CHAPTER 24 MONSTERS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN
When Byrne could finally draw air into his lungs again, he crawled to his feet, the concrete floor scraping his palms raw.
He tucked his throbbing cock back inside his pants with trembling fingers, each brush of fabric sending fresh waves of nausea through his gut.
The zipper's teeth caught, forcing him to wrench it upward.
“Fucking little cunt ,” he rasped, spittle hanging from his lower lip.
“I'm gonna fuck you a new hole when I catch you.”
He staggered into the shadows where he'd tossed the gun, boots squelching through puddles of stagnant water that reflected the pale light in oily rainbows. The cold metal of the weapon felt reassuring in his palm as he jammed it back into the leather holster and limped toward the exit.
The boy could be anywhere in this labyrinth of rust and decay.
But the darkness was absolute, the kind that swallowed sound and hope alike, and the kid didn't know the layout of the factory with its maze of dead-end corridors and sudden drops into mechanical pits.
And now that he knew the girl was here too, the boy would be like a moth circling a flame, predictable in his desperation.
Byrne thumbed on the flashlight, its beam cutting through the darkness like a scalpel, illuminating motes of dust that swirled in his wake.
Each step sent jolts of pain from his groin up his spine, forcing him to walk with a pronounced limp, one hand occasionally dropping to cup himself protectively.
The boy would pay in screams and blood when he caught him, but Byrne moved unhurried through the dank corridors.
The factory was a sealed tomb, and he held the only key.
When Byrne approached the machinery room, rust flaked from the hinges of the massive steel door. The acrid stench of old grease seeped through the hairline gaps in the frame. He pressed his ear against the cold metal, feeling its chill penetrate his feverish skin.
His father's gravelly voice, though muffled through the corroded barrier, slithered through like a venomous snake: “Don't worry about your brother.
We will kill him together... the way I planned all those years ago.
You're the only son I ever wanted—the only one worthy of my legacy.” The words hung in the stale air like poison gas.
Byrne's fingers tightened around his gun, the checkered grip biting into his palm as he listened to the sudden scuffle—grunts, the wet thud of fists on flesh, a strangled cry.
Henry was turning on his father, again. He didn't flinch when he heard his dad's body hit the concrete with a meaty slap. The man had made his choice.
Byrne's breath fogged in the frigid air as he waited, weapon raised at eye level, safety off. He melted back into the inky shadows when the door suddenly wrenched open. But it wasn't Henry who stumbled out.
Daniel yanked the rusted door closed with a metallic shriek and slammed the corroded latch home, sealing the other men inside the machinery room.
He collapsed against the cold steel, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he clutched his side where Henry's blade had cut through his flesh.
Dark crimson blood bubbled between his weathered fingers, spreading across his once-white shirt like spilled wine.
“Fuck...” he gasped again, his voice a sandpaper rasp.
He braced one bloodstained palm against the door to push himself upright when Byrne materialized from the shadows, gun hanging loosely at his side.
Byrne's dull, ice-chipped eyes fixed on his father's wound without a flicker of concern, his face a mask carved from marble.
“I told you,” he said, voice flat as stagnant water. “Mary's fiancé was telling the truth about everything.”
Daniel's leathery face twitched, a muscle jumping beneath his left eye. His watery, bloodshot eyes flashed with primal fury that melted into something more cutting: disappointment. Of course. Disappointment. His golden boy had finally revealed the tarnish beneath his shine.
Byrne's phone erupted in his pocket—three short, electronic beeps followed by two long ones, echoing in the cavernous corridor.
Daniel hunched further over his weeping wound, teeth bared in a grimace. “What's that?” he growled through clenched teeth, blood-flecked spittle clinging to his stubbled chin.
Withdrawing his phone with unhurried precision, Byrne's lips curved into a small, dry smile.
“Just a little security system I installed when I moved in,” he murmured, thumb sliding across the screen to silence the alarm.
The blue glow illuminated the hollows of his face as he slipped the device back into his pocket. “We have company.”
The pitch blackness reduced Maddy to a shuffling ghost. His cuffed hands—the skin torn and tacky with blood—traced the disintegrating cinderblock like a blind man reading braille.
Each step became a calculated risk, his bare feet navigating an invisible minefield of rusted nails and jagged metal fragments.
He'd already taken three bone-jarring spills, miraculously escaping with only superficial scrapes—except for the three-inch nail that had skewered his left palm, which still wept crimson as white-hot pain pulsed from his fingertips to his shoulder, rendering the limb as useless as deadwood.
With each ragged breath that scraped his parched throat, Maddy battled the quicksand pull of despair.
How the fuck was he supposed to find Savannah in this maze of darkness?
The abandoned factory sprawled like a concrete cancer, its corridors twisting in unknowable patterns, each identical to the last in their emptiness.
If she's even here. Maybe that sadistic fuck was lying.
Maybe he wasn’t.
Maddy couldn’t take the chance. If he escaped alone, then discovered that she was still back in that hell, he would never forgive himself.
She would step in front of a bullet for him, stop at nothing to protect him.
He would do the same for her. But he needed some fucking light to see his way, to figure out where the hell he was inside the massive structure.
The handcuffs clanked in the dark, the sound echoing off the damp walls like tiny metal teeth snapping shut. Blood had dried between his fingers, making them stick together when he flexed them.
He needed to get out of these fucking cuffs.
Maddy leaned against the wall, the rough surface scraping his shoulder blades as he pressed his head back against the crumbling plaster.
Dust and tiny fragments rained down his neck as he closed his eyes.
His pulse hammered in his temples, each beat a thunderclap behind his closed eyelids.
His mind raced like a trapped animal, thoughts colliding and fracturing.
He inhaled through his nose—the air tasted of rust and mildew—then slowly pushed it out through his cracked lips.
Again. Again. The way Cory had drilled into him during those endless training sessions.
Just focus—and breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The darkness behind his closed eyelids was no different from the void surrounding him.
When he opened his eyes again, the blackness remained absolute.
First priority—free his hands. If he encountered his kidnapper again, he needed both fists ready.
Cory had taught him methods for breaking free of various restraints, including handcuffs.
Breathing deeply again, Maddy began to rotate his wrists in opposite directions, binding up the handcuffs chain until it bunched up and the links locked against themselves like a metallic serpent coiling for the strike.
Bowing his elbows outward until his shoulder joints creaked in protest, he pushed his wrists past each other as he splayed his fingers wide, causing the cold steel cuffs to bite deeper into his already raw wrists, then twisted inward with savage determination.
Maddy clenched his teeth until his jaw ached and kept twisting even as the pain in his injured hand exploded white-hot through his fingers and up his arm like molten lead being poured through his veins.
“Fuuuck…” he ground out in a tight hiss that echoed in the blackness. “Come on…”
The chain links slipped with a mocking jingle, losing tension like a deflating balloon.
“Fuck!” Maddy repeated the process, trying to ignore the blinding pain that pulsed in time with his racing heartbeat as he twisted his wrists harder, feeling tendons strain to their limits.
The jagged metal cuffs sliced into his flesh like serrated knives, drawing warm blood that trickled between his fingers and dripped onto the unseen floor as they ground against the prominent bones of his wrists. “Uuuhhh! Fucking COME ON!”
The pivoting connector snapped with a sharp crack like a gunshot, and his wrists jerked apart with such force his shoulders nearly dislocated, the broken chain clinking against the concrete in the darkness.
Maddy bent forward, panting, hot tears dripping from his eyes as he clutched his throbbing hand, now pumping blood that felt thick and sticky as it streamed between his trembling fingers.
“Fuck…” he gasped, the word barely audible over his ragged breathing, and straightened up on trembling legs, taking deep breaths that burned his lungs.
He wiped his eyes with his less- injured forearm, leaving a smear of blood across his face, and sniffed back the mucus draining from his nose.
His entire arm throbbing as if it had been beaten with a hammer, he staggered forward on unsteady feet, his fingers outstretched like blind antennae, feeling for doors, praying for a miracle that he would find the one that led him to Savannah.