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Ferocious

Page 28

by Paula Stokes


  “I wouldn’t want all the light in here to be distracting.” I feel Alec’s hand on the back of my headset. And then:

  I’m in a laboratory that looks a lot like this one. Steel tables, textured white ceiling, tang of chemicals in the air. I’m sitting in a chair, my hands zip-tied together in front of me. My heart races; my skin sweats. I struggle to exhale and nearly choke on something.

  Whoever this is, Alec and Kyung have gagged him or her. No, him. The hands are definitely male.

  Mr. Yun steps into the room, with Alec at his side. Mr. Yun marches up to the chair and backhands me across the face while Alec watches. A jolt of pain rushes through me. He hits me again, this time straight on, in the teeth.

  “Sorry,” Alec says. “I realize this punishment might be excessive for your infractions. But in our business, there’s no such thing as a minor mistake.”

  “Stop,” I say. “Who are you doing this to?”

  “Just a poor unfortunate employee whose ID badge was apparently cloned due to his carelessness.”

  Jason. Regret courses through me. Of course they found out. By now they might even know that I sneaked into Lab 6 at lunchtime. “Stop beating him. Beat me instead, you cowards. I’m the one who cloned his badge.”

  Alec clicks his tongue. “See, there are two problems with that. First, you seem to have an extraordinary tolerance for pain. The rope burns on your hands, your injured ankle—those things barely seem to bother you. It’s likely we would beat you into a coma and you still wouldn’t give us the password. Second, we have it on good authority that you care deeply about other people, even strangers. So this is actually a very elegant solution to our problem. You tell us the password and we’ll stop torturing an innocent man.”

  Alec is right that my hands and ankle aren’t bothering me, but tuning out this ViSE is another matter. The pain explodes through me each time Mr. Yun’s fist connects with the recorder’s body. After about six more hits, I start singing in my head. This is one of the things I used to do back in L.A. when I couldn’t convince the man I was with to turn on the television—anything to block out reality.

  But the pain of being beaten is almost as hard to ignore as the pain of being sexually assaulted. A couple of the hits make me want to gasp or scream, but I try to swallow back my cries. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. When Alec pauses the recording a few minutes later, I am sweating and struggling to catch my breath.

  The dark hood is yanked up over my eyes. The sharp fluorescent lights make me blink. Two versions of Alec and Kyung gradually coalesce into one.

  “Just give us the password, Ha Neul,” Kyung says, his voice almost kind. “Your loyalty to Ki Hyun is admirable, but he’s gone. No one else needs to die, do they?”

  “I swear I don’t know,” I say. “I would tell you if I did.”

  “All right. We’ll be back.” Kyung shakes his head sadly. “Until then, think hard. Maybe you’ll remember.” The men disappear into the hallway again.

  Alone in the room and still strapped to the table, I fight the urge to completely lose control. I struggle against the restraints, but it’s pointless. I can’t get out of them by using brute force, and the more I attempt to, the more exhausted I’ll become.

  Tears leak from my eyes. I hate the thought of Jason being tortured just so I can experience it vicariously, but if I want to help him, I have to help myself first.

  But before that, I have to survive another round of vising. Kyung and Alec are back with a new memory card.

  “Time for round two,” Alec says brightly. He slips a new ViSE into my headset.

  Alec approaches me. He sticks an electrode to both of my temples. There’s some kind of collar around my neck so I can’t look down.

  A shock pulses through me. It hurts, but not too badly. Gradually, the shocks increase in intensity and duration. My body spasms violently.

  “You’re going to kill him,” I say.

  “Just tell us the password, and we’ll stop,” Kyung says.

  I don’t believe him. He can’t let me go after this. I know too much.

  “You’ll never stop,” I say.

  “Yes, I will. You have my word,” Kyung says. “I can give you a swift and merciful death. Or I can make this worse for everyone. The beauty of the ViSE tech is that we can beat you, shock you, burn you, and cut you as much as we want without any worry that you’ll die.” He pauses. “Of course, without the editor to amplify the sensations as needed, there is the problem that our poor test subject might eventually expire.”

  I hate the thought that flickers through my mind—that if Jason dies, they won’t have anything else they can do to me.

  “Rest assured we’ll move to a second subject if needed,” Kyung says.

  I pray that he’s bluffing, that he doesn’t have Yoo Mi or one of the other girls tied up in some lab.

  “You’re a monster,” I hiss. “I thought I was a monster because I came here hoping to kill you. But you’re hurting innocent people. And for what? Money?”

  Kyung chuckles. “As if money isn’t the number one motivating factor for ninety-five percent of the world. I’m just a businessman. Anything Ki Hyun created while working at UsuMed belongs to UsuMed. It’s a very common clause in scientific contracts. The least he could do after stealing my inheritance was to honor his business agreements, don’t you think? Give me the password so that I can access the research and no one else gets hurt. It’s as simple as that.”

  “I told you I don’t know,” I say. “If I knew, don’t you think I would stop this?”

  Kyung and Alec exchange a look. “Expedite things,” Kyung says. “I’ll be back.” He turns on his heel and strides out of the lab.

  Alec bends down so we’re eye to eye. “Give me the password, Ha Neul, and no one else dies … not even you.”

  His closeness makes me cringe, as does the kindness in his voice. How dare he speak to me with compassion after the things he’s done. “I’d rather die,” I say. “And we both know he’ll kill me no matter what. Otherwise I walk away from this and go straight to the police.”

  “You might,” Alec admits. “But it would be our word against yours. And we have several employees who would testify that you ran away from building security, going as far as to jump out of a window via the escape rope rather than have a quiet chat about the discrepancies on your hiring forms. And what name would you use to report us, hmm? The name with the falsified Korean documents? The name where you have a long history of mental illness? Your real name, the one where you have no proof that’s who you actually are?”

  He has a point. Even if I could manage to escape and get to the police, I’d probably end up in jail or a psych ward. I twist my left foot in a half circle. Is that restraint a bit looser than the rest? Maybe if I just had a little more time …

  “Why would you ask him to let me live?” I ask.

  “I find you intriguing. You fended off two of our best men in Los Angeles, you came here and managed to infiltrate the company without anyone knowing, you leapt out of a window and might have escaped if you hadn’t twisted your ankle.” He pauses. “And then there’s your aforementioned loyalty and tolerance for pain. Quite simply put, you’re an incredible force and I’d rather see you working for us than in an unmarked grave somewhere.”

  Tears flood my eyes and I don’t even know why. And then I do. I don’t want compliments from this man. “You. Ruined. Me,” I choke out.

  Alec strokes the side of my face with the back of his hand. “No. That’s wrong. You’re not ruined. You’ve become something remarkable. Most people who rise as high as we have only do so after experiencing great lows.” He traces his index finger around my lips. “It’s what motivates us, you see?”

  “I am nothing like you,” I rasp. “I will never work for you.”

  “I’m saddened to hear that,” Alec says. “I suspect our friend in the next room will likewise be sad.”

  “Let him go,” I say. “Kill me instead. If
that’s how this ends, then let’s get it over with. Because I will never give you the password.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Alec says. There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes and it fills me with even more dread.

  The instant he leaves the room I push away the lingering panic. I turn my left foot back and forth repeatedly. The Velcro strap loosens just slightly. Not enough to get a foot out, but I keep working on it. My fingertips crawl over the surface of the table, looking for any rough area that I could use to loosen the straps. I flex different muscles, try to turn my body in different ways, inching my way up to the top of the table and then low toward the bottom.

  Being tied down is surprisingly exhausting, and for a few seconds I close my eyes and welcome the reprieve from the penetrating fluorescent lights above me. I take a few deep breaths and then do a full inventory of everything on my person, just in case there’s something that might be of use. Boots. Tights. Skirt. Shirt. My wig is gone but there might still be a bobby pin lost in my hair. Unfortunately, none of this will help me.

  I go back to experimenting with movement. I try small twists and large thrusting motions. The table is too heavy for me to tip over, no matter what. My throwing knife still sits on the cart of supplies, mocking me, taunting me. Again I wonder what time it is, whether Jesse is waiting for me by the subway station or if he’s here somewhere, looking for me.

  It doesn’t matter. Jesse won’t stand a chance on his own, not if Kyung and his men are still here.

  Alec and Kyung duck back through the doorway again. “I’ve got a real treat for you this time,” Alec says.

  A new recording is snapped into my ViSE headset. The hood goes back on.

  I’m lying on a metal table. A tangle of wires runs across my bare skin and is connected to a monitor. Alec is holding a throwing knife in his hand. “Recognize this?” he asks.

  I shake my head.

  This recorder feels different. I can’t explain how, exactly. Maybe it’s that he’s not in so much pain. Yet. I try not to think about what it means if this is someone new, whether they’re giving Jason Choi a break or they killed him.

  Alec draws near to me. He drags the knife across the skin of my neck. I feel the sharp kiss of the blade. The knife moves lower, beneath the soft cartilage of my throat. Metal penetrates my skin. The pain is sharp, followed by the wetness of blood.

  With his free hand, Alec touches part of my rib cage. “If I stab here,” he says, “you’ll get a punctured lung. Your chest cavity will fill up with air or blood, crushing your lung.” He drags his fingers upward. “If I stab here, I’ll rupture your spleen. Did you know the spleen is always processing blood? If I rupture it, you’ll bleed out in minutes without help. Or I could stab here and with just the right angle and a little luck, I’ll hit your heart.”

  All of my muscles go tense. I try to lean back away from the blade.

  Alec laughs. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t start with any of those.” He makes a second cut, this one into my chest. The pain races through me. My heart rate spikes on the monitor, the number flashing red.

  “You are both twisted and evil,” I gasp through my pain.

  “Perhaps.” Alec removes the hood and pauses the recording. “But I’m not the one prolonging this. Just think, by telling us the password, you can prevent this from happening.”

  “You’ll save lives,” Kyung adds, his voice almost kindly. “And help those who are less fortunate.”

  “How do you figure?” Tears pool in my eyes, but I fight them back. I can’t lose it now. I need to focus. Plus, I will die before I let either of these men see me cry.

  “If we can fix the editor, we won’t have to kill anyone to create the kind of recordings that our clients are interested in buying. We can pay people to be our subjects and just amplify their pain. You’d be surprised how many people would be willing to undergo a few shocks or punches in the name of a paycheck.”

  “That’s sick,” I say.

  “Is it?” he asks. “I wonder what you’d think of the list of interested clients we’ve already amassed. Not just terrorist organizations either. A proven interrogation technique that leaves no marks? It’s every government’s dream.”

  And now I finally understand what Kyung is doing with the tech. He’s trying to sell it to terrorists and government agencies to use for torture purposes. Shock treatments and waterboarding result in accidental casualties. A dead prisoner is a waste. With the ViSE tech, an interrogator would be able to inflict the pain and sensations of those techniques along with even worse punishments right up to death, with no permanent physical harm to the captive.

  “Is it proven?” I ask. “It hasn’t worked on me.”

  “Well, as discussed, you are a particularly difficult case. But everyone has a breaking point. Even you.” Kyung dials someone on his cell phone.“Bring the boy in here; let’s make things interesting.”

  The door to the lab opens as Mr. Yun wheels in a second steel table. My heart wrenches open at the thought of having to watch someone else being tortured. And then I see who it is.

  My brother.

  CHAPTER 47

  “Jun,” I say softly. I don’t want to believe it, but he matches the pictures that Yoo Mi and Baz showed me. He has my cheekbones. He has my chin.

  “Yes. Ha Neul, this is your brother, Song Jun,” Kyung says. “I didn’t realize the two of you had already met.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell Jun. “I’m going to get you out of this somehow.”

  Jun doesn’t respond. His glazed-over eyes look right through me. His hands are bound in front of his body with a zip tie, but otherwise he’s unrestrained. Still, he doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to fight. His face is soaked with silent tears. If it weren’t for the fact that I can see his chest moving and his limbs twitching, I’d think he was dead.

  “You’ll have to excuse him,” Alec says. “I believe he might be in … well, shock.”

  Kyung lifts my throwing knife from the supply cart. “I will kill him with your own weapon if you don’t tell me that password right now.”

  “I’ll tell you,” I say, my eyes focused on the slow rise and fall of Jun’s chest. “But you have to let him go first.”

  “You’re not in any position to bargain.” Kyung approaches my brother, brandishing the knife in his outstretched hand.

  “Fine, then. Just promise me you won’t kill him.”

  “I promise,” Kyung says.

  I turn to Alec. “And you?”

  He nods. “We won’t.”

  “All right. The password is sky with a lowercase s and k and an uppercase Y, and then, um…” I rack my brain to remember the formula for the sequence of numbers.

  Kyung stares at me. “And?”

  “Just a second,” I say. “I’m thinking.”

  “I’m tired of waiting,” Kyung says.

  “There’s a formula where—”

  “Here. Let me help you remember.” Without warning, Kyung plunges the knife into my brother’s stomach.

  Jun gasps. His arms and legs spasm.

  “No!” I scream. “Why would you do that? I said I would tell you.”

  Kyung pulls the knife out and holds the red blade against my brother’s throat. Jun squeezes his eyes closed, but it doesn’t keep the tears from streaming down his face. “You made me wait. And when I have to wait, my clients have to wait. They don’t like waiting and I don’t like having to ask for something more than once. Tell me now or I’ll finish him.”

  I spit out the entire series of letters and numbers that will unlock the drive, praying that I didn’t make a calculation error.

  Kyung drops the knife next to Jun and returns to the computer. He inputs the password and apparently likes what he sees on the screen. Then he ejects the drive from the computer and then glances at Alec and Mr. Yun. “Kill them both,” he says.

  “You promised!” I shriek. I turn toward Alec and try to appeal to whatever misguided affection he seems to hav
e for me. “Please. You promised.”

  Alec pulls Kyung to the side and says something in tones too low for me to hear.

  Kyung’s response is clear, however. “Trust me. You don’t want a pet that might kill you in your sleep.”

  “Still,” Alec says. “She could be useful…”

  Kyung sighs. “Fine. Then just kill the boy. It’s possible I might still need her, depending on what is actually on this drive.”

  “Don’t you dare touch him,” I snap. “If you do, I swear I will never help you with anything. You can torture me until I completely lose my mind.”

  Alec exchanges a glance with Kyung, who shrugs.

  “I’m afraid his time is limited already,” Alec says. “But if you want him to slowly bleed to death instead of a quick and painless end, we can acquiesce to that.”

  The three men turn and stride from the room.

  “Jun,” I say, the instant the laboratory door falls closed.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Jun,” I repeat. “You’re not strapped down. You’ve got to get up. I need you to loosen my restraints so I can help you.”

  He rolls over onto his side so he can see into my eyes. For the briefest moment I think of Jesse and me on separate hotel beds, reaching out so our hands could meet in the middle. All my brother needs is a connection. Something real, something warm. That will wake him up, strengthen him.

  “Who are you?” he asks.

  “I’m your sister, Ha Neul.”

  His face contorts in a mix of pain and confusion. For a moment I expect him to say he doesn’t believe me, but then he says, “Imo told me about my sisters.”

 

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