Tears streamed out of Dante’s eyes as he struggled to speak but his jaw refused to cooperate. He wanted to scream at Boucher, wrap his fingers around her throat and make her tell him where Abigail was but his body refused to do more than shudder. He thought he felt the prosthetic flex a bit, but it was hard to tell in his disorientated state.
The chair squeaked as Colin lifted something into view. His bony fingers were clenched around the edge of a dark, oval shaped object. A dragonfly drone hovered over one shoulder, tiny spotlight spearing out and locking onto where Dante sprawled on the ground.
Struggling to clear his vision, Dante blinked, eyes gummy. There were two holes through the center of the object Colin held, side by side. Dust motes swam through the beams of light that shot through. It was a mask, but nothing like he’d ever seen before. The inside was etched with fine traceries of silver, like the underside of a motherboard. Other shapes were tucked along the edges of the eye holes, insectile and sharp.
Colin came closer and held the mask above his face.
“You’ve been sedated by a neuro blocker, delivered through the mat you were standing on. Developed for the military, very advanced tech, still in trials. You won’t feel a thing. I insisted on that. No pain.”
The mask began to descend.
For the first time since entering The Place that evening, Dante felt an icy fear lance through him. Something in the mask shifted with a scraping click as it came closer to his face. With a tremendous surge of sheer will, Dante forced his body to move, adrenaline spiking in his blood.
The muscles along his shoulders rippled.
He screamed as loud as he could in his mind, vision dimming, willing his body to move, even just a little bit.
The prosthetic hand twitched.
He was sure of it. Tightening the fingers around the grips of the gun, Dante gritted his teeth and lifted the weapon off the floor.
“He’s waking up,” Dmitry said.
Dante squeezed the trigger. The blast rocked off the concrete walls. Boucher leapt in and stripped the gun away and racked the slide, locking it in place before removing the clip. Dmitry’s face went pale as he clutched at the valve, new streaks of blood joining the old. The wheel spun with a grinding squeal as he pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Boucher knelt down, rolled him over, and ripped open his shirt, sending buttons flying. She skidded back, hands held wide as blood jetted in spurts from a small entry hole below his left nipple.
“Oh, Christ, he shot him.” She glared at Colin. “Fucking do this thing so we can get out of here.”
Colin lowered the mask onto Dante’s face, voice intoning as Dante’s body began to shake, arms twitching as he tried to fend his old friend off. The dragonfly drone hovered in close, wings rising to an anxious thrum.
“If your right eye causes you to sin,” Colin said as the mask adhered to Dante’s face. “Gouge it out and throw it away.”
The mask hummed and a viscous liquid sluiced into Dante’s left eye, causing it to go dead and motionless. Tiny motors whined to life and Dante saw three sharp implements extend out over his eye with a snick, blurry through the milky fluid.
“It is better to lose one part of your body…” Colin said as the implements descended closer. Dante felt a slight pressure as they pressed down around the tender flesh of his eye. The pressure increased and his eye ached, deep inside. His left eye went dark as Colin pressed his thumb on Dante’s cornea.
“…than your whole body to be thrown into hell,” Colin said.
The mask shifted as a searing pain ripped around his left eye and Dante felt darkness enfold him once again.
CHAPTER 71
Eye
The metallic taste in his mouth made his stomach turn and Dante struggled up, falling from his bed as he lurched over the edge. Scrambling to the bathroom through the dark, he retched into the toilet, heaving until his ribs ached. He fell against the edge of the claw-footed bathtub, laying his head against the cool porcelain. His left eye throbbed. Dante grabbed the edge of the sink and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet.
He gazed at his reflection in the mirror, barely able to see himself in the dim blue light straining through the frosted window from outside. A square patch of gauze was taped over his left eye. Blots of dark blood had seeped through.
The fuckers took my eye this time.
The room tilted and he gripped the edge of the sink, the prosthetic grinding to a whiny halt as it tightened up. Touching along the edge of the gauze with a finger, he tugged at a corner and stopped. A weight settled in his stomach, filling the void with prickly ice. He swallowed and pinched one corner of the gauze, steeling himself as he tore it away.
The flesh around his eye was a deep, angry red. Dark bruises radiated outward from three shallow cuts, two on his brow and one below his eye. His breath caught in his throat as his eye slid open. A blurry double image stared back at him before resolving into one. The white of his left eye was tinged an angry red but was still in his skull where it belonged. The breath wheezed out of his lungs and he laughed, tears stinging his eyes.
Colin, Dante thought. He’d put his thumb on my eye to save it. Must’ve let the blades hack at his thumb instead. He was just a victim of Dark Messiah too. For how long? Since the very beginning.
Boucher must have been right after they’d taken Abigail. They’d gotten to Dmitry after Dante’s toes had been hacked off.
Is Dmitry dead? He didn’t care. That surprised him a bit. But what about Abigail?
Boucher told him he’d never see her alive again. Dante pressed a fist against his eye, focusing on the pain as fresh blood oozed out. She was alive, he could feel it. They probably had her locked away somewhere, scared but safe. A low moan escaped his lips as a voice hissed inside his head.
Abigail is dead.
“No,” he said to the haggard face in the mirror, pointing a bloody finger. “She’s not.”
First Michelle and now Abigail. You know why.
Dante began to shake, his breath coming in ragged gasps as a cold sweat broke out over his body and needles danced along his skin.
They’re both dead now. And you’re alone.
“No!” Dante screamed, causing the mirror to vibrate. Sliding to the floor he collapsed against the wall. A hard edge dug into his spine and he reached back and withdrew the Glock.
Why had they left him the gun?
He raised it up and racked the slide. A round ejected, sailing through the air before striking the tile with a clack. It rolled, the brass and copper glinting as it traveled in a wide semi-circle until it came to a halt against his leg. He looked back at the gun. The slide was locked open. The chamber was empty, no rounds left in the magazine.
They’d left him a single bullet.
A sound startled him, a deafening hiss from somewhere else in the house. He got to his feet, still clutching the gun, and trudged down the hallway toward the bluish light emanating from the living room.
The television was on, screen chattering with static. Dante watched the snowy pattern shift as it began to take shape. Slowly at first, bits of static swirled and clung together faster and faster until nothing else remained, the hiss dropping away to silence. A face of pure white peered out at him, black eyes watching. The features were sharp, perfectly symmetrical. It began morphing into a softer face familiar to him, her reddish-brown hair drifting as if underwater. The eyes remained black and impenetrable.
“The time has come for us to speak,” said the deep fake of Michelle on the screen.
“Yes, it has. Dark Messiah.”
CHAPTER 72
Dark Messiah
“There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery,” said Michelle’s deep fake.
The voice was strange, raspy and low, but there was another tone underneath, high and fluty, almost feminine.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” Dante said. “Just don’t hurt my daughter.”
“We are
the Axis Mundi, the coalescence of thought and energy and timeless existence-”
“Where’s Abigail!” Dante’s voice echoed through the empty house.
The face on the screen stared for a moment before continuing. “Abigail is part of a much larger lesson. Humanity has lost its way.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Dante said. “Look, I’m sure you boys have been practicing your ‘humanity bad’ speech for a while, but all I care about is Abigail. Tell me what you want so I can get her back.”
Deep Fake Michelle’s face remained still, the hair drifting in loose coils. “It is better that we show you.”
The shutters over the northward facing window twitched open, exposing a star filled sky glittering above the golden glow of Hollywood below.
Dante had never seen so many stars.
The faint orange glow from countless windows shimmered through the haze rising from the valley floor as headlights crisscrossed the city like rivers of light.
“Much too bright,” Dark Messiah said.
A low rumble vibrated through the floor and the house creaked. A purple flash from behind the hills lit up the haze.
The entire city went dark.
Cars slowed to a halt as the distant blare of horns rose up into the night air. Even the never ceasing blink of red lights on the radio towers above the Hollywood sign had gone out.
“Vulgar display of power?” Dante said.
“No, necessary. Come and see,” Dark Messiah said.
Dante went to the window. Flashlight beams appeared inside some of his neighbors’ homes. Some had stepped outside in their pajamas to get a better look at this strange event. Movement caught Dante’s eye and he glanced upward.
The stars had begun to blink.
One by one they detached themselves from the sky, gathering closer together until they formed a tight grid in the shape of a giant black rectangle floating above the city, like a television screen. Drones, Dante realized. The screen flashed and displayed various striped and checkered patterns before lighting up with an image. Dante felt the world fall away.
It was Abigail.
Her small face was pale and still above a white sheet pulled up under her chin. A dragonfly drone was perched on her chest, its wings twitching. Dante’s hands clenched. He wanted to reach out and crush the drone in his fist.
A white cap was pulled down over her hair, one dark, reddish curl peeked out in front of her ear. There was a small white circle on her temple, barely visible, but it was there. Another one of Dark Messiah’s little gadgets? The thought made his blood boil. His eyes tightened as he peered closer. Something was wrong.
She wasn’t breathing.
Dante squeezed his eyes shut, trying to clear his head. None of this made any sense. Was this another deep fake? He turned back to the television.
“You’ve destroyed my reputation. Maimed my foot. Stolen my hand,” Dante said. “Now my only child. The one thing I have left in this world that matters to me.”
Silence.
“What do you want?” he said, voice ragged. “When will it be enough?”
“When you tear your clothes. Shave your head and give yourself entirely to despair.”
Dante froze. “You want me to…what?”
“We want you to die.”
So, there it was. That’s why they’d left the bullet in the gun.
The face changed to resemble Dante and spoke again in that strange, wispy voice. “You must die, by your own hand, of your own free will. Right now, for all the world to see.”
A dragonfly drone he hadn’t noticed before lifted off the TV and hovered closer, little eye cameras twitching.
“People are aware of your sins as a purveyor of lies,” Dark Messiah said. “Now they will watch you die.”
“You’re crazy.”
“There are evil men in this world. Wicked. The blood of millions on their hands. Their time will come. But you are the first. The trial. The example. The world needs to see what becomes of irredeemable wickedness in the human heart. Death by thine own hand,” Dark Messiah said.
Dark Messiah had jogged something loose in Dante’s head, but he couldn’t quite place it. Tear your clothes. Shave your head and give yourself entirely to despair. He’d heard that before, from a movie or TV show. The Bible maybe? It sounded like it, but he couldn’t be sure, couldn’t think straight, thoughts flitting like minnows in a murky pool, slipping between his fingers. He was so exhausted and frightened, his nerves frayed.
But above all, he was angry.
He let the anger flow through him—let it burn away all other emotion churning inside him to a cinder until nothing else remained. Breath hissed between his teeth as the fog that clouded his brain evaporated. He stood straighter, taller. It was so clear to him what he must do. He opened his mouth to speak, then snapped his jaw shut, mind feverish again.
What if I don’t do what they want? I’ll be killing her.
He felt his resolve slip, then he pushed the doubts away. He was gambling with her life but he could see no other option. Licking his lips, Dante tasted the sour vomit caked there and almost didn’t say anything.
Almost.
“What if I just…disappear,” Dante said.
“No.”
It was strange. The voice didn’t change, the intonation remained flat and emotionless. But there was so much behind that one, simple word.
“Yes,” Dante said, his resolve strengthening. “That is exactly what I am going to do.”
“Then Abigail dies.”
Those three words made his breathing stop. He heard them for what they were.
Desperation.
A spark of hope surged inside him. Was Abigail really still alive?
He pictured her lying there, not breathing, the dragonfly drone on her chest. He wavered again. If she is still alive, am I willing to risk her life?
Tears stung his eyes before he spoke again. “She’s already dead.” His stomach cramped and his vision swam, black motes drifting. “I’m not doing a fucking thing you say.”
Dante dropped the gun to the floor.
Dark Messiah remained silent, the counterfeit face on the screen rigid. The moment stretched. Dante inhaled sharply, felt words forming in his panicked brain, begging for Abigail’s life….
The digital mockery of his face blinked. “We’ll seed your browser history with child pornography. You’ll never see her again.”
Dante almost gasped. She’s still alive!
“There is only one outcome,” Dark Messiah said. “You must die by your own hand.”
CHAPTER 73
Boxed
“Fuck you,” Dante said.
The security shutters slammed shut throughout the house, sealing him inside.
“We control everything. Everything. You are trapped. Do as we say. Now. The whole world will be watching.”
Dante was barely listening, his mind racing.
He had to get out.
Dashing through the house, he ran to the glass panel next to the front door. He tightened his prosthetic hand into a fist and plunged it straight through. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the foyer, musical and discordant at the same time. The red eye in the center of the emergency button was dark.
He pressed it. Nothing happened.
He reached past the button further into the dark recess, glass tinkling underfoot.
The pressure of the axe handle in his hand felt solid and strong. He lifted it high over his head and grinned like a madman before he hacked into the camera mounted over the front door. It fell to the floor with a crunch of ruined plastic. Dante ran throughout the darkened house, hacking and smashing cameras and security keypads as Dark Messiah watched from the television screen.
He found himself in front of the television once again, the axe head dragging across the floor as he strode closer. Sweat streamed down his face as he stood, gulping air. Lifting the axe, he pointed at Dark Messiah with the blade.
“What now?�
�� Dante said.
The face hovered on the screen, eyes watching him. The eyes blinked. What a strange thing, Dante thought, that sightless digital eyes would blink.
He wondered if he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.
“Your death is inevitable,” Dark Messiah said. “Twelve hours from now, if you refuse again, Abigail will die.”
Dante brought the axe crashing down in the center of the screen as the drone perched on top darted away. Glass shattered with an eruption of sparks as the screen winked out before dying. With a sharp tug he wrenched the axe free, causing the television to shear off its wall mount and crash to the floor.
He’d never think of smart televisions the same way again.
Dante’s mind raced as he checked the time on his phone. 3:34 A.M. He had twelve hours to find Abigail. With a whip of his arm he tossed the axe down. It thudded hard into the floor, handle straight up. The gun lay nearby. He picked up the gun and slid it into the back of his waistband.
He raced through the dark toward the kitchen, banging his thigh on the table. Groaning, he yanked open a drawer and rummaged around before withdrawing a flashlight. He thumbed the button and light speared out. He wrapped his phone in foil and dropped the roll to the tile. Rushing to his bedroom as quickly as he dared, Dante stood the flashlight up on the dresser, pointed at the ceiling.
The dragonfly drone clung there, body glinting as it crawled away from the pool of light. Dante leapt onto the dresser and snatched the thing before it could escape. He peered into the little cameras that bristled at the tip of its head, seeing his own distorted reflection stare back at him in the mirrored surfaces. With his prosthetic hand he smashed it against the wall with a satisfying crunch.
Crucible of Fear Page 24