side. Turning his attention back to the bearded guard, Hardie gave him a push in the direction of the other guards. The Aussie became a human bowling ball; his friends the pins. Then, as fast as he could, Hardie started to make a beeline for the door he’d just stepped through.
Hardie knew it was practically useless. It was four against one, and he was down two limbs. But Hardie also wasn’t about to stand around for mockery and whatever else they had in mind. He vowed to fight until he stopped breathing. At least then there was the illusion of control.
Who knows? Maybe he’d luck out, and they’d skip the torture and kill him quick.
Hardie found the handle, pulled open the door enough so that he could throw himself inside the metal cage. He half turned and yanked the door shut behind him—but two hands shoved through the space between the metal door and the frame.
Fine. Hardie let it open a few inches to give himself enough room…and then he
The screams were otherworldly—strange profanity in a foreign tongue. Fingers wriggled like white worms in the crack between the door and the frame. Hardie pulled even tighter and relished the agonized screams. Oh, please. Here’s hoping it made these bastards so furious that they killed him immediately rather than drag it out.
“NO!” a female voice shouted.
“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND, MATE!”
“NO! NO NO NO!”
Hardie let the door open a fraction of an inch, giving the wriggling worms enough room to remove themselves from the situation. As soon as the last fingernail cleared the space, Hardie yanked the door shut a final time, then staggered backward until his back collided with the other end of the cage. No one was more surprised than Hardie. He’d made it this far. Could he actually make it out of here? Somehow?
Adrenaline had carried him this far, but he felt like he’d used up his last reserves.
No matter.
All he had to do now was push the up button, figure out his next move once he was back in that waiting room. Maybe he could find a way out. Maybe he could even catch up with Mann. Snap her neck and ask her if she’d still like to meet his wife and son.
A face appeared in the grille. Bearded Aussie guy.
“WARDEN!” he shouted. “DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO—”
“Fuck you,” Hardie muttered, then stabbed the up button with an index finger. A second later the bearded guy sighed, unclipped something from his belt, jammed it against the outside of the metal cage, then squeezed it.
And then:
white
hot
crazy
A disjointed moment later, Hardie was being dragged out of the cage, drooling and twitching. Slowly he pieced together what had happened. A Taser. They must have jammed a Taser against the metal cage, pulled the trigger, and the electricity that sailed through the cage must have shocked him unconscious.
Now rough hands were dragging him along the cold concrete floor. Any minute now the beatings were likely to commence. Hardie knew it. He’d tried. Lost. Welcome to your new life sentence, dumb ass. You should have stayed upstairs. Starved yourself to death. Would have been the classy, stoic move. Better than being thrown into a secret prison cell for the rest of your life.
But instead of a punch—
The bearded Aussie cautiously touched his face. “Can you see me, mate? Are you okay?”
Hardie nodded. At least, he thought he nodded. All he knew, his head may have bobbled around as though it were attached to his body with a coiled spring.
“The hell were you trying to do?” Bearded Guy said. “Didn’t they tell you about the elevator? How it’s a one- way trip?
Hardie shook his head again, incoherently.
“Jesus…look, if you were to have gone back up and made your way outside, you would have triggered the death mechanism. They didn’t tell you about the death mechanism? Anyway, listen to me now. If you had gone up, you would have…well, you would killed everybody in here.
The other three guards glared down at him, a mixture of disappointment and checked fury on their faces. All like,
Finally Hardie’s lips stopped trembling enough for him to attempt a few words in the English language. “Would have…tripped the…death
“The death mechanism, mate. They didn’t tell you about it?”
Utter exhaustion washed over him. Hardie could tell his body was trembling, but he didn’t actually feel it until a few moments later, as the guards stooped over to pick him up from the cement floor. His vision went woozy, and the muscles in his neck stiffened, as if to choke him into unconsciousness in a desperate attempt at self- preservation. No. He had to stay awake, soak up every detail.
What was this place?
Where was it?
Why was he here?
He had no idea.
The guards guided his stumbling ass through a confusing series of rooms. One looked like a cafeteria. The next was a laundry room furnished with—strangely—refrigerators. Then somebody’s spartan bedroom, followed by a room that looked like a primitive security-department control booth, then another bedroom, then a third bedroom, which was apparently his, because they eased him onto a creaky bed there and told him to rest a while. There was a lot of work ahead of them.
Hardie had no intention of sleeping. Just wanted to ease back for a few seconds, take a few deep, cleansing breaths, close his eyes, maybe, for a microsecond or two…
—Donald Sutherland,
A NOISE—
—jolted Hardie awake.
He bolted upright, immediately forgot that one of his arms didn’t work right, and collapsed back down to the mattress. Beneath his head, ancient mattress springs groaned.
Where was
Hardie imagined a map of California—specifically, Los Angeles, where this all began. He wondered how far away he might be from the City of Angels. There had been a ride in an ambulance, with the driver talking about taking the 101. There had also been some time in a hospital—which had to be within driving distance, right? Because he didn’t remember any planes.
Hardie allowed his mental map to zoom out to encompass the entire American Southwest. Lots of desert.
