My Next Breath

by Shannon McKenna

  Their eyes met. “All that’s missing is the gift bow,” he said.

  The room had a bookcase filled with recent bestsellers, travel guides, reference volumes. Zade scanned some titles. “The books are bogus,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “Mark didn’t read fiction. He didn’t get it, not on any level. And he didn’t need a dictionary or a travel guide. He had all those databases in his head.” He pulled out a larger book. “Landscape photography, my ass. This is a prop. All of them are.”

  He seized the bookcase frame and gave it a hard, rattling shake.

  It swung open with a soft click, revealing a narrow staircase leading down into the dark. Wide enough for only a single person.

  “Fuck,” Zade whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “It wasn’t up to you, so skip the guilt,” Simone said. “We can leave if you don’t like the vibe.”

  He shook his head. “I have to know what’s down there. I’ve waited too goddamn long. But you should leave. Be careful getting across the river. Take these. Go now.” He pulled out the car keys and held them out to her. “And don’t argue.”

  She just folded her arms, tight-lipped. So goddamn stubborn.

  “Look, I can do this if I know the keys are in the ignition and you’re ready to roll,” he said. “Monitor me through the button cam if you have to watch. Please, Simone.”

  She still hesitated. “I can’t just drive away,” she said. “We’re together now. We face this together, no matter what’s waiting for you down there.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. “If you’re outside with a phone and a car and it’s a trap, you could get help. If you’re with me, we both die. Or maybe it’s a cage with Luke’s body in it. That could happen. You don’t need to see it.”

  Her face tightened. “You were there for me. And I want to be there for you.”

  He shook his head. “I have to go down there alone,” he said. “If a trap springs, I want you to jump clear.”

  She looked like she was on the edge of tears. “Then I’ll wait for you right here,” she conceded. “I’ll just take a look at Mark’s computer in the meantime.”

  “Good luck with that. He believed in encryption.”

  “So it’ll keep me out of trouble. Who knows, he might even have your control codes in there somewhere.” She turned it on. It hummed to life and images began flashing by on the screen. Mostly nature photographs, cycling at about three per second. Then a prompt invited the user to enter a password.

  “There you go. See what you can do.” He handed her the car keys. “And keep these.”

  She tucked them into her jacket pocket, refusing to meet his eyes, but he pulled her close and gave her a swift, forceful kiss. “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too,” she said. “But I’m pissed. And I’m going to make you pay.”

  “Looking forward to it. See you around.”

  He activated the comm again with his implant and stepped into the coffin-like narrowness of the hidden stairwell. A crushing feeling of suffocation overcame him.

  The ceiling was so low he had to crouch and keep his shoulders hunched. His gun was useless. He couldn’t see well enough down here for a kill shot. His night vision was good, but he wished he had Noah’s eye mods. The Ratcatcher hadn’t gotten around to their eyes by Rebellion day.

  There was a light on somewhere down there. Mark’s words from the video echoed in his head.

  … but you won’t be sitting on a beach. You’ll be in my secret place, six levels down … being my bitch.

  The door at the first level down opened into a big storage space with an elevator in the back. Shelves packed with food, cans and boxes and bottles, freeze-dried, vacuum packed. Paper goods, light bulbs, a gas generator, all kinds of equipment. Nothing alive. He shut the door and moved on.

  The next level was a workshop. Fluorescent lights hung over long tables. Jumbled equipment and electronics. Same elevator shaft in the same place at the back. He shut the door.

  The third level was a weapons stash. Major firepower everywhere he looked. Guns, rifles, ammo, missiles, sniper sights, tripods, everything. He moved on.

  The fourth level was for slave soldier transport pods. He had ugly, visceral memories of being entombed in those in his Midlands days. Arms and legs restrained, a mask over his nose and mouth for oxygen, sensors stuck all over him that recorded every blip of his half-alive body.

  “Can you still hear me?” he murmured into the mic.

  “Loud and clear,” she replied. “I saw all the rooms you opened.”

  He pushed open the fifth door as she spoke and struggled to make sense of what he saw. A huge, clear-sided box, sides sunk deep in a mechanism in the floor.

  A cage of some kind. But nothing and no one was in it.

  “Do you see that?” he murmured. “What do you make of it?”

  “No idea.” Simone’s voice was fuzzed by static. “I’m just glad that it’s empty.”

  The last flight of stairs was much brighter because the door at the bottom was slightly open. A bar of brilliant white light streamed out of it.

  “Be careful,” Simone said.

  He pushed the door wider, enhanced senses at full bore, wide open and straining in every direction. All he heard was a flat, deathly hush.

  The space was like a Midlands lab in every detail, but cluttered and filthy. The wall near the door was heaped with dusty construction materials no one had bothered to haul away. Chunks of wood and plasterboard, lengths of rebar.

  A reinforced metal cot with heavily padded wrist and ankle restraints was set up in the center on top of a recessed rectangle in the floor. A helmet was bolted to the cot. A metal toilet with no seat stuck out of the floor beside it. There were no doors besides the one he stood in. Just the elevator in the back.

  No one here. But his modified senses screamed a warning only he could hear.

  He ignored it and stepped out into the room. He scanned the whole place. That rectangular shape in the floor was echoed in the ceiling.

  Then something else transfixed him. A flash of silver, dangling in mid-air from a near-invisible thread, not far from the door.

  Luke’s dose of poison.

  A few steps brought him right under it. The open door was moving the air in the room and the pendant spun slowly, making a disc of reflected light circle the walls.

  He reached up. Yanked the pendant off the hanging thread, and looked at it for a moment. He wondered if Mark had hung it there to taunt Luke.

  He slid the pendant into his inside jacket pocket and approached the cot. The mattress padding was filthy. Spotted with old bloodstains.

  He put his hand on it. Luke had lain there. But where the fuck was he now?

  Whoosh. A rush of air. Crack.

  He shouted as he slammed up against a clear, hard barrier that suddenly surrounded him on all four sides.

  Huge metal bolts sank deep into the floor, grinding and thudding as they fixed the cage in place. The barrier went all the way up to the ceiling, positioned in the rectangle he’d seen before. He hadn’t made the mental leap that connected it to the cage in the floor above.

  “Simone! It’s a trap!” he hissed. “Get out of here! Run!”

  A seam appeared in the wall panel. A heavy door swung open, revealing a room beyond, its walls covered with multiple security monitors.

  “Zade? Talk to me! What’s going on?” Simone’s anxious voice buzzed in his ear but he couldn’t risk drawing attention to her now.

  A tall, shambling figure stepped out of the monitor room.

  Zade recoiled. The guy looked like a walking corpse. Bloated, greasy gray skin, hair falling out in patches, yellowed bloodshot eyes set deep in bruised sockets. His exposed skin was pitted with weeping sores, his hands wrapped like a mummy’s. Thick, empurpled fingertips poked out of the ends.

  He grinned at Zade, displaying bloody gums and a few teeth, black and decaying, as he pushed a wall button to activate
an intercom.

  “I’ve been waiting for you.” His hoarse, scratchy voice was distorted by the speaker. “Welcome back, D-13.”

  Chapter 29

  Zade stared at the guy for a long moment before he spoke. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The man’s ravaged face contorted into something like a smile. “You don’t remember me? But we were so close.” He let out an oily chuckle. “I know everything about you. On a fucking cellular level.”

  With that, recognition slammed into him, though this man no longer looked anything like Braxton. His stomach lurched. “You’re the Ratcatcher.”

  Braxton placed his bandaged hands against the barrier. Zade recoiled, even though his former tormentor couldn’t touch him. There were pus stains on the gauze. The fingertips sticking out had thick, cracked yellow nails.

  “I never liked that nickname,” Braxton said. “But considering that you’re in my cage, I guess it’s appropriate. I’m the Ratcatcher. And now you’re my pet rat.”

  “Braxton,” Zade said, for Simone’s sake.

  Please, God. Let her be running. Already at the car. Speeding away.

  Braxton stared at him hungrily, leaning closer so that his breath fogged the clear plastic. “Did you miss me?”

  “What the hell happened to you?” Zade asked.

  “Same thing that happened to all the Braxton Boys,” Braxton said impatiently. “Gene mutation. You and D-14 are the only ones who didn’t develop it. Lucky boys. After a while, cells get inflamed. It gets worse and worse. You decay from the inside out. Like this.” He turned his head and spat out a lump of something that looked like rotten flesh onto the glass. It slid slowly down, leaving a slimy trail.

  Keep him talking. Piss him off. Hatred keeps him motivated. Distracted.

  “If they all died, then why didn’t you?” Zade demanded.

  Braxton wiped his slack mouth and stared at him, his yellowed eyes glittering. “I developed antidotes,” he said. “None of them worked for long. But that’s where you come in.” He slammed his hand against the barrier. “Gift-boxed, no less.”

  Zade flinched.

  “Nothing wrong with your reflexes.” Braxton traced a filthy fingertip over the plastic, making circles that Zade’s eyes tracked automatically. “Good boy. Fun game. Nothing wrong with your deep brain. Yet.”

  Zade snapped out of it and stepped back.

  “Don’t move too much,” Braxton said, smirking. “I turned off the fan, see. You’ll use up all the oxygen. Die choking. What a waste.”

  The air already felt stale, now that he mentioned it. “What do you want?” Making conversation with a psycho freak.

  “Nothing much to start,” Braxton said. “Four or five pints of blood.”

  Almost enough to kill him, Zade thought. But not quickly.

  “And deep tissue samples,” Braxton went on. “You’re a game changer, D-13. You and your brother. I was almost resigned to dying before I found D-14.”

  Zade’s hands banged against the barrier. He was electrified. “Where is he?” he demanded.

  Braxton waved that aside. “You know Mark Olund, right?”

  “Yeah. Another crazy prick just like you. This is his place. Where’s Luke?”

  Braxton’s ruined teeth showed in a manic grin. “I’m getting to that. Olund disappeared two months ago. I monitored this place to see when he would come back. He didn’t, so I went in to check it out. And there was D-14. Gift-boxed for me, just like you. Almost dead of starvation and dehydration.”

  “Is he here?” Zade yelled. He’d moved too fast on his way down the six levels. Hadn’t looked closely enough, hadn’t listened hard enough.

  “Mark had a machine rigged to drop food and water bottles at timed intervals, but it only lasted a week. I counted the empties. He was barely breathing when I found him.” Braxton leaned forward, bloody spit spraying the barrier. “He would have died!” he bellowed. “I saved his fucking life!”

  “Thanks for that.” Zade forced the words out. Keep him talking.

  “D-14 had his uses,” Braxton said.

  Had. The single word was chilling.

  “And now I have you.” Braxton’s eyes burned. “My fucking dream come true.”

  “Yeah, you have me,” Zade agreed. “What about Luke? You gave him back to Obsidian?”

  Braxton snorted with laughter. “Fuck no! They didn’t deserve to get him back. But I won’t make the same mistake with you that I made with him. Your brain doesn’t need to function for my purposes. I’m thinking a high dose of Trib-Theta to melt it down. Right after I stun code your miserable ass.”

  Zade tried to breathe less. Like that would help. “Is Luke still alive?”

  “I kept him conscious so I could interrogate him, but he never—”

  “Is he alive?” Zade slammed his hands against the plastic hard enough to make them sting. “Did he escape? Answer me!”

  “He deafened himself to beat the fucking stun code!” Braxton yelled back. “Son of a bitch almost killed me!”

  So Luke could still be alive. Zade’s heart pounded as he listened to the man rant on.

  “The cold got him. Not me. No way he could have survived out there. He has to be dead by now. But not you. You’re alive.” The man’s breath fogged the plastic once again. “And you won’t get the chance to fuck with me like he did. Your cerebral cortex gets shredded before I harvest your cells for the new serum. Okay with you?”

  Braxton moved his finger in circles again, but Zade looked beyond them, straight into the other man’s crazed eyes. He didn’t answer.

  “I think the blonde gets a shot of Trib-Theta, too.” Braxton leered at him. “She’s a hot bitch. I wanted to fuck her since I first saw her at the lab. She was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. So I waited. Looks like it’s my lucky day.”

  “She’s gone,” Zade blurted.

  Braxton laughed at his face. “Gone rogue, maybe. Fucking a sewer rat like you. That’s some wonky programming, huh? They should pay me to recondition her. But I’d do it for nothing. Think about it, D-13. You, bound and gagged. No blindfold. Your personal bitch gets stripped naked. Slapped around hard so she knows who’s boss. Cuffed to the cot spread-eagled so I can punish everything you fucked and licked. She’ll beg me to stop, but I won’t. It’ll just go on and on. Until she’s all done. All used up. And you get to watch it all. And I’ll make it last.”

  Zade’s teeth ground to the cracking point.

  “Take a deep breath, fuckface,” Braxton said gleefully. “You’ll be choking for oxygen when I stun-code you. Ready for it?”

  He braced himself. As if that ever made a difference.

  Braxton spoke. Loudly. Three words … and everything turned to pain.

  His vision narrowed to a tunnel with Braxton’s death’s-head smirk at the other end. He remembered hearing the words of the stun code, but he couldn’t hang onto them. The memory disintegrated in his mind like always.

  Fuck it hurt. Simone yelled in his ear, but he couldn’t understand her.

  Run away. Fast. Please.

  His muscles were rock hard, cramped in agony. Straining, but no release was possible. His blood raced, his stomach heaved. He could barely breathe.

  Braxton smiled and pushed a remote he’d been holding, unseen.

  Zade heard a whirring sound. Bolts unscrewed, and the heavy plastic barrier retracted into the ceiling.

  Braxton stabbed a needle into a vial, aspirating the brain-death potion with leisurely precision. “Game over.”

  He seized Zade’s wrist, and shoved up the sleeve of his leather coat, holding him steady. Zade’s heart thudded wildly. The only part of his body that still worked.

  He could still hear Simone’s voice in his ear, yelling something. He couldn’t make out her words.

  He wished he could understand her. Wished he could say goodbye. Run.

  “There’s a good vein right here,” Braxton observed, lifting his rigid arm higher. “Don’t be scared. It’s for a good ca
use.” He grinned evilly, putting what was left of his rotting teeth on display. “My cause.”

  He lifted the needle to Zade’s wrist.

  The jab felt like a live coal against his skin.

  Chapter 30

  Shit!

  Simone dug through the unhelpful contents of Mark’s desk, scattering the tidy, still-life style composition of notepads, paperclips, and pencils that no one had ever used. Driven by the button-cam feed that showed the Ratcatcher’s hideous face. That wild-eyed, slavering thing had the power of life or death over Zade.

  A wrong move could get him killed.

  She fought to stay calm and focused on finding something that would help. Like a bullet to the Ratcatcher’s head. But with no training, she’d be just as likely to shoot Zade as Braxton.

  Colors from the random slideshow flickered over the white walls. The constant movement on the split-screen display had her almost hypnotized. A jaguar, a lava pit, a long sharp claw. The rapid flicker made her feel sick.

  Her mind raced for something to work with, anything at all besides just watching that damned monitor. A doomed ship clutched in giant tentacles, a big insect, a dagger.

  She forced her attention back to the button-cam feed. The visual was shaky but she could hear Zade’s voice.

  So where’s Luke?

  I’m getting to that. Braxton’s voice again. Olund disappeared two months ago. I monitored this place to see when he would come back. Bloody spit dotted the clear cage wall. Braxton’s spew.

  The audio faded out, then came back. She strained to hear.

  D-14 had his uses. And now I have you. My fucking dream come true.

  Yeah, you have me. Zade, again. What about Luke? You gave him back to Obsidian?

  The audio faded once again and so did the cam feed. Leaving her with nothing to do but look at the split-screen slideshow on the monitor.

  She focused on the pictures, if only to keep from screaming.

  The colorful images repeated. A long claw. Then a merry-go-round pipe organ. A narrow flag unfurled against a blue sky. Then a deer in high grass with long, twisted horns …