Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
It flares and flares, coloring everything red, demanding my attention, which I’m desperately trying to keep elsewhere.
Beep, beep.
The Road Runner is fast.
Fast and evil.
Evil.
Evil.
Evil.
More comes.
Damn you, pain. I knew you. At least I thought I did. I’ve hurt before. Hurt a lot. But I really didn’t know. Really didn’t.
Xave. Where are you?
Hazel. Beautiful hazel.
God, I was so wrong. I didn’t know. Not at all.
A scream rips through my throat, slashing my vocal chords, betraying the strength I thought I had. But I have none.
None none none.
No one. One.
Someone, please.
“Ahhhhhh …”
Meat.
Roasted meat.
I hold my breath. That smell is my leather pants and me combined. It’s my thigh, burning, sizzling like a young pig skewered through and through.
“Let’s try this again,” he or she says in a high-pitched voice. I have no idea if this thing hovering over me is male or female, all I know is that it’s a thing, a thing that stings and stings and stings.
The creature, appropriately named Doctor Sting, is holding up another knife, large and with a wide blade. Its tip is bright orange like the tip of the first one. “This one is also nice and hot. Right off the pit. Where should it go?” He—I decide it’s a he, because of the Adam’s apple—asks, as if trying to figure out where to put a freakin’ floral arrangement.
I clench my teeth, brace myself, pretending to get ready for the pain, but there is no getting ready. Not for this. Not in a lifetime.
With the long, double-jointed fingers of his free hand, he touches a tender spot above my clavicle and says, “Maybe here.”
The creature’s hands feel rough, even though they’re covered with smooth-looking skin. He licks his scaly lips. They’re peeling. Flakes of skin hang loose at the corners of his wide mouth. His eyes are large, too large for a human face. They’re round and bulging, with thin, horizontal pupils like a goat’s. They are also far apart, almost on the sides of his face. A mess of two-toned hair sits on its head—reddish brown and white. The colors make an unnatural pattern, nothing even the best stylist in the world could accomplish with such precision. This hair grew, the way calico-colored fur may grow on a cat.
Twenty minutes ago, Stanton and some other guy snatched me from Elliot’s office, hit the “S” button in the elevator and delivered me here: a cold, disused room with a dank smell and thick pipes running along the ceiling. They hoisted my squirming body onto this restraint chair: a modern-looking contraption that can—with the push of a button—adopt any position between flat and upright. Before leaving, they clamped wide leather straps to my wrists, ankles and head, rendering me immobile, and flicked a bright light that hangs over my head.
Minutes later, this monstrosity showed up, reeking of sweat and something too close to sour milk not to be sour milk. Such a far cry from Elliot’s expensive cologne. It’s hard to reconcile the two, unless I imagine the Whitehouse faction leader as some sort of ringmaster with his wild and filthy, but necessary, menagerie.
“Or maybe here,” my torturer says, purring. He gently touches a fingertip to my eyelid.
I flinch, try to melt into the chair.
No. Please. No.
Eyeball. Burning.
Not there. Not anywhere.
Suddenly, the palm of my left hand sears. On reflex, my fingers splay open as Doctor Sting presses the hot blade to the center of my hand. My skin sizzles like a piece of chicken on the grill. Waves of agony roll through me. I twitch as if with a seizure, wishing for water, snow, ice. Anything to make the infernal pain stop.
Cold peaks.
Mount Rainier.
Hands patting snowballs.
Frosty was a happy, jolly soul.
Hot tears slide into my ears. Shadows leap from one thought to the next, chasing, ready to devour them. I can’t let that happen. I have to fight.
Fight the shadows. Fight the pain.
My thoughts jump at a prodigious speed—random images flashing in front of my eyes—a strobe-light at its highest setting, blinking in and out.
“Your choice, girl,” Doctor Sting says. “Talk or burn. It’s easy.” He laughs and I think of The Penguin.
Superhero.
Need a superhero.
Clark. Xavier. Xave.
The shadows chase and fail. My thoughts are fluid enough to give me some control. Once more, I focus on the creature’s hand and think of it twisting, stabbing one of those hideous eyeballs. Again I fail. There’s pain. Enough pain. There’s peril. Imminent as needed. My skills should activate, but I’m weak, starved and beaten.
Death today.
Coffin tomorrow.
I can’t tell them about IgNiTe. I won’t. So if this is to be the end, I accept it, welcome it even. I tried. For Xave. I did my best to hold strong and keep going. Now it’s over.
Doctor Sting sets the knife down. “Umm, I need to find a better place for the next one,” he says, yanking my jacket’s zipper down.
I buck, thrust my hips upward and to the side, but it’s useless.
“The abdomen is always so sensitive,” he says with delight.
“Are you ticklish?” he asks, raking jagged fingernails lightly over my stomach. A shiver ripples through my skin.
“You sick freak,” I growl as I twist uselessly from side to side.
He picks up the knife again without really looking, those soulless eyes providing remarkable peripheral vision. As he holds the blade up for inspection, the creature frowns.
“Well, it’s gone cold,” he pouts. “Let me get another one.”
He walks to one corner of the room where an antique wood burning stove sits; the kind with a grated, small metal door. His steps click short and dainty on the polished concrete floor.
Whistling a tune I don’t recognize, he pokes the fire with the knife, leaves it there and retrieves a second one. He takes his time, and the wait, the throbbing in my leg and hand, the way the pain morphs from dull to sharp and back again, are driving me to insanity. My fear builds and builds with the knowledge that more is coming.
This delay is intentional, I realize. He wants me to ponder, to second-guess my decision not to talk, to break under the pressure of the tense minutes ticking by.
I want to scream.
Just slice my throat.
NOW.
Red. Lots of it. All over. Life seeping away. But not this.
Except I know it will be a lifetime before that happens. An eternity of ghastly, whistled tunes, questions I don’t want to answer and choices I don’t want to make. Will he seer my lips? Seer my eyes? Seer my life away?
The creature prances back, steps clicking at the rhythm of his own whistled tune.
“This one is perfect.” This time he holds a small, narrow poker. Smoke wafts from its bright red tip. “You know, this particular one would work better in your fingers.” He waves at me to demonstrate. “Hands have always interested me. They’re so intricate and important. It’s a wonder they are constructed in such a delicate way. That’s why I had to do something about mine.” He wiggles his fingers again.
“Rams have thick skulls capable of withstanding 800 pounds of force, you know?” he continues. “They have to. It means their survival. They fight over the females with their beautiful horns to ensure they can pass their genes to their offspring. I’m considering growing a pair of my own.” He absently pats his head. He’s quiet for a minute, lost in thought.
He blinks back to the moment. “Where was I? Oh, yeah, fighting for survival. All animals have their means. Fangs, claws, poison. But for men, survival means fighting with their hands. So tell me then why these tools evolved to be so fragile? It’s paradoxical.” He looks at the ceiling, frowning. “At any rate, mine are strong, now. And, nonetheless, still capable of finesse. So it’s not impossible to have both.”
He takes my hand tenderly to demonstrate.
“See. I can take one finger like this, and angle this very thin rod, like so.”
My lungs forget the meaning of slow. I need deep, measured breaths to stay in control but, instead, they race, tripping over each other.
The tip of the metal rod is face to face with the tip of my forefinger. Doctor Sting’s inhuman hands are steady as a surgeon’s.
“Do you know that your fingertips have more pain receptors than any other part of your body?” He looks at me, but I only have eyes for the sharp, hot object that’s about to impale me.
“I guess you didn’t know that,” he says. “Well, we will correct that. When I’m done with you, you’ll possess firsthand experience in the matter. I assure you.” And with that, he pushes the rod under my fingernail and the world turns to liquid agony.
I scream, my throat torn open, my neck corded. My lower back arches. My bindings strain. Time stands still. There is no beginning and, certainly, no end. I will swim in this misery forever. A trail of fire shoots up my arm. The universe converges in the tip of my index finger—all space and time shaped from pain and pain and pain. Never-ending. Absolute. An entity that has me by the throat.
Shadows gather, one behind the other.
They aren’t attacking. They’re just there, bearing witness to my misery, as if my agent were relishing every single second of it.
“Ooops,” Doctor Sting mumbles. “Fragile, like I said. That nail just popped right off. Not very fun. Lucky for me, there are nineteen more. I thought I’d leave the little one for last, but it’s so cute, I can’t resist. Unless … you’ve changed your mind.”
He waits, savors my terror. I clench my teeth together, hold back the traitorous words that rest there.
I’ll tell it all. ALL!
“I guess not,” the creature shrugs. “The merrier for me.”
Another scream fills my ears. There are a million—no, an infinity—of nerve endings in one fingertip. I know that now, because they are all on fire, shrinking my existence to a centimeter of my body. I’m reduced to almost nothing. There are no legs, no torso, no head, only a single searing nail bed.
My eyes roll to the back of my head. The shadows are still content to just leer, mouths agape with huge, jagged teeth exposed to form sinister grins.
“Ready to talk now?” Doctor Sting asks.
“W-we’ll blow all, all, all of you to pieces,” I stammer, my lips trembling, my mouth stringing together whatever it can, because I have to say something, anything to slow this down and prevent traitorous words from escaping.
He takes my ring finger this time. “Have it your way.”
My eyes flicker to the side, to the wood burning stove. The fire pops and crackles. I focus on its sweltering center. Several other sharp weapons sit in the middle of the flames, approaching white-hot levels with every passing second.
Slowly, the poke stabs my finger, embedding itself under the nail, searing the sensitive tissue as Doctor Sting pushes with a steady thrust. My agony reaches new levels. I used to think pain was pain. I had no idea it could compound, testing its limits just to find that there were none.
Tears blur my vision as I scream myself hoarse.
Can’t take it. No more.
Spill.
All the beans.
But I can’t. I mustn’t. Anger twines with my pain. A spark of strength flares in my chest. I hold on to it, kindling it, stoking it with the never-ending source of agony my hand has become.
I stare at the large knife Doctor Sting returned to the fire a moment ago. I harness the pain, holding the desperate command that rests on my tongue for just a little longer. Energy crackles within me. I feel it like a gentle, tingling current, barely more than a head-to-toe shiver. It builds. It feeds. Then it’s ready.
“Stab,” I murmur.
The knife trembles in place for a moment, deep in the bowels of the stove. It seems to shimmy, trying to get free from the log into which it’s been embedded. I give the command again, hope slipping. Then, without preamble, my perspective changes, and I’m suddenly free from the restraining chair. I’m not a constrained body anymore, but a free, undulating force that knows no doubt or fear or pain.
I’m the flame.
Fluid. Ethereal.
I lick the air, consume its oxygen, savoring it, growing stronger. I dance in a dazzle of shifting colors, a million shades of the most beautiful reds, oranges, yellows, even blues. I’m in control and it’s exhilarating. Magnificent. Because fire can be anything and, in that moment, I choose to be a hand.
The flames coalesce into me. As one, we take shape. We rage and revel and, finally, grab the knife and throw it across the room. It spins end over end, true to its target.
With a gasp, I snap back into my body. Pain welcomes me and clasps its tentacles all around me. The poke is still pushing deeper and deeper, over my knuckle, tearing skin and flesh, scraping bone. A wicked smile reveals Doctor Sting’s large, squared-off teeth that are the size and color of yellow Chiclets. I hold my breath as the knife hisses through the air.
Those bulging eyes widen a bit, then swivel to the side almost imperceptibly. A knowing glint appears in their depths and, in one swift motion, Doctor Sting’s hand jerks upward and bats away the knife.
Both useless blade and slender poker clatter to the floor, their echoes reverberating through the sparse basement. Doctor Sting stares from the fire, to the fallen knife, to me. For a long moment, he seems incapable of words.
I whimper, like a lost dog, my throat emitting a high-pitched sound that barely sounds human. Pain still soaks me through and through, but there’s a difference. My strength is gone. I’m undone, unraveling into a useless heap of nothing.
“What do we have here?” Doctor Sting says after his deliberation comes to an end.
From a distance, I feel every part of me melting, my flesh, my molecules, even my thoughts. Giving up is okay, I think. No one can blame me. I tried. I really did.
If I close my eyes and I just …
—Finally! Mine!
My eyes spring open, searching light.
NO.
Shadows descend over me, a crazed swarm that has finally found its opportunity. They jump onto my every thought and stick like tar, drowning me.
NO.
I was fire.
I was flame.
Now, I’m
Nothing.
I’m
Eclipsed.