quivering mass of terror. His lanky, angular frame seemed to collapse in on itself as he fell back against the desk, his shaking hands held out before him.
“P-please … ,” he sputtered, his suddenly red eyes brimming with tears. “I can-“
Cindy was still facing Chad. “I don’t give a shit what he can do.”
Her hand, the one holding the knife, reared back.
Then, with a grace and precision worthy of a prima ballerina, she wheeled around, cocked her arm all the way back, and whipped it forward. This all occurred in the space of a heartbeat. The knife sliced through the air and flew straight and true. The tall man had time to gasp before the blade punched through one of his eyes and penetrated his brain. His hands clutched instinctively for the knife’s handle, but he was already dead. His body toppled backward, slid sideways along the desktop, and rolled to the floor.
Chad’s psyche, overloaded with violent sensory input, finally kicked his mouth back into gear. “Oh my God, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you were going to torture me and then kill me. Oh, shit. Oh my God. Oh shit. Holy fucking shit.”
But Cindy’s smile was implacable. She exuded the calm that had left her following the tall man’s denial of her petition. “That was never going to happen, Chad. You’re too important.”
Chad cackled, a sound close to lunacy unleashed. “Yeah, you bet. Never going to happen. That’s what I thought all along.”
He looked at the guard with the pistol.
The unlikely savior.
He was a stocky guy in his thirties. He had a thin wisp of a mustache and a receding hairline. His gaze was sturdy, and he projected the air of a man you don’t mess with, not unless you want to lose a lot of teeth. Of course, maybe some of that had something to do with the big gun his hands were wrapped around. The black pistol looked huge and malevolent. But, hey, at least it wasn’t pointed at them.
“So you’re in on it, too.”
Chad’s gaze shifted back to Cindy. “You really ought to tell me more about this whole revolution, conspiracy thing. You’ve been implying I’m some kind of central figure in whatever’s going on, which makes no goddamn sense, since I don’t know you people and have never set foot in this godforsaken place even once in my whole life.” He laughed again. “Call me crazy, I think I’m owed a little more of an explanation.”
Cindy clasped hands with him. “Soon, Chad, I promise.”
And then she was pulling him out of the room.
“But now we have to go.”
He staggered after her.
The guard followed them.
“Hey-“
They were proceeding down a drab hallway at a pace Chad had difficulty maintaining, and he tried to plant his feet, an attempt to bring their exodus from this place to a temporary halt. He was pissed off about being kept in the dark. He wanted answers. But Cindy’s strength again eclipsed his own, and he was dragged along a bit before managing to regain his footing.
“Jesus Christ, Cindy” He panted. “It’s not like I’m being unreasonable. I really did think I was about to die in there. You could’ve fucking told me about our friend here. Do you not have an ounce of compassion in you? Not one single fucking ounce? And what was up with the wait? Why wait so long to bring in the cavalry?”
The guard cleared his throat. “Had to find out how much the boss knew.”
Cindy added, “Which turned out to be not much.”
The guard grunted. “Thank God.”
They exited the building through a rear door and stood in a tunnel that vaguely resembled an underground mine shaft. Earthen walls supported by joists and beams. Chad peered down the length of tunnel he could make out, which wasn’t much-it curved and formed a blind spot. He saw something flickering-a gas lamp flame.
Chad sighed. “I’ve died and gone to the land that time forgot.”
The guard pulled a folded piece of paper from a vest pocket and passed it to Cindy. “A duplicate of your emancipation endorsement. You’ll need it to get past the next checkpoint. The man you’ll need to see there is Stephens.”
Cindy nodded. “Stephens.”
Something flickered in the guard’s eyes, a hint of some private shame. “There’ll…” He cleared his throat again. “There’ll be a price to pay?
Cindy met his gaze. “It won’t be one I haven’t paid a hundred times before.”
The guard sighed. “I know.”
Cindy started walking.
Chad, ever reluctant, had no choice.
He followed her. “I would really like to go home now.”
Cindy ignored him.
“Good luck,” the guard called after them.
She ignored that, too.
The guard waited there until he saw them disappear around the bend in the tunnel. Then he went back into the holding facility and returned to the warden’s office. He examined the bodies of his former colleagues, checking to be sure they were dead. He detected a faint pulse from one of them, Nitkowski, a problem he took care of with another bullet to the back of the head.
Then he moved to the warden’s desk and took a seat.
He surveyed his bloody handiwork and judged it a job well done.
But not quite finished.
He racked the 9mm’s slide, ratcheting another bullet into the chamber. Then he put the gun in his mouth and thought about all the terrible things he’d done since coming Below. The slaves he’d killed. The innocent children he’d consigned to a life of slavery. Unspeakable, unforgivable acts of brutality. He wasn’t an evil man. Not really. These things had been an almost unbearable burden on his conscience, which was alive and well despite his repeated efforts to suppress it, even kill it. He’d allowed circumstance and his own fears to override his morality.
To turn him into a henchman of the devil.
But fate had turned and granted him an opportunity to atone for his deeds.
An opportunity he’d taken with gratitude. There was just one more thing left to do. Seal one more dead man’s lips forever. He pulled the trigger.
This is a dream. A dream but not a dream. A warped reflection or inversion of reality, like the dreamer’s odd visions of the beautiful woman called Dream. He experiences the same awareness that he’s dreaming. The lucid quality of the scene in his head distresses him. His sleeping body writhes on the bed, and he covers his face with his hands. Only then does he realize he is no longer tethered to bedposts. In fact, he senses he is alone in the bedroom. So this is it, the miraculous opportunity he’s been praying for, another chance to get out of this place. All he has to do is wake up.
WAKE UP!
an internal voice commands.
But he cannot.
How strange it is, how frustrating, to experience this dual awareness. Knowing that what he’s seeing in his head is something more than the usual juxtaposition of weird images conjured by a brain at rest. That random quality isn’t there. Nor is there any overt symbolism. He watches the drama unfold like scenes in a movie. A movie he can’t look away from. He is reminded of that guy in A Clockwork Orange, the singing sadist, who is immobilized and forced to watch a series of grotesque images, his eyelids held open with metal clamps. This is like that. Something restrains him. Monofilaments of psychic thread knotted in strategic areas, effectively preventing a return to the conscious world. The knowledge of his unbound body in the bed is like that proverbial carrot at the end of the string-always just out of reach. Maddeningly close.
Not for the first time, he experiences despair.
He is in a room lit only by candles. He sees this. He knows it’s an image in his head. But he’s there. Really there. He can feel the ground beneath his feet. Can feel the warmth generated by the flickering flames. There is an
