“Probably true.” The brass clasps snapped open, the buckle shrugging free to clang against the desk. “Wouldn’t that be interesting? Finding out what you know, girl. Finding all your secrets.”
Emily paled and shrank into the sofa. I wrestled with the straps across my chest. The leather was biting into my arms, but I thought that, with time, I’d be able to get free.
“Another time.” Sloane opened the bag and drew out a long tangle of hoses, bound in tarnished brass clasps and piped fittings. There was some central core to the machine, a complication of pumps and coiled springs. He set this on the table. It scarred the shiny veneer of the wood.
“Do you want to know about this? What it is, what it does?” Sloane held one of the rubber hoses across his thin palms like a holy relic. “Will that make it easier for you?” He looked down at me, his eyes flat, dark pits in his face.
Cold sweat broke out across my hands and face, something I couldn’t avoid. My toughest face wasn’t good enough for this.
“It helps me, sometimes. Knowing what’s going to happen. I form it in my head, smooth it out. See it.” Holding the hose in one hand, he cupped my chin, then ran a dry finger across my cheek. “In your situation, though. I understand, not wanting to know.”
He took the hose and looped it loosely around my head, gathered it up and looped it again, the coils building up beneath my chin. Each time he gathered, the hose snuggled up against my throat. It tightened. My head filled with the sound of my hammering blood. I tried to struggle, to flop free, but my body wouldn’t respond. I felt paralyzed, caught in the strange formality of the ritual.
“Emily, dear. Your eyes.” He planted his palm flat against my forehead and grimaced. “I would close your pretty eyes.”
With a jerk he tightened the hose. Emily screamed and threw herself off the couch. He brushed her aside, kicking her as she fell. My whole head squeezed shut, my tongue lolling up out of my mouth, my eyes wide and hot. I struggled to breathe, to scream, but my body felt farther and farther away. Through the hammering blood, I heard his voice.
“This is the worst part, Jacob. The worst.” He held the hose easily in one hand, his knuckles tight against my throat, holding me up. With his other hand he loosened his collar and showed me the old scars, the shiny skin of his neck. “I know. I understand. After this, my boy, there is nothing but darkness. The worst is almost over.”
He was right. The darkness came, and silence. The last thing I heard was the machine on the desk starting up, and the pulse moving through the hose, my neck, my blood, into my heart and dreams.
I woke up to a taste, and nothing more. It was like tarnished brass filling my mouth, only I had no sense of mouth or tongue. Just a taste, hanging in emptiness.
There was nothing of my body, no feeling of pain, no sense of place or orientation. I could see nothing. Not blackness, as though I had closed my eyes or stood in a perfectly sealed room, but absolutely nothing. The idea of sight was distant, something remembered but unfamiliar.
“There, Jacob, you see? This isn’t as bad, is it? Not at first, anyway.” The voice of Sloane arrived without direction or weight. Just words I knew I was hearing, somewhere.
“Now, before we begin, there’s something I need to show you, Jacob. Pay very close attention to this. Are you ready?”
What followed was nothing like pain. Pain has limits, it has durations and intensities. It leaves scars and teaches lessons. What followed was suffering, pure and simple. It was loneliness and loss, the obsessions of spurned love and the emptiness of lifetimes spent in isolation. It was being alone forever, again and again. It stopped, leaving nothing but the taste of brass.
“There. Do you understand now, Jacob? Emily seems quite concerned. You put on quite a show. Let her know you’re okay, son. Just say yes, Jacob. Tell her you’re alright.”
Speaking without a voice is strange. I fixed it, like some talent I didn’t know I had.
“Ye-”
He hit it again. Five more times before he asked another question. I learned to scream too.
“Do you understand now?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said weakly. Could Emily really hear me, or was my body lying nerveless on the couch?
“Very good. We will start simply. Who on the Council is funding you, and what dealing have they had with the Church?”
“I…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “No one is funding me.”
It started slower, just a background tearing of emotion, an undercurrent of wasted life and depression.
“Someone must be standing with you. Emily is here. Should I evacuate her, see who she’s willing to name?”
“There’s no one, Sloane. Everyone seems to be trying to kill me or capture me. I’m running from everyone.”
The tearing continued for a while, pulsing through me like a thorned rope, then it receded.
“We’ll let that stand for now. How did you get in touch with Marcus?”
“Again, I didn’t. I was downfalls on other business. I saw him on the return trip.”
“You just happened to be aboard that specific ship, on that specific day.”
“Yes.”
Suffering, for a while.
“We know Marcus was in conversation with the city. He told someone his plans, which ship he’d be taking, and when. That he was being pursued. They promised him safety, pledged it, once he got to the city.”
“He didn’t make it.”
“No. Because you were sent to gather him up. And things got out of hand.”
“I wasn’t even supposed to be on that flight, Sloane. I got delayed on my job. It was just chance.”
The next jolt lasted longer, if eternity can last longer. I had a brief, shocking feeling of my body, drifting farther away from my floating consciousness.
“Stay with me here, Jacob. I don’t believe you. This can go on for a long time. It can go on forever. All I need is your body, remember. You don’t need to be in it.”
“Go to hell,” I whispered.
“Of course. But first, I need to understand. You say that you just happened to be on the Glory. Of the thousands of people in the city, the hundreds of thugs who could have been on Valentine’s business, by pure chance, it just happened to be you that he sent.”
“Pure chance,” I repeated.
“Wrong.” Jolt. “Wrong, Jacob.” Shattering jolt, my soul falling apart, my body leaving. “I don’t believe in chance. Not in these matters.” Jolt, less memory and more severing of my body. I was leaving, I could tell, leaving the world for an eternity of brass and suffering. “You will tell me, Jacob, and you will…”
The pain ended. The taste left my mouth, and time passed in darkness. I have no idea how long it was. When I woke up the street outside was bright, sunlight pouring in around the shutters of the front window. Sloane was sitting at the desk, thumbing through a sheaf of papers.
“Ah, good.” He looked up at me, nodded. “Sorry about the delay, Mr. Burn. There has been, well. A development. An interruption to our little discussion. Sorry.”
“Don’t mention it.” I spat and looked around. Emily was gone.
“Yes, your friend has been moved.”
“Where is she?”
“Elsewhere. Not here. That’s all I think you need to know. You’ll be moving soon as well.”
I struggled to sit up. He hit me again, and the jagged line of pain in my cheek put me on my ass. As I fell, a loop of belt fell off my shoulder. My arms loosened. I curled up on the couch to cover it.
He stood up and came over, peering at me curiously. “What happened to her, by the way? That surgery for her wound, it was very… intuitive. Primitive, but still elegantly done. You didn’t do that, obviously.”
“Fuck off.”
“This again. You should try harder to offend me, Jacob. It would at least make our conversations more interesting.”
I pulled myself up, best I could. The belts loosened just a little more. It was going to be okay, I thought. It’s
