Lynx

by Matt Rogers

  Which it had to be. If it was raising killers.

  She said, ‘You’re not going to shoot that in here, are you?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘Hope?’

  ‘I just want the girl. And then I’m out of here.’

  A long pause.

  She said, ‘Do you, now?’

  Everything shifted. The atmosphere, the silence, the temperature. Slater noted the heat for the first time, and he took in his surroundings. The floor was hard linoleum, designed to hold water and snow on its surface rather than letting it sink into the material. Apart from a thin wooden bench running along opposite walls, the space was devoid of furniture. There were dozens of metal hooks along the walls to hang cold weather gear off, to drip dry. The artificial heating ran thick in the air. Everything echoed in here. Their voices off the walls. The steady drip-drip-drip as the snow melted on Slater’s overcoat and ran down his sides in rivulets, plinking against the hard floor underfoot.

  ‘Let’s not make a scene of this,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t want to shoot me,’ she said, and she smiled.

  And she was right.

  If there was the off chance Shien had acclimatised to the Lynx program, then Slater murdering her carer in cold blood would devastate the bond they’d formed in the past. She would see him as a monster for the rest of her days. Taking her out of the lodge would have the same effect as kidnapping her. He needed to remove her from the premises as gently and uneventfully as possible, and then he could get to work deciphering what they’d done to her.

  If she was brainwashed.

  If not, it didn’t matter.

  But he wasn’t willing to risk it.

  He put that all together, and at the same time Mother dived to the floor and rolled straight into his shins.

  86

  At first he thought she was insane, and then it all became abhorrently clear, far too late.

  And he couldn’t do a thing to prevent it.

  She preceded the manoeuvre with flailing arms and legs, like a wild animal, obviously designed to make her appear insane. Which Slater bought — hook, line, and sinker. A spectator wouldn’t have been able to tell, but he froze up for just long enough, and Mother seized hold of his right ankle with both hands. He could have jerked the leg out of the way as soon as he sensed movement, but the confusion worked, and now she had hold of him.

  He wrenched his leg back with all his might, but she held tight, and a half-second later her legs darted through the air like twin vipers, folding over her body like a closing book, and she wrapped them tight around his knee. Now she’d manoeuvred herself upside-down in the air, latching onto his right leg with a speed that defied logic. For a moment he couldn’t believe what was happening, and that was all she needed. She twisted hard and he stumbled back a step, taking him off-balance, and that was when it all struck him with a sharp explosion of terror.

  She’s going to tear my heel off the bone.

  In jiu-jitsu, it was known as “Imanari roll to inside heel hook.”

  A complicated series of movements that had to be drilled relentlessly to have any chance of success.

  But when it worked…

  It made him cold, but he couldn’t do anything to resist. As he fell backward, she jammed the top of his foot into her underarm with the expertise of a seasoned Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner. He’d underestimated her. He shivered as he hit the floor across his upper back, and lunged rabidly for the limb, but it was too late. Aided by the weight of his chunky outdoor boot — a luxury not usually afforded on the mats — she levered her whole body onto the foot, twisting it at a grotesque angle, tearing muscle in the first second, breaking the bone in the next.

  Slater nearly passed out from the pain.

  Mother seemed satisfied by the damage she’d caused. She slackened her grip, the limb now rendered useless. He wrenched it away from her, his foot practically dangling from his ankle, hanging at an awkward angle.

  Trying not to think about the consequences, he used most of his athleticism to get his good foot underneath him, and sprang up on one leg.

  She couldn’t compute. She’d just torn his whole foot to pieces, and somehow he was upright before she was. She seemed a little slower to react — a dangerous game to play around Slater. She got to her feet and he let fly with an elbow, and it struck her in the forehead, and she went down surrounded by the percussive boom of bone against bone, ringing off the walls over and over again.

  He cocked his right fist, ready to drop a staggering right hook onto her chin as she lay prone, but he loosened when he realised she lay unconscious. Her eyes stared vacantly up at the ceiling, her mouth twisted into a sick smile, the expression frozen on the moment her brain thudded back and forth around the walls of her skull.

  She’d won.

  ‘What the hell are you supposed to do now?’ he said.

  Ordinarily not one to talk to himself, but white-hot pain can change your personality awfully quick.

  Sweat pooled around his temples, but not from the heat.

  Shock started setting in.

  The pain was wholly unlike anything he could remember. He’d been shot, and stabbed, and beaten to a pulp, but whatever damage Mother had done to his ankle was in a league of its own. He wondered whether he would ever walk properly again. Then he scolded himself, because that was nowhere near as important as figuring out how on earth he was going to get back on State Route 161 if he couldn’t move. He hadn’t a hope of putting weight on his right leg, no matter how tough he thought he was. It simply wasn’t physically possible.

  As a test, he touched his right heel to the linoleum, and an endless detonation of nerves seared up his leg, through his torso, into his brain.

  He bent over, fought the urge to vomit, and breathed in and out through his nose in deep, rasping breaths.

  He hopped on his left leg, and still the right flared with pain.

  But he could deal with that.

  He turned back to Mother’s unconscious corpse and considered putting a bullet in her for good measure. An efficient operative would. But that was half the reason he’d fled Black Force. He wasn’t prepared to gun down anyone in sight to achieve the objective. He’d done it for years. Now was a different time. A different life. He could have murdered every Whelan in New York City if he’d deemed it necessary. He could have killed Williams, Ruby … the list went on.

  The smart thing to do.

  But Slater had long ago decided to leave the ruthless amoral decisions to others.

  He hopped across the floor and made it to the carpeted hallway just past the drying room. From there it was a short trip to a set of stairs that ascended into a communal central room connecting what appeared to be nearly a dozen separate dormitories. There was no-one in sight. Slater put a flat palm between the corridor’s walls, and helped himself along with the aid of his upper body. He grimaced, and noted his faults. The HK416 swung on its strap around his shoulder, but there was no way to have it at the ready and walk at the same time. He would have to make do with what he could feasibly accomplish.

  He made it to the foot of the stairs. They took a sharp right turn upward, and he rotated his body to get ready for the short journey. He would have to leap from step to step on his left leg.

  He lowered himself into position.

  A dark shape passed across the opening at the top of the stairs.

  Slater looked up, reaching for the gun.

  He froze.

  The shape froze.

  He locked eyes with the little girl he’d travelled halfway across the world to find.

  87

  No one spoke.

  Slater couldn’t find words. Pain thrummed dull and horrid in the back of his head, but it all fell away when he saw her.

  Shien stood four and a half feet tall, small and frail, with the same wide gentle eyes and straight black hair that fell gracefully on either side of her head. She stood clad in a pair of tracksuit pants tucked into fluffy
socks and a long-sleeved white shirt, rolled up around her slender wrists.

  She barely reacted. Processing it internally. Eyeing the man at the bottom of the stairs that had single-handedly pulled her out of hell in Macau.

  Are you the enemy now, Will? Slater thought.

  Is that what she’s thinking?

  Is that what she’s been trained to believe?

  He didn’t say anything. He let her make up her own mind. He was hesitant to pressure her into anything.

  She stifled a sob. Caught it on its way out, and stuffed it back in. Sealed her lips tight. Her eyes turned wet.

  She smiled.

  And suddenly everything was still possible.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ he said, as loud as he dared, barely more than a whisper in the silent lodge.

  She hurtled down the steps, taking them two at a time, and threw herself into his arms. He took all her weight on his left leg and hugged her tight, sensing her heart pounding a million miles an hour, feeling the sheer relief in the air. She still hadn’t said a thing, but he could tell she didn’t hate or despise him, and a ball of happiness built in his chest so full and so complete he wasn’t sure there was any feeling in the world better than this.

  In its own unique way, it made him want to give fatherhood a shot.

  He set her down on the second step, so they were nearly eye level. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t cry. She kept the sobs at bay, quiet as a mouse.

  Looking out for both of them.

  ‘Will,’ she said, small and timid.

  He paused, his breath catching in his throat, and he got the sense she’d been preparing a speech like this every chance she had a moment to herself.

  She said, ‘I know you work with these people, but I don’t like them, Will. And I don’t want to be here. Please don’t hurt me for saying that. I know maybe you think I should be here, but I don’t want to be. I don’t like it. I really don’t, Will. I’m not mad that you put me here, I’m just … I want to go somewhere. Anywhere. Not home — I know I don’t have that. But I just want to start again. Please, Will. Please.’

  Music to his goddamn ears.

  He leant in and said, ‘I didn’t put you here, Shien.’

  ‘You gave me to that man.’

  ‘He promised me something different. Something very, very different to this. And then he lied to me and put you here.’

  Her face lit up with an ecstasy he hadn’t considered humanly possible. ‘You’re … you’re not with them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you get me out of here?’

  ‘Nothing would make me happier.’

  She launched at him again, arms around his abdomen, squeezing as tight as she could. The meaning wasn’t lost on him. He sensed every morsel of pure energy in the hold, her tiny forearms trying to disperse the elation wracking her body, doing anything she could not to cry out with joy. When she pulled away, the tears streamed harder down her face.

  Slater flashed a glance back down the hallway, catching a sliver of the drying room.

  There was no sign of Mother’s slumped, unconscious form.

  He froze, and out of the corner of his mouth said, ‘Shien.’

  She looked up at him expectantly.

  He said, ‘The woman. The one who looks after you in this place.’

  She drew into herself, her lips sealing into a hard line, her tears turning from joy to terror. ‘What about her?’

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Please don’t ever let me see her again, Will.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘She hurts me.’

  ‘What does she do?’

  ‘It started as bruises. She’s so strong. She grips my arm, really hard. The guards say she’s not supposed to hurt the students but she does it anyway. In places they can’t see. But now it’s getting worse. Because she can tell most of us don’t want to be here. There’s … what’s that word? Unrest. There’s unrest in the house. I guess I’m probably causing most of it. I keep telling them they don’t have to be there.’

  ‘Mother doesn’t like that?’

  ‘She knows I’ve been through a lot. And I know what happens when you don’t speak up. Because of Macau. So I speak up, even when she tells me not to.’

  ‘What does she do, Shien?’

  He spotted a shadow against the door frame. Too far away to hear the sound of feet scuffing against flooring, and too far for the stalker to hear their conversation.

  But close enough for concern.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Shien muttered. ‘But she says bad things. Horrible things. She keeps saying if we don’t start behaving she’s going to put things inside us.’

  ‘Inside?’

  ‘You know … in our parts.’

  ‘That’s not very nice of her.’

  ‘No,’ Shien agreed. ‘It’s not. Where is she, Will? She scares me. She’s … so strong.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looked down. Saw him balancing on one leg. ‘You’re hurt. Oh my God … your foot.’

  ‘Stay right there, Shien.’

  He kept his eyes trained on the door frame.

  She said, ‘Did Mother do that?’

  Slater said, ‘You said it yourself. She’s very strong.’

  ‘Don’t let her get her hands on you. Her grip is so strong.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  The shadow moved.

  ‘Close your eyes, Shien.’

  She obliged.

  The shadow lunged.

  Mother appeared in the doorway, a massive swollen lump already forming on her forehead, a Beretta M9 in her hand. She looked like she knew how to use it. She didn’t get the chance.

  Slater blew her face open with two rounds from the HK416, perfectly placed.

  Bang-bang.

  Forehead, eye socket.

  The noise of the gunshots was horrendous in the lodge, ripping through both storeys at once, spearing through the whole building, unmistakeable. At the source of the gunfire, it was deafening.

  Shien shrieked.

  Slater watched Mother sprawl to the linoleum, narrowly missing the carpeted hallway. Her head hit the floor with a wet thwack.

  He said, ‘Hard for her to grip anything now.’

  Shien said, ‘How are you going to get out of here on one foot?’

  Pale and cold, Slater said, ‘I might need your help with that.’

  88

  Screams rose throughout the building, unnerving in their intensity. All children. All scared. Some more than others.

  Some were just frightened by the noise.

  Maybe they’re further along in the program, Slater thought.

  A sharp voice called from a far-off room, ‘You can’t be in here! Get out of here! No shooting in here! This is our space!’

  Followed by discordant wailing.

  Like something out of a horror film.

  Shien tensed up, hunching her shoulders.

  Slater looked at her.

  ‘We’re taught rules,’ Shien said. ‘Some of the kids have been here for years. They don’t know anything else. Mother is very strict on the rules. No guns in the house is one of them. The girls aren’t going to stop screaming. Until they put the place on lockdown.’

  ‘They’re going to raise hell?’

  Shien had clearly never heard the expression before, but she nodded. ‘We should go.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Haven’t figured that out yet.’

  ‘Will…’

  ‘Work with me here, Shien. It wasn’t easy getting here.’

  ‘You need a vehicle.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’re all locked up.’

  ‘There’s a garage?’

  ‘Around the other side of the lodge. Underneath it.’

  ‘How do we get in?’

  ‘We can’t. Locked doors. They’re metal or steel or … something. There’s codes.’

  ‘Who
knows them?’

  ‘Mother.’

  ‘Who else?’

  Shien simply stared at him.

  Slater nodded. ‘Right.’

  Already he could picture the four remaining guards huddling together outside, scolding themselves for not taking the situation seriously, forming a plan to storm the lodge from all sides at once, or together in a tight cluster. He put himself in their shoes. They’d heard gunshots in a distant booth, and then they’d all had a strange interaction with one of the guards, who they now realised hadn’t been one of the guards at all, and now they’d heard gunshots in the lodge itself.

  Slater would be thoroughly unnerved, if he was them.

  Which favoured sticking together. Splitting up might prove more efficient. Slater certainly preferred it that way. He could maybe deal with them one on one, four consecutive times. A coin toss either way. The damage inflicted to his right foot was steadily hammering home. He was starting to understand the bleakness of his situation. It was awfully difficult to do anything on one leg.

  He sat down on the first step, breathing hard.

  ‘What?’ Shien said, leaning over him, placing her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Quiet,’ he hissed.

  He listened, hard. Rifle at the ready. He extended his right leg straight out, and when the mangled foot touched the carpet his whole body screamed a protest in unison. He ignored it, tasting cold sweat that ran down his nose, over his upper lip, into his mouth.

  He wasn’t doing so well.

  ‘You okay?’ Shien said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Torn muscles. A broken bone. Maybe two. He forgot about it.

  ‘How are we getting out of here?’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to have to kill all the guards, Shien.’

  She stiffened. ‘Can’t we sneak away?’

  ‘Not with my foot. It’s just not possible.’

  ‘I can hear them coming.’