“FINALLY!” SAYS THE ONE Who Is The One triumphantly. “This is what I needed to see.
“Clearly,” he continues, walking away from one of the dozens of video monitors, stroking his chin, “it’s just as I hypothesized. It appears she manifests especially in moments of great duress. Which clearly indicates she has little or no mastery of her Gift.”
The man at his side types this up in his mobile data pad and nods.
“Once they’ve doused the flames, put her in the Isolation Ward. We need to study her abilities in a controlled environment. And, needless to say, show no mercy. Not to either of them. I need results, results,
“Yes, Your Excellency,” says the assistant.
“The Allgoods believe they’re here to get closer to me, and they’re absolutely right,” The One reflects. “In time, once I know them better than they know themselves, I will get very,
Chapter 56
“WELL, ‘GRIM’ HAS A new dictionary entry,” I comment aloud to myself as I explore my latest venue. The Isolation Ward they put me in is actually the vast, windowless, unbearably dank basement of the BNW Center. “This place makes the General Bowen State Psychiatric Hospital”-one of the dungeon cribs that we busted out of-“look like a flower shop, a tea parlor, and a cribbage hall.”
Great. Five minutes in solitary, and I’m already talking a blue streak to myself.
No worries, though. My giant bunker is about to be filled with six bighearted scientists running inane tests on me. You know how your doctor bangs your knee, shines a flashlight in your ear, and presses your tongue down with a stick and never finds anything wrong? It starts out kind of like that. The medicos seem particularly interested in my fuzzy head, examining it with a magnifying glass.
“A shame that the original was destroyed,” a giantess I decide to call Helga says to another “researcher,” who looks like a beautician from a backwater town-who nearly flunked out of cosmetology school. I call her Gigi.
“The informant has provided a small specimen, but the rest is said to be lost, or possibly under heavy guard,” says Gigi.
Am I actually hearing that my hair has become like the Holy freaking
Then someone starts plucking out some samples of my hair-or, rather, reddish stubble-with a tweezerlike tool.
“Ouch!” I yell, and try to slap the hand away, but my wrists are grabbed by a doughy-faced lab assistant I call Hans.
Gigi, who I think is the lead scientist, steps back and looks intrigued, almost pleased, by my reaction.
“Why don’t you just wax my whole scalp while you’re at it?” I spit out sarcastically, and then instantly regret it.
Because that’s when the torture really begins.
Chapter 57
IT BEGINS with the waxing. Helga takes the hot substance and sticky fabric strips and starts ripping the eighth-of-an-inch-long precious regrowth right from my skull. Okay, it’s my scalp, but it feels like my skull.
As in, testing my response to sudden, random eardrum-breaking air-raid sirens. Or to lights that strobe really slowly so my eyes nearly adjust to the darkness and then-
“If this were an interrogation,” I tell them, “I’d have given you your answers long ago. So what are the questions? I repeat,
“Give us your Gift,” Gigi demands. “That would be sufficient.”
“No way!” I wouldn’t do that even if I knew how.
While Gigi executes the experimentation, Hans and Helga hold me in place as needed. Their three white-suited compatriots are now sitting in a row of chairs in front of me with their notebooks, watching as if I’m the season finale of their favorite TV show. The only thing missing is the popcorn.
Next they’re delivering hot steam into my face and nostrils like a facial from hell. Suffocation by dragon breath. Give me waterboarding any day.
Then they demonstrate an acute pinching technique that takes six hands-Helga’s, Hans’s, and Gigi’s-and if that sounds like child’s play, think again. It’s like being attacked by fire ants with road rage.
“Give us your Gift!”
“WhmmaMMMMMphhhhhh!”
I forgot to mention-they seem to need to try everything twice: once with duct tape on my mouth/eyes/hands, and once without. This time, it is
Then there is the force-feeding of unmentionables (I can’t even write it without serious gagging). Let’s just say I would rather be biting off live bat heads.
What ends up being the worst part, you ask?
If you have an aversion to dismemberment, don’t read any further. (Okay, that pretty much includes everyone.) While my limbs remain intact, someone else’s apparently haven’t.
They bring Drummer Boy’s hands. On a platter.
I know from his insignia ring. They force me to hold those hands, and, by God, they are real.
I used to think that the New Order had banned all art, but I now realize I was wrong:
Chapter 58
THEY FINALLY GIVE UP on me. At least for now. I curl up in a tight little ball, trying to recoup my energy for when they come back. The endless hours of drip-drip-drip quiet are interrupted only by the occasional scuffle of a rat, the noise of the grate opening in the food chute, and the
Yes, lima beans. With freezer burn.
I pick up the crumbling block, and I’m startled by what I think sounds like a sizzle. Must be my imagination. It
