? All he wanted was peace and quiet! Couldn’t she see? All he wanted was a few fucking minutes’ peace every fucking day to compose his own fucking thoughts without domestic fucking haranguing.
His own space.
His own study! Now, that would work ... a place he could call his own, a place he could be at one with himself. Shut - and lock - the door. Leave the world, and Charlotte’s moaning and braying donkey laughs, behind.
‘But everybody at work has switched to LVA.’ Her lip came out then. A sulky one. ‘Why do we have to be the odd ones out? We’ll appear strange! Our friends will look down on us!’
‘Keeping up with the Joneses, eh? It’s got fuck all to do with your buddies at work, and everything to do with our depleted bank balance. How much was this fucking Godawful settee? Jesus, it’s like an advertisement for vomit.’
‘But you don’t understand, Freddy!’ she whined.
‘The answer is no.’
Charlotte pouted again, moving towards the kitchen door where she leant against the frame and reached for the settee remote control. She spent a few minutes flicking through the designs and watching the floral patterns shimmer and morph across the surface of the settee while Freddy ground his teeth in total annoyance.
It gave him a headache.
A proper fucking headache.
How had she picked a settee with a hundred digital floral designs, with every single bastard one an absolute pile of shit? A pain to the eyeballs too. And a pain to the wallet ... but no, she had to have one, had to have her way, had to maintain that pretence of social superiority and puerile domestication.
‘But everybody is getting LVA! I know it sounds like a lot of money to get the transfer done, but we’ll save in the long run, honest we will.’
‘We’ve just spent six months of our fucking salaries on a world cruise! The damn holiday will take us the next two years to pay off! And now you want this? Now listen -which part of “no” don’t you understand?’
‘But you don’t understand, Freddy!’ Her voice suddenly changed, from an erotic purr to a schizophrenic snarl in the blink of an eye. Below him, floral patterns flickered and changed and he felt incredibly sick. His stomach heaved with the swirling remnants of a fried breakfast. But then, at least his decorat
ive projectile vomit would be a far superior design pattern when compared with the swirling artistic smush squirming beneath his buttocks like dead frogs in a bucket of custard at this inopportune moment in time.
‘No, Charlotte, you’re fucking doing it again. We don’t have a conversation any more! You get an idea in your head, and if I don’t agree with it then you hit me with a tirade of “buts” until I wither and die like a rose under Bio-CHEM. I’m fucking sick of it, you hear?’
‘Sick of it?’ she raged. ‘I’m offering you the chance to keep up with everybody else! I’m offering you LVA - it’s always on the TV, always on the news, all our friends have got it...’
‘But we haven’t fucking got it,’ snarled Freddy, rubbing at his moustache in annoyance. He climbed to his feet, grabbed his jacket and stared hard at Charlotte’s face. ‘You’ve changed since we met, you’ve really changed. I don’t know you any more.’
He stormed from the house, slamming the front door.
‘Please do not slam the front door,’ called an automated voice with a comedy robot accent.
Charlotte chewed her lip for a moment. Her eyes flickered to the TV, where yet another ad for LVA ran for the full ten-minute slot. In any hour of TV, only twenty minutes was actually programme content - the rest was made up of ads, although her mother said that it had got worse over the years.
‘Leviathan Fuels proudly present Premium Grade LVA,’ burbled the ad as a smiling man filled his gleaming car with fuel, and then drove across a desert with his family on the rear seat playing happy family games. ‘Four hundred miles to the gallon means you can drive across the Sahara on one tank! And it’s pollution-free with absolute guarantees - go on, make the switch, because you know your children deserve a better future…’
Charlotte reached for the telephone.
When Freddy returned, it was dark, the wind howling outside like some diseased banshee. The house was quiet, except for a low burble of TV, and Charlotte was standing waiting for him. Freddy clutched a credit card receipt in his fist, and Charlotte’s eyes dropped to the slip of paper.
‘Ah,’ she said.
‘Yes, you might well say fucking “ah”. I can’t believe you went behind my back, Charlotte! I can’t believe you’ve been bought by the marketing, the hype. You’ll bankrupt us. We just haven’t got the money!’
‘But you don’t understand –‘ Charlotte insisted with urgency.
‘I understand perfectly,’ said Freddy coldly, and reached for the largest gleaming kitchen knife.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Charlotte.’ He took a deep breath, eyes gleaming in the gloom. ‘I am making you see sense.’
As he murdered her, and she screamed and gurgled, the TV happily babbled the benefits of buying LVA fuel to a background symphony of slaughter.
Jam could feel movement. He came awake groggy, aware that he was being dragged across rough sandy stone by his ankles. Occasionally his head would bump against hard objects, such as steps, but thankfully most of the corridors were linked by ramps. Jam’s groggy eyes came open and he could remember the pain following the injection - like pure burning molten metal had been flushed through his body, through every vein and artery and blood vessel. It had crucified him internally, seeped through every pore, wrought evil magic on every limb, every organ until pain had truly been his master. He had wept - but to weep was only to bring more pain on himself and it had gained him nothing.
And now he knew: every human had a breaking point. For some it was financial destitution. For some emotional rejection. For some, cancer. For some, torture. And they had found his limit, his threshold - for Jam had never felt anything like this internal rampant raging fire. And he knew that if they had asked him questions then, to his very great shame, his unbearable sorrow, he would indeed have told them everything.
But there had been no questions.
Just torture ... and then they had left him until, after many hours, the pain gradually began to throb, to fade, to subside.
This worried Jam even more than a torturer’s interrogation would have. As he was now dragged, bound with titanium wire, up and down sand-strewn ramps through narrow dark corridors and past sandstone walls created from mammoth rectangular blocks, his mind ticked over. If they had not asked him questions when he’d been ready to talk, then maybe they already knew the answers. And that thought chilled him more than anything had chilled him before.
What came next?
A welcome death?
Jam’s head bumped against the ground and he grunted. The two Nex dragging him halted, looked back, smiled and kicked him several times. He took the kicks without a sound ... after the injection, they were as nothing.
He was dragged along again, for what seemed an age; but in reality he had no real concept of time. Finally, they entered a chamber. It was large and cool: the floor was paved with white marble, and silver pedestals were set out in symmetrical patterns, each one capped with a shallow bowl containing a liquid which burned on the surface, providing light. At the centre were ten benches, ornately carved from marble and sandstone. As Jam was lifted and placed on one, he noticed curious grooves and channels -and his unease grew. It reminded him of a sacrificial altar.
‘What’s happening here?’ he croaked through smashed lips. One of the Nex swiftly planted a wide fist in his face. Stars exploded in his vision and when he could see again he realised that he was alone.
For long hours he lay, shivering with the biting cold until a figure finally appeared.
It was the slender black-garbed figure of Mace.
‘Hello again, Mr Jam.’
‘What do you want of me?’
‘Of you? Now we require ... nothing.’ He smiled and nodded, like a psychiatrist listening attentively to one of his patients.
‘I thought you needed answers to questions. About Spiral.’
‘We have cracked your ECube. As we suspected, you are Level One. You are a Prime. We have all the answers we could ever need. We know your identity, and we have your codes.’
‘What the fuck is this?’
Mace simply smiled, and more figures moved from the shadows. These were cloaked and masked, and they carried metallic objects with slender silver pipes. Jam looked from one to the other, then Mace pulled out the hypodermic syringe filled with bright mercury and Jam started to struggle against the wires that bound him. They bit through his flesh, bit deep, and blood wept tears across his bruised skin.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Get away from me ...’
‘I fear this will sting a little.’
As Mace came close, Jam stared into the twinkling copper depths of the Nex’s eyes. ‘I will fucking kill you for this, you cunt,’ he snarled.
‘Of course you will,’ came the gentle reply. ‘As you can see, my patients always do.’
He chuckled. The sound was ice.
The needle slipped into Jam’s vein again. Fire screamed through his system and just as vision was failing and pain was consuming him in the flames of a billion infernos, he heard Mace’s voice quietly say, ‘Take his measurements ... decide which advanced inhibitors will work ...’
And then he was falling, falling into a well of desolation and he had always thought he was so strong, so powerful, so in command and in control and these fuckers had reduced him to little more than nothing, a shell, a carcass of rotting flesh.
Jam awoke in his cell. This time he was lying in the sand, staring at the heavy stone door with heavy-set steel bars across a small opening that was an excuse for a window. It was through these slits that the flickering light came, and Jam slowly rolled into a sitting position, thankful at last to be alone.
He breathed deeply, but pain lashed at him from his broken ribs. He slowly rubbed broken fingers across his battered face - everything about him felt tender, loose, shattered. Bones in a tin can. He examined his hands -four fingers were snapped. His hands moved across his naked body: every inch of skin, it seemed, bore a bruise and was tender under his
gently probing fingers. One ankle had a torn ligament, and there was some damage to one kneecap. His broken arm had been realigned and tightly strapped with some kind of bandage - bloodstained - but at least it meant they possibly had some further use for him. Besides these wounds, it was only his back that was giving him problems and he hoped to God they hadn’t damaged his spine with their heavy blows.
Focus.
Jam settled his mind, using army meditation techniques taught by an old sergeant now dead. His breathing became more deep, more relaxed, and he inspected himself more thoroughly - internally and externally. Apart from the physical injuries, it was more the mental strain that worried him ... and he felt it, nestling at the back of his mind like a dark maggot feasting on his brain.
Fear.
He acknowledged the word, the feeling, and realised that it was something he was unused to. The fear was of the hypodermic and the silver fluid - and the incredible pain that would follow. Because he knew; Jam knew that they could do that to him, again and again and again until his will was broken. Until he was nothing more than a spastic shell.
Escape.
The word flared in his mind. Before, while being beaten by the Nex, the only feeling that had flared in his subconscious was a need for survival; but now that he had a moment to think and reflect he knew how great was the danger that he - and the rest of Spiral - were in. For a start, the Nex were far more numerous than he’d realised. Spiral were winding down the SAD anti-Nex teams when they should have been putting more manpower and more firepower into them.
These fuckers are far from fucking dead. And they’re up to something bad ...