couple of minutes doing Christ knows what; then he scrambles back up and brushes himself down. He stands on the other side of the room and looks at me.
“There you go, you can-”
Before he’s even finished his sentence I’ve realized the shackles have been detached from the bed frame. I swing myself around in a sudden single, painful movement and use my weight to throw myself forward and stand up. My legs and arms are cold, numb, heavy, and unresponsive, but I know this is my chance to kill him. I raise my aching arms and stretch a length of chain between them, ready to wrap it around the fucker’s filthy neck and squeeze the life out of him. I lunge, but he sidesteps easily, then sticks out a foot and trips me. I fall quickly, too fast to put my hands out and stop myself. My left shoulder clips the edge of the chair, and then my head smacks against the wall. I roll over onto my back in agony, head spinning and vision blurred. Mallon stands over me. He looks down, shakes his head, and tuts.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
He moves the chair out of the way and sighs with disappointment.
“Honestly, Danny, weren’t you listening to anything I said earlier? Haven’t you worked it out yet? The more you struggle and fight, the less you’re going to achieve.”
In the confusion of my pathetic, fumbled attempt to attack, I managed to kick the door shut. It opens again, and Mallon gestures for the two men outside to come in. One of them, a huge, evil-looking bastard, grabs the chains hanging from my wrists and hauls me up onto my unsteady feet with worrying ease. If he’d been like us, I think to myself, he’d have been a Brute. He grips my arms tight, and it feels like I’m being squeezed in a vise. There’s nothing I can do about it. The other man walks toward me and puts something over my head. It’s a pillowcase, I think, thin enough for me to be able to breathe but thick enough to block out the light and stop me from seeing. The chains around my ankles are padlocked together. The floor is cold and wet under my bare feet.
“Stay calm and keep your temper in check and you’ll be okay,” Mallon says. “Fight back and you’ll regret it.”
Is that a threat or just a warning to play by his rules? Whatever, the slight glimmer of hope I’d been feeling since Mallon’s earlier visit has gone now and has been replaced by fear. What are they going to do to me? I’m completely at the mercy of these foul bastards, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I feel like a failure, ashamed that I’ve been beaten by the Unchanged. Even if I did manage to fight them off, I’m still bound and chained. I’d never get away.
“Move,” the huge man standing behind me grunts in my ear, his voice deep, loud, and emotionless. He shoves me square in the middle of my back, and I fly forward, barely managing to stay upright and not trip over the chains between my feet. I almost fall, but one of the men-it might even be Mallon-catches me and pulls me back up.
Head bowed, all I can see is my dirty, shackled feet. My legs feel leaden with pain and weak with nerves as I realize this could be my final walk. All that crap about not fighting fire with fire and trying to break the cycle… it was all lies-a cheap, pathetic ruse to keep me occupied and catch me off guard. And the worst thing of all is how easily I fell for it. I should have seen through the bullshit. They were just trying to keep me pacified to make it easier for them to kill me when they’re ready. What am I walking toward? A firing squad? A stoning? The room where I’ll be given my lethal injection? I try to stop-try to turn around and fight my way out of this-but the fuckers surrounding me are having none of it. They restrain me, but they don’t strike back, not even allowing me the satisfaction of going down fighting. When I stop struggling again, they relax their grip and let me walk on alone. The journey to my final destination feels endless. I think about Ellis, and then about Lizzie, Josh, and Edward, and the pain and frustration is too much to stand. I start crying like a fucking baby, sobbing and shaking and pathetic.
We turn right, and I trip through another doorway, stubbing my toe on a low step. This must be it. I’m led across a wide, open space by one of the men before being stood still-exposed, prone, and vulnerable. I feel him tugging on my chains, removing the shackles from my feet; then I hear the clink of metal on metal as another chain is wrapped tight around my waist, then attached to something behind me. I wait and listen as he walks away again, heading back in the direction from which we just came. I’m left here alone, swaying slightly, wrists still bound, my heavy legs still stiff and aching after endless hours of inactivity. I lean forward until the slack is taken up and the chains become tight enough to support my weight. I look down at my bare feet and the grubby, years-old carpet, crying pathetic tears of anger and desperation that bounce and splash off the floor. What will I see when they uncover my head? Will they even bother? Maybe they’ll just shoot me blind. I picture the two men standing at the other end of the room on either side of Mallon, both of them holding guns aimed in my direction. They could fire at any second. These might be my last few seconds of life. My legs feel like they’re about to give way, but I’m determined to stand proud and defiant and face this like a man. But this wasn’t how it was supposed to end…
The pillowcase is whipped off my head and dropped on the floor. I close my eyes for a split second, then open them wide again and look up. Mallon is backing away from me. He’s the only other person here. I’m standing alone in a large, open room, chained to the back wall by an industrial-strength bracket. The fear starts to lessen, and uneasy, tentative relief takes its place, but I know it’s not over. Just because he hasn’t killed me yet doesn’t mean he’s not still going to. The room is bright and cold. There are windows along one wall, but they’re too far away and too high to see through. I can see the very tops of distant trees and the squally, rain-filled sky, nothing else.
Mallon watches me intently, then turns and leaves. The temporary relief immediately disappears with him. What happens next? Is this another gas chamber? There’s no pipework or exhaust fans that I can see, but there are red and brown splashes and stains on the grubby wall behind me-blood, shit, and Christ knows what else. There are two filthy buckets over to my right, one of them full of water. Waterboarding? Torture? But I don’t have any secrets or restricted information, so what can they hope to get from me? Or is it worse than that? Is Mallon about to start playing masochistic games with me? Rape me, even? Whatever he decides, there’s nothing I can do about it. But when it happens I’ll fight the fucker until either he’s dead or I am.
He’s back, this time carrying more food and a pile of clothes. My last supper?
“Move back,” he says, watching me carefully. “Right up against the wall.”
I do as he says, shuffling backward but not risking turning around. Mallon edges forward to the spot where I was standing, watching me constantly. He puts down the clothes and the food, then moves back again. He sits down a safe distance away.
“Help yourself.”
Stunned, I can’t help speaking. “What?”
“I said help yourself. The food tastes like shit today, but it’s warm and it’s better than nothing. And the clothes are from a dead man, I’m afraid. But hey, they don’t stink of piss like yours do!”
I don’t move. He gestures for me to come closer, and I slowly start to edge forward, moving like a bear circling a bloody lump of fresh meat in the middle of a trap. Is the food I’m shoveling into my mouth poisoned? It wasn’t before. I sit down cross-legged and start eating, too hungry to care. I can’t tell what it is I’m eating, and he’s right, it does taste like shit, but that doesn’t matter-it’s food. It’s finished too soon, and I wash it down with another bottle of stale, lukewarm water.
“Better?” Mallon asks, stretching out on the floor and appearing surprisingly relaxed. “I’ll get you some more later. There’s soap and water for you to wash with in one of those buckets over there. Scrub yourself down, Danny. Get rid of the stink and try to make yourself feel human again.”
I don’t argue. I get up and move over to the buckets. They’re just inside the reach of the chains. I take off my soiled shorts and rip off my shirt (the shackles on my wrists preventing me taking it off any other way), then start to wash. There’s an inch of disinfectant at the bottom of the other bucket, and its purpose is obvious. I drag it closer to the wall, turn my back on Mallon, and squat and shit. I wipe myself clean on the torn clothes I’ve just discarded.
I wash myself as best I can, then dry off with a blanket that Mallon throws over to me. I pull on a pair of trousers that just about fit, then wrap the blanket around my shoulders to keep warm. I walk toward Mallon until the chains are at full stretch. Bastard just sits there and looks up at me. He knows I can’t reach him.
But then-to my complete amazement and disbelief-he throws a bunch of keys and some other stuff out of reach and stands up. He waits, psyching himself up; then he walks closer, so close we’re almost touching.
“All we need-” he starts to say, but I shut the fucker up. I grab his collar, spin him around, and slam him down on the floor. He tries to fight me off, but I brush him aside. He’s had this coming for too long. I drag him nearer to the back wall, his stumpy, pudgy, pathetic limbs flailing, then take up the slack from the chain around my right wrist and wrap it around his neck. He splutters, showering me with foul Unchanged spittle, and his already bulging eyes
