Val's eyes snapped wide open, his consciousness flaring like a struck match. There was light, too much of it. He winced and began to comprehend that he was not well. His chest expanded under a swell of alarm, and then collapsed against the bruised wailing of his heart. There was a sharp, specific pain under his ribs: the cord that bound him to a chair was excruciatingly tight. And the cable on his wrists, pinning his arms behind his back to the chair frame. The position reminded him of his captivity after his arrest, and the sick helplessness he'd suffered sweating out the debilitating meds.
Without doubt, he was drugged. The taste of weakness was at the base of his throat and in the mist that darkened the corridors of his mind. His ankles were cabled to the chair, another spot of discomfort to ignore. And there was a bright silver table in front of him, which was problematic only because on the other side of the table was a man regarding him with a combination of amusement, curiosity, and satisfaction.
"It's just a little sodium pyxanthol," the man said. "Okay, it's a lot of sodium pyxanthol. Should feel like you want to do simple math but you can't make your brain concentrate on two plus two. Look at me, please."
Val had shut his eyes. Now, he felt a dull pain in his face. Someone next to him had slapped him open-handed but hard. Val peeled back his eyelids to look at the man standing on his left. There was a third man on his right, facing him.
It was a family reunion, sort of.
"Where am I?" he managed to ask.
"The place at which all men, sadly, arrive," advised Adam Manegold, from across the table and with considerable delight.
Val supposed he was going to get an earful in a moment and tuned out Adam to do a cursory, ineffective sweep of his surroundings. A tight room with a bright ceiling panel, a table, two chairs. The walls were metallic, the floor concrete. A sweat box, a torture chamber, but where? What country? What facility? How far from the Goraneg was he? Was he still in Volodya? Doubtful but possible. He'd been out a minimum of ten hours and could conceivably be across the ocean. Where were the others?
" ... explain your predicament--" Adam was going on.
Val interrupted. "Where are the others?"
Adam clamped his mouth, mulled over his thoughts. "That's disrespectful, Val. You don't say hello, you don't ask how we've been. Then you cut in like that, and me here trying to fill you in on the essentials."
A big hand clamped his shoulder, fingers tightening.
Val said, "Hello, Gabriel," to the man whose fingers were making dents in his collarbone. To the man in long black leather on his left: "Hello, Arnulf." He stared across the table. "I regret I was unable to write."
"Yes, well." Adam spread his arms. "We have to get past it, I suppose."
"Put it behind us," Val agreed in a rough voice.
"You're reading my mind," chuckled Adam, full of mirth. Creases under and around his pale eyes showed his age. He was old enough, nearly, to be Val's sire. A sense of humor was a new trait for Adam, who'd always been matter-of-fact as well as ruthless. "Okay, to the point, and no interrupting, little brother, I've never seen a man so dead as you before. Unfortunately, we've a bit of business to conclude before the formalities. What you talked about to the turds, how much of our operation you exposed, what they have on us, what they are going to do next. We know you're on their dole, we pulled a transmitter off you while you were taking a nap. Who or what is on the other end? What'd they send you up the mountain for? It's a lot to go over, I know, but you'll feel better after we talk about it."
Arnulf leaned heavily into a wall. Now, Arnulf looked the same, big, broad, with a flamboyantly red shirt and black leather coat down to his knees. He'd have a pistol in the small of his back. He was paranoid, compulsive, never without a gun, and never uncomfortable talking about the ways in which he'd used it. His sole weakness was Katherin, and now that was about to be finished. "Time is an issue, though," Arnulf said.
"I was getting to that," Adam grunted. "We haven't the whole day, I'm afraid. Can we cut to the heart of the matter?"
Val said that he could.
"After we're finished here, we're going to take you upstairs, take you outside, and tie you down. Then Gabriel is going to make an opening about so long in your gut. We're going to lift out your entrails, stuff the opening with fish, and sew you back up. You know the routine. At that point, you'll probably be alive but you'll be going into shock. Arnulf will have the honor of leveraging open your jaw and slicing away your tongue. He's agreed to leave the pieces in your mouth, so that's what will kill you, choking on the blood or the tongue.
"I want you to pay close attention to what I say next. This is a business. The staff expects a certain level of consistency. Word has spread among the entities we've got you back. Some things, with respect to your demise, have to happen, and we'll have to record it for GateKeeper, so that's that. On the other hand, Gabriel will be using a scalpel, not a butcher knife. Notice, too, we'll be taking your tongue last, not first, and nobody's thinking about pulling what we slice off out and letting you die slowly. We could go the full route, and remove your manhood. We're not going to do that either. Facts, however, are facts.
"I'm sorry, but here's the rest. We can't give you a bullet but we can give one to your friends. Try to look at that as the up side. The down side is, if you dick us around here, not only do you get the butcher knife and three or four hours in the sun, but we're going to penetrate every opening possessed by your females with every instrument known to man, until they die. After that, we're going to have the men upstairs, and you're going to watch me drink sebera and eat lunch while we practice our technique on the men, one at a time. Sure, it's time consuming, but what are you going to do?"
"So ..." Gabriel leaned on Val's shoulder. Ever the brutal one. Shorter than his brothers, with a head of dark hair instead of blond, like the others, Gabriel was like a hammer. He was always sent to operations wherein the employees were losing focus, or the audits were off, and then Gabriel would rattle the staff and find the problem and bring the problem home. There would be a barn discussion, what Val used to call a "casual" murder, Gabriel later strolling from the venue wiping his big hands on a strip of linen. "A little cooperation, some recompense for the shit you put us through," Gabriel went on, "and we can put this unpleasantness behind us. What do you say?"
"Now I see why you shot me full of sodium pyxanthol."
"It's to help you see your way to telling the truth," Adam agreed. "Plus, we have it on authority your mind game suffers when your bloodstream is polluted with chemicals."
Val let a few moments go by. "Where's Sir?"
"That's none of your fucking business," Arnulf said.
"Seen Kath lately?" Val asked his brother.
Arnulf responded by seizing the back of Val's neck. "The little one with the muscles," he murmured, "that's the one I want to poke. Is that one yours? Probably not. I don't go for the sweet-faced, simple-eyed ones myself but I saw your honey on GateKeeper. What a washed-out little whore. She offed herself, I hear. What did you see in her?"
Val inhaled deeply, waited until Arnulf let him go, and inhaled again. The reunion was devolving faster than expected. He decided to have an end.
"The Federal Authority hired a band of contracted soldiers, international types, to take me into the mountains, hoping you'd intercept. It was supposed to look like I'd escaped and I was trying to get over the Alinan border."
Gabriel, overcome by the absurdity of the fraud, erupted in laughter.
Adam chuckled, too. "Who in their right mind walks over the Goraneg for Alina without paying the toll to the local baron?"
"They're not Goranegi. They didn't know."
"But you told them."
"Yes, I told them. They didn't listen, like they didn't listen when I told them not to serve their papers to Sir at Petronille. They went anyway."
Gabriel laughed again, as at some fond old memory.
Adam said, "So, what else did you tell them?"
"What do you mean, what else did I tell them? I told them everything. I've met officials of every government of every nation in which the family does business. I gave them everything. I left nothing unspoken, so if you have an operation that hasn't been harmed since you ran me off the mountain, it's because they are watching it or because I didn't know about it."
"The acounts in the Talos Islands, what about those?"
"What accounts in the Talos Islands? Who does banking in Talos? Going in and going out, it's not secure."
"For us it was, and you know that."
"Does it sound like I know that? Talos accounts are something I know nothing about."
Leaning forward on his elbows, Adam stared. "I'm not feeling convinced, Val. See, this is a deal breaker. We've watched the Talos accounts very carefully. The banking officials say we're okay, we're better than okay, with interest. The mucky-mucks we hired when we bought that ridiculous little country, they say they have not heard from the federal turds, and they have not heard from ITAN. But what can I tell you? They know we're not as strong as we used to be. It's all electronic withdrawal there, no mule we can watch disappear into the net of your disloyalty, you prick. We can't wash the transfer, because it's too big. Yes, that's right. We have a heavy operation going on and we want all the funds in those accounts. A direct wire is necessary, and two full days of untraceable access. Do you see now why we are so happy to have you in the fold? Come on, Val. Show some loyalty. If we touch the Talos funds, are we going to spring a trap, or get our money?"
Val looked at Adam for a long time. Reality was setting in. He was going to be tortured.
Adam clucked and sat back. "What a stupid way to pass an afternoon." He pointed his chin at Arnulf. "Get the simple-eyed one, the one that cries easily."
Arnulf spun around and went out. The door thudded shut behind him.
Val was glaring at the table, throat pumping. "I won't respond the way you think if you hurt her."
"Won't you?"
"What system managed those accounts? Were they on the core system, or in the box? I never worked the red or blue box systems."
Adam frowned up at Gabriel. "Who would know if he's lying?"
"Katherin," Gabriel answered. "And Marcus."
Adam grunted and tapped an earpiece. "Hey, Ludo. Yes, find Marcus for me." He glanced at Val. "Nothing's been on the core since you left. We haven't had a core since then. It's all manual now, or stand-alones, and what a pain in the ass. Billions of credits, a dozen years to build a decent infrastructure, and we're back in the bloody dark because you couldn't keep control of your mouth." Adam paused to listen. "Yes, Marcus. I'm on level two. No, no need. Before we went cold, what system managed the Talos funds?" He listened. "I said, before we went cold. Gods almighty. Why must I endlessly repeat myself." He listened more. "Are you sure? Because my friend here is telling me he never played on the red or the blue. Is he lying?" A lengthy quiet. "Why did Sir do that?" More quiet. "Okay. Yes. No, go back to the board. I don't want you weeping all over the room when we gut him. Stay where you are."
Val frowned with disgust at Adam's melodrama. Then he said, "Listen to him. I had enough work to do on the core."
Adam spoke into his communication device. "He's not broken yet. We'll see."
"There's nothing to see," Val insisted. "Go get your funds, I never knew about them." The door was opening, full of the sound of shuffling footsteps and labored breathing. Arnulf came in with the doctor's arm in his fist. Val studied his knees. "I just met her. She's a doctor. You want to take this to the next level, I understand that. But I just met her."
Adam said, "Make her cry, Arnulf."
Arnulf did something, and Siris gasped, tried to wrench away, and was yanked back.
Val's hands became fists. He raised his face to glare at Adam.
Adam said to Arnulf, "See if you can get a few of the lads together, and let's put the doctor in a room with them for an hour."
Val said, "Do you really want to convince me to go silent? I know who I'm dealing with. A bullet for her, for the others? I want you to put them back in the forest and let them go. It would be an uncommon exercise in good judgement, so I'm not optimistic. But start making them bleed, and you can go fuck yourself. Get her out of here, Adam. Tell me what system you had the accounts on, and I can tell you if they're compromised."
Adam gestured, and the door opened behind Val. "Put her back in her cell."
Thrust at the door, Siris blurted, "Are you all right?"
"Yes, I'm all right."
Arnulf dragged the doctor from the room, and after the ensuing silence, Adam said, "That's the one, then. Your favorite."
"I'm getting that urge to be silent again."
"You don't trust us--"
"No."
"And we don't trust you."
"Your survival doesn't depend on me."
"Actually, this is pretty important to Sir." He eyed Val. "The accounts were on the red box."
"They are safe."
"Just like that, you say they are safe, and I'm supposed to have you at your word."
"Yes, and fuck you. If I'm going now to my gods, I want a priest, and an hour to get my head clear. Are you going to honor your word, or what?"
"You mean about those others?"
"Yes, I mean about those others."
"I haven't decided."
"That's what I figured. What about me?"
"About you. I saw you die, I don't care what they are saying, on GateKeeper. Video can be manipulated, but our experts say it was you. Was it?"
"Believing now in tales spun by old women?"
"We're going to find out, you know."
"Find out what, Adam?"
"If you are like the real demians from legend, if you can heal others and heal yourself."
"If you remove my entrails, I can't make new ones."
"No, probably not. No worries, we'll be trying to find out in earnest."
"So you're not going to give me a betrayer's death."
"No, but you can take an hour anyway, and we'll send in a priest. As for the others, we'll keep them a little longer, in case you come back to life. And if you come back to life, then they know stuff about you. Wonder what they know about you."
* * *
The next time the big man, the one who'd shot Zedric, came for her, Siris resolved to ask no questions, and to try not to speak to John. Her cell, shared with the others, was just walls and a light panel protected by a grill. No furnishings, nothing. Skocz had warned her not to talk, because the cell was undoubtedly wired. So, she'd been silent, until the first time the big man came. Then she'd asked the usual. Where are you taking me, what is happening. And when they brought her back, she'd said to the others that John was alive.
She wasn't sure he would be.
A day ago in the forest, the thugs had marched her and the others to a clearing. Night was falling fast, and it was almost too dark to see properly. She'd heard the whoosh-whoosh of a stealth helicopter, and looked up to see the great big shadow of one descending beside another. Two of them, sophisticated war machines doing the bidding of rustic thugs. She was beginning to see the complexities that John hinted at, a world of which she knew nothing.
The leader took out a scanning wand and went over his captives one by one. With John, he stopped, and then located the tiny transmitter embedded in the waist of John's trousers. He tapped an earpiece, and said something in Volodyan. Later, she learned he was giving someone an order to begin active jamming. The helicopters landed. John was put on a stretcher, and a technician took a sample of his blood. Meanwhile, the helicopters launched. Siris felt ill, but tried nonetheless to get a feeling for where they were going.
The journey was unexpectedly long. The helicopters landed on a pad near a river, and she and the others were ushered onto a fixed-wing aircraft that had the word EsterMANN displayed inside a large blue circle. The aircraft was a coast-to-coast executive model capable of accommodating everyone. The jet landed on a private runway three or four hours later. The passengers disembarked at the end of the runway, where a bus waited to pilot them onto a serviceway and past a solitary hangar, toward the denuded wall of a very tall cliff. The air in the new, as yet unnamed place was cool and dry. However, Siris heard the snarl of fast-moving water, and she breathed its heavy mineral smell.
Etched into the cliff was the curved face of a building. The building did not look big. There was only one door. She and the others were guided through the door. John, who was still out, went through on a stretcher. Interestingly, the doorway led to a concrete passage, the passage into an underground complex, the size of which Siris could not determine.
She still had no idea where she was or what the complex was for. The big man had a hand on each arm and steered her along a corridor unlike the one he'd used before. At the end of the corridor, he used his thumb and an eye scan to access a chamber.
A medical room, Siris realized. John was in it, and the three men from before, along with a technician wearing a lab coat and holding an old-fashioned intravenous syringe.
John was at the technician's mercy, pinned by leg, arm, wrist, and ankle restraints to an exam table. An IV lock had been started, but nothing was attached to it.
The older man raised a finger to get her attention. "You told my brother earlier that this man has a medical condition. He goes unconscious for many hours."
Siris contemplated the wisdom of answering, as well as her total lack of appreciation for the trouble she was in.
Without looking at her, John, on the table, said, "It's okay, answer him."
She felt a spike of distrust for John's judgement, given his position, and then realized that she was likely more frightened than he was. "Yes."
"Good," the older man said. "We've known for many years about our brother's sleeping problem. Now. The underground word says our brother gave the healing to children at that Bhavaja hospital for several years. Did he?"
"Did you?" Siris asked John.
John sighed. "Adam, I told you I just met her. How would she know that?"
"Does she know what kills you?"
"Yes."
The one called Adam looked at Siris interrogatively, an eyebrow quirked.
"I'm not going to tell you how to kill him."
The technician spoke to her. "This is potassium chloride. We want to avoid tissue damage on the assumption regeneration is harder if there is any." The technician was discussing murder but didn't want to puncture or lacerate John's skin. "To that end, I've prepared a 100 mEq dose. Will this work?"
When used medically, doses of 10 to 20 mEq over an hour was standard. The technician had loaded her syringe with the intention of affecting the electrical conduction of John's heart. The result would be sine-wave formation and asystole. In lay terms, the technician was going to cause catastrophic (and fatal) heart dysfunction.
Siris' jaw had dropped. "Don't you dare give that to him without an anesthetic."
Catching a nod from Adam, the technician inserted her needle into John's IV.
Siris strained against Arnulf in horror. "You're nothing better than butchers!"
John rolled his head in Siris' direction. "It's all right, we're on our own. How long will I be gone?"
Scrutinizing Siris carefully, the technician put the syringe on the tray behind her. Conscious of the others listening, Siris hesitated.
John groaned suddenly with pain, muscles popping under his skin as he tightened. His arched into the table. It must have felt like a giant had stomped on his chest. It was going to get worse.
"Twenty or so hours to reverse the mechanism of death," Siris told him quickly. It was the only comfort she could give. "And then twenty hours to reanimate."
He nodded, and began to die. Hephaestion's ability to locate persons around the globe when he was "out of his body" was an exceptional and valuable talent, in Kinder's opinion, and well-used. In other words, he got set free, or killed, on occasion. She'd supervised seven instances, using potassium chloride, of course, but only after Hephaestion had flat-lined on Vezdrin. John was experiencing the crushing pain of cardiac arrest as well as the anguish of living tissue deprived of oxygen. The thugs watched with fascination, the technician with detached interest. Siris decided that John must have felt incredibly alone and vulnerable, so much so that the prospect of returning to a similar predicament may have seemed, as he edged closer to the twilight of clinical death, cruel.
The spasms subsided, and John became unconscious. Siris realized the big one had let her go. She did what came naturally, and approached the table. The technician had her instrument at John's breast. Siris reached instead for John's wrist. No distal pulse. Her fingers slid up several centimeters and encountered a tiny deformity on his forearm. She used the pads of her fingers to manipulate a subdermal bead over the large bone of John's forearm. A little pressure, and the transmitter was on. We're on our own, he'd said. He was telling her he hadn't been able to activate the Holland-Tchey transmitter.
The technician said, "No pulse, no respiration. He's clinically dead."
Siris reached toward John's face to close his eyes.
The one called Adam stopped her. "Can he see us?"
Siris wanted to say, In every way possible. She wanted to say, You've freed him. He can walk these corridors unseen, find his way out, "walk" to a landmark, see where he is. And he can find Hephaestion, who can see and hear him. He'll tell Hephaestion what he's learned, where we are, and he'll bring the Holland-Tchey to the party.
She said, "You killed him. He can't see anything."
--- Exile continues with the Book of Hephaestion
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