Chapter Sixteen
Bee Speaks
By the next morning it was impossible to deny that Eli was on the mend.
The man refused the pee basin and instead shuffled his way to the bathroom, borrowing Samuel’s shoulder to do it.
He was surprised not to be pushed away again.
Maybe it was a peace offering, or maybe it was repayment for not putting a shiv through Big Tom’s neck.
He would have preferred the shiv. He still hadn’t entirely put away thoughts of revenge.
He couldn’t. But whenever the suppressed need for violence grew too strong, he forced himself to look at the twist tie on Eli’s finger.
But he couldn’t imagine it going for that long, at about the sixty-hour mark Eli convinced him to break his own fast. It was just some crackers and peanut butter, but Eli smiled at him like he’d just helped a whole army of old ladies across the street.
Nathaniel wasn’t surprised to hear Eli was still fasting. “We usually start him on a bit of vegetable juice, though of course he can’t get that now.”
He thought maybe he could ask Norm if he could make something happen—but he got all the way to the kitchen when he realized he couldn’t. The “Safe” food was no longer safe. They were just turning to leave again when Jabbers came running up the hall, a little out of breath .
“It’s Eli. He’s collapsed. “
Samuel's head snapped around so fast his neck clicked. “What?”
“He said he wanted to make a phone call, but then—”
“Are you an idiot? Why didn’t you stop him!”
“I—”
But he was already past the man, no longer listening.
He wasn’t sure who he was angrier at—Eli, who’d promised to stay put until he got back, or himself, for trusting him.
No. He did know. It was Eli. Definitely Eli.
The man had never broken a promise before.
Not even for stupid things like waiting to eat together or picking up the laundry.
So why would he choose now, when he could barely hobble a few steps, to set himself onto the path of oath breaking?
“In there,” Jabbers called, and pointed to one of the spare rooms they sometimes used for the GED classes.
He didn’t pause to wonder what the hell Eli would be doing in such a remote part of the prison.
The whole situation didn’t make sense, so he wasn’t about to start picking apart particulars.
And anyway, he was too furious to think, and too worried to do anything but sprint right into the room with Eli’s name on his lips.
“You stupid old man, why would you—"
He stopped when he realized he was talking to thin air. There was no Eli—no anyone . The room was empty. He whirled around, a curse for Jabbers in his throat, just in time to hear the soft click of the door shutting him in with the newcomer.
“Hello, Samuel,” said The Android.
He barely registered that; his mind still too focused on Eli to measure anything but some confusion.
“What are you…?”
The Taser’s fifty thousand volts made damn sure he never got to the end of that sentence. It was a good shot too, right in the chest, exactly how they taught COs in the training sessions. This time there was no Eli to catch him.
He hit the floor with a crash, face first, and his nose exploded in a spray of blood and a startling amount of pain.
But he moved quickly. If five years of violence had taught him anything, it was that if you wanted a chance in a fight, you’d better not spend much time on the ground.
So he was fast, but The Android was faster.
He didn’t hear the snap of the cuffs. It was the taser.
It always fucked with his senses. So when he tried to jerk himself back to his feet, his wrists jammed painfully against the restraints and sent him crashing back onto his face.
His instinctive shout of protest was more of a choke from all the blood, and he didn’t get another chance.
Something rough and foul-smelling was shoved into his mouth as The Android flipped him over and sat down on his thighs.
“Hush,” the man said with a gentle smile, looking serene, as he pulled the knife from his pocket and flipped it open.
That was when he knew. He would fight, of course. He would do everything he possibly could to escape. He owed the others at least an attempt. But he wasn’t going to be leaving the room. The empty smile on that unfeeling face all but promised it.
He bucked his hips and jerked his head up, meaning to smash his skull into whatever part of the psychopath he could reach, but The Android was expecting that.
He’d always seemed to know exactly what Samuel would do and where he would be.
This time he caught him by the shoulders and shoved him back to the floor.
“Hush,” he said again and leaned in close—more than close.
He tried to jerk away, but The Android caught him by the hair and darted his tongue out to dip into the mess of blood that covered most of his face.
He tried to scream again, to call for Jenny as he tried to spit out the gag, but The Android crammed it in deeper, choking him with it and nearly making him vomit. “So much noise,” said The Android. “You’ll damage your voice, you know.”
He couldn’t answer. He could barely breathe. The gag was making him retch, but there wasn’t enough space to do that properly either.
“Tell you what,” The Android said as he drew a careful line down his face with the tip of the blade, too soft to draw blood, but with the suggestion that it might not stay that way. “If you stay quiet for the next ten seconds, I’ll take off the cuffs. How does that sound?”
It sounded like a lie. There was no way he was getting out of the cuffs. He wasn’t going anywhere. Vaguely, he wondered how soon anyone would discover his body and who would be the unfortunate finder. One of the prisoners, surely, on janitorial duty maybe.
The Android touched his fingers to where the knife had been.
“I’m sure you can do it. You’ve always been more than the others.
Stronger than the others. Never letting them hear how they hurt you, so quiet as you fell apart.
I love that quiet, Samuel. The quiet of something after it breaks.
Count aloud with me. One. Two.” The Android’s hands were softer than he was expecting, like he invested time and effort into keeping them that way.
“Three. Four.” Those fingers circled one of his eyes, and Samuel flinched, thinking they might press into the sockets, but they kept moving along to find the shell of his ear.
“Five.” The Android brought his face down and pressed his lips to the seam between his face and ear.
“Six.” Circling his neck, the other hand dragging down the opening of his shirt.
“Seven.” Samuel lunged, jack-knifing even more violently than before, but The Android only laughed, his knees still firmly connected to the ground.
“Eight.” The hand on his neck began to squeeze.
Bad. Very bad. He’d never been able to handle asphyxiation, and the panic was going to make him useless—more useless than he already was.
“ Nine.” Samuel managed a half-breath, a tiny whistle of air, and then the knife plunged deep into the meat of his shoulder.
He screamed—as he was meant to. As he’d always been meant to, he realized, because the shattering pain brought with it a clarity that connected all the dots together.
Big Tom’s antagonism. Cheese’s falling off the bandwagon.
Jabbers’ betrayal. All of it like the strings of a spider’s web, a herding into the trap, everything coming together in the center where The Android was waiting for him.
“ Oh ,” said The Android, and for the first time his voice had some feeling in it, a yearning kind of pleasure.
As the man pushed down on the knife, the act brought color up into those cheeks, a blushing virgin in the thralls of his first torture—except Samuel knew it wasn’t the first. The Android was far too practiced.
Too comfortable. Samuel screamed again, unable to help it.
He was no novice to pain, but this—this unending explosion, never leveling off, only shooting higher and sharper the longer The Android pushed in with the knife.
He felt The Android’s tongue in his mouth then, along with the gag.
He tried to bite down on it, but couldn’t, and the knife—the knife!
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t breathe. The knife and that tongue were the only things in the world he was aware of.
And then the door exploded on its hinges, shattering its way into the room in two great chunks and a countless number of splinters, some of which even flew far enough to pelt them with little stinging kisses.
The Android kept his hand on the knife, but he turned his head and was caught up by one of Bee’s great dinner-plate hands.
It seized him right around the neck and hauled him up like some straggly chicken.
It shouldn’t have looked like that. The Android was a man fully grown and kept well in shape by the pathological discipline that ruled every last bit of the man’s life.
But Bee was bigger. Bigger than everything.
And he seemed to grow even more, his rage like some kind of transforming serum, so that right then, before all their eyes, he had become a monster god of all-mighty retribution snarling to life.
The Android was slammed against the wall, but made no sound at all, not even a choking kind of sputter.
The hold on his neck was that tight—so much tighter than a human hand should have been able to grip.
Samuel hadn’t known a hand could do that.
If he had, then every minute of his prison life would have been a paralyzed terror.
But it wasn’t terror he was feeling, because he’d just spotted Eli, half-collapsed in what remained of the doorway, and then he wasn’t thinking anything at all.