Flashback (Out of the Box Book 23)

by Robert J. Crane

  If I'd done this to a normal human, the next sound you'd hear would be shrieking as every tendon and bone in the wrist ruptured, and the tips of their fingers touched the inside of their elbow.

  I didn't quite manage to get Wolfe's fingers to bend that far, but they were pretty close. In the momentary flash in which I did it, I saw the tips of his long nails hover about a quarter inch above the hairy skin of his forearm, his mouth thrown open in a silent scream.

  Needless to say, I didn't stop there, because I didn't want to die.

  Trying not to put too much weight on my annihilated back, I swept my right foot up and brought my calf under Wolfe's chin while pulling myself up using his arm as a lever. It wasn't dissimilar to what my mom had done and was an exceedingly dangerous thing to do under any circumstances, because I was drawing closer to the beast.

  I was fresh out of options, though, and was counting on Wolfe's failure to feel pain on a regular basis to be a stunning experience that would give me a moment or two to work my plan before he started tearing me to pieces.

  Locking my legs around his neck, I gave his wrist one more crank and shoved hard, pulling myself up him a little farther, my thigh reaching the underside of his chin, the far side of his neck cradling perfectly beneath my knee. Dropping my left leg down now that I was in place and no longer needed it to stabilize me during my ascent, I muscled myself up enough to grip my right ankle, forming a perfect loop – a noose, if you will – using my leg as the choking mechanism, snaked around his throat. I clamped on to my ankle hard and squeezed my knee joint as tightly as I could.

  I was hurting so much, my back screaming as I dangled from Wolfe, hanging upside down, my right thigh and calf forming the perfect squeeze play around his neck. I cranked it with all my strength, closing the loop tighter, trying to bring them together so there wasn't an inch of space between thigh and calf. His neck, naturally, was in the way, but with my meta strength I tried to crush that trifling obstacle into non-existence, cranking my muscles as taut as they could go, ignoring the screaming pain all along my back and flank.

  This was my life on the line. Failure meant death, and so I ignored the pain – at first.

  “Nnnnnnnngh!” Wolfe grunted, lifting me, driving me up with his jacked-up arm. I slapped it with my left hand, and he screamed as I agitated the splintered tendons and connective tissue with my blow. I hit it again, and again, hard slaps to the top of his hand, trying to keep him in pain so he wouldn't think through what I was doing.

  I definitely wasn't stealing his breath. His grunts proved I hadn't cut off his airway at all. Maybe constricted it some, but I was not choking him.

  I was squeezing the carotid artery and jugular again, thanks to General Krall reminding me of the efficacy of that particular weak point in the human body. It was top of mind, my most recent humiliating failure, being choked out by a pint-sized pipsqueak who – not that long ago –I would have been able to burn to ash to rid myself of the literal spider-monkey on my back.

  Now I seemed to be applying this particular technique everywhere, including now to the toughest son of a bitch I'd ever met. He writhed and jerked, thrashing up and down and yanking me along with him. My shoulders and back moved two feet up, then dramatically whiplashed back down after he reached the apex of his movement.

  I screamed, and I didn't mean to. It just came out.

  My grip was like iron on my ankle, but only by thoughtless default, only because it was locked in. Everything else on my body cried out, hurt, like I'd taken a hundred lashes to my back.

  I came through a blackout, long seconds I'd somehow lost, my body now in a different angle and orientation, two feet lower than I'd been a moment earlier. Wolfe had me hanging only a foot from the ground. My eyelids were fluttering, but when they came open I found him doing a very similar thing, a flaming hatred behind his eyes that was fading as he did.

  Movement out of the corner of my eye caught me by surprise. Wolfe was moving his other hand, bringing it up above him, plunging it down, claw-like fingernails catching the overhead fluorescent light with a glimmer-

  He shoved his claws into my guts without mercy and I gasped as he did it. He ripped into my belly like a chainsaw through a loaf of bread, buried up to his elbow in a half-second. It was a fury move, pure anger, him lashing out as he fought against unconsciousness and against the thing causing it – me.

  I tried to hold on, but gut wounds are painful when they're small. Having an oversized lump of fetid skin and putrid psychiatric disorders ram his clawed hand through your belly and into your intestines went well beyond the “small” category of stomach trauma and well into the “catastrophic” range. I couldn't see what he was doing because my body immediately spasmed as the shockwave of pain ran through me like someone had placed a star in my abdomen and then triggered a supernova.

  Every muscle in my body contracted, and the scream I let out would have been the kind of music Wolfe would normally have danced madly to. I didn't know what happened next, only that I was in the most pain I'd ever been in in my entire life. That this was definitely what death felt like, especially if it crawled up inside you and inflicted itself on every square inch of your body and your innards all at once. It felt like my stomach had been turned into a blender, the blades turned free on my tender belly, and a mountain of broken glass turned loose within, all at once.

  My scream died and I blacked out, crashing against the table I'd been lying against, something breaking as I came down, Wolfe still clutched between my thigh and calf. My grip was a death grip now, because I was sure I was dying, and we both collapsed into metal and steel and pain-

  32.

  The slap to my face woke me to a world of agony, a galaxy of it, an infinite universe of screaming anguish-

  I cried out and didn't even have the self-control or inhibition or shame to give a good damn, I just let it out as I came screaming back to the world, my head wedged against a hard metal surface and my entire belly feeling like I had been vivisected then burned for good measure.

  Blood tinged my mouth and came out with the slap, along with a couple of teeth and a fair amount of spittle. It was not a gentle hit, nor a gentle hand, but one covered in steel and painted black, jarring me out of my passed-out, glorious reverie in which the pain had been at least muted.

  I writhed as it all came back to me now, and I opened my eyes to a scene of horror under my breastbone, an open hole in my stomach that looked like my body had been used as a prop in Alien for the stomach-exploder scene.

  “...Back to us now,” Henderschott's husky voice came from beneath the black mask, eyes peering at me from the thin slits he used to see. He was leaning over me, hand raised to deliver another wakening slap.

  Behind him, clutching his throat and grimacing with pointed teeth sticking out from beneath curled, sneering lips, was Wolfe. He was rubbing his neck self-consciously and staring at me with hatred.

  He...was...sooooo pissed at me.

  I spared a look at where my mother had landed, and she was already bound, tightly, in unyielding chains, her eyes closed, not too far from where Henderschott had flung her before I'd engaged with Wolfe.

  I wanted to say something spiteful, something horrible, but all I could get out was a weak gurgle of pain. I tried to move and failed, my body wrecked beyond my ability to overcome the nerve and muscle and tissue damage. My brain seemed to be operating at ten percent of normal, and I suspected I was experiencing at least a little organ failure to go with my wounds, because Wolfe probably hadn't just gotten my guts with his attack. The liver was in there, some other somewhat important stuff, and I'd likely lost even more blood in addition to what I'd left in the damned mob casino.

  My body was spasming, almost gently (except for the anguish it brought) every few seconds. It blended into a cacophony of such pain that I could barely concentrate on anything. My thoughts came slowly, all this occurring to me over the course of long minutes in which Henderschott leaned over me, trying to ask me things
I couldn't even really hear because I was so out of it.

  He slapped me, probably due to non-response. I barely felt it.

  My neck went slack, and my cheek found the hospital floor. It was strangely cool to the touch, an odd counterpoint to every other sensation in my body, which was hot, steaming hot, pain everywhere.

  “Transport will be here shortly,” I heard Henderschott through the spreading haze that was in my head.

  “I want this one first,” Wolfe said, still brushing his fingers against his neck, hoarser than usual. He was still staring hatefully at me. “Alone.”

  “No,” Henderschott said. “Gerasimos wants her alive. And...as unharmed as possible.”

  “I won't harm her any more than she's already been.”

  Henderschott's eyes flicked to Wolfe, then back to me. They were cool, Wolfe's were flaming angry. “No,” Henderschott said. “Take it up with Gerasimos.”

  “What was it...they called him...back in old...days? When he was Zeus's bitch?” I burbled, blood running down my chin and cheek, whether springing from the bleeding in my mouth or the internal injuries, I wasn't sure. “Smite? Wrath?”

  Henderschott and Wolfe traded a look, but Henderschott was the one who turned back to me first and asked, in a professional, quiet tone: “How do you know about that?”

  “I know...all about you guys...” I said, dribbling, speaking into a pool of my own blood and bubbling it with each spoken word. “Gerasimos's son...is Rick. And he...is definitely a little...bitch.” I chuckled and the blood bubbled. “He's going to come...to a bad end...”

  My brain was fading; now I was answering questions a little more honestly than I might have otherwise, all my inhibitions fading behind the pain, behind the cold touch of death that was coming over my nerves even now.

  Henderschott started to ask me something but stopped midway through. He raised an armored hand, beckoned forward. “Come.”

  There was movement behind me I couldn't see. Something crossed into my vision past Henderschott, black boots and black pants legs, and something moving wildly between them-

  Sienna.

  Little Sienna.

  Two Omega operatives had her clutched between them and she was crying, squirming but utterly unable to do a damned thing against them. They were full-grown men and she was a child, and I watched them carry her like she was nothing, bring her to Henderschott like she was a sack of writhing cats.

  And behind her followed two more...

  Dragging Lethe by the arms between them.

  She was unconscious and riddled with bullets, blood dripping down her chin. She twitched as they tossed her down next to my mother, and her eyes were blank, unfocused, though she blinked when she saw me.

  “...Thought she was dead...?” Henderschott asked, only part of his question making its way through the haze filling my brain.

  Wolfe looked away. “It doesn't matter. Look at her. She's nothing anymore.” There was a level of contempt in his voice that hit new lows, loathing that reached even deeper than the anger he was currently harboring for me.

  I lost a little time, I realized, as the players on the stage in front of me were in different positions when next I saw them, as though I'd skipped through a few minutes. Wolfe was on his feet, looking at me, but now next to the two Omega lackeys that were holding little Sienna.

  He brushed a clawed finger across her cheek, smiling at me. “So delicious.”

  I grunted, my few surviving abdominal muscles tightening in revulsion.

  If he killed her right now, would I cease to exist?

  If he did his usual, horrible, Wolfe-things to her now...

  What the hell would be left of me in the future?

  I only had enough brain power to idly consider those possibilities before the world shifted on me again. Now there were more black-clothed figures in the room, an even half-dozen, and the new ones were carting something big and metallic on a dolly. Two of the others had my mother, and were shoving her inside, a metallic THUNK! resonating through the room as they closed her into the containment unit, then clicked a lock that shut her in. She was still bound hand and foot when she'd gone in, and I blinked, staring at the damned thing as two of the newcomers tipped it back, wheeling it out the door.

  “Take the girl, go with them,” Henderschott said. “Bring the next unit.” He turned his head to me. “She's next. Gerasimos wants her.”

  I wanted to decline his invitation with a spit of blood, but I couldn't even muster it, and no one was really in range of my spit right now anyway. The pool of blood before my lips seemed to have grown in the period that I was out, and I coughed up another glob.

  My muscles were all paralyzed, my usual defiance all spent. I couldn't even manage a nasty quip.

  I was beaten. Broken.

  Finished.

  I lay there, muscles all slack, feeling like I might fall into the concrete floor were it not pushing back at me just as hard as I was against it. It resisted my efforts to meld with it, to fall into it, to just drop right to hell and cut out the middleman.

  The middleman, though...he wasn't having any of that.

  “Don't leave us yet, little doll,” Wolfe said, turning his attention to me now that little Sienna and my mother had been pulled from the room. He cast a stray look at Lethe, revulsion curling his lips. “Wolfe wants to show you the...depths of his appreciation for you.”

  “Guessing you mean...shallows...” I managed to burble out, a bare shell of my former self, but defiant to the damned last.

  Wolfe's expression flickered with contempt, and he took a step closer. “Wolfe is going to show you-”

  And he froze, mouth open, teeth bared, mid-step.

  A strong grip took hold of me by one hand, dragging me. I let out a scream, but it did no good, echoing in the room, warbling in a strange way, as though the sound were bouncing off the walls.

  Lethe was there, next to me, eyes fluttering, hand raised above her head, also being dragged. I couldn't quite see the figure that had us, but I lolled my head up, up-

  The strain was visible on his face, his jet-black hair slightly more mussed than usual as he pulled me and my grandmother from the room, Henderschott and Wolfe and the Omega men frozen in time.

  “Akiyama,” I breathed. My grandmother stirred, just for a moment, then her eyes closed as he dragged us away.

  A moment later, I joined her in unconsciousness.

  33.

  I awoke to pain, but not as grim and agonizing as it had been when I'd passed out, Akiyama dragging me from the animal hospital. I also woke to darkness, to faint dawn on the horizon, and to a ringing headache in addition to the still-rumbling anguish in my belly.

  Trees swayed softly overhead, gently moving in a light breeze, and there was a chill on my skin as I stared up into a dark blue sky, the sun yet to rise. Night sweat had given way to morning dew, and I mopped my brow, feeling the chilled water resting there, salty as I disturbed a drop on my cheek and it ran down to my lips. I licked it, mouth dry and heavy with thirst.

  A ripple of movement drew my gaze. Akiyama was there, then he was not, skipping in and out of view like a bad videotape. Which they'd know all about here in 1999.

  “You...got me out...” I managed to croak. My voice sounded like Wolfe had scratched up my voice box while he'd been rooting around in my guts. He'd done no such thing, as far as I knew, but it had damned sure felt like it.

  “I did,” Akiyama said, solidifying back into this time. I almost gasped as he did so.

  He looked...drawn. Dark circles were fully emplaced under his eyes, and he walked with a hunch, like an old man. Akiyama maybe – maybe – looked middle aged the whole time I'd known him, so this dramatic transformation was...well, dramatic.

  “This thing I am doing...holding us here, keeping us from moving forward,” Akiyama said, shaking his head. “It is different than anything I have done before.”

  “Dude,” I said, “you once held an island in place for seventy years, s
uspended and out of time. You're telling me-”

  “That was different,” Akiyama said. “Extremely localized.” He put his hands inches apart. “A very small slice of territory. This...” he pulled his hands apart as wide as they could go. “This is the whole world, and I am keeping recent events from rewriting our future, the one we left behind to come here.” He shuddered. “If I let it go...” He shook his head. “It would not be good.”

  I squinted at him. “Wait...you're saying that the world we left behind...it's gone? Because-” I pointed over my shoulder, as if to indicate the hell that we'd left behind in that animal hospital with Wolfe and Henderschott.

  He nodded. “Worse than that, I think – if I were to let go of time and let it re-run its course, right now – you would disappear from existence.”

  I shifted, a stick digging into my back. I moved to avoid that and a rolling spasm of pain shook my whole body, starting at the stomach and moving out in a rollicking wave that radiated from my head to my toes. I looked down at my belly; it was caked with dried blood, and there was still a wound an inch in diameter there, though it looked like it was crusted over. “You couldn't have let me disappear before the disemboweling?”

  “I have done all I can here,” Akiyama said. “I have stopped time to aid you...for the last time.” He drew himself up a little taller. “I cannot help any further without dropping the hold I have on time. And that...would mean catastrophe for you, at present.”

  “I'd cease to exist,” I said, musing. “Sounds like a bad deal.”

  “For more than just yourself,” Akiyama said. “Think of all you have done in your time on this earth-”

  “I think you mean 'since I got out of my house', because before that I wasn't doing much of anything.”

  “Sovereign,” he said, solemn. “The meteor over Chicago. President Harmon. The nuclear missiles launched by Hades. To say nothing of what you did in my case, saving all of time from-”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I said, clutching at my stomach, trying to steady it from moving while I spoke. It didn't work, pain came with every movement of my abdomen. But less. “I've done a lot of stuff. But I've got to tell you – none of this feels right.” I wished I could sit up without feeling like I was going to explode in the midsection. Having a conversation on your back with a person who’s standing? It's weird. You get a straight-up-the-nostrils view, and I found it very disconcerting. I looked to my right and my grandmother lay there, unconscious, and completely still – like “out of time” still.