by G. P. Ching
“There’s something I haven’t told you about my time at the reactor,” I say, thinking about the promise I made to David. “I met someone.”
“What kind of someone?” A note of jealousy creeps into Korwin’s voice.
“My mother.”
He gags like he’s choking on his tongue. “Your biological mother? I thought she was dead?”
“Me too. Turns out she survived. And one more of the Alpha Eight, Charlie Stone.”
“Is that it? You’re not going to tell me my parents are alive?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve always assumed they were gone.” He laughs but I can tell a tiny flicker of hope has faded for him and feel guilty to be talking about my mother being alive.
“So along with David, that makes three of the Alpha Eight alive and well. How are they surviving without the serum?”
“They’ve replicated it. They have a full medical lab in the reactor.”
“Damn. So why don’t you want to go back?”
I shake my head. “She’s a stranger. She’s been alive all this time and never sought me out. What type of mother does that?”
Korwin shrugs. He walks to the door and places his ear against the wood.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I say. “You’re thinking she did it to protect me. She wanted to save me from this life for as long as possible. But look where it’s gotten me.”
He nods and unlocks the door, looking right, then left down the hall. He motions for me to follow.
“I know you think I should be forgiving. I should at least hear her side of it and give her a chance. Maybe. Someday. But is now the time? Is she just confusing my emotions to try to entice me to join the Liberty Party?”
The hallway twists and turns. I’d forgotten how mazelike it was down here. But somehow, Korwin finds the blue palomino painting. I look behind me, across the hall, to the place that should be the base of the stairs. There’s only a wall.
“Dad and I sealed it off before Stuart Manor was taken. They’d need a diamond-tipped drill to get in here without my father’s blood.”
“Then why have you been so cautious this entire time?”
“Because the Green Republic has access to a diamond-tipped drill and worse.” He winks at me.
Together, we lift the painting off its hook. Behind it is a barely visible panel recessed into the wall. Korwin runs his finger along the edge.
“Ouch.” He retracts his hand, shaking it. There’s blood. The safe door opens slowly and makes a whooshing sound like it is vacuum-sealed. The air inside rolls out in a dense, icy fog that falls toward our feet.
“What is this?” I ask.
“A freezer with a taste for blood,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Looks like Dad had this one set up to use my blood as well as his.”
I wrap my sleeve around my hand and reach inside. A metal crate holds six frosted vials. I rub the sleeve of my opposite arm across the labels. “They have your name and a date on the outside.”
“Huh?” He tries to take a vial but the cold burns his fingers.
“My hoody is temperature controlled,” I explain. Even so, my fingers are starting to feel the cold.
“What do you think they are?”
A loud hiss comes from behind us. We pivot to see the vault door opening. I try to react, but within a split second a scrambler is pointed at my face and a man I’d hoped to never see again steps out from between a circle of Green officers.
“I want to thank you for your assistance.” Dr. Konrad dons a pair of black gloves and takes the vials from me. “I’ve been trying to find Maxwell’s missing specimens for months. I had a hunch all I had to do was wait.”
28
I don’t remember the scrambler. One second I am thinking about Dr. Konrad’s face, how the lines around his eyes and mouth have grown deeper during the last year and his pasty white skin gives him a corpselike appearance, and the next I wake shivering. Everything aches. I try to curl on my side but can’t. A sharp pinch at my wrists and ankles brings me further into consciousness but my eyes won’t open. I shift my head from side to side in panic.
“Shhh. Lydia, shhh. Calm down.” Korwin’s voice is on my right. “Your eyes are taped shut.”
“K-Korwin? Where are we?”
“Some type of operating room. Listen, you need to focus your power on burning the tape off your eyes. Do this now.” His words are steady but urgent.
I dig for the tickle at the back of my brain. It’s elusive and weak. It comes forward only with prodding and is not strong enough to free my eyelids. “It’s not working,” I croak. My throat is dry and it hurts when I talk.
“Try again. It’s going to be hard. It’s only going to get harder the longer you wait.”
With a deep breath, I find the tickle again and this time I hold my breath. I pull energy from the rest of my body and direct the heat to my eyes. The smell of burning plastic fills my nostrils.
“Good. Good girl. Almost there.”
“Aah,” I yell as my eyelids wrench open. The pain is excruciating and my power retreats into its cave with a snap that rocks my body. Even open, my vision is blurry and I blink repeatedly to clear my eyes. “What’s wrong with me? I can’t move and everything hurts.”
“Look at me,” he says. I turn my head to the right and a Korwin-shaped blur comes into my field of vision. With each blink, my vision becomes sharper. “You’re hooked up to a drainer,” he says. “You’re strapped to a table. Don’t waste your energy on the bindings; they have draining technology. You can’t burn them off.”
My vision finally clears. I cry out as I see the sores on Korwin’s exposed skin. He lies on a silver surgical table awash in bright light. The white ceiling and walls look sterile but the smell in the room is of blood. Our blood. I look down my body to the wires poking out of my skin and lose it. Whimpering, I struggle against the restraints and whip my head back and forth on the table.
“Lydia, listen to my voice. You have to calm down. If you panic it will drain you faster. You’ll lose consciousness. We’re alone but I’m not sure for how long. We need to try to make the most of it.”
“What does it matter? Konrad has us. We’ll never get out of here alive.” I weep. My nose starts to run and I can’t move to wipe it. This in itself is enough to make me panic again.
“I have a plan,” he says. “But you have to conserve your strength. It’s our only hope.”
I force myself to take deep breaths and lie still. It doesn’t help. My heart hammers in my chest, and my eyes dart to the machines against the wall that drain our energy.
“Here’s what we have to do. We need to try to move the tables closer so that we can touch. If we can touch and complete the circuit, we might be able to overload the equipment. Shut down the drainers, even for a moment, and we’re out of here.
“How?”
He moves his body as far away from me on his table as possible, pulling against the restraints, then surges, throwing his weight to the other side. There’s a screeching sound that makes the hair on my arms stand on end, and Korwin pales like he might die from the pain. His table is a quarter of an inch closer. There’s still a good three feet between us.
I follow his lead and try the method myself. The effort makes all my joints ache. Because of my lesser weight, the table only moves an eighth of an inch. Korwin goes again. A fraction closer. The space between us might as well be a mile.
Fatigue hits me fast and hard. I can’t even fathom trying again. I don’t get a chance anyway. The door opens and the devil walks in, dressed in the skin of Dr. Emile Konrad.
“Welcome to my laboratory,” he says. “Or my kingdom, as I like to call it.” He places a black bag on a steel rolling tray near the front of the room and pushes its squeaky wheels between us. “What a relief to have you back within the fold. You gave us quite a scare when you escaped last year. Chancellor Pierce thought you were dead. He wanted to drop the entire search. But I w
ant you to know something: I always believed in you.”
“Let her go,” Korwin says. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll help you, just let Lydia go.”
Konrad shakes his head slowly. “That won’t do at all, Korwin. I have a scientific hypothesis that must be tested. Do you know what a hypothesis is, Lydia?”
I shake my head.
“A hypothesis is an idea that a scientist thinks might be true but requires additional testing to prove. My hypothesis is that you two are much harder to kill than ordinary humans.”
“What do you want from us?” I ask. It’s futile to engage Konrad, but I can’t help myself.
“You’re not paying attention, young lady. I want you to lie on the table while I see how long it takes to kill you.”
His words are ice water. Goosebumps break out across my arms and legs.
“We’ll work with you,” Korwin promises. “Wouldn’t it be better to keep us alive? We could be powerful allies.”
Konrad shakes his head and clucks his tongue. “Oh dear. That old tune. I think you’ve proven you can’t be trusted. Not only are you a threat to the Republic, but thanks to recent events, we don’t need you anymore.” He exaggerates a patronizing grimace. I have no idea what recent events he’s referring to, but I don’t have the strength to ask. “You have two choices. You can meet your end quickly or, and I really hope you choose this one, slowly… painfully. Which way you choose will be determined by how quickly and honestly you answer my questions.”
I stare at the ceiling and don’t say a word. Korwin remains silent as well.
“Ah,” Konrad says. “I bet you’d like to know more about how you will die.” He paces back and forth near our feet. “Your physiology presented a special challenge for me. Usually when I have a guest here I have a number of tools I use to elicit information. Specialized tools for specific purposes.” He chuckles. “I have a vise specifically designed to separate a patient’s shoulder from the socket and a toothy clamp that could shred muscle from bone without tapping an artery. But I realized after we strapped you to the table that my entire toolbox was metal and, therefore, useless without great hazard to myself.”
“Isn’t it enough to drain us?” Korwin says. “If you kill us, you’ll waste the energy.”
“Sacrifices must be made,” he says with a shrug. “But like I said, you have control over how this happens.” Konrad holds up a white tube with a green light on the side. “I want to introduce you to a new addition to my toolbox. This instrument is called an Accunitt. Handy tool for mainstream doctors to do surgery without breaking the skin. This useful gadget can focus atoms to a point as thin as a fraction of a hair width. It can be used to destroy a tumor or solder a torn artery without an incision.” He rolls it in his fingers. “All that power, right here in the palm of my hand. Allow me to demonstrate.”
His eyes dart between Korwin and me, his thin lips curving as he decides between us. Accunitt raised, he focuses on me, and I squirm under his coarse gaze.
“No…No,” Korwin begs. “Start with me.”
Konrad ignores his pleas. His gloved hand strokes the bottom of my foot and up my leg, trailing his fingers over the thin white hospital tunic. “The inside of the arm, near the armpit, is an exceptional pain point, often overlooked by the amateur.” He grips my bicep and touches the cylinder to the place he describes. When his finger presses the green light, fire shoots straight through my arm, straight to the bone. The muscle between his grip and my neck contracts, my body trying to protect itself. But I can’t move. My eyes widen and my mouth opens, but the pain keeps me from drawing a full breath. Instead, my jaw gapes until somewhere, somehow enough oxygen leaks into my lungs and I release a shrill scream.
Konrad smiles at me as my scream peters out. “That was a good one. You might be an easier nut to crack than I expected.” He pulls the cylinder away. The pain ebbs but not fully. When I look down at my arm, the dull ache and the way my skin puckers tells me he’s damaged me. Maybe the bone is broken or there’s a hole in my muscle. Crippled. Broken. Irreparable. To my core I understand that he will take me apart piece by piece.
Soulless and evil, Konrad turns on Korwin and raises the Accunitt. My hopelessness is trumped by my desire to spare my love pain. “You said you had questions,” I say to Konrad.
The doctor stops, cylinder hovering over Korwin’s chest, and rolls his head back on his neck. The sigh he lets out is exasperated, as if I’ve ruined his fun. “Ready to talk so soon?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Where have you been hiding these last months? Who helped you?” He snaps the words toward Korwin but I understand he’s asking me.
I answer quickly. “Willow’s Province. We lived in the woods on the edge of the Outlands.”
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” Konrad turns a sadistic smile in my direction and shakes his head. “Don’t lie to me.” He drops the cylinder to Korwin’s hip.
Korwin turns away so that I can’t see his face but his leg twitches with the effects of Konrad’s torture. The sadistic doctor carves his way from hip to opposite shoulder. It’s a long time before Korwin screams, an awful, gurgling sound that makes me weep. Blood dribbles off his jaw and onto the table. He’s covered in sweat and white as a ghost. Konrad is killing him.
“Stop!” I yell, between sobs. “I’ll tell you the truth.”
Konrad grunts with disappointment but raises the cylinder from Korwin’s flesh.
“Where have you been hiding?” Konrad asks, and this time he focuses the full force of his dead gray eyes on me. The Accunitt hovers over my heart. His lips are peeled back and I can see his yellowed teeth.
“The deadzone,” I whimper.
“Don’t!” Korwin yells. “Lydia, don’t say another word.”
“I have to. I can’t watch him hurt you.”
“Touching,” Konrad growls, “but we’re not done here. We’ve had undercover officers in the deadzone for months. Tsk. Tsk. There is no possibility you were there the entire time. A lie means I get to do more of this.” He raises the Accunitt.
The cylinder presses into my right hand. I hear my bones snap. I scream as my thumb pops from its socket. Below my wrist, there is nothing but limp, useless pain. I turn my head and vomit next to my shoulder.
“That was a good one,” Konrad says again through his thin grin.
The ring of a phone comes from his pocket and the grin morphs into a frown when he glances at the screen. “I’m going to leave the room for a moment. You two think about what just happened here. When I come back, we’ll talk.” He places the phone to his ear and steps around his black bag to leave the room.
All I can do is whimper and cry as my body tries to deal with the pain. My throat is raw. I can’t tell if it’s from electroscurvy or screaming. I want to die.
“Lydia,” Korwin rasps.
I turn my head to look at him and a tear cascades over my nose. All I can smell is my own vomit. I blink at him because I can’t speak.
“Pray with me,” he says. “The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.”
He’s praying Psalm 23. I know it by heart, but I can’t bring myself to join him. I stare at Korwin with contempt, anger brewing within me. “Stop. What are you doing?”
He pauses. “Praying. Pray with me, Lydia.”
“Why? You were right, Korwin,” I say through the pain. I swallow and the result is excruciating. “There is no God. What God would let this happen to us?”
Korwin sobs, tears flooding his face. “Don’t say that. I wasn’t right. I don’t know anything.”
I turn my head to stare at the ceiling and my soul sinks. I am sucked into a black hole of despair. I am nothing. I have nothing. I will die and there will be nothing on the other side.
“…though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Korwin begins to pray again.
I close my eyes and try to block everything out—the pain, Korwin’s mumbling.
The door opens and Korwin goes
silent. “Now then, are you ready to talk?”
I sniffle.
“Who helped you?” he demands, picking up the Accunitt from his black bag.
I don’t hesitate. “David Snow,” I say, closing my eyes as if giving up the information is painful.
“David and Natasha Snow are dead. We found their remains.”
“Burnt badly enough to make DNA testing difficult,” I say. “David planned it that way.”
“Lydia, stop.” Korwin sounds so disappointed.
Konrad shows his teeth again. “Do you know how I can tell if you are truthful?”
I am too tired to respond. The drainer and the torture have brought me to the point I can no longer keep my eyes open.
“The probes I have hooked to your body measure over thirty factors across multiple body systems proven to be associated with lying. You can control your voice and what you say, but you can’t control your chemistry. If David helped you escape, where is he now?
“Outlands,” I whisper.
“Outlands? How?”
I say nothing.
“Hmm. So, you hid in the Outlands with David. My machines say it is true, but there’s something you’re not telling me. More to the story. What are you hiding?”
My eyes flutter.
Konrad is shaking me. How did he get so close that fast? “Where did you stay?” he demands.
“A cabin in the woods,” I whimper. This is perhaps the best lie I’ve ever told because it’s true. I did live in a farmhouse beyond the woods.
I pull another breath. I’m vaguely aware that it has been too long since my last.
“Disappointing. I thought it would take longer to break you, but it appears our time together is coming to an end. As promised, your honesty will be rewarded.”
My eyes flutter open when Konrad bumps into me. He leans across my body to reach a rubber mask on a hook near my head. It’s attached to a tank labeled oxygen. I take a shaky breath. He lowers the mask over my mouth and nose and straps it to my head.
29
Shattering glass. The clang of metal on metal. What is Konrad doing? I am locked in darkness, unable to open my eyes. I have a sense I’ve been asleep but can’t say for how long. I’m holding my breath.
