by Sam Sisavath
It was a room, except it was too brightly lit (or was it?) and that played with her ability to tell how big or small the place was. She could just barely make out the concrete blocks in the far wall, and there was a strong smell in the air that tickled at her nostrils. It was a strange scent, both familiar and yet alien.
Focusing on any one thing around her was too foreign a concept, and she decided to withdraw inward instead, searching for something to hold onto in her mind’s eye.
Her childhood? No, she didn’t have one.
So what, then?
Ben. Of course, Ben.
Beaming as he handed over her official FBI badge and ID wallet for the first time.
Ben.
Ben…
The fog began to lift inch by inch, and she was able to concentrate on a new face perched in front of her—and had been for some time now, but she’d failed to notice. How, she couldn’t imagine, because the man’s features were startling: Dark black eyes, a sharp nose, and even sharper chin. He looked almost insect-like, and seeing his face made his touch even colder. She willed herself to concentrate, to look back at the face peering at her until the wall behind him seemed a million miles away.
“You’re right,” the man was saying. “She’s adapting surprisingly fast, even to the paralyzing agent I just introduced into her bloodstream.”
“You want me to tie her back up?” Pete asked.
She couldn’t see Pete—couldn’t turn her head in search—but his voice came through loud and clear from somewhere to her left. She listened for but didn’t hear what had become of the driver.
“No, no,” the man in front of her said. “She’s fighting it, but she’ll lose. Everyone loses.”
“She’s not everyone.”
“Is that your feelings for her talking?”
“I don’t have feelings for her.”
“Of course you don’t.”
The man straightened up until his belt was at her eye level because she couldn’t lift her head to follow his movements. Whatever he had given her kept her sitting on the chair like a marionette without strings.
“Never be helpless,” the voice said, speaking to her again from the past. “Whatever you do, never be helpless again.”
I don’t have a choice right now.
She waited for her chance to fight back, but in order to do that, she had to be able to move first. And she couldn’t at the moment. She could blink, but that was about it. Whatever had been in that second injection—the one that had accompanied the pricking pain in her neck—it was keeping her from moving completely.
But maybe it was just a matter of time. She had managed to overcome the drugs they had given her at the hospital, then an even stronger dose at Pete’s apartment. What were the chances she could overcome this, too? The man who had given it to her seemed certain she wouldn’t be able to, but Quinn had spent most of her life proving people wrong, including herself.
The man wore all white, including some kind of lab coat. Was he a scientist? A doctor? Which one made her feel better about what was about to happen?
She knew the answer to that without having to think about it: Neither.
“If you’re sure you can control her,” Pete was saying, though there was uncertainty in his voice.
“Have you ever known me not to be sure about these things?” the man asked. There was a slight annoyance in his voice that he couldn’t—or maybe didn’t want to—hide.
“Hey, it’s your world; I’m just the delivery man,” Pete said. “You need me for anything, or can I leave?”
“You don’t want to stay and watch?”
“Not my scene. I don’t need to see it.”
“When did you get so queasy?”
“You call it queasy, I call it civilized.”
The man in the lab coat chortled. “How long have you been doing this? You should be used to what we do by now.”
“Has nothing to do with it. I do what I do, you do what you do. Let’s leave it at that.”
“Leave, then. I’ll let you know when I’m done. You can come back and collect both of them at the same time.”
“How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
“They’re going to want to know soon. Porter’s priority A, B, and C right now.”
“When it’s done, I’ll give you a call,” the man said. Again, that lack of attempt to hide his impatience. “This isn’t something you can rush.”
“All right; call me when you’re done.”
“What’s the hurry, anyway?”
“She fired two rounds in my apartment. I have to go back and make sure nothing comes out of the police visit.”
“She tried to kill you?”
“I told you, she’s not like the others. You need to be extra careful around her. In fact, you should bring someone in here just in case.”
“That’s not necessary. They’ll just get in the way.”
“She’s dangerous…”
“So am I.”
“Don’t underestimate her.”
“Maybe you’re overestimating her.”
“Let me bring someone in here before you get started…”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
A sigh of frustration. “Leave, if you’re going to leave. You’re getting on my nerves, Pete.”
“All right, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Pete said.
Footsteps fading, then a door opening and closing.
She wanted to turn her head to look after Pete, but couldn’t. Her head was stuck facing forward. Which was odd, because there was nothing holding it in place. Or was there?
The man with the sharp face disappeared out of her peripheral vision, just before she made out the clinking of metal against metal.
Tools? What kind of tools? And for what purpose?
She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know the answer to that last question.
“He thinks I enjoy this,” the man was saying from somewhere behind her. Beside her? “The truth is, I don’t. But it’s what I’m good at. I learned long ago that you have to embrace your innate talents, even if it’s not something others view so favorably.”
Footsteps again, until the man’s all-white clothing reappeared in front of her.
“I won’t lie to you, Quinn; this is going to hurt at first,” the man said. “But eventually the pain will dull. It won’t fade, not completely, but there will be numbness to spare you the rest of it. It’s the best I can do. I can paralyze your body, but the mind has to remain receptive for this to work. If you really think about it, this is a lot more civilized than waterboarding or whatever they’re calling those enhanced interrogation techniques these days.”
The room’s light glinted off a thin metallic instrument in the man’s right hand. He gripped it with long, almost fragile fingers, keeping away from the sharp point. Some kind of scalpel, but longer and thinner and somehow more…elegant?
“Let’s start,” the man said, as the cold hand returned to touch then grip the skin around her forehead. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. Many times before, actually. I’m obligated to tell you not to fight it and things will be easier, but I know you won’t be able to resist the temptation. It’s only human nature, after all.”
Then she felt pain.
Excruciating pain, cutting through skin.
Her skin.
Chapter 11
He’s going to kill me. He’s going to slice me open, and he’s going to kill me.
God, I don’t want to die.
She closed her eyes. Or thought she did. The truth was she couldn’t be entirely certain because her world had gotten dark. She didn’t know if that was because of the fear of what was coming overwhelming all of her senses to the point where she couldn’t see anymore. Or maybe she really had just closed her eyes since that was the only real control she had left over her body at the moment.
I don’t want to die.
Whatever the reason, the r
esults were the same: there was only darkness and the foul caresses of the man’s breath against her face as he leaned in closer. The hand that had gripped her head remained, turning her slightly to one side just as she began to feel the cold steel cutting—
I don’t want to DIE!
“What?” the man said. “What are you doing?”
At first she thought he was talking to someone else who had come into the room, or maybe had always been there but she’d never noticed. But his breath was hitting her directly in the face, so he was still talking to her.
“How are you doing this?” he said, and she could almost believe that he sounded...afraid? Was that it? What he afraid? If so, of what?
Because it couldn’t have been her. She was sitting in a chair that held her in place even though there was nothing to strap her in, nothing to keep her from bolting up and fighting back, because she had to fight back—
The man’s hand. It was hovering in front of her, seemingly frozen in the air.
No, not frozen. Something was holding it in place. Something…
Her. It was her hand.
How?
She was holding onto the man’s wrist in a viselike grip. How long had she been doing that? How long since she had managed to move her arms at all? She had no comprehension of time or reality, and things were happening that she couldn’t explain.
How am I doing this?
The man (Doctor? Scientist? Butcher? Did it even matter?) was standing in front of her, slightly bent over as she held his right hand in place with her left. There was something that resembled fear in his eyes, but it was overridden by something else, something that looked almost like…excitement?
His eyes shifted from the scalpel to her face and back again. She glimpsed blood on the edge of the instrument. Not a lot, but enough, and she didn’t have to think very hard about where it had come from.
“How are you doing this?” the man asked again.
She wanted to answer him but she didn’t, because the truth was she didn’t know the answer either. How was she doing this? How was she doing any of this?
I don’t know!
She lifted her right hand with some effort (“Never be helpless. Whatever you do, never be helpless again.”) and struck him in the side of the neck with a balled fist. It was a nice, solid rabbit punch and the man backpedaled, looking more stunned than hurt, and the knife dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor as he did so. He didn’t get very far, and tripped over his own legs and fell onto his ass.
Move, her mind screamed. Move now! Move now, or you’ll never get out of this place!
But she didn’t know if she could. Moving her hands was one thing, but she couldn’t feel anything below her waist—
Oh, she thought as she stumbled out of the chair like a clumsy oaf who had just learned to walk seconds ago. Or it might have been the most elegant chair dismount of all time, because she was only focused on one thing—the odd-looking man on the floor staring up at her.
She took a faltering step forward and willed her knees to bend as she reached down for the scalpel. It was cold to the touch and clammy like the man’s skin had been, but finally having a weapon in her hands sent a shockwave of confidence through her.
“Never be helpless. Whatever you do, never be helpless again.”
Never again, she thought as she straightened up.
“This is impossible,” the man said. He sat on the floor as if he were rooted to it. She had hit him hard—hell, as hard as she could—but if he was in pain, he didn’t show it. Instead the only thing visible on his face was that out-of-place mixture of confusion and excitement she had seen earlier.
What the hell’s wrong with you? she wanted to ask him, but then thought, What the hell is wrong with me?
Sensation had continued to return to her legs, enough that when she straightened back up, she could feel the joints of her knees popping and her calves stretching. She tightened her grip on the scalpel and glanced around her, really taking the place in for the first time with unclouded eyes.
The room was all wrong. Or at least it looked vastly different than when she had first glimpsed it earlier. There was nothing ethereal about it, and it was much smaller—maybe twenty-by-twenty feet—than her eyes had perceived moments ago. (Minutes? Hours? Days? No, it had to have just been mere minutes since Pete brought her in here.) Two long and slightly curved light bars were attached to the east and west walls and the floor was made of heavily scarred concrete, as were the walls and ceiling above her. The air was thick with a smell that was hard to place.
It looked like some sort of back room torture chamber.
Or a dungeon.
A flicker of movement as the man with the insect-like face attempted to rise from the floor. She lunged at him before he could fully straighten up and grabbed him by the throat and pushed him back, back until he slammed into the far wall.
He let out a grunt but stood very still as she pressed the sharp point of the knife against his left cheek. The blade, still partially smeared with blood (Mine. That’s my blood.), scraped his flesh, but if that frightened the man, he hid it well. Instead he focused on her face, and they were close enough now—inches apart, really—that she could look into his eyes and see the darkness on the other side gaping back at her.
“Amazing,” the man said.
“What?” she said.
“No one’s done that before.”
“Done what?”
“What you just did. The paralyzing agent should have kept you in that chair for hours. How? How is any of this possible?”
Quinn wanted to laugh. He was asking her?
She looked behind her at the chair they had put her in. It was gray and grimy, with peeling upholstery where there was still fabric at all, and it stuck out from the floor like a cancerous appendage. It sat on a plastic tarp and was surrounded by buckets of various sizes.
Jesus. This really is a torture room.
A metal tray sat on a cart nearby with instruments laid out in a clearly organized pattern within it—a couple of longer versions of the scalpel she was clutching in her hand and a line of smooth metallic tools that she’d never seen before. Some had various angled teeth while others looked arbitrarily shaped.
There was a second cart, this one with a thin all-in-one computer. The screen was dark, which meant he hadn’t turned it on yet. Two smooth metal objects the size of pens lay exposed inside a black matted case next to the PC, the bright ceiling LED lights gleaming off their shiny construction. A bundled coil of razor-thin metal wires sat unused nearby.
“You don’t know, do you?” the man was saying.
Quinn turned around and saw that his eyes were glued to her, completely ignoring the knife she had pressed against his skin. “What did you say?”
“What’s happening,” he said. “You don’t know.”
“I… What’s happening?”
“You shouldn’t be able to do this. You shouldn’t even be able to stand up right now. Do you know how many times I’ve administered that drug? That exact same dosage? You shouldn’t even be able to lift that scalpel, much less do any of this.”
There was that familiar look again flashing across his eyes—the excitement she had seen earlier in place of the fear that was supposed to be there.
Or maybe she was reading him wrong. Maybe her mind was still moving at half its normal speed and she was having difficulty processing his facial cues? It was possible. Just about anything was possible right now, including all of this being a figment of her imagination, a last-ditch effort to escape from the reality of what was happening to her.
No. This is real. All of this is real.
Isn’t it?
She shook the doubts away and forced some confidence into her voice when she asked, “Who are you? Where am I?”
“Hofheinz.”
“Hofheinz?”
“My name.” Then, tilting his head slightly, “What’s the matter?”
“What?”
“No…”
She clenched her teeth and pushed through the pain. The thrumming inside her skull had been building up ever since she left the chair, but it had increased in intensity in the last few seconds.
“It looks like a headache,” Hofheinz said.
“It’s not a goddamn headache,” she said.
“That’s another first. A side effect. There shouldn’t be any side effects at all. The drugs are designed to be painless.”
“Shut up.”
She refocused on Hofheinz’s face, on that beady nose of his, to help ignore the throbbing.
He looked to be in his late forties, and though she hadn’t realized it before, she had inadvertently cut his cheek with the knife…when? It didn’t matter. There was a small gash where blood dripped down, not that he seemed to even notice.
The dark red reminded her of whose blood was mostly on the scalpel she was holding right now. Quinn pulled away from him and took one, then a second step back before reaching up with her free left hand and wiped at her forehead. She glanced down at the blood on her fingers. Not a lot, but enough to leave behind a scar.
“Aren’t you curious?” Hofheinz was saying. He hadn’t moved from the wall or tried to flee. He didn’t even look as if he had any interest in escaping.
She glared back at him. “Curious of what?”
“What’s happening to you.”
“Nothing’s happening to me,” she said, but thought, Except my head feels like it’s about to explode. Jesus, what’s that pounding?
“I think we both know that’s not true,” Hofheinz said. “I think a lot of things are happening to you right now. Amazing things.”
He finally pried himself from the wall and took a tentative step in her direction. She lifted the knife and pointed it at him. He stopped halfway to her and once again looked past the bloodied blade to scrutinize her face.
“You can’t leave anyway,” he said. “There are guards outside. You’d never make it out to the streets.”
The overwhelming pain in her skull had begun to lessen slightly, but that was like saying the ocean had ebbed. Even now she could feel it gathering itself, preparing to smash back against the shores of her brain.