X had Jason brought to the subbasement, and his eyes were keen as the young man entered the cell. It was the last cell in the row, and the one he used to store his completed paintings. Dozens hung at eye level; hundreds more leaned in stacks against the walls.
“Ah, Jason. Good. I want to show you something.” He took a canvas from a stack of others. It was a portrait of Jason, his eyes intent behind strands of dark hair, his face battered and bruised, but set in determined lines. “I call it The Unconquerable Soul. It’s what I see in you when we fight.”
Jason struggled with a sudden surge of unexpected emotion. The painting was … intimate.
“It’s in the eyes,” X said.
For Jason, looking into those painted eyes was like staring into something at once familiar, terrible, and strange, a part of himself he preferred to keep hidden and dark. That a man like X could capture it so perfectly …
“Put it away, please.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Please. If you would.” X seemed surprised and hurt, but Jason didn’t care about that. “When I finished my sentence, you said I was free, that you would stay out of my life.”
“I did say that, yes.” X propped the painting against the wall. “But I have so little time in the world.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with me.”
“Hours, Jason, a few days at the end of this life. Is it so hard to imagine that I’d wish to spend that time with a man I admire? There’s no need to respond, of course. I see how angry I’ve made you—it is a selfish desire, but you should be flattered. I say flattered because what I see in you, I see in me. I’m a sociopath, of course, and you are not; but as the world forgets, you will remember.”
“And that’s what you want?”
“As epitaphs go, it’s better than most.”
“An epitaph.” Jason could not conceal the anger.
X didn’t care. “An epitaph. A marker.” He shrugged languidly. “When the time comes, I want you there, an admirable man to bear witness. I’ve asked Warden Wilson to make the arrangements.”
“You did all of this so I could bear witness?”
“I won’t leave this world surrounded by sheep, alone. The last thing I wish to see is your face. As I said, you should be flattered.”
X smiled as if the matter were settled, but that’s not what Jason felt. Rage. Loss. He was a blind man. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Perhaps you should have.”
“I should kill you right now.”
“As always, in this place…” X showed his palms, no smile left. “You are very welcome to try.”
Twenty minutes later, guards dropped Jason onto a table under bright lights, leaving the room as a weary doctor snapped on latex gloves, and cut away Jason’s clothing.
“Can you roll for me?” Jason shifted so the clothing could be removed and discarded. “Now back.”
Jason could recall no conscious decision to try, but staring past the doctor’s shoulder, he remembered X at the end, the last man standing but almost as bloody and almost as broken.
You must understand, Jason. It’s not the dying that bothers me but the idea of doing it front of these people. I know you find me horrible, but tell me you see that …
He’d collapsed into a chair, almost begging.
Tell me you understand …
The troubling thing was that Jason did understand. In three years of war, he’d been shot, stabbed, and burned, and come back to fight so many times that even hardened marines thought him charmed or blessed. And maybe that was true. All Jason knew for sure was that strength mattered, and that he respected it.
Of course, X was insane …
Jason ground his teeth as the doctor worked his narrow fingers, probing and pushing.
“Well, you’ve looked worse.” The old man’s voice was thin as a reed, but his eyes were clear. “Cracked ribs—again—and at least one that’s broken. Dislocation of the left shoulder. I can’t count all the contusions, but he went easy on your face this time. Kidneys are the worst. You’ll pee blood for a few days. Let me know if it lasts longer than that.” He cocked an eyebrow over the sharp, right eye, looking down until Jason nodded, then continuing in the same reedy tone. “Two broken fingers, a dislocated thumb…”
Jason closed his eyes as the doctor droned on.
He’d been here before.
He knew the drill.
In his cell sometime later, he remembered something X had called him.
An admirable man …
But Jason knew the deeper truth: that if he were truly that admirable, he’d have killed X then and there, for Tyra’s sake, if nothing else.
One more day and another night …
Jason shifted on the bunk, wary of the pain.
After that, the bastard dies …