Second Solace

by Robert Clark

  She didn’t explain anything. She just stared at me for a long, uncomfortable minute. I began to think she hadn’t heard me, or was pretending like I hadn’t just called her out. Then I wondered if I’d gotten trapped in some kind of infinite loop of time, unable to proceed.

  ‘But where is the proof?’ she pondered with all the dawning realisation of a person who finds the light. ‘What is there to stop anyone from believing that this was your game all along?’

  ‘No games from me, unless you fancy a game of solitaire before I go tell the rest of the group what a traitor you are.’

  ‘I always knew you were a snake,’ she snarled. ‘I said it from the start, but they let you in anyway.’

  ‘Whatever you’re cooking up in that head of yours, save us all the bullshit.’

  ‘How long have you been planning to overthrow Maddox?’ she asked. ‘Months? Years?’

  I couldn’t contain the laughter.

  ‘Oh Cece, you really are one crazy bitch if you think-’

  ‘It all makes so much sense. You brought mayhem here. This all started with you. And it will end with you.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘You can’t blame this on me. This is your doing. You didn’t believe in Cage’s vision, so you twisted his dream and broke his trust. The evidence doesn’t lie.’

  ‘You planned the attack during your trial,’ she gasped. ‘You tricked everyone to believe Westaway attacked you, and had Corser put him down. Then you planned the ambush. You convinced Maddox that only the three of you rode in the Humvee. I bet you even sabotaged ours so we wouldn’t see your heinous acts.’

  ‘You need to see the doctor about these delusions.’ I said.

  ‘I should have realised it sooner,’ she mused. ‘It all makes complete sense. As they say, a leopard never changes its spots. Once a snake, always a snake.’

  A terrifying smile crept across her face, and finally she took the liberty she had so wanted to take. With great care, she lowered herself into Cage’s chair. Like the comfort of a warm bath, she absorbed the feeling and let it sink into her pores.

  Then she spoke.

  ‘James Stone, I find you guilty of the murder of Lee Corser,’ she said. ‘I also find you guilty of the attempted murder of Maddox Cage, and of conspiracy to destabilise Second Solace for your own twisted agenda. These crimes cannot go unpunished. Therefore, I sentence you to death by firing squad at dawn. Guards!’

  ‘You can’t do this!’ I shouted, but in an instant the two men burst back into the room and pinned me in place.

  ‘Take him away,’ she hissed. ‘Not in the hole. I want him locked up. Somewhere he cannot slip out of and escape. There will be no redemption for this snake.’

  And as I opened my mouth to retort, something smashed into the base of my skull, and my whole world went crashing into darkness.

  Twenty-Four

  Hang Time

  If I had to count out the number of days I thought I was on the brink of death, I’d run out of fingers. I’d lose count entirely. Such was the magnitude of disaster my life had achieved.

  I woke with the feeling like my head was about to burst. A loud humming noise sounded like my tinnitus turned up to a billion. It reverberated in my lungs. It tingled in my fingers. It was as much a part of me as my intestines.

  I wanted to open my eyes, but doing so would likely result in them popping out of my skull. Of course, the alternative was being put in front of a firing squad, so risking eye-popping shenanigans was marginally better, so I went ahead and unleashed my beautiful blues on the world.

  Or as it turned out, a dark, cold and empty room. Not one that I recognised. The walls were not made from wood, but stone. Not jagged and misshapen, but smooth and square. Steel pipes snaked in and out of the wall opposite me. I could hear something inside them whooshing along. Water, maybe? Not that it was any of my concern right then. I had bigger problems.

  Like the fact I was hanging upside down from the ceiling.

  My hands were tied behind my back with what felt like tape, judging by how it nipped at the hairs on my arm. My feet were wrapped tight with a rope, which - as I craned my neck to see - was looped around a giant hook hanging from the ceiling. The support it hung from was a giant thick slab of metal, with bolts the size of my fist securing it to the stonework. You could probably hang twenty reluctant Brits from it and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference.

  My head felt like a balloon with too much water in it. If I stayed this way for much longer, I was pretty certain I would die. Hanging people upside down was mostly for show. You can’t keep someone in that position for ten hours without them getting blood clots in the brain. So you have to keep flipping them back upright if you want it to be a sustainable torture method. Of course, the act of going the right way up after a prolonged hanging is painful in itself. I’d felt it before. All the blood that had drained into your head and torso comes rushing down into your feet. It’s like nothing you’ve felt before. It hurts.

  Behind me, I heard a door open. I heard the big heavy object scrape against the stone floor like nails on a chalkboard. Then there was the slap of boot soles. A man walked around me and came into view. Not the man I was expecting, but definitely one of the worst I could expect.

  Jack Dawson looked at me with the same intense eyes his brother had shared. The colour of copper. It’s a harder eye colour to do intensive staring. Blue is the best. You can relay all kinds of wintery hatred behind a pair of blues. Brown eyes get lost in the dark. You have to really try and make yourself look like a psycho.

  But Jack Dawson was doing it to perfection. He was maybe in his mid to late forties, judging by the lines in his face and around his eyes. His hair was short on the sides, and slicked back on top. It was a little messy. If he knew his brother was dead, he probably didn’t care much for appearances. Even so, he still managed to pull off the look of a suave, sophisticated secret agent. He wore a navy blue shirt with the sleeves tucked up to his elbows. His forearms were enormous.

  ‘You killed my brother,’ he snarled.

  I opened my mouth to respond. He didn’t give me the chance. He slammed his fist into my chest, and sent me flying around the room like a tethered ball. I let out a noise that sounded like someone letting the air out of a tyre and spun around on my hook. Jack just watched me.

  When I slowed down, he hit me again. This time in the back, right in the left kidney. And the whole thing started over again. I wanted to vomit. I felt like I could pass out at any second. But I didn’t. I just twisted and rotated and gasped.

  The third punch caught me dead in the centre of my chest. Right in the heart. I felt it flutter like a cute girl had walked by, albeit without the massive shock of pain. My eyes rolled into my head and I felt woozy. No sleep, about a bajillion miles of walking and hardly anything to eat did not a healthy man make. I tried to focus onto something. I’d learned to take one thing, something bright and innocent, and turn it into my sole focus for being. It had worked in Afghanistan. It had worked in Brooklyn. It would work here.

  I narrowed my gaze in on the wall-mounted light. The bulb was bright, so much so that I could barely see the wired casing surrounding it. It would do the job. I shut out the world and became that bulb, burning bright in the darkest of places. I shut out Jack Dawson’s heavy breathing. Shut out the heavy humming noise that filled the room. I became the bulb.

  The next punch hit me in the gut, but it felt lessened, like it had been administered through a pillow. It still knocked the air out of my lungs, but it didn’t make me want to vomit, which was definitely progress.

  I stayed that way for the duration, transporting my conscious out of my body and into the burning bulb. Punches rained down like hailstones, beating my shell, bruising the skin. I was already damaged enough. He could do no more harm to me. Blow after blow clipped and whacked me around like a piñata. Each furthered my resolve.

  ‘Just like they taught you, James.’

  I came to only when I was sure t
he beating had come to an end. Jack was still there. He was panting heavily like a dog in the hot sun. His eyes were fixed on mine.

  ‘You’ll die in here,’ he growled.

  Which I didn’t believe was true. Not if Cece had her way, and I was sure she would damn well try to get her way. My fate was meant for a bullet at dawn. Not in some underground hovel.

  ‘I bet you I don’t,’ I wheezed. My voice was ruined. My lungs were starved. ‘On your brother’s life, I bet you I don’t.’

  His eyes lit up like nuclear bombs. I thought he might just beat me to death, wailing on me like a punching bag until my heart gave in. Deep down, I bet that was exactly what he wanted to do. But something inside his brain told him no, and as a wild smile stretched across his face, I began to wish he’d gone for option one.

  He put his hands on my shoulders and brought me to a stop and looked into my eyes like forlorn lovers. Then he left the room.

  I had no doubt he was going to return. The question was how long until he did. I couldn’t have been hung up like a deer for ages. He could leave it hours before I needed medical help. Or he could leave it minutes and return with a hunting knife.

  I craned my head to look at my binds. Rope an inch thick wrapped around my ankles. I had as much chance breaking through them as I did developing skills in telepathy. The hook protruded between my calfs, using the tension in the ropes to keep me in place. Nothing but gravity keeping me from the rest of my business.

  I heaved my head and shoulders forward and heard the hook jiggle. Then I flung them back and swung a few inches back. Then I used my stomach muscles to heave myself forwards again, and swung about a foot ahead of the point I’d started at. I kept it up, tensing and swinging like an inverted pendulum back and forth, back and forth. Again and again. Making marginally more progress with each time. The hook jiggled more and more as the ropes around my ankles forced it back and forth. As I ticked forwards, I looked down and saw the top rung of the rope breach the tip of the hook.

  With added muster, I flicked my head back and arched my shoulders and swung away, one foot, two foot, three. Almost at the three position on a clock.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’

  Jack sprinted into the room and wrapped his arms around me, killing the momentum.

  ‘You think I’d let you off that easily?’ He snarled. ‘You killed my baby brother. I’ll make sure you suffer slow.’

  ‘Slowly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The correct term is slowly. Least you could do is grasp the English language if you plan on using it. And it wasn’t me who killed your piece of shit brother. It was Corser. And let me tell you, he died slowly. Probably drowned in his own blood like a little bitch.’

  That earned me another punch to the stomach. But if I was going to die here, I wanted I piss him off as much as I could first.

  Jack took a step back and put his hand into his back pocket. What he pulled out took me a moment to register, but when it did, it sent a shock wave through me.

  The plastic bag was translucent and looked like it has come from any supermarket store across the globe. There was no logo printed on the side. No holes in the bottom where it had torn. A brand new specimen, and I could guess why he had brought it.

  ‘You’ll die slowly, you son of a bitch.’ Jack growled. ‘I’ll make doubly sure of that.’

  He slipped the bag over me head and pulled it tight.

  The plastic wrapped around my face, squeezed the skin. Instinctively, I breathed in. Plastic sucked into my mouth, but no oxygen accompanied it. The effect was immediate. Panic stormed through my mind, burning any shred of common sense in its way. I tried to move my hands, forgetting instantly that they were trapped behind my back. The shock made me attempt to breathe again.

  Huge mistake. One failed inhale was bad enough. Two was horrific. The film of plastic sank deeper into my mouth. It squeezed the skin around my cheekbones. It didn’t break. No air. Nothing.

  My lungs burned. I felt like I was underwater, struggling in the depths of an ocean. It was torture. It was painful. It was overwhelming. My limbs twisted and writhed, desperate that some kind of movement would suddenly grant me the sweet release of oxygen. Sweat trickled up my spine. Tears flooded my eyes, blurring my already distorted vision. My conscious was fading. The darkness pouring in. The humming intensified, increasing with every moment until it was all I could comprehend. I was moments from death. A fraction from the finish line.

  Then everything went impossibly dark. At first, I thought that was it. The grand beyond. The nothing. But I was pretty certain that death was more of an all-or-nothing type of deal, and I could feel the erratic beating of my heart pounding away in my chest.

  The bag came free. Not all the way, but enough that had to mean Jack had let go of his end and let it hang loose across my face. I gulped a lungful of air and tried to blow it away. It drifted over my nose and came free.

  The room was quiet. The light I’d sought comfort in earlier had died, and the impenetrable vibrations had ceased, as had the nauseating humming noise. Everything was still.

  Behind me, I heard Jack swear and disappear once more. To where, I had no idea. And just like that, I had a second chance. He could be gone for seconds. He could be gone for minutes. But he would return, and I needed to be a million miles away by then, literally or figuratively. He’d caught me once, he wouldn’t strike gold twice.

  With added vigour, I launched myself back into a swing. Abs crunching. Shoulders arching. My head like a wrecking ball out of control. Forward. Back. Forward. Back. Higher. Higher. Forward. Back. Every bit of my body felt like it was ready to explode. The pressure in my head and torso felt like someone had replaced the blood with liquid concrete. It seemed a miracle that my head hadn’t ripped clean off my neck. The constant movement only amplified the excruciating feeling. But I’d be damned if I gave up. Damned and dead. I reached the eight o’clock. Then four. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then nine o’clock. Then three. Higher and higher. Ten o’clock. Then two. Forward. Back. Forward. Back.

  Then came the eleventh hour.

  The experience felt similar to jumping out of an aeroplane, or so I guessed. I’d never actually done it myself. The sudden weightlessness as my momentum carried me up and free of my restraints felt like one of the longest moments of my life. A day and a half, right there in a millisecond. The rope slipped over the tip of the hook, and like a surfer cresting a wave, there was nowhere to go but down.

  At six foot, I was not a small man, and hanging upside down, my head had been around Jack Dawson’s gut, which meant my feet had hung around nine feet off the ground. That kind of drop onto a soft mattress would knock the wind out of the best of people. But I wasn’t landing on something soft.

  I came down like a boulder, and hit the ruthlessly solid stone floor with a sickening thud on the base of my skull. Everything went numb. And as the air evacuated my lungs, I was gone.

  Twenty-Five

  Vox Nihili

  James Stone died with his hands and feet bound in a small, dank store room a quarter of a mile under a mountain in Montana. He hit the ground with enough force to shatter his spinal cord, and slipped into the darkness with a mouthful of blood.

  And from the ashes, I was born. As his fingers drifted from the reigns, I took control. Now was the time of the Wolf. And I wouldn’t let something so woeful get the better of me.

  I opened my eyes and acclimatised to the darkness. They had no effect on me. I had lived in the shadows my whole life. But now I wanted daylight, and there was none of it down here.

  The problem I faced first was the binds around my wrists. James had come down hard on his back, and the hands had softened the blow of his backside. The joints ached, but I could wiggle my fingers without too much pain. Nothing broken. I rocked on my side, then up onto my knees. Then, like a jack-in-a-box, I launched straight up off my knees to my feet.

  With my hands bound, I couldn’t reach the blade in my boot, if it was e
ven there anymore after everything that had happened. I needed something else. There wasn’t much in the room save for the hook above my head, and a couple of pipes lining the adjacent wall. Something flowed inside with enough pressure to make the thick cast iron tube rattle in its fixture. Taking care not to fall over and having to repeat the process, I hopped across the room towards them. Straight away, I could feel the heat coming off the centre pipe. It would do the job, with a sacrifice.

  I twisted around and positioned the tape around my wrists against the pipe. The heat was intense. Even before I pressed against it, I felt the burn in my hands and forearms.

  No time like the present.

  I pushed back and snarled as the searing heat worked through the tape and into my skin. I fought every instinct in my head to flee, and pushed harder. The stench of cooked flesh met my nostrils. My muscles shuddered. My teeth ground together. I wanted to shout. But I didn’t.

  It lasted only seconds. The tape gave way, and my hands snapped to my sides. I dropped forwards, twisted around and worked at the ropes around my ankles. Ignored the excruciating pain in my hands. I had no time for it. My eyes watered. My head throbbed. I fought through it. Time waits for no wolf.

  The ropes came loose with ease, and in seconds I was on my feet and ready to go. But there was one more thing I wanted from the room, and it hung nine foot off the ground with nothing to do but kill time.

  While the supports holding the hook in place were as stoic as Norse Gods, the hook itself was less stationary. Held in place on a rusted chain link, pulling it free took nothing more than a little finger work and some patience. In the palm of my hand, the hook was a formidable weapon. The edge wasn’t the sharpest thing the world had ever seen, but the point would cut deep if you swung it right. That was all I needed. That and a shot at Jack Dawson’s throat.