“You wait,” Kunal told him when he locked Colton in his room that night after dinner. “You wait, I come.”
“And the others?”
Kunal didn’t answer him. “You wait.”
The moon moves halfway across the sky before Kunal shows up at his door. His keys do not jingle. The lock turns slowly, quietly. Colton’s heart seem to rise so he can feel it beating in his neck. His heart. Kunal is here, which means he will keep his heart. If the tunnel truly is a tunnel. And if the guards don’t kill him before he reaches it.
He sees Kunal silhouetted as the door opens. “Come, come,” Kunal whispers. “No time.” He gives Colton a handgun—and he doubts it’s loaded with tranqs. Colton has never held a weapon before, but he knows he’ll use it if he has to.
It’s only as he steps out of his room that he sees the others. Kemo, Gamon, Karissa, and Marisol, her silhouette spiderlike in the darkness. Kunal has armed them all.
Colton would make a beeline for the tree, if it weren’t for one thing. Jenson isn’t with them.
“We have to get Jenson,” Colton whispers.
“No,” says Kunal. “You leave now. He stay. Too late for him.”
But Colton knows he’ll never be able to live with himself if he doesn’t try. “Take them to the tunnel,” he tells Kunal, then holds out his hand. “Give me the key.”
Kunal hesitates but only for a moment. He finds the key on the key ring but can’t take it off, so he hands the entire ring to Colton.
“You stupid. Very stupid.” Then he leaves with the others.
Alone, Colton creeps in shadows to the double doors of the recovery room. Even at this time of night it’s not silent in there. There are still moans and the faint, hopeless wails of the damned. He waits for a guard to pass on his rounds, then he goes to the door, unlocks it, and slips in.
The first thing that hits him is the stench. Both medicinal and septic at the same time. It’s hard to keep from gagging. The lights are scarce and dim, and he’s glad for it, for in each alcove is another one of Dr. Rodín’s recovering experiments.
And that’s exactly what they are—experiments more than creations. Colton can almost hear the hypotheses the Doctor was attempting to investigate.
Can a brain be housed somewhere other than a skull?
Can a mythological Janus exist, with two faces on the same cranium, forever facing in opposite directions?
Can a giant be created by stacking spinal columns?
And these were the ones that survived their procedures. Colton couldn’t even imagine the miscreations that didn’t.
And then there’s Jenson.
“Who’s there?” Colton hears him say. “I know you’re there—I can hear you!”
Colton moves closer to the hospital bed on which Jenson lies, ankles and wrists secured to the frame of the bed. An intravenous tube feeding into his arm.
“Don’t pretend you’re not there! I hear you!”
“It’s me, Jenson. It’s Colton.”
At first it seems as if nothing’s been done to him . . . but as he turns his head in the direction of Colton’s voice, Colton can see that Jenson no longer has eyes. Instead he has a second set of ears where his eyes should be.
I know a way to make him listen, the doctor said. Colton shudders.
“Help me, Colton. Get me out of here.”
Colton tries, but the keyholes on Jenson’s shackles don’t match any of the keys on Kunal’s key chain.
“Please, Colton! You’ve got to! You’ve got to.”
“I’m trying. . . .”
And then from outside come shouts in Burmese and gunshots. He hears a girl scream. Is that Marisol? Karissa? More gunshots, and then a barrage of machine-gun fire. Something’s gone wrong! Colton takes a step away from Jenson to peer out the door.
“No, don’t go!” Jenson wails. Then quieter. “If you can’t free me . . . then kill me. Please, Colton. I don’t want to live like this.”
Colton understands. He wouldn’t want to live like this either. He pulls the pistol from his waist and aims it at Jenson’s scarred forehead.
But he can’t pull the trigger. He can’t. He just can’t.
“I’m sorry, Jenson,” Colton says. “I’m sorry.” And he turns and runs, knowing that if he does live through this night, he’ll never be able to forgive himself for his moment of weakness. For his failure to give Jenson what he truly needed.
10 • Kunal
Kunal blames it on the moon. Had it been a moonless night, they would have been under full cover of darkness. He should have waited a few more hours, until after the moon set—but he was anxious, and it clouded his judgment. Now all could be lost.
He hears the shout of the first guard, which draws the attention of the second. He can’t see them yet, but knows the direction the shouts are coming from. Marisol panics, running toward the tree—but she doesn’t know where to go. She’s heading toward the wrong side. Karissa goes after her. Then one of the guards fires. It hits Karissa, and she goes down in a scream of pain, but that doesn’t stop her. She rolls over and begins firing the gun Kunal gave her in the direction of the guards.
Then the small Thai boy—was his name Gamon?—loses control. He has not said a word since he was brought here, but suddenly he runs out into the center of the courtyard, screaming a war cry at the top of his lungs. Kunal had taken whatever weapons he could carry when he raided the armory. He hadn’t given much thought to which weapons he handed to who. Gamon has a submachine gun, which he now fires wildly at anything that moves.
And it’s just the diversion that they need.
“The left side of tree,” Kunal tells Kemo. “Between the roots. Go now!”
Kemo runs, grabbing Marisol, while Karissa limps behind them. The guards’ attention is on Gamon, who has already taken down at least four. Lights come on upstairs—but not the big floodlights—which means there’s still time, if they can just make it to the tree.
11 • Colton
Colton races into the courtyard, not quite sure what he’s seeing. Bodies litter the ground. He doesn’t know whose they are. Then he’s grabbed. He turns, ready to use his gun this time, but it’s Kunal.
“Go now!” Kunal tells him. “Now! Last chance!”
They run to the tree, taking the long way to keep under the overhang of the upstairs balcony, shielded from the moonlight.
In the courtyard, whoever’s screaming and firing that machine gun is taken down by a shot to the head. Was that . . . was that Gamon?
“Down there! Go!”
They’re at the roots of the tree. Something smells awful. All around them, a terrible stench. Smells like gasoline…
Kunal pushes him, and Colton plunges down the hole that’s barely large enough for him to fit, birthing him from one world into another.
“Are you okay?” It’s Kemo. Karissa’s there and Marisol. Karissa groans. She’s been shot, but she’s alive.
Colton turns to the hole, expecting to see Kunal climbing down behind him—but he doesn’t come.
“Kunal!” He’s already failed one friend today; he can’t fail another. He climbs a pile of broken bricks back up toward the hole.
“Colton!” shouts Kemo. “What are you doing?”
The gunshots have stopped. Colton pokes his head out from between the roots. Kunal is nowhere. But someone sees him and is running toward him. It’s not Kunal. It’s Sonthi. He raises his gun—
And suddenly the whole world is engulfed in flames.
12 • Kunal
The moment Colton slips into the hole, Kunal is grabbed from behind, pulled away from the tree, and thrown to the ground, pinned there by none other than the doctor himself.
“You evil, ungrateful little bastard! What have you done?”
There’s a gun in Kunal’s hand, but the doctor slams his hand against the ground until the gun falls free. He grapples, but the doctor pins both his hands to the hard earth. “I’ll have Sonthi unwind you alive bit by bit until
there’s nothing left of you.”
“You forget something, doctor,” Kunal says. Then he smiles. And with a hand that used to be a foot, he plunges a knife deep into the doctor’s neck. Rodín barely has time to register his surprise before he dies.
With no time to lose now, Kunal pushes the doctor’s body off him and looks toward the tree. Sonthi has seen the hole and is running toward it—but he hasn’t seen Kunal. The man’s gun is raised, aiming at the hole. Kunal grabs his own gun and raises it too—but instead of aiming at Sonthi, he aims at the base of the tree.
Kunal fires the flare gun. It hits a large root, and the tree, which he drenched in gasoline an hour earlier, bursts into flames.
13 • Colton
He falls back down into the tunnel, his hair and eyebrows singed.
“What the hell?”
Kemo has just finished tying off the wound on Karissa’s leg. The light from the flaming hole flickers around them, illuminating a tunnel that heads into absolute darkness.
“Do we know where it goes?” Kemo ponders.
“Away from here,” Marisol says, wrapping all four of her arms around herself.
“I couldn’t save them,” Colton says, looking at the flaming hole in the tunnel roof. “Not Jenson, not Gamon, not Kunal.”
“No,” agrees Kemo. “But you saved us.”
Colton nods, knowing that it will have to be enough. He turns from the flames that have now begun to spill down the walls like lava and leads them through the tunnel into a darkness full of hope.
14 • Sonthi
The floodlights come on two minutes too late. They’re not needed anymore, because the tree blazes, lighting up the entire courtyard.
“In the morning I want proof that they burned down there!” Sonthi yells with a fury that could shake mountains. “I want to see their charred bodies!” The tree ignited quickly, and he suspects an accelerant. Perhaps it was some sort of plan the AWOLs had that went awry. If so they’ll be consumed in their own flames. He orders men to get fire hoses to douse the flaming tree. The AWOLs no longer matter. The top priority is putting out this goddam fire before the whole place goes up in flames.
That’s when that talking monkey Kunal comes up to him, tugging at his arm.
“Mr. Sonthi! Mr. Sonthi! They kill the doctor! They steal keys and kill the doctor!”
Sonthi grunts and looks over to where Kunal is pointing. There, on the ground, a dozen yards away, lies the doctor, with a knife protruding from his neck. What a mess this whole thing is. What a stinking mess. How could this have happened?
Then he studies Kunal, whose eyes are wild and panicked.
“What should I do? What should I do?”
And Sonthi laughs. In the midst of this miserable night, he laughs. “Take acting lessons,” he tells Kunal.
Kunal just looks at him, confused. That’s all right; let him wonder. Sonthi is no idiot. He knows the AWOLs didn’t kill the doctor. They had no reason to—their only goal was to escape. He wouldn’t be surprised if Kunal helped them, and then used their escape as the perfect cover for killing Rodín. He could blame the AWOLs, and no one would ever know the truth. Yes, the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that’s the real play here. That’s exactly how it went down.
Sonthi supposes he could turn Kunal in. Punish him for it. But why? After all, he’s done Sonthi a favor. He’s managed to get rid of the doctor, leaving Sonthi in charge of the camp. If anything, he should be rewarded.
“What should I do, Mr. Sonthi?” Kunal asks again.
“Draw me a bath,” Sonthi says. “Draw me a bath in the doctor’s private suite.” Then he thinks for a moment and adds, “But first draw one for yourself.”
Kunal gives him that same confused look.
“Didn’t you hear me? You stink! Go take a bath in the doctor’s quarters. As long as you like. That’s an order.”
“Yes, Mr. Sonthi.”
Kunal hobbles off in that weird way he has, but there seems to be a spring in his step that wasn’t there before.
And that makes Sonthi laugh and laugh and laugh.
15 • Colton
Six weeks later he sits at the same restaurant where he met Karissa, eating panang curry and reading a newspaper in Thai. He’s picking up the language faster than he thought possible. He can easily read the headline. It says PARTS-PIRATE RING DISCOVERED IN POLICE FORCE.
The face of the police chief who first turned him over to the Dah Zey is right beneath the headline, looking far less smug and condescending than when he spoke to Colton.
A tuk-tuk speeds by. It was weeks before Colton could bring himself to ride in one again, but even the driver who brought him to the gray building was arrested. They’d likely never even get a trial. With the way the Thai abhor unwinding, he won’t be surprised if they just disappeared.
Kemo disappeared in his own way as well, after their escape. He’s in Laos now, at a monastery in Luang Prabang. Colton has no idea what happened to Karissa and her sister. After they stumbled out of the forest and rediscovered civilization, they quickly went their own way. He assumes they’re together, dealing with Marisol’s very particular issues. Colton finds he’s not even curious. All that matters to him is that they’re alive and no longer his problem.
The harvest camp is still there, just across the border. So are half a dozen other Dah Zey camps. He can’t fight them directly, but he can battle their agents here in Bangkok. The Thai police force is more than happy to use him, the same way the Dah Zey used Karissa. But rather than catching AWOLs, he’s begun working undercover to expose parts pirates. It’s dangerous work, but he’s paid well, and it’s rewarding in other ways. He knows that each parts pirate he cleans off the street means dozens of AWOLs saved. Those AWOLs will never know him and never know what he’s done for them, but that’s all right. At least he’s beginning to atone for the ones he couldn’t save from the Haunted Mansion.
He stirs the rice into his curry and takes a taste. The sun is setting. Pretty soon the tourists will be out in full force to experience the Bangkok nightlife, and Colton will get to work.
For a moment—but only a moment—he pauses to think of the life he left behind. The comfort of his family. The grief and sense of betrayal when they unwound his brother. But it’s as if that were another lifetime. Colton smiles. He’s no longer the person he used to be. He’s become something entirely different.
UnConfirmed
Hayden approaches the West Palm Beach mansion driving a rental car. He still finds that amazing. A year ago he was public enemy number four—just behind Connor, Risa, and Starkey. But now people in airports call him Mr. Upchurch and hand him the keys to Toyotas and Hyundais, with a smile, like none of that ever happened.
“I listen to your radio show all the time, Mr. Upchurch,” said the gushing clerk when she rented him the car. “You’re so clever!”
He grinned and gave her the answer he gives everyone who gushes at him. “Not clever enough to get this for free!”
The funny thing is, about one third of the times he says that, they do give it to him for free, whatever it is. A meal, a movie ticket, a pack of gum at the convenience store. All he has to do is drop his name, then they’ll recognize his voice, and the magic ensues. Sometimes the cost is the ten seconds it takes to pose with someone for a picture—which is ridiculous, because it’s his voice that’s become famous, not his face—but who is he to argue with free lunch?
The rental car was not free, but he’s not paying for it. The big bad media conglomerate that sponsors his radio show gave him a corporate credit card. He finds that even more absurd. How is this not theft? He doesn’t want to think about it too deeply. If this is his fifteen minutes of fame, he intends to milk it dry. No guilt, no regrets. Maybe therapy when it’s all over, but damn it, no regrets.
The woman he’s come to visit is just a few years older than him. Twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Nouveau riche, as they say. Rags to riches in a most spectacular way. Hayden is here
by her personal invitation. He’s never met her, though they do have some key mutual friends.
He announces himself at a street-side intercom and a wrought-iron gate slowly swings open to a semicircular driveway and the mansion beyond. It’s an ostentatiously pink Floridian palace with the requisite palm trees, balconies, and red-tiled roof. Lots of “curb appeal,” as a Realtor might say, although behind the gate you can’t really see the house from the curb—which, for residents in this kind of neighborhood, is its appeal.
Hayden is greeted at the door by a butler. An actual butler.
“Miss Skinner is expecting you,” he says in the mournful, lugubrious sort of voice one might expect a butler to cultivate. “This way, Mr. Upchurch.”
The house is as elaborate on the inside as it is out. Lots of marble and designer furniture and expensive art. It looks like something one might see in an interior-decorating magazine—and not in a good way. It looks more like a model home than an actual one. Cold and false.
The butler leads him all the way through the house and out a pair of french doors to a backyard pool. Grace Skinner isn’t lounging by the pool. Instead, she’s on the far side of it, in front of a little guest house. She sits there with an easel, painting. As Hayden approaches a step behind the butler, he can see her canvas. It’s a dog. Or a horse. Or a giraffe. He can’t be quite sure. It’s either avant-garde or just very, very bad. She is so absorbed in her work, she doesn’t notice that they’ve approached.
The butler politely clears his throat. Twice. She finally looks up.
“Oh, lookee lookee who came right outta the radio!” She stands up—as tall as Hayden, and he’s pretty tall. She reaches out her hand to shake, but then pulls it back before he can. “Bad idea. Not unless you want your hand covered in oil paints. Stuff’s a bitch to get off your skin. And don’t even get me started on clothes.”
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