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In my dream I lay next to the same kid who had haunted my sleep since the nectar had entered my veins. His bony body was strapped to an operating table, a splinter of shadow compared with my own muscled form as I lay beside him. I thought at first that the room we were in was empty, but then the darkness started to move and I realised there were wheezers all around us, their twitching limbs like insects running up and down the dark walls.
‘It’s time,’ said the kid, the one I knew had once been me. His face was calm, but beneath his tattered overalls I could see his ribs jutting up like rock through snow, rising and falling too fast. He was scared, and even in the fog of sleep it angered me.
‘Time for what?’ I asked, my growl so deep it made the table beneath me tremble.
‘Time to let go of me forever,’ the kid answered, and I could see that he was trying to hold back the tears. ‘If that’s what you want.’
Before I could answer the wheezers were approaching, their staggered movements making them look like puppets. Several grabbed hold of the kid’s arms and legs, but none tried to twist his gaze away from mine.
‘I don’t want to be you any more,’ I answered as another wheezer lifted a scalpel from the tray beside the table. ‘You’re weak. You’re pathetic.’
‘You’re wrong,’ the boy answered, and at last the fear broke through his paralysis and he started to struggle. The rest of his words came in short, sharp bursts as he fought the arms that held him. ‘It’s an illusion. I wasn’t strong, but at least I could think for myself. You’re the weak one, you’re letting them win. You can still stop them.’
I looked at his limbs, nothing more than matchsticks, the whites of his eyes so bright they seemed to light up the entire room. The thought that he was still in my head somewhere, still alive after everything they had done to me, made my stomach churn. He had no right to be there. I was done with him.
‘Please, Alex,’ he pleaded. ‘I don’t want to die.’
The wheezer lowered its scalpel towards the boy’s chest and held it above his heart. Then it raised its piggy eyes to me and I nodded.
‘You died a long time ago,’ I said, watching as the scalpel blade vanished into the boy’s skin, a geyser of blood reaching skyward like one last bid for freedom. The kid screamed, and as much as I wanted to see him die I couldn’t bring myself to watch. I turned away, losing myself in the artificial night of the ceiling until the last wet breath had faded.
There was a shuffle of feet as the wheezers approached me, and I offered no resistance when the butcher pressed his dripping scalpel against my chest. There was pain, but pain was nothing new to me and I didn’t so much as flinch as the blade cut through my skin. Because it was a dream there were no bones beneath, just a hole stuffed with straw and twigs – almost like a bird’s nest. The wheezer laid the boy’s heart down in its new home, the organ still pumping despite the fact it wasn’t connected to anything.
‘Am I done?’ I asked, watching another wheezer thread some surgical wire through a hooked needle and start to sew me back up. They didn’t respond in words, but I could see from their gleaming obsidian eyes that their work was finished. The last stitch was knotted and they stepped back.
I looked round at the kid, sprawled on the table, dead eyes seeming to stare at the world a mile or so above him. It looked as though something had exploded from his chest, and blood pattered like rain onto the floor around the table. There was no room in this world for a boy like him – like the one I had once been. There was only space for the creature that had been born from him.
I lifted an arm and felt the tight zigzag of stitches that marked my chest. The kid had been killed so that I could live. His heart was now mine. I was finally complete, finally whole.
But even in my dream I couldn’t shake the feeling that, despite the immense layers of muscle that bound me and the stolen heart that ground against my sternum, I was now empty inside.
There was a moment when the world of my dream and that of real life seemed to overlap. I felt myself stirring, saw the wheezers peel away as I bubbled to the surface of sleep. I looked back at the body of the kid one last time, but after a single blink the murdered boy had become a stone wall and the last trace of nightmare drained from my head.
I tried to move but it felt as though I had been stabbed in the chest. Looking down, I saw that the truth wasn’t far off – my entire torso had swollen to twice its normal size, a network of scars and stitches decorating the bruised skin. My face, too, radiated pain, and all I could do was open my mouth and utter a scream, a pathetic croak that barely made it out of my mouth before tumbling unheard to the floor.
Panic gripped me, doubling the agony in my chest and stomach. I had never felt this weak, not ever. Even if I wasn’t held down by leather straps I doubted whether I could have climbed off the operating table. I was as helpless as a newborn baby, ready to be picked off by the first enemy that walked in through the door.
What if something had gone wrong? What if the wheezers had somehow injured my spine as I lay sleeping? What would happen to me now? Bait for the rats, or maybe just incinerated along with the rest of the failures.
Something moved behind me, the flap of a coat and the tail end of a dry wheeze. Oh Jesus, they were coming already. Wait, I tried to say, but this time my words were so timid even I didn’t hear them. The noise grew louder, then I felt the sting of a needle as it slid into my arm. Almost instantly the pain began to fade, the strength returning to my new body as the nectar filled me. The relief was so great I swore I could hear thunder in my head, loud enough to drown out the warden until he was standing right next to me.
‘The pain is what kills most people,’ he said, perching on the edge of the steel table. ‘Or what drives them insane. Take the rats. They couldn’t handle the pain so they lost their minds, became animals. The nectar, and the operations, they can have that effect.’
He noticed a trickle of blood that was slowly winding its way towards him. Pushing himself up, he paced around the room as he continued.
‘I was worried about your mind. You see, if you try and resist too much it’s like using a stick to barricade a door. It will only last so long before it snaps into splinters.’ He walked over, pressed a hand on my forehead. The touch released a fresh wave of pain that scoured its way down my face and torso. ‘But you seem to have survived with all your mental faculties intact. Well, the ones we wanted to keep anyway. You dreamed again while they operated on you, right?’
I was in too much pain to nod but the warden didn’t seem to be expecting an answer.
‘It will be the last one. It always is. From now on there will be no more pain, no more nightmares. Only power. It hasn’t been an easy journey, I know that. But it will be a rewarding one.’
He walked round behind my head and I felt the topmost strap loosen. He appeared on my other side and unfastened the buckle that held my arm. Slowly and methodically he released the bonds that held me, then offered me his hand. I couldn’t look him in the eye to see what his motives were, but I knew he meant me no harm. Grimacing against the ache in my chest, I took his hand and let him pull me into a sitting position.
‘I’m proud of you,’ he said, resting both palms on my head the way a priest might do. ‘You have embraced a new life, our life.’
I felt my chest swell, not with pain this time but with pride. The warden took a step back, checking the sac of nectar which hung from a stand beside the table. When he spoke again the warmth was gone from his voice, taking me by surprise.
‘But we are not ready to accept you, not quite yet.’ I opened my mouth to protest but he stole the words with a single glance. ‘Simply staying alive this long isn’t a guarantee that you are ready. Some of those who make it through the procedure are still weak at their core, they do not have what it takes to join my family.’
He nodded at the door and a wheezer entered the operating room. I watched the creature as it staggered to a tray beside the table
and picked up a long syringe. This one was full of clear liquid.
‘Some lack the physical strength to make it as one of my soldiers,’ the warden went on as the wheezer tapped the tube and squirted some of the liquid into the air. ‘Others cannot handle the … responsibilities that their new life entails.’
The wheezer shrieked, and before I could object it jabbed the needle into a vein in my forearm. There was none of the cold rush of nectar, just a pleasant buzz that permeated my entire body. When the warden’s voice came again it was muffled, as if heard through gauze.
‘This is a mild anaesthetic, nothing to be worried about. When you next wake we’ll find out how far you’ve come, and how strong you really are.’
His voice continued to fade as I plunged deeper into the silence of my mind.
‘Get the chamber ready, divert the river, and prepare the rats. Let the test begin.’
THE TEST
Something was dripping on my face and it was driving me insane.
I snapped open my eyes, saw that the world was made of silver. I was confused for only a moment before I remembered my new eyes, the night vision letting me know I was in a small room made of rock. At first I thought I was back in the hole, in solitary confinement, until I looked to the side and saw a narrow passage leading off into shadows.
Another trickle of water brushed down my cheek and made my whole face itch. Looking up, I saw a hatch embedded in the rock maybe ten metres above my head. Even as I watched, two more globules peeled their way loose from the metal and fell, every detail perfectly sharp as they danced then merged with one another – platinum teardrops against the dark stone. I went to move out of their way but a cold grip on my wrists stopped me. Manacles, bolted into the wall.
What the hell was going on?
I thought back. Remembered the warden’s last words. Let the test begin. What kind of test was this?
Tugging on my chains did nothing but almost deafen me in the small space. I waited for the echoes to die out before searching the floor for a key. The cracks in the rock were laid out like a spider web of light, and there was nothing there but my own bare feet. I noticed the scars on my skin and remembered the surgery, the way my torso had looked the last time I’d seen it. I don’t know how long had passed since the wheezer had sent me to sleep, but it must have been a while because the pain had vanished completely.
And the warden was right. There had been no more nightmares.
Something groaned above me, so loud that I felt my heart stutter through a couple of beats before finding its rhythm again. I clambered to my feet as the trickle of droplets became a steady flow, as if somebody had turned on a tap on the other side of the hatch. The groan came again and this time I knew what it was. I felt my blood run cold, and it had nothing to do with the freezing downpour that was already starting to form puddles in the rock.
It was the sound that metal makes when it is under a huge amount of stress. The kind of stress that might come from an immense weight of water.
Before the third groan died out I had wrapped the chains around my hands and was pulling on them with all my might. There was now a veritable waterfall sluicing down the narrow shaft, making the floor slippery and preventing me from getting a grip on the metal. Although the passageway next to me meant that the water wasn’t getting any deeper, I knew it was only a matter of time before the hatch gave out under pressure and I was crushed beneath a fist of white foam.
Swearing at the top of my voice, I braced my leg on the rock and leant back, tensing my arms and shoulders until I thought the muscles would burst through my skin. I could feel the strength inside me, feel every fibre of my being put to work. It was power I had never dreamed of possessing, but it wasn’t enough.
The hatch groaned again, then one corner popped loose from its casing. I looked up in time to see a jet of water cut down the cell, slapping me hard enough to make me lose my footing. I scrabbled up, screaming in rage as another hinge snapped above me and the jet became a blade.
This time I wrapped the chains around my chest and turned away from the wall, pulling on them like I was hauling a cart. The adrenaline pulsed through my veins like acid, and I could feel the nectar in there too, giving me strength, urging me on.
I wasn’t going to die like this. Not now that I finally had power at my fingertips. I wasn’t going to die.
I gritted my teeth so hard I thought they might snap, pushing my foot back into the join between floor and wall and putting every muscle to work. There was another groan, and I almost dropped earthwards, thinking it was the hatch finally giving way. But then I felt the chains stretch and knew that this time they had made the sound.
I stopped for a second to recover my breath, then threw myself forward again. The chains cut into my wrists, into my chest, but the pain was good, spurring me on. With the squeal of metal on rock one of the bolts in the wall flew loose. Facing my strength alone, the other bolt didn’t stand a chance, ripping out a head-sized chunk of stone as it surrendered.
Momentum caused me to fly into the passageway, which probably saved my life. Above me the world seemed to collapse in on itself, a sound like the sky falling. The floor trembled as the water struck it, but by that time I was running along the passageway at full pelt, my chains dragging behind me.
My legs were like jackhammers, the silver cracks in the walls and floor flashing by like catseyes on a midnight motorway. I could feel the wind on my face, the sheer exhilaration of being able to run this fast making me grin despite the fact that death was right behind me. I risked a look over my shoulder, the unleashed river like a swirling torrent of mercury, gaining quickly. Too quickly.
I forced myself to run faster. There was nothing but rock ahead, no sign of a door or a junction or anything that might let me escape. I was stronger and faster than I had ever been, but my lungs were burning, my heart was threatening to burst its stitches, and I knew I couldn’t go on like this forever.
I felt the first cold tendrils of water on the back of my neck, the roar like some vast creature that saw its prey was trapped. I knew why it sounded so triumphant. It had held me in its teeth before, this river, an age ago. I had escaped, and now it wanted to finish the job.
And it would. Up ahead the passageway was sealed, a dead end of solid rock. I was strong, but there was no way I could pummel my way through it. Not before the seething mass of water ground me to a pulp against the stone. This wasn’t a test, it was an execution.
I thought of the warden, his cold laughter as I died, and the anger clawed its way up from my stomach. Uttering an animal cry of pure rage, I charged at the wall, my fists raised. The water was almost upon me, its cold fingers the touch of death. So this is how it would end. Crushed between the unstoppable force of the river and the immovable weight of the rock.
I had almost smashed into the end of the passageway when I noticed the tunnel angling upwards. I reacted instantly, propelling myself off the ground and bracing myself in the narrow chute. The water flooded the space I’d occupied only moments ago with a sound like an atomic bomb being detonated, flecks of foam resembling pale talons reaching up for me. The river wasted no time in continuing the chase, bubbling up against the rock with frightening speed.
Snatching in a lungful of air, I began to climb, my silver eyes picking out cracks and crevices in the rock and my massive arms pulling me up with ease. The heaving breath of the river made the stone slick and slippery, but every time I thought I’d lost my grip I rammed my legs against the sides of the vertical tunnel, locking myself in place. The water was fast, but I was faster. I was going to outclimb it.
And then the top of the shaft came into sight, sealed tight by a hatch.
I vaulted up the last few metres with a grace that surprised me, leaping from side to side like an ape. Wedging my feet in opposite corners, and hooking one hand into a crack in the ceiling, I reached up and felt the ring of metal. A single touch told me the hatch was solid steel, at least as big and as heavy as the one
that had kept me in solitary. The water was still rising, maybe five metres between its icy depths and me. I had only one chance.
Furious, I bunched up my fist and threw it at the hatch. I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but the sound it made when it connected almost made me lose my footing. The crack of bone on steel, and my cry of pain, were twin echoes that dropped down the shaft until they were swallowed by the roar of the river.
It felt like my hand had been put down a garbage disposal, the pain unbelievable, even when compared with everything else I’d been through. But when I looked at the hatch I was amazed to see a dent in the metal, as though it had been struck by a sledgehammer.
Grunting, I smashed my other fist against the hatch, this time causing the edge to buckle. Blood dripped from my knuckles, turning the white foam red inches beneath my feet. This time I wrapped the heavy chains once around each hand and lashed out again, and again, left and right, the steel barricade bending out of shape with each strike.
The water reached my ankles, its touch seeming to drain all warmth from me. I gripped the ceiling harder, tensed my legs and my back to give my arm more leverage as it blasted upwards again. The hatch bent even further outwards, but still it didn’t break. Past its warped edge I could see the flickering light of torches, and more than anything I wanted to be out there. I didn’t want to die like this, swallowed whole by a beast of ice.
But the river was up to my waist in seconds, so cold it made me feel as though all the bones had been filleted from my body. By the time it had reached my chest, my muscles had no strength left in them. I tried to take in one last breath but the water was too eager, filling the top of the shaft in a heartbeat and sliding its cold fingers down my throat.
Death Sentence Page 6
