Fade To Midnight (39 page)

He stared at the syringe as if it were a venomous insect.

“You'll be amazed, how much more effective the drug is now,” she said. “Dr. O worked hard all those years. It was X-Cog 2 or at most X-Cog 3, back in your day. This is X-Cog 19. There's a world of difference. I'll show you the trick you'll be performing today. Wait here.”

As if he could wander away. He followed her as far as his head would turn, which wasn't far with that hard plastic band cutting across his throat. A few minutes later, she reappeared, pushing a wheelchair.

A girl was in it, her hands plasticuffed to the arm rests, her ankles to the footrests. Gagged. Young, no more than eighteen. She wore a gray sports bra and shorts on her slender, curvy body. Her face would have been beautiful if it had not been distorted by terror.

The sick feeling of creeping horror intensified. Whatever she had in mind for him and that girl, it was sure to be bad. There was no end to how bad it could be. He knew about bottomless pits. He lived in one.

“Kev, meet Yuliyah. Fresh out of Latvia. She's a musician. Plays the oboe. I have her audition CD in my car. I listen to it every day. A Mozart concerto. Stunning. She is going to be your new little friend.”

Kev stared at the girl. She stared back, eyes wild.

He wondered if he could consciously trigger the oubliette. He never had before, but Jesus. He had to find a way, if Cheung tried to make him hurt that girl. “What the fuck are you doing with her?”

“Oh, nothing terrible,” Cheung soothed. “We have big plans for Yuliyah. She's destined for the next X-Cog slave interface the next time my client needs a big job done. We finally got a reliable supply line of subjects, but every single one of my girls is spoken for. I certainly don't intend for you to hurt Yuliyah, or even leave a single bruise on her. I just want you to, ah…” She winked. “You know.”

Fear clutched nastily at his guts. “You can't make me do that!”

“Oh, no?” Cheung's smile thinned. “I can make you do absolutely anything. I don't have a lot of experience in crowning men into sex, but it sounds like fun. And I love a challenge. Don't worry, if you're shy. I made arrangements for no one to disturb us.”

“It won't work,” he told her. “You can't regulate my blood flow, or hormones. You can't control my glands with that shit. And violence and rape are a huge, dick-wilting turn-off for me. Don't waste your time.”

“So you think being a man protects you from sexual compulsion? Typical male arrogance. The connection between master and slave crowns is more complex now than it was in your day. There's more give and take, more exchange. And violence may not turn you on, but it sure does it for me.” She giggled. “My heart is racing, already. I'm breathless and hot. And once I put that crown on you…you will be, too.”

Yuliyah writhed against her bonds. Kev closed his eyes. He had to block Cheung out. He had no idea how he'd done it with Osterman. All he knew was the price that he'd paid for it. For eighteen fucking years.

“You know, I picked Yuliyah out of my stable on purpose, just for you,” Cheung said. “She looks kind of like Edie, don't you think? I thought that might make it, you know. More exciting, for you.”

His guts churned. He had to stall her somehow, keep her talking, preening, gloating. “A stable? How many girls are you holding?”

“I just got a delivery last night,” she confided. “I was so excited. I have six, counting Yuliyah. All talented, all beautiful. They're already booked up, though. Lots of jobs to do. I have ten more on order.”

Six now. Ten more to come. Jesus wept. “You're like Exhibit A in Criminal Psych 101,” he said. “Dr. O tore you to pieces, didn't he?”

She giggled. “It's like Dr. O used to say about research ethics. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. The bummer is if you happen to be the egg, right? Right?” Her giggle got higher, shakier. She couldn't make herself stop.

She slapped him again. The sharp
smack
cut off her own hysteria, and she swayed, mouth dangling open, panting. “Everybody takes their turn to crawl,” she said hoarsely. “You're turn's up.” She came up close to him, and whispered into his ear. “And if you're good at your interface…if you're very good at fucking Yuliyah…if you make me come in my pants…I might even tell you your real name. Think about that.”

She stabbed the needle into his arm. He gasped, arching.

The effect was immediate. Like a wasp's sting. The monstrous mother of all wasps. A rictus of cramping, agonizing pain.

His face was locked into a staring grimace. His teeth ground. His tendons stood out. He felt blood pulsing in his temples, pressure in his eyes increasing. As if he were screaming inside, but no sound came out.

Ava Cheung lifted up a silver mesh cap, set it on his head, and leaned close to set the little dangling sensors at various points over his scalp. The contact points had adhesive on them. She put a set of goggles on his eyes. She set a similar device on her own head, placing the sensors on herself without taking her eyes off him. She put a pair of goggles on, and grinned. “Now we'll see who's the victim, Kev. Now we'll see who's in control.” She dragged in a deep breath. Her lips peeled back, her eyes closed. He was reminded of a mummified corpse.

She slammed into him. Oh
Christ.
Like being hit by a truck.

He fought, instinctively, as he felt her trying to make him move. But he soon realized that she couldn't. That connection was severed. His will to move was located someplace else, a place she could not reach. Of course, he couldn't reach it either. So what else was new.

He could feel her, flailing around in his brain. It hurt, but she couldn't get a grip on him. The block still held.
Yes.

The emergency rewiring he'd done eighteen years ago still worked. Thanks and praise to the great Whoever. She could cut him into pieces, but she could not make him rape that girl. Pressure built, but that armored part of his brain was like a nut she could not crack.

She stepped back, eyes bulging with rage. “You son of a bitch,” she spat. She grabbed another hypodermic from the table. Held it in front of his eyes, let him see the drop of liquid ooze out and shimmer on the tip of the needle. “Big, strong boy, huh? I guess you need more help than I thought. Let's see how a double dose affects you.”
Stab.

Another wasp sting. Incredible, that it could actually get worse. He hung there, rigid, enduring it. The realization formed, oddly calm. This shit would kill him. When the pressure got high enough, pop.

His only chance was the oubliette, but he'd always gone into it involuntarily. He'd never actually tried to get in.

Now was the time to figure out a way.

Of course, he might never come out. He might stay there in the dark until he wasted away, body atrophying, muscles and tendons shortening into the fetal position. Horribly conscious, waiting for death. Which would be long and slow in coming.

No good option. So be it.

He didn't know how he'd gotten into the oubliette, but he knew how he had gotten out. His little angel. Maybe she could lead him back in, too. So hard to concentrate, to still his mind, with Ava crashing around in there like a maddened bull. He called up Edie's image, her shining eyes full of light. He let it fill his conciousness, and the violence retreated into the background. Ava could flail around however she wished, in a room that was now empty. He took his leave, floated away.

Edie took form before him. She stood in the dark rocky tunnel that he knew very well, and beckoned to him. She glowed like a pearl.

He followed her into the darkness, letting her shining form lead him through the labyrinth. Ava pounded away, behind him. He no longer cared. He followed his love. Trusting her without question.

She lit up the tunnel with her inner light. She was his sun. He had no idea how far they went into the twisting darkness, but it was far.

And then, the door. Like something out of a medieval castle. Massive, made of heavy dark iron. Fastened with huge square bolts the size of a man's head. Fortified, spiked, speared, armored.

A key appeared in Edie's pale, slender hand. It gleamed in the light that came from her lambent form. She put it in the lock, turned it.

The door opened inward. She stepped back, beckoned him in. Inside was only darkness. Her eyes were so sad.

Grief clutched him. He was afraid to go in alone. He asked with his eyes if she could follow him in. She shook her head.
No.

Do the hard thing.
He steeled himself, walked past her, through the door and into the darkness. The door began to creak shut. Soon would come the hollow
boom
, locking him in the dark.

He turned to look back, though he knew he shouldn't, that it would only weaken him, torture him. And saw it, transfixed with horror.

The enormous black widow spider stood behind Edie in the tunnel. Her huge gleaming black abdomen reflected back Edie's light, distorting it. The fluttering shreds of its web clogged the rocky tunnel.

The way back was blocked. There was no way out for Edie.

Her eyes met his. Dark liquid dripped down her face from her eyes. A medieval madonna, weeping blood. The result of an X-Cog slave crown. She knew there was no escape from this trap. She was doomed.

Her eyes said good bye. The doors slammed shut.
Crash.
Dark.

Horror exploded inside him with the sound. Guilt, for dragging her into this, for not protecting her better. Terror and denial and fury.

He'd fucked up. The hard thing was the wrong thing. The worst fucking thing he'd ever done. Holing up in here to cower like a trembling mouse in a burrow, while Edie was in danger. What craven bullshit.

This was worse than death. He'd thought only of himself, leaning on her, counting on her to lead him through his darkness like the ferryman of the River Styx. Using her, when he should be saving her.

Those monsters would eat her alive.

He couldn't stay in here. At the cost of blowing every last fucking capillary in his brain into mush, he had to get out of here. Right
now.

The charge built inside him, and he stoked it, threw everything he had into it. All the nameless horror that he'd blocked from his mind, but not his body, or his heart. All the yearning and the loneliness, the mad frustration, those years of mute confusion. The towering rage.

The energy rose, like the gas pressure in a volcano about to blow a mountain miles into the air. Building, swelling—

Boom.
The force of the blast knocked him out.

When his eyes opened, the pressure of the plastic band across his throat was throttling him. He was drowning. It took a minute to realize that it was blood, streaming from his nose down into his throat, clogging the air. Ava was on the floor. She, too, had a nosebleed. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, touching her head. Dazed.

Something was different. Night and day different. He was still locked in the jaws of cramping pain, but his mind…it was as light as a balloon. Like a huge rock had been lifted from it. The blind spot.

It was…gone.
Gone.
Oh, Jesus.

Images began trickling into that numb space. He saw Osterman, crowning him. Osterman, trying to force him to tell him something. But X-Cog compulsion was essentially useless for the purposes of extracting information, so Osterman had given him to Gordon to play with.

Gordon.
Oh, Jesus. He remembered Gordon's torture now, and he wished he didn't. The burning, the cutting, the gloating. It floated back, chunk by chunk. Fragments of a screaming, bloody, endless nightmare.

Gordon hadn't expected him to fight back, that last day. Gordon thought that he was played out. He'd told Kev that was the day they'd finish him. Put out his eyes, cut off his ears, cut off his tongue, his hands, his feet, his balls, his dick. If he didn't tell them where Liv was.

Liv.
Liv? Who was…he struggled, groped for it. Liv…Endicott.

Oh, God.
Liv.
Yes. He saw her, in his mind's eye, outside the library, her gray eyes full of fear. He remembered telling her to take the notebook to Sean, and to get out of town before they—

Sean? Who the fuck was…
Sean?

His brother. His twin brother.

Images unfolded, full color, full feeling. Sean. Davy. Con. Dad. The house, the mountains. The Midnight Project. His life. His self.

Tears streamed down, mingling with blood. One memory triggered a hundred more, crashing down on him. An avalanche of memories, feelings. The formless longing he'd curled around, tried to ignore for years, it finally had a name. It was for them. Brothers. Family.

He'd found a burst of strength that day, in Osterman's lair. A lucky nerve pinch put Gordon down long enough to run, hotwire a car. He'd driven to Flaxon, God knows how, to blow the whistle on the Midnight Project. Bad call, choosing Parrish, the Flaxon rep. He should have gone to the cops. To anyone but Parrish. He hadn't been thinking clearly.

They'd put him down. And Gordon came, to retrieve him.

Osterman had been furious. He'd tried to compel Kev to mutilate himself in punishment. In his desperation, Kev had done…something to his own brain. He'd triggered the block. Hidden in the oubliette.

That was all he could remember, but the rest was easy to reconstruct. Osterman got bored with an unresponsive chunk of meat. He sent Gordon off to dispose of him. Tony found him. And that was it.

Ava was slapping again, had been for a while, but he was too overwhelmed by memories to notice. She swayed, blood streaming from her nose. “…do that to me? You
bastard!
You
hurt
me!”
Whack.

He flinched, blinked. Tossed in a heaving ocean of feelings, memories. He couldn't process them all. Half a life had been more than enough weight for his brain, his heart, to bear up under.