The Mentor (43 page)

"
What
is the rest??
"

I screamed,
"That's it.  It was incomplete, he told me it was incomplete, that
was ALL HE HAD!"

My words bubbled
at my lip as sweat, tears and snot poured over my mouth, blood oozed down my
neck.  

"
The
rest
!"

Then, in
that moment, so strange, but in that moment, I realized something amazing.

I was not
beaten.  I had not been broken.

Then the
next realization: I could not be broken.  I could never be beaten.

My death
would not be my ultimate defeat, but instead would be
their
failure to
extract from me what they wanted to know. 

But they
would get nothing more from me.

Through the
blood and fluids that caked my face, both eyes swollen shut, I smiled.
Certainly, I was the only one in the room to know it was a smile.  But it was
there.

It was
there because I realized that I had beaten
them
.  And the reason I could
resist them?  Oh.  Oh,
that
was what made it so sweet.

Several
weeks ago, I'd never have held up.

They could
have sat me down and threatened simply to run paper cuts through the webbing of
each toe, and I'd have told them anything they wanted to know.

Not
anymore.

"
No
more
," I mumbled through loose teeth, triumphantly.

Because
they
…
had inadvertently conditioned me to resist…
them
.

Trials by
molten fire, crushing thirst, unimaginable fear, nearly drowned, nearly blown
to bits, nearly fried by electricity… and through it, I'd had to learn to
better control my mind.

Better
control my fear.

For their
part, they gambled that The Mentor's torture would bring back the memories that
had been locked away in my brain.  The memories that held the one thing in the
world they wanted but could not be bought, could not be negotiated for.

But they
would not get their extension of
time
.

Because
they hadn't simply brought back my memories.

Because
they inadvertently brought back me.

I was back.

Slumped in
the chair, my head held like a vice by my tormentor's arm, right then,
something in my chest trilled, and it was as if, for the first time in years, a
string had been pulled on some gyroscope in my chest.

I felt it
right me, center me.

I was back.

The pain on
my legs, the burns there, I no longer felt.  At the wrist, once electrocuted,
that pain was gone.  Even the lumps The Mentor had given me only minutes
earlier, no pain.  No pain.

I coughed
away the moisture and held fast.  He wasn't going to get any more screams
from me.

"Okay."

The fire
filled my ear, steam shot quickly down the short passage, it felt as though the
membrane was melting in my head.

“All
right!”

The grip on
my face tightened as if he were trying to snap my jaw between his fingers and,
still, he pushed deeper into my skull, burning as he went.

"Stop
it," Bluth said from some screen above us.  "Put it down, stop
it.  If that's all there is, well, it's far more than we had
earlier."

"It's
good," a voice said, floating above my head.  "It's a damn good
jumping off point."

The hand
holding my face let me go, threw me forward.  I heard a clatter onto the
table, as my head dropped, lolled against my chest.

The
Mentor’s voice rolled into my left ear, my right was dead and now forever
silent: "What about him?"

Bluth
stopped, he was chattering low with the others, and said, "It… he, I don't
know.  We have what we were after.  Please get rid of... everything,
no trace.  Nothing left but don’t do it
there
."

I lifted my
head and got a sharp rap to the base of the skull, everything going dark.
 But I had seen it.  So small, so simple.  There'd been a black,
bubbling mass on its metal tip, blood stained its cord.

A simple
soldering pen.   He'd destroyed one of my ears with a simple
soldering pen.

Chapter
Twenty-five

“Wake up,
sleepyhead,” I felt a slap across my face.  The other side stung, too, so
my guess this wasn’t his first attempt to roust me.

The Mentor
stood in front of me, his hands behind his back, in full daylight.  I
could only see the black of his face and hands.  The rest of him was, as
usual, covered in neoprene or dark padding.  The bulge in his jacket, I
wasn’t sure of.  All that time, he’d never shown me a weapon.

"What?
 Only heard half of that," I said, realizing my resting place was an
overturned, rusted filing cabinet.  Then, surprisingly, I leaned up
realizing that there were no bounds, no restraints on me.  Only the
incredible headache weighed on me.  That and a dull throbbing from the
right side of my head.

“What?
 No chains, no drugging, no lake of fire?  You bored of me?”

His hand
slowly came out from behind his back, and he was holding an envelope.  As
he moved, an open door, just behind him, came into view.  That could be--

“Last time
for you and me then,” he said, standing by the room’s built-in shelves.
 He placed the envelope on the middle ledge and walked to the door.
 I watched him for a moment, and then my eyes flicked back to the shelf.
 Nothing else on it but what he’d put there.  In fact, aside from
some bits of dirt, carpet scraps, scattered crumpled sheets of paper, there was
very little in the office.  “Everything you need to know is in that
envelope.”

“No big
speech?  No random facts.  You’re just going to walk away.”

He stepped
across the threshold, pulling the door behind him.  And as it closed, he
said those words one last time: “Lesson begins.”

I rose to my
feet slowly, having some trouble with my balance momentarily.  My first
intuition was to race out the door.  But, then what?  Just get beat
down again?

Instead, I
ran to the shelf and tore open the envelope.  Inside was a single piece of
paper, perfectly square.  It was from a desk calendar.  With today’s
date.

The room
felt strange.  I was in an office.  An office building.

But, so
quiet.  Where were all the people?

Dead quiet.

Turning the
square piece of paper over, nothing on the back, blank, I looked at it again.
 I crumpled it up and was about to toss it, and then pocketed it instead.
 

A moment
later, I went out into the office's hallway.  Deserted.  I couldn’t see him
anywhere.  He’d gone either up or down.

What I did
see was open doors.  Offices along each wall, a few broken pieces of
particle board in the center of the room.  No desks, no chairs, no lights,
no people… out the dirty window at the end of the long hallway, I was surprised
to see the Atlanta skyline.

I was many,
many floors above street level.

This
building, it was like something I’d seen before in post-apocalypse movies.
 Wasteland office space, some busted up filing cabinets turned onto their
sides.

Then it hit
me, the date.

“Oh God…”

I pulled
the piece of day calendar out of my pocket and read the name at the top of the
paper.

“Sun Trust
bank.  Today.  I’m in the Sun Trust bank.”

Outside, I
heard the blare of a warning siren.  I guess that’s what they do before
they trigger the charges to demolish an entire building.

SCRAMBLING
TO THE MAIN hall, then to the elevator, I wasn’t entirely surprised when the
buttons wouldn’t light, no grinding of gears.  There was no power in the
building.  

To the left
of the elevator, there was a door.  On the other side, I could hear the
sounds of feet taking the steps quickly.  Hitting the long handle, I burst
through, and standing at the top of the stairs, my head spun, hit with vertigo,
as they seemed to wind down forever like an Escher drawing.

I caught a
glimpse of the top of his head, that perfect haircut, and made a decision.

As fast as
I could, I took the stairs, four and five at a time, round and around, down
lower and lower, nearly jumping from landing to landing, until he was a
half-flight in front of me, and he spun just as I leapt, this time knocking us
both off our feet, and we tumbled and banged down several lengths of stairs.

I was up
first—my fat better than his hard padding—and I kicked him once.  He
flinched a little and when I delivered another kick, he caught my foot, twisted
it and I spun to the floor.

As he
stepped over me, I reached up and grabbed legs, and we tumbled another set of
stairs together, this time he was grunting on the way down.  I’d hurt him
a little.

“Dexter,
after that siren, we’ve got two minutes to get out of this building,” he
yelled, huffing.  “You keep this up and we’ll both be dead!”

“I’ve been
dead,” I said into his face.  “This time, I’m taking you with me”

I hit him
with everything I had, my full weight, delivered to the side of his glistening,
sweaty face.  His head slammed into the cement floor but before I could
strike him again, he was up and, grabbing me by my shirt, lifting me and
tossing me to the wall.

I hit hard,
my skull and shoulders bounced against the cement wall, and I fell hard.
 He wasn’t done.  

“Dexter,
that was a fine punch,” he said and kicked my ribs.  “But you’ve got to
learn follow up.”  He kicked the other side and I flipped over in pain.
 “Too bad, boy.  I think you could have been pretty good.  Not
great, but pretty good.”

One last
axe kick to the back of my head, and I heard him running down the steps again.

A recent
pro at getting my ass kicked, I recovered quickly.  Flopping onto my back,
I allowed a few seconds to breathe and feel a little sorry for myself.
 Little “me” time.

As I looked
up, I saw the number on the wall.  Forty-second floor.  This, of a
fifty story building.  In my shape, and if his timing was to be believed,
I’d never make down forty-two floors in less than a minute.

But, I
might make eight.

I staggered
to my feet, the bitter taste of blood rolling around and through my teeth, and
started climbing the stairs, slowly at first.

As it’s
been established, I’ve got a pretty good memory for things I hear.  Not as
good as it used to be, but fair.  And, aside from having a beer-soaked
brain, I can very often visualize images associated with the audio recalled
pretty well.

Which is
why, as I climbed the stairs, faster and faster to the top, I tried to envision
the Atlanta skyline painting Doc Drake had been working on.  

Each breath
sent white hot cannon balls into my lungs, and I could only assume I had broken
ribs on both sides.  Still, I pumped my burning thighs, my shattered hands
and wrists pulled hard on the railings, aiming for the top.

I decided
on small goals.  If I were going to die, I wanted to be in the sunlight.
 Just make it to the top, that’s all I needed.  I didn’t want to end
my life, not anymore, but if it was my time to go, I want to be looking right
at God— because I had a few things to get off my chest.

The number
at the next turn: forty-seven.  I wanted to stop because I couldn’t seem
to get enough air, I felt dizzy, but I knew I had to keep moving up, up, up.

Doc’s
painting had been nearly night time, he preferred the eerie light of dusk, but
the buildings were exact.  Doc refused to work from photos as some artists
do.  Instead, he would go up and “watch” the city, or whatever he was
going to paint.  He’d get to a tall building, sit on the roof and let the
image burn into his brain until, when he blinked, he’d see it’s negative in his
mind—like when someone stares at the sun too long.

Forty-eighth
floor.

It’s cliche,
but it’s only in those moments that you are about to lose something that you
realize its full value.  Sad, but true.  I thought about my little
life.  My daily pastry.  My handful of friends.  The soothing
feeling of a nice dark beer drizzling over my tongue.  And Mom.  I
never called my mother enough.

At
forty-nine, I heard a terrifying sound.  At first it was sort of faint,
pop-pop-pop
,
but continued to get louder, racing upward toward me.

Halfway up
that last flight, the pops grew into thunderous explosions, and I could hear
crumbling cement and rubble following each, then just below me, last one, I saw
part of the staircase blow out and a blade of sunlight cut inside.

The entire
structure shook, questioning its ability to stand, as I reached the door to the
roof.

It was
locked.

The glass
was thick, and I couldn’t see anything around me to break it with.  I
punched it with my weak fist a few times, but it just bounced off harmlessly.
 

Sliding to
the floor, on my knees, I twisted the knob back and forth, back and forth,
willing it to open.

I felt the
top step below me shudder.  

One final
pop, very close to me and my eyes and ears filled with dust, my left ear nearly
as deaf as my right, momentarily, all I could hear was a high whine.  The
world had gone silent and dark around me.

But, then,
a blade of light.  
Sun
light, this time in front of me.

The last
explosion had a ripple effect and had blasted a crevice in the wall next to me.

My only
goal: The sunlight.  Just to be in the sunlight was all I wanted.

Willing
myself to my feet, I choked on dust, it filled my throat and nose and I pressed
my soft body through the crack, and spilled onto the rooftop like being born
into the hot Atlanta sunlight.

I stood
looking at the beautiful city for a brief moment.  The glitter of steel in
the joy of the sun.

“Okay,” I
said.  “New goal.”

Get off the
building.

I wasn’t
terribly schooled at the city.  I knew where the aquarium was, where you
could catch a concert, and where you could get the best hot dog on the planet.
 That was pretty much it.

But, Doc’s
painting in my head, I began to run west as hard as I could.  My crazy
friend was prone to “artist interpretation” but if I were wrong (or he’d been
overly creative), this would be the last act of Dexter Daisy-- a final sprint.

The sun
scorching my bare arms, I stripped off my shirt and let it have more, and ran
faster, harder.  As the edge approached, my heart leapt, hopeful: I saw my
target in the distance.

Then, the
building pitched, began to rise behind me.  It was collapsing underneath
me, its groaning reminiscent of the dying moments of some massive,
millennia-old prehistoric creature.

Then the
sound grew sharper, and a roar started low, shaking the structure.  I felt the
world collapse and tilt upward.  

From what I
know if it, which is all the Cobb County library audio collection had to say
about it, they’re supposed to fall
nearly
straight down.  Often,
the roof will tilt, list to one side as its support crumbles away unevenly
beneath it, but the buildings themselves don’t tip over.

Running,
running.

Air
conditioning units burst around me, vents imploded, a small array of antennas were
rising behind me, their tips racing toward my back, and I ran faster, faster,
on the downward slope.

When I
finally got to the edge, for some reason, I thought of Laura. Because of my
full sprint, I could only leap with the one leg, but I gave it what I could and
thought,
I should call her
.

Falling.

falling.

falling.

My eyes had
closed because my brain knew this wasn’t something I should see.  

For a
moment, there was Ruthie’s voice and she was laughing.  If I was dead, she
probably saw it happen and was now simply getting a huge kick at how stupid her
big brother bought the farm.  Her voice, her laugh was like a warm home on
a winter night.

I said to
her, “I’m sorry.  God, I’m so sorry.”

She laughed
again, softly, and said: “
I know.  It’s okay
.”  The quiet
faded and a roar came up in my left ear.  She whispered to me, giggling, “
You
may want to hold your nose
.”

Whhoooooosssssshhhhhhhhhh!!!

A burning… fire,
everywhere.

Not fire.  Not,
actually, burning.

In fact, kinda cold.

Jesus. 
Damn
cold.

The previous few
seconds had been information overload, and I'd been unable to process it until
a few moments later.

The
neighboring hotel with its rooftop pool that I’d seen in Doc’s painting had not
been open for swimming, too early in the season yet.  As I'd landed at the
adjacent building, my eyes popped open for a brief second, and the water my
feet were just about to hit looked so unnaturally blue.

Then, hitting
the pool’s protective tarp, my heels punched it downward and my world went from
light to dark again, hot to cold.