Chapter 17 Delirium
DELIRIUM
JAKOB
I watch the whole thing unfold from the chair I'm tied to.
I hear the rifle report a half-second after the guy's head explodes. The second goon takes off running—into the field, for some reason, rather than back into the relative safety of the building. Panic makes you do stupid things, I suppose.
He takes off sprinting for who knows where, but he only gets a dozen or so steps before an explosion crumps the air, rattling the building and making the dust on the floor underfoot jump.
The goon is blown to literal pieces, his legs essentially disintegrating while his torso flies in another direction.
The other three henchman, in the process of heading for the door, stop and whirl on Pugli, snarling at him angrily, pointing at the pieces of their compatriot.
You neglected to tell us about the FUCKING MINES! I can imagine they're saying.
Pugli answers calmly, in English, once he's gotten them to stop shouting at him.
"I may have forgotten to mention the mines, yes.
" Something in his eyes tells me he didn't forget anything.
"But it's in our favor. They can’t get any closer very soon, which means their greater numbers mean nothing.” He points at the catwalk, a good twenty feet up, which goes right past the bank of windows a third of the way up the wall.
"One of you up there, two of you at the doors.
The mines are all outside, so as long as you stay in here, you will be fine. "
I wonder about that, but stay silent. I watch one of the three remaining henchmen scramble up to the catwalk while the other two approach the open door from opposite angles.
Catwalk henchman opens fire; I hear the concussions of my team returning fire, their rounds stippling the ceiling with holes that stream narrow beams of daylight. Below, the other two are opening fire now, and receiving it turn.
Hands grab my shoulders, and something sharp and cold touches the skin behind my left ear. "Not a sound. Do not even breathe, Caleb Indigo." Pugli's voice is hot and close. "Did you feel hope, for a moment?"
The zip ties around my ankles snap free as he slices through them, but he doesn't free my wrists. "Up. To your feet."
I'm forced to keep my hands behind me, the chair dangling an inch above the ground, hanging from my wrists by the zip ties. I can walk, but it's awkward, and I’m certainly not going to be making a break for it like this, wounded or not.
Clever bastard.
Although…the chair might just stop a bullet. Something to think about. For now, his knife pricks the middle of my back between my shoulder blades. "See that door over there?" A free hand points over my shoulder, and I follow with my eyes.
In the dim recesses of the vacant, echoing warehouse, a door —a hint of silver gleaming in the gloom—leads deeper into the facility, which must cover tens of thousands of square feet. Once we're in there, all bets are off.
Shit.
The knife digs into my back, loosening a trickle of blood down my spine. "Walk. No sounds."
I should have known he'd have a better plan than…Whatever I thought he was going to do with six guys against my entire quiver of Arrows. The poor henchmen were nothing but a distraction.
I have to admire his cunning, even as it fucks things up.
I stagger into the shadows, the folded metal chair banging against my calves and heels at each step.
Each time my foot hits the ground, my wounds jolt and scream in protest. I have no choice but to bear it in silence, however—Pugli wants me as bait and as a shield, but he'll drive that knife in just to make a point if he has to.
I'm just going to have to trust my arrows to find me and save me.
I hope Brys is somewhere safe, but if I've learned anything about her in our brief time together, it's that she never does what you'd expect. Which means she's likely out there with the guys, finding a way to be a part of this shitshow.
We reach the door, and Pugli leans past me and yanks it open. Behind us, the henchmen fire in short bursts, the reports overlapping and echoing and dopplering until it sounds like there’s a hundred men out there instead of three.
I don't expect them to last long, but it'll be long enough for Pugli to get away with me.
I'm not even bleeding anymore, so it's not like I can leave a trail for them to follow.
Pugli shoves me through the door and lets it close behind us—quietly.
We’re plunged into darkness—my other senses take over for a moment.
I hear dripping somewhere, louder now, a steady plink…
plink…plink…; something scuttles underfoot, and I don't want to know what it was; I smell mold and rot and damp and mildew and dust and age.
Things crunch underfoot with each step, and some of those things may have been moving when I stepped on them.
"Where is it?" I hear Pugli hiss to himself behind me, and then he curses in French. "Ah. There it is."
A spear of white light lances through the darkness, illuminating a narrow, seemingly endless tunnel writhing with pipes overhead. At each junction, the pipes leak, drip-drip-dripping onto the pitted concrete floor below.
The crunching underfoot is a carpet of dead insects, scuttling spiders of all sizes swarming in dozens, rats the size of chihuahuas bolting this way and that, and pausing to sit, hunched, and stare at us with beady, glowing eyes.
Also, bones. Lots and lots of bones. Something uses this hallway as a depository for its kills.
The rats? A snake? The spiders? A pack of feral cats?
When Pugli's beam flicks to life, the various living things vanish in an audible clatter of clicks and scuttling scrapes and angered chittering.
"Well, this is horrifying," I slur, dizzy and sluggish. "As far as first dates go, Robby-Bobby-Boy, this is not your best work."
There's a long pause, and then the knife-point pricks deeper, hitting bone with a sharp pang. "What on earth is wrong with you? Did you hit your head?" Pugli sounds legitimately puzzled.
"Aww, Robby-Bobby-Boy is concerned."
My head swims. My mouth seems to be operating on its own. Can blood loss make you loony? Or do I mean loopy? Loony or loopy? Loompy. Loonpy? I don't know.
"I was shot, Robert. Shot." I sound strange. It's hard to make my legs work. I'm so tired. "I did not hit my head. I don't think."
"Walk."
"Poke me too hard in that spot, Robby-Bobby, and you might paralyze me." My brain wobbles. "That would be bad."
"What?"
"What?"
"You said something, but it wasn't English."
"I said that would be bad. Please do not paralyze me."
"That isn't what you said. It sounded like Czech."
Oh.
"Hmmm. Interesting." I shuffle forward, and he points the flashlight—one of those one-billion lumen super flashlights that can shine on the moon from earth—past me, which only serves to illuminate the crawling, scuttling horrors ahead.
"Why is that interesting?”
"Because I have not spoken Czech in…oh my. Decades. I thought I'd forgotten it all. Apparently not."
"Czech?"
"I was born in Prague, Robby-Bobby."
“You are delirious."
"Yes, I suppose I am. And whose fault is that, Robby-Bobby?"
"Stop calling me that. Just fucking walk, whoever you are."
I snicker. "Whoever I am. Oh, Roberto. You have never said such an accidentally and ironically accurate thing. Whoever I am. Do you know? No, you don't. You don't know who I am, Roberto. You're just…just an angry little boy with a big gun. Very silly."
My legs feel like tree trunks—wooden and inflexible. Each step hurts like a demon. My head is fuzzy, hazy, thick.
"You are far more palatable when you are not delirious. This version of you is immensely obnoxious."
I snicker again. "And whose fault is that, Robert?"
"You are going to drive me to murder just to get you to shut up."
"Is that not your plan anyway?"
"Timing, Caleb. Timing is everything."
"Caleb, Caleb, Caleb," I sing-song, unable to keep my mouth from its antics. "Caleb is dead. Caleb died in a car bomb ten years ago."
"Oh, come off it," he snaps, irritable. "You may have convinced the world, but you never fooled me."
"No," I admit. "I suppose not." I trip over a rat that doesn't seem inclined to move out of the way—oh, it's dead. Lovely. "How much longer is this hallway of horrors, anyway?"
Drip, drip, drip.
"Just keep walking."
The chatter of automatic gunfire is distant, a cacophony of echoing rattles and crackling. And then there's only one gun chattering and half a dozen answering, and then silence.
"Uh-ohhhh," I whisper. "Just us chickens, now."
"Silence, Indigo."
"Indigo," I echo. "An inspired choice, was it not?"
"What are you on about?" Pugli snaps.
"Indigo, Indigo, Indigo. Who is Indigo? Who was he? A captain of industry. And now? Digital ashes on the funeral pyre of obsession."
"You are mad."
"But poetically mad!" I exclaim, and then my legs give out.
My knees crush crumbling exoskeletons and old bones, and my trouser legs absorb whatever filthy liquid is on the floor.
“Damn it, man, on your fucking feet," Pugli snarls.
He transfers the flashlight to tuck it under one arm and yanks me roughly to my feet, then shoves me forward. "Walk."
"I am shot, Robert. Shot. Be reasonable. I have lost a lot of blood, you know. Also, wherever we are going, I do not want to go. I know I am dead, but I do not want to die."
The knife needles into my side. "Shut up and walk, damn you."
I stumble forward, dizzy and wobbly. "I'm trying, damn you."
"I will leave you here for the rats, if I must."
"That does not sound like an enjoyable plan. But then, I don't think my enjoyment is your primary intent."
"You are maddening."
"You are going to die, Robert. You know that, do you not?"
"Death comes to us all. You first. You and Lash."
"Cute. It's cute that you think you will win."
This time, the knife doesn't just dig, it sinks into flesh. I twist away and drop to my knees, groaning.
Pugli is beside me, and the knife edge is at my throat, either hot or cold at my Adam's apple.
"I have had enough of your delirious ramblings, Caleb.
I have plans for you, but they don't require your tongue.
So please, keep talking." The flat of the knife blade rests on my lower lip.
"I would quite enjoy cutting your tongue out of your fucking mouth. "
"Mmmm," I hum, not daring to move my lips. “Mmm-hmm.”
I hear something in the distance—voices. Familiar ones. To cover, I cough, lurch to my feet, and slap my soles noisily against the floor. Distract, distract.
Tricky when he's about to cut my tongue out.
It is only a slight exaggeration to trip and stumble from one side of the endless hallway to the other, caroming off walls like a drunkard, and the groans of pain at each impact of my shoulder send agony lancing through my wounds.
It has the intended effect, though: Pugli snarling in annoyance, hurrying after me. "Stay on your damned feet, would you? Just walk."
"You…" I fight the fuzziness, and whatever I was going to say is forgotten.
"…ahead…" I hear an echo of a voice, and I slam into a wall again, and the chair Pugli has had me dragging around clangs and echoes in the narrow, low-ceilinged space.
"Did you hear that?" Pugli says, stopping behind me. "I heard someone speaking."
"The rats, perhaps? They are large enough. I saw one wearing robes, I believe. Perhaps it was Master Splinter." I hum the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.
He only snarls wordlessly.
Ahead, the darkness takes a different shape, a different quality—darker. Solid. A door. He yanks it open and shows me through. I stumble and hit the ground, rolling and landing on my back, the chair awkwardly and painfully stuck beneath me.
"Can we dispense with the damned chair?" I grumble.
Pugli is silent. And then the flashlight sweeps over me, illuminating yet another massive, echoing chamber. No drips here, and no light. The beam sweeps along a section of wall, and then stops on a door—a huge one, from the quick glimpse I got.
Pugli yanks me to my feet, shoves me forward a dozen or so steps, stops me, kicks the chair open, and slams down into it. Zip ties around my feet again, binding me to the chair once more.
I watch with curiosity as Pugli sweeps the light over old hunks of machinery, now long dead.
Wires, cords, and cables lay tangled in serpentine knots.
It lands on a gasoline generator—a new one.
Pugli yanks the starter a few times, and then the machine rattles and chugs to life, and a lightbulb overhead flickers to life.
I'm on a pedestal of some sort. A giant hydraulic press? I look up: yes, I'm sitting inside a god-sized industrial hydraulic press.
This doesn't bode well.
Pugli locates the control panel—to which the generator is connected—and presses a button. Above, the press grinds to life, lowering and lowering and lowering slowly, millimeter by millimeter.
Oh, that's nefarious.
But…
Voices and footsteps echo, nearer.
"It was them," Pugli says. "Tricky bastard. You heard them and were covering, weren't you?" A soft laugh. "No matter. All part of the plan, just a little sooner than expected."
The door slams open and beams of light sweep the space, land on me.
"Roberto Pugli,” Solomon shouts at the front. "Hands up!"
He's standing behind me, not on the pedestal, which is just wide enough for the chair to rest upon. The knife is gone, replaced by that little Walther. "Ah-ah-ah, not another step, not another word." He gestures up. "You have a few moments at most."
I see the plan, and it is nefarious indeed.
The press will crush me in another minute or two—it's descending slowly but inexorably closer to my skull.
The generator powering it is behind us, so they can't just shoot it and stop the power.
If they don't comply, I die. And they have a hard time limit to comply, or I die.
And I assume the demand will be to trade Nico for me.
Devious bastard.
I see Inez putting it all together, too.
I see her dark eyes shining with worry, fear, fury. Behind her, the whole crew; lost in shadows.
"Lash." Pugli gestures with the barrel. "Gun on the ground, walk to me. Hands on your head."
Nico complies, eyes hard and glittering. When he's close enough, Pugli crabwalks toward him, grabs him by the arm, and yanks him backward so his back is to Pugli's front, shoving the gun against the back of his head.
"Finally, I have you." Pugli is triumphant. "Finally, you die."
A gun goes off.