CHAPTER 29 LOCKED DOWN
His steps slowing, Daniel came to a halt.
“What is it?” Byrne asked.
“I can’t chance Henry escaping.”
“They’re locked in that room, they’re not getting out. Even if they did, they won’t leave without the boy and the girl.”
Daniel shook his head. “I’m not willing to risk it. I still have plans for him.”
Byrne frowned. “Plans? You mean, to torture him.”
Daniel looked at him. “ Other plans.”
“What?” Byrne hissed. “He tried to fucking gut you. Are you really this stupid?”
Daniel backhanded him with a crack that echoed off the concrete walls, a blur of movement ending in an explosion of pain across Byrne's face.
Fresh blood spurted from his nostrils, metallic warmth flooding his mouth and dripping down his stubbled chin.
The older man's finger jabbed within an inch of his face, trembling with barely contained rage.
“You are still my son. You will show me some fucking respect.”
Byrne stared into his father's eyes—burning with the intensity of banked coals. A vein throbbed visibly at his temple as his own blood surged hot through his veins. “You told Henry that he was your only son. The only son you wanted. Why the fuck should I show you respect?”
“Because you need me.” Daniel's voice scraped like boots on gravel.
“No, I don't,” Byrne spat, a fine mist of blood spraying between them.
“If you didn't need me,” his dad murmured, voice dropping to that familiar dull monotone that had preceded so many childhood beatings, “you wouldn't have wasted your time breaking me out of prison—you would have dealt with Henry yourself. But you couldn't, because you can't do anything yourself.”
“And you can’t face fucking reality,” Byrne scoffed. “Henry will never be your perfect little killer.”
“He will,” Daniel said. “Once I remove the obstacles. He isn’t strong enough yet to do it himself, but once they’re gone… all he will have is me.”
“I told you,” Byrne said low. “Mary confessed her secret to me. She had no cause to lie.”
Hate smoldered in Daniel’s eyes. “No… but you do.” He pointed at his son. “You killed my wife. You better fucking believe that won’t go unpunished.”
“You should have killed her before Henry was ever born. We were supposed to kill her together .” Byrne's jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped beneath the stubble.
“ You betrayed me —for her and for Henry .” His face twitched, a spasm rippling across features carved from granite.
“They were obstacles. I got rid of one, and it brought you back to your senses. Now...” Byrne unsheathed his knife, the blade catching the pale, dim light with a cold silver wink.
“...I just need to get rid of the other.”
“Put that away,” Daniel said, his voice firm with authority. “You leave your brother to me.”
Byrne suddenly shoved the knife to his father's throat, the razor-sharp tip dimpling the papery flesh beneath the stubbled crook of his jaw.
A single bead of blood welled up, bright as a ruby, oozing along the steel blade.
Daniel didn't flinch as he stared back, eyes cold as ice.
“He isn't my brother,” Byrne snarled, bloody spittle flecking his dad’s face.
“He never was.” He pressed the blade tip a fraction harder against Daniel's throat, his knuckles whitening around the worn leather handle.
Daniel curled his fingers around Byrne’s wrist and calmly forced his hand down, drawing the knife away from his throat. “Deal with our visitors,” he said. “ I will deal with Henry.”
His dad turned away in the opposite direction and walked off.
Byrne watched him as the shadowy corridor gradually swallowed him.
His hand twitched against his sidearm, while thoughts of shooting his father in the head crossed his mind.
But the idea went no further than a thought.
Byrne turned his back on the retreating man and continued along the corridor in search of the intruders.
Clint raised the radio to his mouth, the cold plastic slick against his calloused thumb as he pressed the button.
“What's your status?” Static crackled through the speaker like distant gunfire.
They had opted for radio communication over cell phones, as the steel machine factory—a hulking monstrosity of corroded metal and forgotten industry—would swallow cell signals in its iron belly.
“Nothing yet,” Cochise's voice came back, tinny and distant. “ I'm headed toward the central machinery stations.”
“Watch your back. They could be anywhere,” Clint said, eyes scanning the shadows that pooled in every corner. “I'm going to check the lower level. I'll let you know if I find anything.”
“Be careful.”
“Always.” Clint clipped the radio to his belt with a dull click and pushed open the heavy, corroded door.
It protested with a banshee-like shriek that set his teeth on edge.
He shot his flashlight beam down the rusted, steel-grate stairs, illuminating a spiral of decay descending into pitch blackness.
Each step released clouds of orange-red rust flakes that danced in his light beam like toxic snow.
The stairs creaked and groaned under his weight, the sound amplified in the hollow space below, but the old metal held firm beneath his boots.
At the bottom was another door, latched closed from the outside with a rusted iron bar that had oxidized to the color of dried blood.
Clint lifted it with both hands, muscles straining against the weight, and the metal scraped against its housing with the sound of nails on a chalkboard.
When he pushed the door open, the corroded hinges let out a high-pitched shriek.
His flashlight beam sliced through the darkness, revealing glimpses of the cavernous chamber beyond: concrete floors stained with substances he didn't want to identify, metal tables with leather restraints hanging loose, tools of torture hanging on hooks drilled into brick walls that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
The cold hit him like a physical blow—not the bracing winter chill, but something septic and unnatural that penetrated his clothes and settled in his joints with arthritic malice.
His breath billowed in front of his face in thick, ghostly plumes that hung suspended before dissolving into nothingness.
The walls wept with condensation, rivulets of moisture threading down the concrete like tears on a tortured face.
Patches of black mold bloomed in the corners, their edges rimed with crystalline frost where the subzero temperatures battled the room's fetid humidity.
The stench—a nauseating cocktail of human waste, chemical preservatives, and the copper-penny reek of old blood—made his eyes water and his throat constrict.
In one corner of the room, the remnants of a filthy blanket—once white but now stained a yellow-brown with sweat, urine, and God knows what else—stuck out from beneath a locked cage door, its frayed edges frozen stiff.
More cages lined the walls like iron coffins, boxes of absolute blackness that swallowed his flashlight beam.
On the far wall, crude tally marks were etched into the rough brick using what might have been fingernails or perhaps a scavenged nail, some shallow, others gouged deep enough to chip the mortar.
The numbers climbed with a compulsive, desperate logic—first in neat rows, then increasingly frantic and uneven toward the end.
Each vertical line represented a memorial to someone who had occupied space, each group of five marked a chapter of captivity, a calendar of suffering scratched by those who'd lost everything except the ability to count.
Clint entered, boots cracking through a thin layer of frost that coated the concrete floor like a funeral shroud.
The vast, frozen chamber swallowed his flashlight beam, and the darkness seemed to recede only inches before rushing right back in.
He pulled his collar tight around his neck with numb fingers, but the gesture felt as feeble as striking a match in a blizzard; the chill here wasn't just physical but existential—a primeval coldness that gnawed at the very idea of warmth, seeping through his clothes and settling into his marrow.
He paused just inside the threshold, nostrils flaring at the stench of urine and despair, eyes struggling to adjust to the intermittent patches of glare and gloom that his flashlight carved out of the darkness.
The metal cages were mostly empty, their interiors scuffed with desperate fingernail marks and stained with dark spots he didn't want to identify.
In one, he saw a tuft of matted blonde hair pressed against the corroded bars, unmoving as death.
He counted the rows: twelve cages in total, arranged like coffins in a mausoleum.
As he shone the light across the row of bars, fearful faces appeared in the harsh beam—hollow-cheeked prisoners huddled in the back of three cages, knees drawn to chests, eyes reflecting his light like those of trapped animals—young boys in their mid-teens, one possibly preteen, with tear-streaked cheeks and lips bitten raw.
Clint moved forward cautiously, his footsteps silenced by the damp, uneven floor.
Halfway across the room, he heard a faint chuff—more of a sigh than a cry—and a pale hand reached out from the darkness, fingers spread, palm raw and red.
Clint hesitated. The hand hung in the air for a moment before pulling back, as if the owner had abandoned hope of rescue and withdrawn into the safety of their own shadow.