Chapter 2 #2
Then again, there was another possibility I had to consider.
Maybe she wasn’t there at all. Maybe she was a recurring hallucination.
Maybe Halliwell’s mystery drugs had built up in my system, or I was just having a psychotic break from the strain of solitary confinement, etc.
, etc. Fortunately, most of my memories were still buried since the coma, and I was careful not to even try to access them.
I kept my head as empty as a fucking gourd.
I cultivated stupidity the way a gardener cultivated rare plants.
I favored bland, striking images of the natural world to fill my mind, drive out thoughts of the past. Starry skies, ocean waves, jagged snowcapped mountains. A moonscape with shadows as sharp as knives. I had my standbys, always at the ready.
I tried a currant. It was more tart than I expected. Wouldn’t a hallucination respect my own expectations? Why would it occur to my subconscious mind to include currants in a fruit bowl? I’d barely known what they were, let alone how they tasted.
Who the fuck knew. I was a soldier, a mechanic, an engineer. I had never studied neuroscience or psychology like my brother Ethan—
No. Even a glancing thought about Ethan was risky. I had to stay in the moment. No past, no memories. As few articulated thoughts as possible. No future, either.
The only big question left for me was when the death fog would flow.
I leaned my forehead on the glass, studying the freckles on her narrow nose. “You’re wasting your time,” I told her. “I’ll never tell Halliwell anything. I’m brain damaged. I can’t put out, even if I wanted to. Even if a pretty girl pouts at me.”
The soft lips in question tightened. “I’m not pouting. I’m just a human being, interacting with another human being. I’m not trying to trick you, Shane. I swear.”
Human, my ass. Not anymore. And hearing her say my name bugged me. It was an outdated name, belonging to a person who was long gone. I was nameless now.
Still and all. I might not be human, but my animal parts were in working order, and they stirred eagerly as I looked her over. My stare brought a blush to her cheeks.
Sweet detail. Maybe Halliwell had hired her for her acting ability. He was definitely convoluted enough to organize a complicated mind-fuck like that, just to amuse himself.
“Please,” she whispered into the mic. “I swear. I’m on your side.”
I laughed, a painful wheeze of irony that jolted my sore muscles. This girl was not on my side. A person had to be someone, with a name, a life, a personality, an agenda, to have a side. I had let all of that shit go.
That was my only defense. To have no side, no self.
I was invulnerable, as long as there was no ‘me’ to defend.
Maybe that was the nature of Halliwell’s gambit.
A sexy girl, to coax me into having a side again.
A self, again. It opened up dangerous doors, and I had to keep all the doors shut up tight. Even to myself.
Some time ago, Halliwell had taunted me with a video of a little girl, blonde, about ten.
My daughter, he’d said. If I drove him to it, he’d have to “collect” her, to make me talk.
He was just fucking with me, because if he could have gotten his hands on her, he would have done it. Sadistic old fuck.
I knew my daughter existed, but I didn’t really remember her. It was more like I remembered remembering her. It was much safer for her if I stayed in the fog. The only way to protect the poor kid was to forget her. Which was fucked up.
The worst thing was, I had pushed the memories away, but I couldn’t push away the pain. The ache. It was still there, just not attached to anything tangible.
My brother and sister would keep her safe.
That was a comfort, but I was trying to forget them, too.
Memories were all strung together, like beads on a string.
If I gave them one, they could start yanking them all out.
And if I slipped up and somehow gave Owen Halliwell a handle on SmokeScreen, well. It was game over.
That would be an extinction event for humanity.
“Please,” she said. “Shane? Talk to me.”
“What the fuck do you want me to say, Red?”
“They all tell me about how he wants to get his hands on some super-powerful algorithm, and you’re the only one who can get into it. Why does he want it? What does it do? I’m trying to see the bigger picture, so I can figure out what to do next.”
“Why should I help you?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Because we’re in the same boat,” she told me.
“I’m a prisoner, too. He’s holding my sister hostage.
She needs medical care only he can provide.
In return, I license my software to him, and work my ass off in the guts of his machine.
He’s got me pinned, but I’m not like the others.
I am not his bitch. I swear. I want out of here. ”
Same boat, hah. “No.” I pointed at the wire biting into the scar-tissue and scabs over my throat. “You and I are not in the same boat. You aren’t wearing a shock collar. You are not in a cage. Your skull was not fractured. You were not tortured. We are not fellow prisoners.”
She studied the burn scars on my chest and shoulders, the multitude of scars on my throat. “Did Halliwell do that to you?” Her voice was small.
“Not all of it. Some of it was Nicole and Vincent. His mad dogs.”
“Nicole and Vincent are dead, by the way,” she said. “Did anyone tell you that?”
Well, fuck a duck. I squinted at her, considering my reply. “I think I’m just going to assume whatever you tell me is a lie, Red. It’s safer that way.”
“It’s not a lie. The others told me what happened.
It was before I came here. Those two got into it with your family.
They tried to abduct your daughter and your brother’s girlfriend.
Your sister and brother rescued them. Wiped them and their team out.
Very bloody, very public. Halliwell was beside himself.
But she’s okay. Your little girl, I mean.
Your brother and sister, too. So? Score: one for the Masters family, zero for Halliwell. Yay, right?”
I suppressed a shudder of emotion that I did not dare to examine. “Great bedtime story, beautiful. I’ll cherish it. Now get lost. I don’t want any more news out of you.”
“And that shock collar? I hacked into Vincent’s files after the first time I saw it, found his specs. He had eight different versions. The one you’re wearing was his latest model. He finished it just before your sister shot him to death.”
I deliberately ignored the lure she was throwing out about my family, but the collar info was too much to resist. “You have the specs for this fucking thing?” I touched the collar clamped around my neck.
It itched and chafed when it wasn’t shocking or stinging me or slicing me with the wire. It was a small preview of hell.
“Yes. I’ve been studying it. If you try to take it off, or move out of range, the system triggers the wire to tighten, and the shock amps up to lethal.”
“Sweet.” My jolt of laughter made the wire against my throat sting. “Great to know. Thanks for that tidbit. I’ll sleep like a baby now.”
“I swear to God, I’m not trying to pry that algorithm out of you. I just want to know why he’s so obsessed. It’s all anyone here has worked on for months. What does he want with it? I need to know, Shane. I don’t want blood on my hands.”
“I can’t comfort you, Red. I can’t give you any information. But not because I won’t. I literally can’t. My head was bashed in. My brain’s all fucked up. So if he sent you here to sweet-talk me, you’re wasting your breath. End of story.”
“No. I’m here on my own. Secretly.” She held up a blank silver card with a string of lights on it. “I cloned Halliwell’s passcard a couple weeks ago. So far, no one seems to have noticed the movement in the logs. Fingers crossed. We’re alone. For real.”
I gestured at the video cameras in the high corners of the room. “There’s a recording of every second that passes in this place from five different vantage points.”
She looked back over her shoulder, then leaned close enough to the glass that her breath fogged it.
“No,” she whispered. “I hacked into their security system and embedded a program I wrote. I call it ‘Invisibility Cloak.’ It swaps in alternate loops of video and audio for whatever camera or mic that I’m walking past, in real time.
The signal covers me for twenty meters, coming and going.
It’s safer at night, because the lighting is more consistent, and the corridors are deserted, and people would notice if people started winking out of existence on the monitors, or if noise suddenly cut out.
For the cameras in this room, I have a loop of you meditating, and one of you sleeping.
If anyone looked right now, they would see you, sitting cross-legged, in complete silence.
So I can visit you secretly. Anytime, in the night. If you want.”
I stared at her for a minute. Wow. So my dream girl was a laser-sharp computer whiz, as well as beautiful. Scary, how Halliwell knew just how to yank my chain.
“I don’t want,” I said flatly. “I’m done with wanting. Don’t fuck with my head. The floor show is over for tonight.”
“I swear, I’m not—”
“Fuck off, Red. It’s past your bedtime.”
She straightened up, her mouth pressed tight, and turned. She marched out, head high, her round, gorgeous ass twitching in those worn jeans. Her thick braid swaying.
The dead silence after she left was smothering.
Strange move, on Halliwell’s part. A pretty girl offering fellowship, secrecy, confidence, intel. Halliwell must think I was a pathetic slob, to fall for it.
And maybe I was. Damn. I regretted throwing her out. I missed her already.
Whether Red was real or a fantasy, I had a creeping sense that Halliwell was ready to toss me in the shredder. Red might be the last beautiful thing I’d ever see.
If I ever laid eyes her again, I better make it count.