by Sam Sisavath
“You’ll never make it outside,” Hofheinz said.
“We’ll see about that.”
“Stay here. We’ll discover what’s happening to you together.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Had she heard him correctly? Did the man actually propose that she stay in his torture dungeon?
Quinn didn’t know whether to laugh or jam the scalpel into his neck for being so audacious.
“And be your lab experiment?” she said. “No thanks.”
“Don’t you want to know?”
Yes, she thought, but said, “Not if it means staying here with you.”
“Wait,” Hofheinz said even before Quinn knew what she was doing.
One moment she was standing two feet from him and the next she had grabbed him by the forehead the way he had done to her earlier and shoved him back into the wall for the second time. The shock on Hofheinz’s face was very real as she flicked the point of the scalpel, still slick with his and her blood (but mostly hers) against one of his eyeballs. For the first time, fear crossed Hofheinz’s face, and Quinn would be lying if she didn’t admit it made her slightly giddy to see.
“Now,” she said, pushing her palm so hard against his forehead that it ground the back of his head against the concrete slab, “you’re going to show me how to get out of this place, and if anyone gets in our way, I’m going to slice you open from ear to ear. Is that understood?”
He would have nodded if he could or wasn’t too afraid the blade might pierce his eyeball. Instead, Hofheinz blinked his unthreatened eye and stuttered out, “Yes.”
She smiled, feeling in control for the first time in a very long time. “Now that we understand each other, let’s proceed.”
Quinn took the scalpel away and took a step back. Hofheinz’s gaze never left her even as the rest of him remained pinned against the wall. She thought his legs might have shook slightly even though he was trying to hide it.
“Well?” she said. “You coming or not?”
He pulled himself from the wall, then walked cautiously (maybe too cautiously) past her and toward the door.
She walked after him. “If you run, I’ll catch you.”
“I’m not going to run,” he said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“You should, because it’s true. You’re fascinating, Quinn. I’d like us to spend more time together.”
“And play with all your nice, shiny toys?”
“They’re crude, I know, but that was before I understood you were different. Very different. If you stay, we can find out just how different. Don’t you want that?”
“No,” she said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
They had passed the chair and reached the door behind it, and Hofheinz grabbed the lever and twisted it open slowly. Quinn positioned herself behind him, close enough that she could reach out and grab a fistful of his short black hair if he tried anything. She waited for the inevitable, for either a trick from Hofheinz or an appearance by the guards he had mentioned earlier, but instead there was just a lit hallway outside.
Gray and scarred concrete on the floor, walls, and ceiling, like the room she was standing inside. Light bars led the way to a turn at the far end. Quinn listened for noises other than her own slightly labored breathing, but there were no footsteps, shouting, or orders being given.
She reached over and grabbed the back of Hofheinz’s coat collar to stop him from going through the door. His body tensed, but he didn’t make any attempts to flee.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“You’re still in the city,” Hofheinz said.
“Where, exactly?”
“I don’t know. I have a driver, just like you did. Someone brought me here. It never occurred to me to memorize the address or pay attention to the exterior of the place.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Why would I?”
The way he had said it (“Why would I?”) was almost comical, like he was insulted by her insinuation that he would lie.
She peered past him and at the hallway beyond. “You said there were men outside. I don’t see anyone.”
“They’re around. But they know to keep their distance when I’m working. Distraction is the enemy of progress.”
Asshole is full of mottos, she thought, before saying, “Okay, let’s go,” and pushed him through the door.
She might have put more force into the shove than necessary—or maybe she had done it on purpose. Either way, he stumbled into the corridor before righting himself.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“I’m going to use you as a shield. If anything happens, this scalpel is going into the back of your neck.”
“That’s…a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“Compared to what you were about to do to me?” she asked, and reached up to wipe away another bead of blood from her forehead.
“That was before I knew about your potential. Things are different now. There won’t be any sharp tools involved anymore.”
“As tempting as that sounds, no thanks.”
“Don’t be rash.”
“Shut up and keep moving.”
She kept her left hand on him, fingers clenched around his coat’s collar to keep him within arm’s reach. Her right continued to clutch the knife, her only weapon at the moment. She had thought about grabbing another knife from the tray inside the room, but one was as good as another and she only had one free hand anyway.
There was a different quality to the air in the hallway, even if she couldn’t quite explain it. Maybe she was just so glad to be out of Hofheinz’s “lab” that any other place was a welcome relief. She thought she could hear a slight hum in the background. Some kind of generator. Or it could have just been the lights.
They had gone halfway down the hallway when she asked, “How much farther?”
“Around the corner,” Hofheinz said.
It’s a trick. His “guards” will be waiting around the corner.
Get ready. Get ready…
But there was nothing waiting when they made the turn except for another door five feet ahead of them. It was just as plain and dirty, and likely as bacteria-laden as the one they had just stepped through.
“Through there?” she asked.
“And another door after that,” Hofheinz said.
“How many guards do you have?”
“Two that I know of. Maybe more coming and going without me knowing. It never occurred to me to keep a proper count.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” He let out what sounded like an almost exasperated sigh. “You don’t seem to understand my role here, Quinn. I’m a scientist. Things like where this place is located, how many men are watching it—they don’t interest me in the slightest. Only my work does. And you’re part of that now. I didn’t know how much until now.”
The word work made her reach up involuntarily and touched the bloody gash on her forehead for the third time. She glanced down at the blood on her palm—not nearly as much as the first or second time, but still noticeable. At least there wasn’t any pain, and the constant sledgehammering against her brain had dissipated enough that she could think straight without having to fight for every minor thought.
“Okay,” Quinn said, changing her grip on the back of his collar, “let’s go.”
As they walked the short distance to the door, he said, “Rethink this, Quinn. You don’t realize how different you are. The things we could learn together…”
“I’m not interested.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Keep moving.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Open the door.”
He did, and she peeked past him and into a familiar looking room.
The walls were gray and black concrete, and even from the open doorwa
y she could see rough divots along the floor. Two light bars lit the twenty-by-twenty space. It wasn’t just similar to the room she had just escaped from, but identical.
“Quinn,” Hofheinz said.
“Shut up,” she said, and pushed him through the open door and followed him inside.
Like the other room, this one also had an old raggedy chair in the middle that didn’t look like it was in good enough shape to withstand the weight of an adult human being—except there was already someone sitting on it. The chair was turned away from her so she could only see the outline of the hands and legs of its current occupant.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“My previous patient,” Hofheinz said. “He got here before you did. Would you like to say hi?”
Chapter 12
“What about the other one?” Pete had asked. “Did he tell you anything?”
“He can’t reveal something he doesn’t know, can he?” Hofheinz had said.
They had been talking about someone else, someone who had been brought to Hofheinz before her. It made sense the other person would have been kept in similar circumstances. Except whoever he had been, he hadn’t managed to stop what was being done to him the way she had.
The gash on her forehead tingled even more noticeably as she stepped inside the room.
The man—and she was sure it was a man—was seated on the lone furniture, next to a cart holding a tray with tools—long and sleek, their purposes unknown. There was a second cart with an all-in-one computer and metal wires that snaked down to the floor, along with an identical black matted box, except instead of two pen-shaped metal rods, there were empty placeholders.
She kept behind Hofheinz and pushed him forward while keeping a firm grip on the back of his lab coat. “How long has he been here?”
“They brought him in yesterday,” Hofheinz said. “They might have had him before, but I only saw him for the first time yesterday.”
“What did they want with him?”
“The same thing they wanted with you. Information on Porter.”
“Stop,” she said when they neared the chair.
She tugged at Hofheinz’s collar and moved him in a semicircle around the seated man. Slowly his face came into view—first his side profile, then the front.
“Jesus Christ,” Quinn said, the words coming out almost as a breathless whisper. She knew who it was before she saw the man’s face, but the sight of him still caught her by surprise. “What did you do to him?”
“My job,” Hofheinz said.
“Is this what you were going to do to me?”
“At first, yes. But not anymore. Things have changed.”
She unwittingly (or at least that’s what she told herself) tightened her grip around his collar so much that he actually grunted with discomfort. Quinn didn’t care and stared at the man sitting silently in the chair. She wouldn’t have recognized him so easily if she hadn’t already committed his face to memory as they prepared background on the operation—all that work for just one night, and she had managed to screw even that up.
He wasn’t strapped into the chair or bound in any way, and his posture indicated he hadn’t been in any discomfort despite the presence of blood trickling from his forehead and down the length of his neck. There was surprisingly very little blood—or at least not the kind of mess that would have warranted a tarp being placed around the area. It was very clean and efficient, the handiwork of someone who had been doing this for a while. Or, as Hofheinz had put it, had a “talent” for the grisly work.
She could still smell the blood lingering in the air, invading her nostrils and pushing at the back of her throat. She felt like gagging but fought through it. Not here, not in front of Hofheinz. She’d be damned if she gave the man the satisfaction.
The dead man’s eyes were wide open, but he didn’t look to be in pain. If anything, there was something that almost looked like…joy (?) on his face, which didn’t make any sense.
“Gary Ross,” Quinn said quietly.
“Is that his name?” Hofheinz said. “Sounds familiar.”
There were two very thin cuts along Gary’s forehead, one of them at precisely the same spot that Hofheinz had begun on her. But where he hadn’t been able to finish the job on her, Gary hadn’t been so lucky. The incisions were at least two inches long, and each one had become housing for the pen-shaped metal objects that were missing from their box. It looked as if a good half-inch of the rods had been inserted into Gary’s forehead, with thin metal wires dangling from the other end and connected to the computer behind her.
She spun on Hofheinz. “What the hell did you do to him? What are those things sticking out of his forehead?”
“They wanted answers,” Hofheinz said. “This was the only way to get them.”
“By shoving metal rods into his forehead?”
“It looks harsh, I know, but it’s the only way to be absolutely sure. What they did to you at the hospital, with the drugs, was the soft approach; this...is the opposite.”
“You were going to do that to me…”
“Yes, but like I’ve been trying to tell you, not anymore. I’ve realized now that you’re too valuable to be damaged in this way.” He smiled at her. Or tried to. It came out cringe-inducing. “The things we could learn, Quinn. Don’t you want to know?”
Quinn took a step back and punched him in the stomach. Hofheinz grunted and tried to double over, but she grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back up to his feet, then turned him around and kicked him in the back of one knee, then the other, until he was kneeling between her and Gary.
“You were going to do this to me,” she said through clenched teeth. “Lobotomize me like you did Gary.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. It might not look like it, but this approach is a lot more humane than the alternative.”
“Bullshit. Look at him. There’s nothing humane about that. You did this to him, and you were going to do the same to me…”
He looked up and twisted his head to glance back at her, his face scrunched up in pain. If he expected sympathy, he would be disappointed. The anger boiled up from the pit of her stomach and wouldn’t be quenched, and she didn’t care to try.
“Not anymore, Quinn,” he said. “Not anymore. Why can’t you understand that?”
She looked at Gary, then at Hofheinz, then back at Gary. Anger, fear, and a dozen other emotions roiled inside her, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to contain them or let them loose on this man—this monster—kneeling in front of her.
“There is nothing left for you, Quinn,” Hofheinz said. He made a half-hearted attempt to get up—maybe just to see if she would let him—but she pushed him back down. “Your life as you know it is over. But you can have a new one. A better one. All you have to do is stay with me. Not here, but at my real lab.”
She refocused on his face, peering up at her, a salesman trying his damnedest to make his pitch. She couldn’t decide if she wanted to stab him or punch him in his eager face. Maybe she could do both. Maybe she should do both.
“Forget about him,” Hofheinz said. “He’s nothing. Irrelevant. You, on the other hand—the things we could learn together. Don’t you want to know?”
“We,” he had said. Over and over again. “We.”
She wanted to throw up at the idea of being a we with this man.
“I know you do,” Hofheinz was saying. “I can see it on your face. You want to know what makes you so different just as much as I do.”
Different? There was nothing different about her. Nothing extraordinary that made her stand out. Maybe she was a little faster and stronger than the other girls and maybe she could have given some of the boys a run for their money, but that was more a product of growing up on the streets than anything else. If it weren’t for Ben Foster, who saw some potential in her, she would be on a very different path right now.
“You’re different,” Hofheinz said, and he tried to get
up again.
And like last time, she pushed him back down and clenched her fingers around the scalpel. What was stopping her from cutting this man? From gutting him like a fish? Nothing. There was nothing. She wanted to do it, not just for what he had done to Gary Ross but for what he had intended to do to her before changing his mind.
“We can find out the answers together,” Hofheinz was saying. The man never seemed to run out of things to say. “All you have to do is make the choice to stay. Give me that scalpel and stay.”
“No,” she said.
“You want to stay. I can see it in your eyes.”
“No…”
“You want to know,” Hofheinz said. He cocked his head slightly, like a predator looking for her weakness. “I know you do. You want to know, but you’re scared. That’s okay. We’ll do this together, far from here.”
“Shut up,” Quinn said, and looked back at Gary, at the stupid grin on his face. “Is he dead? Did you kill him?”
“No,” Hofheinz said. “But…”
“But what?”
“The process can be jarring. And the human mind can be a fragile thing.”
Hofheinz made another tentative attempt to stand, but she could tell he was waiting for her to push him back down. When she didn’t, he stood up and brushed at his pants legs and coat.
She gripped the scalpel, wondering what was keeping her from slicing his face open.
Answers. He has answers, that’s why.
And I need answers right now.
“He’s not dead,” she said.
“He may or may not live past the day,” Hofheinz said. He had said it so casually that it irritated her. “But even if he were to survive, he wouldn’t be the same man you knew. If you’re thinking about trying to save him, I wouldn’t bother.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off Gary, off the thin metal wires dangling from his forehead. Quinn didn’t really know the man, and her only real-life exposure to him was that very long ten or so minutes in his nightclub when Porter took her hostage. She had read plenty of background research on him, though. Forty-two, single, never married. He had two children in a different state that he never saw, though for a criminal he took care of them better than most non-criminals, so at least he wasn’t completely a deadbeat asshole.