My mind worked at any desperate plan at all. Needed to figure a way out of this, otherwise we were dead.
Struggle was useless. They’d strapped me in tight. I hated my impotence, but gave my hosts my most defiant look.
Baer grunted in disgust. “What about you, black beauty?” He turned and back-ended Wren with the heel of his boot. “Know anything about a shiny disc, glittering all colors, size of your hand that can take you to faraway places? What about my big horseshoe gadget, like a wonder magnet, something you may have seen in a haute moderne living room?”
She looked away, shook her purpled face, looking as if she was going to vomit.
“Thought so.”
Had they gotten to TK? Maybe he was sprawled in another room, getting his face plastered all over the wall.
With cat-like strength, Dolgra shot up and clawed at the nearest thug, bringing him down in a crashing heap. Thumbs caught in his eye. He cried out in pain as fingers worked and he kicked Dolgra off him. The other two pinned Dolgra’s arms and began clubbing him.
The one rubbing at his face swore. “That miserable catclawer. Fucked up my eye.”
“Whine somewhere else,” cried Baer. “Get that trash out of here. I need to have a one-on-one with Rusco.”
He peered with critical appraisal at Wren. “And this bitch is a bit mannish for my tastes, so remove her too.” He motioned to one of his henchmen who gave an anticipatory growl.
“A woman’s a woman, boss.” The bald-headed thug grabbed Wren by the ears and hauled her up and dragged her out by what had grown of her hair. Wren kicked and screamed all the way.
Baer shrugged. “Nasty piece of work, Rusco. Such company you keep. Now, I might just let you live, albeit it painfully, if you’ll tell me where the amalgo is?”
“What amalgo?”
He gave a weary sigh. “We have to do this the hard way?” He nodded to his other man; they cut my right arm bonds and forced open my palm flat. I struggled but Baer shoved a coin-sized object in it, while the other thug closed and tied my fingers around it.
I protested in horror when I saw what that silver thing was and what they planned to do. On a nod, all three left the room and whispered in anticipation amongst themselves.
“I always repay any favors done to me.” Baer gave a last look. He closed the door while I counted the seconds.
Kaboom.
The blast came from far away in my mind as my ears adjusted to the shock, and my fingers were gone in a second and the hand with it. Blood and flesh kicked up in my face. Then the agony came in mountainous waves.
Red hot gallons of it. A minute, two days, a year? How much time passed? I don’t know.
I remember a figure larger than life lumbering into that room. Could have been an avatar, a dark angel, some figment of my distorted imagination. He was big, his shoulders so wide, hawk eyes so dark and bright at the same time. The man wore a long, wine-colored trenchcoat, with white stripes down the middle and golden eagles off to the side. His hair was thick and black as buffalo fur and trailed past the middle of his back. The eyes, sightless as a blind crow’s eyes, penetrated into my soul, windows into new universes. But the presence of the man was what awed and stunned me most, despite my pain. He made Baer look like a mangy rat. Those ageless eyes scrutinized me as a raptor might bore into a helpless rabbit, but then his eyes went soft and gentle, as if he were trying to coax the truth out of an errant child.
“You’ve wandered far from the truth, haven’t you, child? Empty your soul, become one with the universe.”
I must be in heaven, dreaming a benevolent dream. My hand had ceased to throb, just a warm jelly feeling there.
“Yes, the pain is not that crippling, is it?” he asked. “Doesn’t last, like all things in this transient world.”
His voice changed as he muttered something to Baer who had clumped in, “So this is your darkhorse, the one who’s been causing me so much trouble and giving you merry chase?”
With my eyes adjusting to the pink mist of pain, I recognized that face!—Mong. The holo screen…I croaked a hang-man’s curse.
“Yes, you know me, don’t you?” the warlord jeered with a grotesque grin. “You have something of mine. A very important item. Tell us about it, and I’ll make sure the pain goes away. Forever.”
I shook my blood-stained head, coming in and out of delirium.
He exhaled a sad laugh. “That phaso’s nothing but a cheap imitation. You expecting to pawn it off on somebody in a quick sale?” He gave a spitting growl. “Good luck.” In impatient, cruel pantomime, he reached in his trenchcoat and pulled out a green vial, which he opened and flicked the caustic liquid on my stump of a wrist. The fires of agony bit into my flesh. The severed nerves reanimated. A good reminder of the pain to come.
Yet Mong’s promise of pain meant the end of me, a bullet to the brain or worse. I’d hold out and die. They’d never get the amalgo, those fucking scavengers.
As if reading my mind, Mong grinned and pulled a pick-hook out of his grab-bag of tricks and approached me from behind. He jabbed it into my stub of a wrist bone and proceeded to carve out the marrow.
I howled in misery, croaking out a rasp as a lunatic might make, hoping for the oblivion of unconsciousness. The warlord paused, his eyes blinking in expectation, his presence a still of
