I want to deny what he’s saying, but I can’t. It all rings true. And when push came to literal shove, she cut me down rather than let me drag her into an escape attempt that might have gotten her killed. As much as I want to believe that, if we ever get free, Ophelia would help me learn to survive, I’m slowly figuring out what exactly that means to her.
“Is that what you did?” I ask. “Learn how to betray other collectors from Ophelia? How does it feel to prey on your own kind?”
“We’re not predators. We’re something much more than that.” He’s got a crazy gleam in his eyes that sends warning bells through my body.
I lean slightly away.
“Why are we like this?” His question is a challenge, like he wants to see if I know the answer.
“Like what?”
He reaches for my forehead, and I jostle backward, dodging his reach. But he wasn’t really trying, and he just smiles at my evasion.
“Why do we have the power of God in our hands?” he asks.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just bad luck.” Even people who have the genetic marker for collecting don’t always express. It’s just my luck to be one of them. Even the original vaccine that set everything in motion was a case of side effects piled on bad luck with a side-order of mutation. It’s not like anyone created this ability on purpose. Although now that we have it, people like Dr. Brodsky are trying to recreate it. Make a machine that can do it.
I’m not sure if that will be better or worse.
“Why can we concentrate so many lives in us?” Valac continues, ignoring my verbal swipe. “For what possible reason, if not so we can live those lives? We can collect because it is our nature to take that into us. To live. To live longer. Don’t you see, little bird, we will outlast them all. It’s the one thing we were built to do. To relieve the weak of their lives, gather them into us, and make ourselves strong. To become immortal like the gods.”
“Sure. That makes perfect sense.”
He laughs. It’s the light-hearted, no-care-in-the-world laugh he had when I first arrived. “I’m not crazy, Lirium. At least, I hope not. Because there’s no hope at all for me then.”
I frown, thinking there’s not much hope for any of us. But I keep that inside, wondering where Valac is going with all this talk.
He gets serious again and steps closer. I take a half step back, and he nods, allowing.
“You have no soul, Lirium.” His face is back to the wild-intense look.
That may be true, but I don’t need to hear it from him. “You’re one to talk.”
But that doesn’t give him even a second’s worth of pause. “When you collect, those holes you feel… those are the empty spaces where your soul should be. You know what I’m talking about,” he says, and I don’t deny it. I’m pretty sure every collector feels it. “Your soul is a tattered, gossamer thing that’s gone with a strong gust.” He gestures with his hands for effect, demonstrating the demolishing of my soul with a sweep of his splayed fingers. “It’s gone—do you know why? For every life you take, you lose a piece of it. And if you have no soul, little bird, you damn well better live forever. Because if you don’t, there’s something much worse than death waiting for you. I know… I’ve tasted it.” He loses the crazy eyes for a moment and looks genuinely afraid.
That look makes my heart stutter. “Wait, what? What do you mean?”
He swallows and comes out of that fear-stricken look. He gives me a grim smile. “You’ll be glad to know I talked Kolek out of cutting off half your fingers.”
I blink at the swerve in subject. “Okay…”
He looks me in the eyes with a softness I don’t care for a bit. “I am sorry, little bird.”
My stomach clenches. “Sorry about what?”
But he just turns away and strides toward the door. When he waves his hand, it slides open. Outside are Kolek’s two thugs—Nico and two-pints. Valac brushes past them without a look back. They come in, and the bottom drops out of my stomach.
They don’t come close right away. The door slides closed behind them. That’s when I notice that they’re covered head to toe: black turtlenecks, coarse pants, boots. Gloves. They each slide on a black ski mask that covers their faces, leaving just a filmy screen over where their eyes are, so they can see through.
There’s not an inch of skin showing on their bodies. Nowhere I can touch them.
I clench my fists, but I can’t even get a swing in before the first blow plows into my stomach, knocking all the air from me. I double over. A smack to my face comes next, whipping my head to the side and sending me down to Kolek’s pure-white carpet. The pain follows a half-second later and my vision blurs. I struggle to get to my hands and knees, but a kick shoves my stomach into my spine and lifts me into the air, twisting me over. I’m on my back, staring at the ceiling, choking, my collapsed lungs fighting for air. Pain races through the center of me, shooting to every nerve ending and making them scream, even though I can’t.
One of the thugs hauls me up and holds me as a punching bag for the other. I can’t tell them apart. I just feel the fists pummeling my body, right-left, right-left. I lose count. The pain is one giant lump, every organ inside me beaten. I throw up. The punching one steps aside just in time. Then he draws his fist back and clocks me square on the jaw. My head whips to the side so hard it bangs against the shoulder of the thug holding me.
Darkness crowds my vision, and I have a sense that I’ve been dropped. I fall slowly to the floor in a collapsing tower of pain. My face plows deep in the plush carpet.
Consciousness flies away. I don’t fight it.
I’m not sure if I want to wake up again.
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The Debt Collector Serial
EPISODE 5 –Driven
Available 4.29.13
Lirium pretends he’s a willing debt collector for the mob while deciding whether he can trust Ophelia to help him escape.
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Susan Kaye Quinn is the author of the bestselling Mindjack Trilogy, which is young adult science fiction. The Debt Collector series is her more grown-up SF.
Susan grew up in California, got a bunch of engineering degrees (B.S. Aerospace Engineering, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering) and worked everywhere from NASA to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). She designed aircraft engines, studied global warming, and held elected office (as a school board member). Now that she writes novels, her business card says "Author and Rocket Scientist," but she mostly sits around in her pajamas in awe that she gets paid to make stuff up.
All her engineering skills come in handy when dreaming up dangerous mind powers, future dystopic worlds, and slightly plausible steampunk inventions. For her stories, of course. Just ignore that stuff in the basement.
Susan writes from the Chicago suburbs with her three boys, two cats, and one husband. Which, it turns out, is exactly as much as she can handle.
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Broken (Debt Collector 4) Page 5
