Hellbent--An Orphan X Novel

by Gregg Hurwitz

  He stood up.

  The effect was momentous.

  All the gang members went on point. The woman started trembling, shaking her head. Evan couldn’t hear her beg, but he knew that she was.

  Freeway gripped her chin, squeezing her cheeks. He flicked out a straight razor, which gleamed in the low lights from the altar.

  She cowered, her back to Evan, blocking his view. Freeway towered over her. Evan saw his hand rise and move across her face, two strokes, each punctuated with an artistic flair of the wrist. Her shriek was clear, even above the wind rushing over the rooftop.

  Evan moved his gaze away from Freeway and the woman, finding Xavier. Benito’s son stood in the half shadows to the side of the altar. The other gang members looked on with reverence, but Xavier’s arms were crossed uncomfortably. His face was pale, blood draining away, and his blink ratio had picked up—signs of an anxiety reaction.

  Freeway flung the woman aside. She landed on her belly with her torso twisted, bringing her face into view, and Evan saw the damage inflicted on it.

  Matching slashes across both cheekbones, red streaming like war paint.

  Freeway hadn’t just punished her. He’d marked her for life.

  She sat on the floor, hands cupping her face, blood spilling through her fingers.

  All the gang members were watching Freeway.

  Except Xavier.

  He watched the woman.

  Noteworthy.

  Freeway dismissed his men with a flick of his fingers and headed back to the sanctuary to attend to other business. They streamed out. Xavier got halfway to the door, then paused and looked back at the woman, on her knees before the altar.

  His jaw shifted with discomfort. He looked torn.

  One of the other initiates said something to him, and he snapped to, exiting the church.

  Evan watched the woman unsteadily find her feet. The other women finally broke out of their paralyzed trance by the bags of stolen goods and rushed to her. The injured woman collapsed into their embrace.

  They helped her out a side door.

  Evan backed away from the edge of the roof.

  * * *

  He caught up to Xavier four blocks north as he said good-bye to two fellow initiates at a street corner. Xavier peeled off, heading up a dark block alone, ignoring the invitations of the street girls: “Hey, Big Time, wanna get warm?”

  Evan shadowed him, keeping a half block back. After a quarter mile, Xavier cut up the stairs of a dilapidated house that had been diced into a fourplex. From across the street, Evan waited and watched. Most of the windows of the apartment building behind him were open, banda radio music and the smell of charred meat streaming out.

  After a moment a light clicked on in a window on the fourplex’s second floor.

  Evan waited as a low-rider scraped past and then he crossed the street. The front door’s lock was a joke, the metal guard bent back from previous B&Es. Evan pulled out his fake driver’s license, used the edge to slide the turtle head of the latch bolt level with the plate, and eased the door open.

  He took the stairs up to a tiny entry between two facing doors. The floorboards, though battered, looked to be oak, probably the surviving section of a study from before the house had been carved up.

  He rapped on the door to the left.

  Footsteps. The peephole darkened.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Your father sent me.”

  “Go away. You’re gonna get yourself hurt.”

  “Open the door.”

  “You threatening me, fool? Do you have any idea who the fuck I am?”

  “Why don’t you open the door and show me?”

  The door ripped open. Xavier stood there holding a crappy .22 sideways, like a music-video gangsta. His head was drawn back, chin tilted up.

  Evan stood there staring at him over the barrel.

  Xavier cleared his throat, then cleared it again. Apparently the gun was not having the effect he’d hoped.

  “Your throat’s dry,” Evan said.

  “What?”

  “Because you’re scared. Adrenaline’s pumping. It acts like an antihistamine, lessens the production of saliva.”

  Xavier stuck the muzzle in Evan’s face.

  Evan regarded it, a few inches before his nose. “You’re holding your weapon sideways.”

  “I know how to hold my goddamn—”

  Evan’s hands blurred. He cranked Xavier’s arm to the side, snatched the .22 neatly from his grasp, and stripped the gun. Pieces rained down on the floor. Slide, barrel, operating spring, magazine, frame.

  Xavier stared at his empty hand, the red streak on his forearm, his dissected gun littering the floor around his Nikes.

  “Step inside,” Evan said.

  Xavier stepped inside.

  Evan followed, sweeping the remains of the gun with his boot, and closed the door behind him.

  It was a run-down place, sleeping bag on the floor, flat-screen TV tilted against the Sheetrock, floor strewn with dirty clothes. An add-on kitchenette counter bulged out one wall—hot plate, microwave, chipped sink. An exposed snarl of plumbing hung beneath the counter like a tangle of intestines.

  “Life’s not fair,” Evan said. “Your mom died. You pulled a dumb move and joined a gang. The wrong gang. I think you’re scared. I think you’re in over your head and you don’t know how to get out.”

  The sleeveless flannel bulged across Xavier’s chest. Veins wiggled through his biceps. He was a big kid.

  “You don’t know nuthin’ about me, baboso.”

  “You sure you want me to work this hard to like you?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come here.”

  “No. Your father did.”

  “That old man don’t know shit.”

  Evan cuffed him, an open-handed slap upside the head. The sound rang off the cracked drywall. When Xavier pulled his face back to center, his cheek bore the mark of Evan’s palm.

  “Make whatever choices you want to fuck up your life,” Evan said. “But don’t disrespect that man.”

  Xavier touched his fingertips to his cheek. Down near the elbow, his forearm had a tattoo so fresh it was still scabbed up. An elaborate M—the beginning of Mara Salvatrucha.

  He stared at Evan. And then he nodded. “Okay.”

  “We both know you’re not a killer,” Evan said. “But they’re gonna make you one.”

  Xavier’s face had softened, his cheeks full, his eyes as clear as in that photograph Benito had shown Evan. He looked much younger than twenty-four.

  “I know,” he said.

  Evan recalled the tremble in Benito’s voice when he discussed his son. This boy he’d taught to put on socks, ride a bike, throw a baseball. Countless hours of loving attention, late nights and early mornings, and then your son winds up here, with grown-man problems. And you—the father who once held the answers to the universe—you’re helpless.

  A memory flash penetrated Evan’s thoughts: Jack squinting into a handheld camera at sixteen thousand feet, wind whipping his hair. Evan banished the image.

  “I am out of time,” Xavier said. “I swore the oath.” He held up his arm, showed the tattooed M at his elbow. “It’s written on my flesh. Know why they do that?”

  “It’s good business,” Evan said. “Once you’re marked, you can’t ever join another gang. They own you. Which means they can treat you however they want and you can never leave.”

  Xavier looked confused at that. “It’s to show allegiance. For life, get it?”

  “Nothing is for life. We can remake ourselves in any image we want. One choice at a time.”

  “I’m out of choices.”

  “We’re never out of choices.”

  “Know what their motto is? ‘Mata, viola, controla.’” Xavier snarled the words, suddenly the raw-boned gang member again. “‘Kill, rape, control.’”

  “Their motto,” Evan said.

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘Th
eir motto.’ Not ‘Our motto.’”

  “I already robbed a store. I stole stuff from a truck. They make me collect from the putas. I brought one in today, and she … she got her face cut open.” Xavier put his hand over his mouth, squeezed his lips. “I’m already one of them.”

  “Does anyone beyond this chapter know about you?”

  “No. I’m just getting jumped in.”

  “No one back in El Salvador?”

  Xavier’s eyes shone with fear. “No.”

  “You’ve got one chance to get out.”

  Xavier paced a tight circle by the kitchenette, came back around to face Evan. “Why do you care?”

  “I got into something when I was young,” Evan said. “I’ll never get out. Not clean. You still can.”

  “What about them?”

  “I can handle them.”

  “You can’t do that. No one can do that.”

  Evan just smiled.

  Human engineering had been part of Evan’s training, no less than savate and marksmanship and endurance. He had been trained to disappear into a crowd and fire three-inch clusters at a thousand yards. He had been trained to intimidate, to make grown men afraid. He could convey breathtaking menace when he had to.

  So he just smiled, and that was enough.

  “You decide what you want,” Evan said. “And call if you need me: 1-855-2-NOWHERE. Say it back to me.”

  Xavier said it back.

  Evan started for the door. He’d stepped over the stripped gun and set his hand on the doorknob when Xavier spoke.

  “This girl today, her face…” Xavier lowered his head. “There’s a point you cross where you can’t get yourself back. Where you can’t find, I don’t know. Redemption.”

  “Every choice holds redemption.”

  Xavier lifted his eyes to meet Evan’s. “You really believe that?”

  Evan said, “I have to.”

  44

  Running the Same Race

  A half-drunk glass of milk rested on the kitchen island. Standing just inside his front door, keys still in hand, Evan stared across the open stretch of floor at it.

  There was filmy white residue up one side where Joey had sipped.

  He unlaced his boots and then crossed to the kitchen.

  He picked up the glass. It had left a circle of milk on his counter. Beside it a pile of crumbs rested next to a torn-open box of water crackers. The inside bag was left open, the crackers exposed to the air, growing stale.

  What kind of feral creature ate like this?

  The rest of the world could be filthy and chaotic and lawless. But not in here. After scraping through the underside of society, Evan needed to return to order.

  He washed the glass by hand, dried it, and put it away. There was another glass missing from the cupboard, an empty spot leaving the left row incomplete. It occurred to him that two glasses had never been out of the cupboard at the same time. He nudged the clean glass into place, the set of six still down one soldier.

  Maybe she needed another glass upstairs.

  Maybe that’s how people did things.

  Joey could have used more time with Jack. The Second Commandment: How you do anything is how you do everything.

  Evan put away the box of crackers, swept the crumbs into his hand, dumped them into the garbage disposal. He waved his hand beneath the Kohler Sensate touchless kitchen faucet, turning on the clean blade of water so he could run the disposal. There were smudges on the polished chrome.

  Who touched a touchless faucet?

  He cleaned off the smudges and then got out a sheet of waxed paper and used it to wipe down the chrome. It prevented water spots. When he was done, he sprayed and paper-toweled the counter, washed his hands, got an ice cube for Vera II, and headed across the great room and down the brief hall.

  The door to his bedroom was open.

  He didn’t like open doors.

  The bedspread on his Maglev floating bed was dimpled where someone had sat and not bothered to smooth it back into place.

  The door to his bathroom was open.

  One of Joey’s sweatshirts was tossed on the floor by the bathmat. One corner of the bath mat was flipped back. With a toe he adjusted it.

  The shower door was rolled open.

  The hidden door to the Vault left wide.

  He took five deep breaths before proceeding.

  “Joey,” he said, stepping into the Vault. “The milk glass—”

  The sight inside the Vault left his mouth dry. An adrenaline antihistamine reaction.

  Various monitors had been yanked off the wall and rearranged on the floor, data scrolling across them. The computer bays had been dissected, torn from their racks. Cables snaked between hardware, connecting everything by no evident design.

  Joey lay on her back like a car mechanic, wearing a tank top, her sleek arm muscles glistening with sweat. She was checking a cable connection. She rolled over and popped to her feet.

  “Check this shit out!”

  “I am. Checking this shit. Out.” Evan picked Vera II up off the floor, nestled an ice cube in her serrated spikes, and eyed her accusatorily: I left you in charge.

  Joey breezed past him, using her bare foot to swivel a monitor on the floor so she could check the screen. The scent of girly soap tinged the air, lilac and vanilla, anomalous here among the weapon lockers and electronic hum.

  She laced her fingers, inverted her hands, cracked the knuckles. “You are looking at a beautifully improvised machine learning system—262,144 graphics cores devoted to a single cause. Tracking down David Smith.”

  Evan figured maybe he could forgive the milk. And the crumbs. And the smudges on the faucet.

  He set Vera II back on the sheet-metal desk. She was now the only item in the Vault in the proper place.

  He looked at the open door to the Vault and the rolled-back shower door beyond and bit his lip. Managed the words “Good job.”

  She held up a hand, and they high-fived. “At least now you and Van Sciver? You’re running the same race.”

  45

  A Bit More Incentive

  Listening to all that gurgling and choking wore on a man.

  Van Sciver set down the watercooler jug of Arrowhead and wiped his brow. Enhanced interrogation was hard work.

  Orphan L was strapped onto a decline bench, a soaked towel suctioned onto his face. Van Sciver had been pouring a steady stream of fresh springwater through the towel and into L’s sinuses, larynx, oropharynx, trachea, and bronchi. It didn’t actually reach the lungs.

  It just felt like it.

  Van Sciver had been waterboarded as part of his training. All Orphans were.

  The discomfort almost defied explanation.

  He’d been drownproofed as well, and by comparison that was a breeze. Bound at the bottom of a swimming pool, breathing in water, the head going hazy as in a dream.

  But this felt like having a water hose opened up inside your skull. The more you gasped for air, the further you pulled the towel into your mouth, an octopus clutching your face, expelling an endless stream of fluid through your orifices.

  Van Sciver nodded at Thornhill, who lifted the soaked towel from Orphan L’s face. For a time Draker bobbed on the bench, bloodshot eyes bulging, mouth guppying. He didn’t make a noise.

  When the upper respiratory tract filled, water obstruction prevented the diaphragm from expanding and contracting to produce a suitable cough. You had to fight to earn your oxygen.

  Five seconds passed as Draker contorted, clutching for air.

  Thornhill gazed down at him with empathetic eyes. “I feel you, pal. I feel you.”

  Candy leaned against the mattress cushioning the far wall, examining her fingernails. They looked freshly painted. Aubergine.

  Van Sciver looked back at Thornhill, nodded again. Thornhill undid the straps around L’s chest and thighs, and L rolled off the bench onto his side. When he struck the floor, the impact loosed his lungs, his head seeming to explode with
jets of water.

  He coughed, heaved, coughed some more.

  Thornhill slapped his back a few times, encouragingly. “There you go.”

  Draker whipped up in a violent sit-up, driving his forehead at Thornhill’s nose. Thornhill wheeled back, nearly losing his footing. He looked down at his shirt, darkened by the spray from Draker’s wet hair. Draker’s head butt had missed him by inches.

  “Whoa, cowboy,” Thornhill said, seemingly pleased by the effort. “That was close.”

  Draker collapsed flat on the floor, spent.

  Van Sciver squatted beside him, knees cracking, alert. “The boy,” he said. “The address.”

  Draker gagged a few times. Van Sciver pressed two fingers into his solar plexus, and Draker vomited a water-clear stream so calmly and steadily that it was like opening up a tap. When he was done, he took a few seconds to catch his breath. Then he said, “What boy?”

  “Right on,” Candy said. “Gotta admire the grit.”

  She peeled herself from the wall and tested the plywood covering one of the rear windows. It was screwed in tight but not too tight. Which was perfect.

  Van Sciver said to Thornhill, “Get the dog collar on him.”

  The next technique, walling, was a Guantánamo Bay special. There they slipped a rolled towel around the detainee’s neck and used it to slam him into a semiflexible wall. The shoulder blades hit first, snapping the head. The collision gives off a sound like a thunderclap, like someone banging cymbals in the space between your ears.

  Van Sciver preferred to use an actual collar. They were more durable, and his meaty hand never slipped. Plus, when he squeezed tight, he’d found, his knuckles shoved into the larynx, which added a bit more incentive.

  Thornhill secured the collar around L’s neck.

  “I don’t know about this, bud,” Thornhill said, flashing that carefree smile. “I was you, I’d just talk to the man.”

  L lay there, curled on his side, panting. Van Sciver knew how it was. You had to enjoy the respites when you had them.

  It was tough work from both sides.

  “Get him on his feet,” Van Sciver said.

  Draker was limp, his muscles turned to rubber. Candy and Thornhill juggled him up, holding most of his weight. He’d gone boneless.