by Lee Bond
With an efficiency that should disturb him, Garth dragged the dead guys into another room in the basement. Worrying about his tendencies towards grave robbing, Garth rifled through their pockets. It took longer than strictly necessary thanks to the sheer volume of weapons and trinkets these Portsiders carried as opposed to their Port City counterparts. They were five year olds with the crap shoved in their pockets; the only thing missing were dead frogs and live snakes. The best of the knives and a couple other interesting doodads were saved from the junk pile. Then it was time to get to work.
Chairs. He felt a deep need for chairs. There wasn’t an easy way to torture … interrogate… someone without a chair. Garth zipped upstairs, found the kitchen table, and shouldered a heavy-duty oak chair on each side, then hurried back down. Once they were in place, Garth struggled to get Jamal into one without breaking any bones. The sonofabitch was heavy. Whistling the theme song to Star Trek, Garth securely stowed Jamal to the chair with adhesive tape, then dragged the unconscious Portsider over to the wall for phase two.
Garth stepped back and admired his handiwork. Other than Jamal’s arms, the Portsider was so firmly attached to the chair that they were practically one. Thanks to heavy-ass Latelian physiognomy, Jamal the Asshat could struggle in that chair for the rest of his short life and never get the thing to creak, let alone break. All that remained was to do something with the arms. He went to the duffel bag and pulled out five pitons.
Jimmy had done an excellent job in picking out the best money had to offer. The pitons were duronium coated and self-mounting; each was outfitted with a tiny pressurized canister of propellant that would drive an inner spike deep into any surface. Garth popped the top of one to watch the spike in action. Fully extended, dozens of miniscule spikes flanged outward to prevent the piton from being pulled free by any heavyset Latelian mountain climber. The noise the spike made sent a chill down Garth’s spine. Eyeballing Jamal for a second, he took an estimate on optimal placement, then drove four pitons into the wall, two on either side. With rope used to secure the idiot, Jamal’s arms would fit nicely between each set.
xxx
Garth slapped Jamal awake. The Portsider glared daggers at him for a moment before trying to break free. Waiting to see if Jamal was going to break the chair or pull his arms out of the ropes mounting him to the wall, Garth eventually went back up to the kitchen to see what was in the fridge when it became apparent that no amount of struggling would work.
There was a jug of citrus juice and sandwich fixings and little else. As the sandwiches were prepared, Jamal’s venomous threats and incoherent thrashing filled the kitchen. Garth went back down to the basement with his early, early morning snack and sat down in the chair opposite Jamal.
“I don’t want you to scream so much, pal.” Garth said as he eyed his handiwork. “Too much screaming and you won’t be able to tell me what I wanna know. You’ll hurt your throat and that doesn’t work for me so much.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Jamal shouted. Then, because he didn’t know what else to do, he started screaming and trying to break free again.
“Who do you work for?” Garth asked, making a show of eating. He jerked his sandwich out of the way when Jamal hocked a loogie. “Guess you don’t realize what kind of shape you’re in here, pal.” Garth put his snack on a table out of spit range and headed over to the duffel bag.
Grinning evilly, Garth brought a few pitons over for Jamal to see. “These,” Garth explained, “are climbing pitons. Ever seen ‘em?”
Jamal didn’t say anything, but he stopped struggling.
Garth put all but one of the pitons on the floor by his feet. He smacked the top of the climbing tool with the palm of his hand. The basement filled with the sharp crack as the pressurized canister popped open and the distinctly chilling snik of the spike sliding out of its home reached Jamal’s ears. “These are safety rated for any kind of mountain you want to climb, Jamal, and any kind of fat-ass who feels like doing it. You could hang upside-down off a cliff with one of these. They go deep. They go through anything.” He paused for effect. “Anything.”
Garth took a drink of juice and ate in silence, playing with the expended piton. He washed the sandwich down and started again. He spoke reasonably. “Who do you work for?”
“The Portsiders.” Jamal answered. There was no way the Offworlder was crazy enough to do what he was implying. Jamal looked around. He had killed all his guys. Maybe … maybe he wasn’t in such a good position. There had to be a way out of this.
Garth went back into the duffel bag and pulled out the spool of duronium wire and a fancy jet engine lighter he’d liberated from one of the dead bodies. He uncoiled a bit of the wire and played the flame over the tip. Then he stuck the tip, which blazed with furious heat, into the wooden table. There was a satisfying hiss and the brief smell of charred wood.
“Now,” Garth said, “I’m not going to stick you with a burning hot wire. That’s very last year. What I am gonna do … it’s much worse. I will take these pitons and I will stick them in you. Every time you give me an answer I don’t like, I’ll connect two of the pitons together with a length of this wire. Then I’m going to heat the wire up. This is d-wire, so it won’t ever melt. It’ll just get hotter and hotter and hotter. Eventually, the pitons will begin to heat up as well. You might smell something at that point. It’ll be you, cooking from the inside out. I don’t want to do this on account of the smell. It crawls inside your nose and stays there for days, making everything you eat or drink taste like dead person. Which,” Garth added cheerily, “is why I am eating before I do this.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Jamal spat.
“Let me explain something while I put a few of these into you.” Garth picked up two of the pitons by Jamal’s feet and hefted them thoughtfully. He looked deep into Jamal’s panicky brown eyes. “I am not a nice man. I’ve been hunted since I landed, attacked at every fucking turn. Scratch that; I’ve been hunted my entire life. I’m not here to fuck with your planet or anything so petty. I know you work for the fucking Portsiders, and I know you want my ship. I want to know two things: who are the people who give you guys your orders, and why did you kill Jimmy?” He jabbed one of the explosive pitons into the densest portion of Jamal’s thigh, then punctured the same spot on the other leg.
Jamal started shrieking. Flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth.
Garth went back to his snack.
xxx
Reywin closed her eyes. The screams coming through the ship speakers were horrible. And they were letting it happen.
Trumann thrust her chin at Reywin. “We should do something.”
Agent Reywin snapped the audio feed off. Thermal scans of the home showed that Garth was carrying through with his promise to slowly cooking Jamal alive. “This is information we can use.”
“What are you talking about?” Trumann hissed. “He’s torturing that man to death.”
Bolo saw where his boss was heading. “It’s also something we would never, ever do. We’ve been trying to find out who funds the Portsiders for six years. We’ve done wiretaps, prote assaults, relay hacks. We’ve tried to get our own agents in on the ground floor and they always wind up dead. The Portsiders are untouchable, Trumann. The last time one of our own tortured a Portsider for information, she ended up very, very dead. And so did her family. And her friends. For as long as Doans has been using these new policing methods, the Portsiders have only been growing stronger.”
Reywin nodded. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Trumann, but Bolo’s right. Nickels is clearly getting solid info. It’s not as though the Portsiders are going to leave him alone after this, not now, not ever, so he’s going to have to go to war with them if he wants to survive. That means getting as much info as he can on their inner netLINKs. Again, any damage he does before our contract worker shows up is beneficial to Hospitalis.”
“This is insane.” Trumann had a younger brother in the Portsiders. There were n
o misconceptions that the Ministry knew about his recent induction into the organization. She’d taken great pains to sever relations with Thompson the moment she’d found out; she loved her brother dearly but couldn’t afford any black marks on her record. “Garth Nickels will bring a war into the streets of Port City, just to make a point. We stop him.”
“No.” Reywin grabbed hold of Trumann’s shoulders. “He’s doing something distasteful, yes, maybe even evil, but he’s also doing our work for us in a way we never can. The ‘siders are a criminal organization, Trumann, not just a ‘gang’. Gangs don’t have access to sniper cannons or the ability to smuggle things from planet to planet. If Nickels can get anything worthwhile out of Jamal… I say we let him continue.”
“I want to go on record as being opposed to this particular course of action, Rey.” Trumann pulled away from her supervisor. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for making a little extra cash, everyone does, but if we’re hauled in front of a review board for this … I’m not going to The Peak. No fucking way.”
“Fine.” Reywin exchanged glances with Bolo. “Fine. If Nickels doesn’t get anywhere in ten minutes, blow up the truck. That’ll bring him out.”
xxx
Garth was impressed with Jamal’s pain tolerance. He’d managed to withstand four pitons in the legs and the subsequent slow roasting with the d-wire joining them together as well as having his arms physically mounted to the wall behind him. The smell of roasted flesh was pretty stomach turning, but Garth couldn’t let that get the better of him. If Jamal didn’t give up some good secrets before dying, he’d be back at square one. Worse. The Portsiders wouldn’t look too kindly on the torture-death and execution of more men.
“Are you going to make me torture your sister, Jamal?” Garth separated Vernita from Jimmy’s corpse and dragged her over to the second chair. She’d come to once during the torture session for about three and a half seconds before going into some kind of convulsion. He’d broken off to make sure she hadn’t swallowed her tongue, and as he’d checked her vital signs, Jamal had paid very close attention.
Garth taped the lolling woman to the chair and turned to Jamal; the Portsider’s entire body was taut with pain. “I’m not keen on hurting a woman, Jamal, but she did let you kill her husband. Probably maybe even asked you to do it. I won’t do her like I’m doing you because a guy’s gotta have limits. But,” he held out a piton, “I will drive this into her stomach. It won’t kill her, but it will hurt more than anything you can possibly imagine. It’ll puncture her stomach. Digestive acids and all the food and waste in there will leak out into everywhere. Sepsis is a nasty goddamn way to go, pal. She’ll die unless treated by a physician, but it’ll take days, maybe even weeks, for that to happen. And the whole time this is going on, that shit will eat away at her insides. It will be agony, and I have the time to sit here and make sure it happens. She will pray for death.”
Jamal closed his eyes.
Garth slapped Jamal across the face. “Open your eyes, Jamal.” He kept on hitting the Portsider until his demands were met. He fixed Jamal with an icy glare. “You’ve seen what I can do here tonight, Jamal. I’ll do it. I’ll feel bad for a while, but I won’t lose any sleep. If you don’t answer right away, she gets one in the gut. Won’t kill her, but it’ll hurt, brother Jamal. After that, I’ll bolt her hands together. Then her feet. Then her elbows. And, if by some miracle, you still don’t answer me, I use electricity. You ever see someone burned with electricity, Jamal? Hurts a million times worse than fire. The nerves feel like they’re on fire and the skin cooks. Cells will be permanently destroyed, Jamal. When I am done with your sister, she will be begging for death and out of her mind. And it’ll be all your fault.”
“Go … fuck … yourself.” Jamal grated.
Garth sighed. It was always the same. Gang ties were stronger than family ties. He hadn’t wanted it to come down to this, but he was committed to staying alive. Garth pivoted, piton in hand…
“Wait! Wait! Wait.” Jamal let loose with a hitching sob that would have been heartbreaking under other circumstances. “Wait.”
“That was real close, Jamal.” Garth wasn’t lying; the tip of the piton was less than half an inch away from Vernita’s stomach. “You’d better not be fucking with me, either. Tell me what I want to know and a couple of things are going to happen. One, you and your dear ol’ sis will live. Two, I will leave you alone unless what you tell me turns out to be wrong. If you lied, this happens again, only I widen the family circle. Do you believe that I can find you wherever you go, Jamal? Do you believe that I can reach out with my hands and find you no matter where you are and make you die?”
Jamal nodded and burst into tears.
xxx
Bolobo felt sick to his stomach. “This … he’s … he’s not human.”
Reywin’s opinion differed; unlike her teammates, she’d gone through rigorous training on this sort of thing, how to both administer and survive such tactics. Garth’s methodology was perhaps more visceral than she preferred, but according to her old instructors, it was the end result that mattered. “He’s a master at this sort of thing, that’s for sure. Watching him work, while uncomfortable, is a good lesson. This is a man who is capable of doing anything for what he believes.”
“For what he believes?” Trumann demanded. “He could’ve gotten his answers, the name of The Man, in less than fifteen minutes if he’d wanted to!” The scene sickened her. To imagine for a minute that anyone was capable of such horrific actions, even in self-preservation …
“Weren’t you listening to his five minute monologue about the innocent?” Bolobo called up the text and flashed it to Trumann. “Read that over. Jamal was punished for killing Jimmish and for no other reason.”
“I assumed he was talking just for the sake of frightening Jamal further.” Trumann didn’t need to read the document over. Everything Garth had said and done would burn forever in her mind.
Reywin snorted. “No. Our man here has a very clear notion of innocence and guilt. Get one of the avatars working on a profile and shut up.”
Trumann cleared her throat and stopped chewing nervously on her lower lip. “What about Jamal and Vernita?”
Reywin looked up from her prote. “What about them?”
Trumann gestured uselessly with her hands.
“Neither one will survive, Trumann.” Reywin said slowly. “Jamal’s wounds are severe. Even if he got medical attention, which he won’t because he’s a Portsider, he’d die. And Vernita? Her mind is cracked. If she doesn’t die from shock, no one will believe a word she’s said.”
Trumann tried to catch Bolobo’s eyes, but he kept himself occupied by looking into a monitor. “And … and The Man? What about him? We’ve tried to find out the identity of the Portsider connect for years. Ashok Guillfoyle? Really?”
Bolo spoke up, quietly. “It fits, Trumann. Neatly. I doubt very much Jamal was capable of lying at the end.”
Reywin ran a hand through her red, frizzy hair. “We … we keep letting Nickels loose.”
“What!” Trumann’s bark of surprise echoed loudly through the aircar. “What?” she repeated, calmer.
“It’s like this, Trumann.” Reywin sat up and looked directly at the woman, who returned her steely-eyed gaze with perfection. “If Ashok Guillfoyle is the guilty party, Nickels will determine that. There will be no repercussions if the man is innocent. We’ve seen that here tonight. If he is guilty, then anything Garth Nickels does is for the greater benefit of the Latelian people.”
“If he continues ‘being a benefit’ to us,” Trumann demanded vehemently, “why in the fucking hell are we following him around? He’s doing our fucking job for us!”
“Because,” Reywin supplied sweetly, “sooner or later, he’ll find out about all the agencies in this system. When that happens, it’s highly likely he’ll decide we’re just as bad as all these little gangsters he’s killing. Wrong, of course, but given he’s an Offworlder, he can’t comprehe
nd the necessities of what we do. What we do is also of paramount importance, and in the end, we’re infinitely more valuable to Lately than anything he might do. So for now, we let him loose, use his craziness to clean up our world. Once the contract worker arrives, we’ll have our payday and can vanish. Understand?”
That shut everyone in the flier up. In the pursuit of their mandate to protect the Latelian way of life, each one of them had done things that could quite easily be viewed as wrong, and if Garth Nickels was the sort of man to take it upon himself to protect the innocent, then they were all in a lot of trouble.
xxx
Garth logged Jamal’s confession. Then, on the off chance that OverSec Terrance got it into his head to have a chinwag with his pet Trinity spy, he encrypted the data under an iceberg of ICE. Garth didn’t know Ashok Guillfoyle from a goddamn hole in the ground, but Jamal evidently thought the man was second unto God His own bad self.
Only a few hours remained before the first elimination round. Disgusted that things weren’t going his way at all, Garth did a half-assed job of wiping down his prints before packing up his shit and heading out to the van; if he was lucky, the horror show inside Jimmy’s house and Vernita’s craziness would make it difficult for crime scene investigators to get anything done.
If he hurried, he could catch the Continental Breakfast.
DAY SIX:
ELIMINATION ROUND #1
With The Game taking place every five years, more than ninety percent of all non-Game related businesses experienced such a drastic downturn in profits many were forced to go on the dole until it was over. Although education was of paramount importance, schools nevertheless closed for the duration so families could spend time together watching the Game.
At first blush, The Game was a fairly simple battle of might, with the last man or woman standing as the winner. There were five weight divisions, ranging from light to ultra. Each group was broken down into subsets based on augmentation or lack thereof. Once a champion from each division and subdivision was named, they squared off against each another until there a main winner out of light through heavyweight was determined. That winner earned an opportunity to fight in the Final Game.
