Chapter 14 Toolie
Toolie
The first thing I tasted was blood. The next was the iron bite of the cuffs, wrists yanked so tight I thought the bones would grind to paste.
My head hung slack, hair dripping, jaw hot with the memory of knuckles.
When I tried to move, my ribs screamed. The left arm throbbed—a deep, electric pain like my heart was pulsing just beneath the shamrock tattoo.
Even with my eyes closed, I saw green: ink, bile, rot.
I opened them. Darkness everywhere, but this was no midnight.
The walls sweated. The floor was angled stone, slicked with centuries of piss and things worse than that.
The chair was wood, rough-cut, and set to face the door.
It was bolted to the floor, and I was bolted to the chair, heavy rings pinning my ankles and cuffs so thick I could barely flex my hands.
They’d stripped my jacket, cut the shirt at the shoulder, and left it hanging in shreds off my back.
My left forearm was laid bare—bruised, swollen, tattoo splintered with dried blood.
They’d left the rest, jeans and boots, but they’d searched them so hard there wasn’t a pocket left whole.
Not even the lighter, my last totem from the future. Gone.
The room was still as a church, until the door ground open and three men walked in.
Two were guards, neither worth remembering.
The third had a uniform too clean for this place: blue-black wool, buttons polished, boots that gleamed.
His hair was cropped so close to the skull it looked painted on.
He walked with the weight of someone who knew nobody would stop him, and he carried a small, flat packet in one hand—a notepad or maybe a ledger.
He stopped a foot from the chair and fixed his eyes on me. They were blue, but not the pretty kind. Not the color of hope or sky or sea. More like winter. More like frostbite.
He didn’t bother with names. “How do you want this to go?” His voice was as clean as his uniform. No accent, just authority.
I spat blood on the floor between us. “Easy way, or hard way, right? You always give a choice before you take it away.”
He smiled as if he’d just stepped into something disgusting. “There are no easy ways here.”
He flicked open a notebook, bound in old leather. He read, or pretended to, for a moment. “Sullivan O’Toole, is it? Born nowhere, belonging to nobody, except for a curious collection of tattoos. And a remarkable capacity for violence. You see my problem?”
I shrugged, which hurt everywhere. “Not really.”
He snapped the notebook shut. “Men like you, they come through here sometimes. Irish, Scots, and a few wild Germans. They all think they’re untouchable. Until I touch them.”
He walked a slow circle behind the chair. His boots rang on the stone. “You took down three trained men on the bridge. With your bare hands.” He leaned over, breath hot on my ear. “You know what that looks like, from the other side?”
I smiled, lips cracked and sticky. “Like they need better training.”
He stepped back, expression unchanged. “We found a tattoo on your arm.” He motioned to the swelling.
“Unusual, for an Irish peasant. Even more unusual, the marks on your shoulder. Skull and bones, and some sort of gear, here.” He jabbed a finger at the leather patch barely sewn into what was left of my shirt.
“Is this some sort of sect? Devil’s work? ”
I didn’t answer. The guards didn’t move, but I could feel them both holding their breath, waiting to see how it would go.
He checked the notebook again and tapped the cover against his palm. “You’re going to tell me what you are. Or I will find out on my own time.”
I stared at the door, not at him. “You ever get bored with your own voice?”
He took that as a challenge. “Very well,” he said. He nodded to the guards.
They moved with military precision, one to each side, both gripping the arms of the chair.
The right-side guard was built like a fence post, hands thick and hard.
He seized my biceps, wrenching my arms out flat.
The other held my shoulders, pinning them down.
I set my jaw and waited for the first punch.
It didn’t come. Instead, Captain Hale (he hadn’t said his name, but he didn’t have to) produced a glass of water from somewhere—ice-cold, cloudy with whatever poison grew in these walls. He held it above my head, let me see it, then poured it slowly over my hair and down my face.
The shock was instant. I gasped, chest locking up, water drilling into every open cut and swelling. I snapped my head up, saw stars, and tasted the sour fear at the back of my throat. The guards let go just long enough for me to jerk, then slammed me back down.
Hale took out a handkerchief and wiped his hands, slow as a surgeon. “Ready?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I tried to focus on something, anything that wasn’t the pain, or the shame, or the cold.
My brain defaulted to Catherine. I saw her smile, the one she’d saved just for me.
I saw her hands, scarred but soft, tucking a blue ribbon behind her ear.
I saw her standing on the porch, arms crossed, telling me to get my ass in gear.
That made it better. It made everything worse, too, but I’d take the pain if it meant I kept her face in the front of my head.
The first punch came, right to the ribs. Not a haymaker, not a show. Surgical, mean, and right where the bone was soft from the old wound. Something popped. I groaned and let my head loll, tried to keep my eyes open.
“Where are you from?” Hale said.
“Fuck you.” I spat blood, again. “Not from here.”
He let the guard punch again, same place, same sound. My world went white, then red, then Catherine’s green eyes again.
Hale stepped in close. “What is this patch? What does it mean?” He jabbed the badge at my shoulder.
I shook my head. “Means you can go fuck yourself.”
He said nothing. The next punch was higher, under the ribs, like he was aiming for my heart. He might have got it, because I felt a cold snap run up my spine and into my skull. I wanted to scream, but I bit down and let the pain boil up through my nose.
The left arm slipped, just a little, and I realized the swelling had made the skin on the inside of my wrist start to split. Blood was running down to my palm, thick and dark. I watched it, fascinated, as it dripped to the floor and pooled there, black in the torchlight.
Hale saw it too. He leaned down and stared at the tattoo, at the blood. “You have the look of a man who should be dead,” he said, voice low. “You died before, did you not?”
I shivered. “Maybe.”
He looked at the guards, then back at me. “No mortal man withstands pain like this. I’ve seen a hundred men break in half the time. You don’t scream. You don’t beg. Are you a witch? Or just too stupid to know when you’re beaten?”
I started to laugh, which was a mistake. The ribs let me know I’d crossed a line. “You want to know the truth?” I managed, voice barely above a hiss.
Hale waited, eyes glittering.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “You’re just another asshole with a badge.”
He studied me. Then, for the first time, he looked rattled. “Bring the irons,” he said, turning to the guards.
They hesitated, just a moment. Hale’s voice dropped a register: “Now.”
One guard left, boots pounding. The other kept a hand on my shoulder, the grip so tight I felt the bones grind together.
Hale circled, arms folded behind his back. “You will tell me everything. Before the sun sets, you will scream. Or you will die here, nameless and alone, and I will salt the ground so not even your bones remember you.”
I smiled, even though my face was numb. “Deal.”
He shook his head, disappointed, and left the room.
For a minute, I hung there, head spinning, feeling the blood drip from my arm in a steady rhythm. I closed my eyes and tried to remember Catherine’s voice. I remembered her saying, “You always come back for me.” I promised her I would.
So I waited for the next round. Because the only thing I had left was stubbornness, and I was going to make them work for every inch of my soul.
The door banged open, and the guard returned with a set of tongs and a thick iron poker, already heating to orange at the tip. The guard held it at arm’s length, sweat rolling down his forehead.
He made a show of it, slow and theatrical, like some ancient priest working a sacrifice.
The orange tip of the poker hissed in the chill air, spitting sparks as it neared my skin.
My whole body locked down; even the blood froze in my veins, waiting for the inevitable.
The stink of burning iron mixed with the piss and sweat until my stomach twisted up into a fist. All I could do was stare at the glow.
Captain Hale hovered behind the guard, eyes flat, face a perfect mirror for the agony he was about to inflict. “This is the part where you beg, O’Toole,” he said.
I ground my teeth and forced a smile. “I always was a slow learner.”
The guard brought the poker close, hovered over the inside of my left wrist, right at the edge of the shamrock, where the skin was thinnest. “Hold him steady,” Hale ordered.
Two hands locked my forearm in place. The poker dropped.
The sound it made was unreal. First the sizzle, like steak in a skillet, then the snap as the heat split skin and the muscle underneath.
It wasn’t a pain you could yell away, or even process—it just hijacked everything else, turned my world to a flash of white and then a bottomless void.
I tasted blood and bile, felt my jaw pop as I clamped down on a scream.
The tattoo boiled up, blue and green turning to black, the ink melting in a halo around the burn.
The guard pulled the iron away, and I saw the mark he’d left. Ugly, jagged, pulsing with raw meat. For a second, I thought I’d puke, but I didn’t give them the pleasure.
Hale nodded, satisfied. He crouched so we were eye-to-eye, then spoke slow, as if to a child. “I know what you are now. You’re not a man. Or you are, but you’re broken. Something came back with you, something that shouldn’t be here. Demon, changeling, it doesn’t matter. You’re not of this world.”
I wanted to laugh, or spit, but my voice was gone. Instead, I stared at the iron, waiting for the next round.
“Why are you here?” Hale pressed. “Who sent you?”
I shook my head, small. “Nobody sent me,” I croaked. “I just wanted to see her again.” It sounded pathetic even to me.
He smirked. “You mean the girl. Catherine.”
My throat locked up. He saw it.
“Yes,” he said, “we have eyes everywhere. All this blood, for one simple farm girl.” He sounded almost impressed.
“She’s worth it,” I said, the words scraping out of me like glass. “You’ll never know what that feels like.”
Hale straightened, wiped his gloves, and turned to the guard. “He’s not going to talk. Leave him to stew. When he’s ready to be a man again, we’ll finish.” He looked back at me. “No mortal man withstands pain like this, O’Toole. When I return, I’ll bring the knives.”
He nodded at the guards and stalked out, boots crisp on the stone.
The pain ebbed, then flared again as the nerves reconnected.
I bit my tongue so hard I tasted blood. All I could do was stare at the burn, feel the ruined skin pulse with each heartbeat.
Catherine’s face swam up in the back of my eyes, the memory of her hands on my chest, her lips at my ear.
It was the only thing that kept me in the chair.
The guards posted themselves by the door. One lit a cigarette, the other leaned back, bored. For a few minutes, the only sounds were my breathing and the faint hiss of the cooling iron.
Then the world ended.
It started as a distant boom, so low it could have been thunder.
The guards looked up, puzzled. Another explosion, closer, and the whole chamber shivered.
Dust rained down from the ceiling, and somewhere above, I heard shouts—English, at first, then Irish, and then the universal music of men in a panic.
The guards tensed. One reached for the musket propped against the wall, the other fumbled at the keys on his belt.
The next explosion was right overhead. The stone shook, and a chunk of plaster dropped, hitting the floor with a slap. One of the torches guttered out, plunging half the room into darkness.
I took my shot. I flexed the ruined left arm, felt the scab at the wrist split wider, and started to twist. The bone screamed, but so did the rest of me, so it barely registered. The cuff had loosened from all the thrashing, just a hair, and I worked at it with every ounce of strength I had left.
The guard with the musket saw, rushed over, and slammed the butt of the gun into my shoulder.
The pain was so bright it nearly knocked me out, but it also numbed the arm enough to get the wrist past the metal.
I yanked hard, and the skin tore. Blood sprayed the chair, and the hand slipped free, useless but out.
The guard fumbled with the gun, but he’d made the mistake of getting too close.
I took the chair with me, still chained at the ankles, and drove the edge of the seat into his kneecap.
It buckled, and he fell, face-first, into my lap.
I wrapped the burnt hand around his throat and squeezed, even as the pain shot up my arm like lightning.
The other guard pulled his pistol and leveled it, but before he could fire, the ceiling above the door blew inwards. A rain of bricks and dust engulfed the room, and for a second, everything went white.
When I could see again, the first guard was out cold, limp in my lap.
The other was buried up to his waist in rubble, arms flailing.
I braced myself, wrapped my free arm around the back of the chair, and let the blood rage carry me.
I heaved, snapping the seat off the bolts, and used the whole thing as a battering ram to crush the buried guard’s head against the wall.
Silence. My vision tunneled. I saw only the exit.
I yanked at the remaining cuff, shredding more skin, but the pain was clean now, almost sweet.
I got the ankle free and tumbled forward, scraping knees and hands on the sharp edge of the floor.
The room spun. I crawled to the wall and used it to stand, left arm hanging dead, right hand leaving streaks of blood on the stone.