There was no response, so he threw up his hands in the air.
‘Bulla!’ he shouted abruptly, wincing and coughing immediately from the raking pain this harsh shout induced.
He lay back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, which was also bleached of colour, like everything else in this room. White. Everything white. If part of whatever the Huntsmen were doing to him involved driving him to insanity, it was working. He did not know how long he could last in here, in this bone-white space, this cuboid skeleton of concrete and plastic and steel devoid of colour and life. There were no distractions, nothing to focus on, just the blinding whiteness. That, and his mind. And, of course, all the restless recollections of everything that had gone wrong in recent weeks, the memories of how the life he had built up for himself, his economic empire, had been conquered, subdued, and crushed beneath the heels of the powerful.
It had been quite something to have had the rug yanked so quickly and violently from beneath his feet. He had come down hard, and still felt dazed from the blow. Now here he was, having gone meekly into the hands of the enemy, sitting in a prison cell with bandages around his head and a hole in his skull. God only knew what they had done to his brain – or what they were going to do to him after this. That thought sent slug-crawling chills of greasy horror down his spine.
But what could he do? Here he was, at the complete mercy of his captors. Any attempt to resist them would be met with lethal force. He had no choice but to cooperate.
With these dark thoughts swirling through his head, he kept on staring at the ceiling, hoping that some sort of revelation would hit him, that some madcap plan of escape would burst from one of the too-white light bulbs and burn inspiration into his brain – but none came.
Nothing.
Nothing but the dry snow-coating of the room. He was starting to drift back into a slumber when the sound of a key turning in the lock jolted him awake with a start. He sat up in the bed as a small, androgynous-looking Chinese nurse wearing a surgical mask walked into the room, carrying a tray with a tall glass of water and a bowl of some sort of porridge. She walked directly over to him, although her eyes did not meet his at any point.
‘Water, quickly,’ he croaked.
She did not reply but pulled up the wheeled tray at the bottom of the bed and put the food and water onto it and then rolled it up to him. He snatched the glass of water off of the tray and chugged it as fast as he could, but it felt as if it had done nothing to slake his burning thirst.
‘More water, please, please.’
The nurse ignored him and pointed at the porridge. She still would not meet his eyes with hers.
‘I’ll eat that later,’ he said in Mandarin. ‘For God’s sake, just get me some more water.’
She did not react at all to his request and kept pointing at the porridge. Aboubakar felt anger starting to seethe inside him.
‘What’s wrong with you?! Get me some more damned water! Or just, just fucking saysomething!’
No reaction. The finger simply pointed unwaveringly at the porridge. Aboubakar breathed in deeply, doing his best to calm himself and keep his anger at bay. He picked up the spoon next to the bowl and gingerly put a spoonful of porridge into his mouth. It tasted surprisingly good and seemed help a little in terms of rehydration. He started spooning more into his mouth, and eventually he was gobbling it up with the eager haste of a child given unlimited reign over a table of sweets and cake, and before he knew it the bowl was empty. At this point he felt better, but his stomach was still crying out for more, and his body felt as if the rehydration process had only been partial.
‘All right, I’m done,’ he muttered. ‘Are you happy now? Come on though, I need more. Please, please, more water, more food—’
‘And you will have it,’ a new voice said, speaking English.
Aboubakar looked up and saw that Mr Wang had entered the room while he had been eating. The silent swiftness and stealth with which the man moved was distinctly unnerving, and Aboubakar started with fright when he noticed him at the foot of his bed.
‘What have you done to me?’ Abou asked. ‘I deserve to know that much at least.’
Mr Wang’s face was cold, his phoenix eyes two obsidian balls glinting menacingly from beneath his scarred eyelids.
‘You deserve nothing, Aboubakar,’ he said coldly. ‘In fact, you’re lucky we’re even keeping you alive, so be grateful for that. We do have a plan for you, but we want you to work with us, willingly, rather than against us. It would make things so much easier for both you and ourselves. So as long as you cooperate, we’ll do our best to make your stay here comfortable. And in that regard, it would seem that the first item on the menu is more food and water, yes?’
Abou nodded, his expression grim with suspicion. Mr Wang barked out a curt order to the nurse, and she hurried away. He then turned back to Aboubakar and smiled.
‘She’ll be back with more soon. I apologise for the uninspiring nature of the meal, but while you are recovering from the surgery it is the best food for your body to repair itself. Right now you have a hole in your skull, so you need to be extremely careful about moving and touching your head. The bone has been stapled back in place, but nonetheless you must exercise caution. We do not want
