All the strength ebbed from my body as the final screw twisted free from my skull. I slumped against the wall, fighting against sobs. They would have been the manliest sobs ever uttered, of course, but I swallowed them down all the same.
With palsied hands, I reached up and carefully slid the helmet off.
Blood gushed from the bottom as it cleared the crown of my head. Scalp wounds bled like hell, but usually weren’t life-threatening. As the blood poured down my shoulders and chest, streaking along the floor, I was more than a little concerned. I didn’t think I’d lost enough to die, but my ability to fight and think could be seriously compromised.
Between the bodies by the door, the torture chair in the middle of the room, and the blood covering every surface, it looked like I’d stepped onto the set of a horror film. And not one of those classy horror flicks, but one of those terrible torture-porn movies.
I tossed the helmet to the floor and forced myself to get up.
Judging by the blaring alarm, something big must have been going on. Only one other guard had come during the beginning of my escape. If the alarm had been for me, I would have expected a bit more action. I could only hope that Drew had found where I was.
I bent down and picked up the pistol before staggering over to the bodies. Another gun was holstered on the waist of the guy who liked to burn my ass. I took it, checked the mag and chamber, and moved to the door.
Dual-wielding pistols was the kind of nonsense you saw in bad action flicks and video games, but I didn’t have a waistband to jam the second pistol in, so I had to carry both. There was a dick joke in there somewhere about having three guns.
I wiped blood from my eyes with the back of my hand before sticking my head out the door. A hallway stretched in either direction, dim overhead lights showing a few doors and little else.
Most of Smith’s men were above me somewhere. A few scampered around off to my right. If I was going to find out where I was and how to get out, I needed to get my hands around the throat of one of them and do a little negotiating.
Then I had to find Smith and ventilate his head.
Breaking into a painful jog, my blistered and raw legs protesting every step, I headed for the blank minds on my floor. There were three of them, all close together. I passed a handful of closed doors, but I didn’t bother to check them. I didn’t sense anyone behind them and didn’t have time to search every nook and cranny of the place.
Bloody footprints trailed behind me. If anyone came looking, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out which way I’d gone.
The hall turned left.
I followed it to a closed door at the end.
The light above it dimmed, then regained its brightness.
No sound emanated from the other side of the door as I paused in front of it.
It felt like Tommy Lee was pounding on his drums inside my head. I expected him to Shout at the Devil soon.
The three men inside weren’t moving. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell what they were thinking or what they were doing. For all I knew, they were aiming at the door, waiting for me to burst through it like the Kool-Aid Man.
Just as I stepped back to kick the door in, The Bridge reformed in my mind.
I paused, foot cocked back, and tried to clear my thoughts. It was difficult to stay focused when your mind was connected to someone else like that.
…I… need…
Yeah, I know. You need me to kill you. If you don’t stop breaking my concentration, I might take you up on the offer.
…please…
I booted the door in and burst inside the next room.
A man in a suit stood in front of a desk, hunched over a keyboard, his fingers dancing across the keys. His head snapped around at the crash of the door.
“Oh, yeaahhh!” I yelled.
I shot him in the back.
Two more men stood on either side of a large metal and glass rectangle of some kind. One of them manipulated a touchscreen on the side of the box. He tried to duck down behind the weird object, but I put two rounds in his chest before he could.
The third guy, also wearing a gray suit, raised a pistol and popped off a few shots.
I dove behind a workbench with wires and electrical parts of some kind atop it.
Debris showered down around me as the guy unloaded a full mag into the counter behind me. Holes carved through the wood, forcing me to crawl away from the fire. He stopped shooting for a second, and I could hear the ruckus of him jamming a new magazine home.
I popped up and returned fire, spraying bullets at the other side of the room.
He wasn’t there anymore.
…what’s happening…?
Keeping both pistols trained on the rectangular contraption, I slid along the edge of the bench, moving toward the rear of the room. If I flanked around the shooter’s location, I could pick him off with ease. Hiding might have worked against a normal man, but I had some lovely brain damage working to my advantage. His blank mind flashed in the room like a lighthouse.
As I approached, the man popped up from behind the box and ripped off two rounds. The bullets zipped over my shoulder. I returned fire, catching him the chest.
He stumbled back to the wall behind him.
I lithely ran around the bench and reached the man as he slid to the floor.
Blood bubbled from his lips.
“Don’t die on me.” I kept the pistols trained on him. “I’m not done with you yet.”
I knelt in front of him. The only way to get the information I needed was to beat it out of one of Smith’s men or to worm my way through their mental defenses. Either one was fine by me. They’d electrocuted and burned me to get what they wanted. I didn’t mind returning the favor.
The man slumped against the wall, his eyes glassing over.
I opened my consciousness, focusing my anger and willpower on the void. He was circling the drain, so I needed to work quickly. At first, nothing happened. Even as he died, he fought against my mental intrusion.
An emotion slipped through—fear.
I worked even harder, prying at the crack in his defenses.
He groaned, throat bobbing rapidly.
An image of Smith’s face popped into my head. He stood before the rectangular object behind me, peering at the top of it. I grabbed hold of that thread of memory and pulled.
I saw a handful of men chasing down a teenage boy in an alley. Trash and puddles of filthy water dotted the concrete. Graffiti colored the walls and a dumpster. The boy had a deep tan and raven-black hair. His pursuers grabbed hold of him by the neck and jammed a needle into his arm. He fought in their grasp before the tension drained from his body, and he gaped at the man with the needle. The man jerked as if a spasm ran through his muscles. He turned and rammed the needle into the eye of the goon holding the boy.
And then I lost the memory in a flash of white and a rush of pain.
The man in front of me exhaled for the final time.
“Damn!” I exploded to my feet and then slammed the handle of the pistol against the wall.
I didn’t manage to get anything that could possibly help me before the guy had died. I hit the wall again.
… mister… I hear…
The pleading in my head was the last straw. I felt like a pot on the brink of boiling over. The tools and electrical wires vibrated on the bench. A soldering iron fell to the floor.
My anger teetered at the precipice of falling into a full-blown rage. No one could fight effectively in a rage. That would get even the best soldier killed. I had to channel my emotions toward something constructive and re-exert a semblance of self-control.
I wheeled around, looking for something to destroy because nothing said self-control like smashing shit. Atop the rectangular object, a window was cut into the metal near one end. Even though I could barely contain my anger at that moment, curiosity still tugged at me.
Moving closer, I leaned over the edge and peered into the window.
My jaw dropped.
The boy I’d seen in the dead man’s memory lay inside.
His dark skin had taken on a sallow, unhealthy hue. The flesh at his temples and cheeks had sunken in. Both of his eyes were closed. Straps secured his arms, chest, and forehead. His neck and arms had atrophied to the point where I doubted he could have sat up even if he wasn’t secured down.
A feeding tube ran through an incision in his stomach—a breathing tube to a hole in his throat. Cracks split his lips.
I recoiled at what I saw above the strap over his brow.
Part of his head was missing.
Wires snaked into the skin that had healed over the crater where skull and brain should have been. Surgical scars crisscrossed his scalp. Some of them were fresh, the cuts not quite healed.
The wires ran to the end of the coffin-like container imprisoning the boy, disappearing inside the white mesh covering the walls.
As I gaped in horror through the window, the boy’s eyes slowly opened.
He stared straight ahead for several seconds. Then he blinked a few times and sluggishly turned his gaze to me. We watched each other in silence for what felt like an eternity.
I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
… it’s you…
I almost fell over. The voice coming through The Bridge was from the boy in front of me.
My mouth worked as I tried to say something, anything, to comfort him.
You’re all… bloody… did they… hurt you… too?
A tear formed in the corner of my eye.
Yeah, buddy. They hurt me too.
He blinked. … I hate… them… they keep me… here… won’t let me… die…
I wanted to pick him up and carry him out of there, but something about the wires in his head, the missing chunks of skull and brain, told me he wouldn’t make it more than a few feet after I removed him from that metal and glass prison.
How long have you been here?
… I don’t… know… years?…
I placed my hand on the window. What’s your name, big guy?
… Jamie…
Jamie Welsh?
… yes… He blinked slowly. Very slowly. … so tired…
I’m going to get you out of here, Jamie.
… no… please… let me… go…
No. I shook my head. We can help you get better.
… they… crippled me… can’t… move…
Staring down at the remains of what had once been a healthy boy, I raged at the abomination they’d twisted him into. Beyond the waste to his muscles and skeletal system, the missing chunk of brain and skull had likely removed his ability to survive outside of his metal tomb.
… hard to… think… so tired… so… hard to… think… let me… go…
His thoughts jumbled together as I watched his eyes close again. The Bridge between us crumbled.
I removed my hand from the window. A bloody, grimy handprint remained on the glass. I bent down, searching the metal monstrosity for some kind of a clue as to what I could do to help young Jamie. On the back, above the top of his head, was a control panel.
A button marked T. Field blinked rapidly.
Several other switches and buttons were scattered about the panel, some blinking, some a solid yellow. Though I didn’t know what any of them did for certain, I wondered if the T. Field thing had kept Jamie from reaching me telepathically. When the power went out, perhaps the defenses of the coffin-like containment system had gone down.
The same had happened to my helmet after all.
I resisted the urge to empty both guns into the body of Smith’s man behind me.
What kind of monsters could do that to a child? It was inhuman.
I went back to the window and watched Jamie again. His eyes rolled under their lids. What did someone in his position dream of? Or were his dreams nothing but nightmares?
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
A machine beeped behind me. A series of medical machines stood in the corner, monitoring Jamie’s heart rate and God knew what else. I didn’t know much about that stuff, but a beeping sound couldn’t be a good thing.
And then I realized what was happening.
When the power had gone out, it wasn’t just the machine that contained his telepathic abilities that went down, but all the machines connected to him. I doubted he could survive long without the life-support systems running. That was why the men were in here—they were trying to get everything operating properly again.
And I showed up and killed them.
The beeping turned into one solid tone.
I whirled around, saw Jamie’s eyes had stopped rolling. His breathing had arrested.
“Oh, God.” My fingers fumbled over the machines as I frantically searched for anything I could turn on or switch over that would help.
But I didn’t understand any of the crap I saw.
The tone continued.
I went back to the window and stared down at the dead boy.
My breathing was ragged, my vision red.
“Smith!” I bellowed.
Then I stalked from the room, looking for a scar-faced man to kill.