'Yeah. It sounds like a real sight for sore eyes.'
'There are two other cells like ours, empty at the moment. There's a narrow stone corridor outside that ends at a heavy wooden door about twenty yards to our left. At the other end of the corridor is a room with walls of polished black stone that looks like marble; there's a television monitor and floodlight mounted in the ceiling, an unlit torch and short sword mounted in brackets on the wall.'
'They should have put us there.'
'I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. There's a knobless door cut into the rear wall, but it's open on this end. I don't like the look of it.'
I turned my head to the left at the sound of the wooden door opening; it creaked quite nicely. Three sets of footsteps approached. 'Company?'
'Yep. A fat, mean-looking kid who probably thinks he's a badass because he wears a machine pistol in a holster; he's got a pimple on the end of his nose, and he doesn't like the fact that I just told you. There's a solid, tall guy in a Warrior uniform, and he probably is a bad-ass. The third guy is about my height, angular, hawk nose, and pale eyes. He's wearing a Bayreuth Eighty-three T-shirt and a Mets baseball cap. Good morning, motherfuckers. Kill any kids today?'
'I'm Siegfried Loge- '
'The Mets cap,' Garth interjected.
'The kid killer.'
Epithets didn't seem to have much effect on Siegfried Loge. 'Why are you keeping your eyes closed, Dr. Frederickson?' he asked calmly. His voice was slightly nasal, airy.
'I'm trying to take a nap.'
'Your eyes are very photosensitive, aren't they, Dr. Frederickson?'
'Yes,' Garth answered. I slapped his arm, and he put his hand on my shoulder. 'They'll find out anyway, Mongo.'
'Indeed, we will,' Siegfried Loge said.
'My brother needs the glasses he was wearing, Loge. He can't see without them.'
'Give him the glasses, Obie.'
'Fuck him, Dad.' Dear, sweet Auberlich. 'Let him be blind.'
'All right, Obie,' the elder Loge replied casually. 'And you can lead him wherever he has to go.'
There was a silence that lasted a few seconds, then Garth squeezed my shoulder. 'Put out your hand, Mongo.'
I did, and felt the smoked glasses drop into my palm. I put them on, looked around. The 'dungeon,' including the sinister-looking black cell and the pimple on the end of Obie Loge's nose, was as Garth had described it to me.
The Warrior standing next to Loge was staring at me impassively. He had a distinctly military bearing exuding quiet self-confidence, and he looked rock solid. Like the other Warriors, he wore black gloves, and I assumed he had bone-blades on the sides of his hands. His dark hair was cropped very short, and his eyes glinted with intelligence. He held his head high, his broad shoulders back; he would easily have blended into the scenery at West Point.
Siegfried Loge, in his sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap, looked more like the third-string pitcher on a local saloon softball team than the scion of an ultra-brilliant scientific family, and Auberlich Loge looked like what he was-a fat teenage thug. Both Loges had the kind of pale hooded eyes that I cross the street to avoid.
Siegfried Loge absently fingered the medallion around his neck, a gold wire sculpture of the four-ring symbol the Warriors had emblazoned on their shoulder patches. 'Do you know where Lippitt is?' he asked me.
'Damn,' I said, patting my pockets. 'I seem to have misplaced him.'
The man with the close-set, pale eyes smiled wanly. 'What's the most terrible thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word 'torture,' Dr. Frederickson?'
'Being forced to sit through
'They don't know,' the Warrior said in a flat voice as he continued to study Garth and me. 'Even if they made a joint decision to split up, Lippitt wouldn't tell these two where he was going, or what he planned to do.' He paused, added softly: 'A very dangerous man.'
'What do you think of them, Stryder?'
'I don't know what you mean, sir,' the Warrior replied without looking at Loge.
'You wouldn't think one dwarf and his big brother could wreak so much havoc or be so elusive, would you? I guess it's a good thing they decided to come to us, or we'd never have found them.'
'I take full responsibility for the failure of my men,' the Warrior replied evenly, still not looking at Loge.
'Good,' Loge said curtly. 'That's what I wanted to hear. On occasion, you can be rather arrogant. I wanted to hear you admit failure.' He paused, addressed Garth and me. 'This is Stryder London, gentlemen. He's been described as the 'ultimate warrior,' and he leads our security forces. I find it rather amusing that the ultimate warrior and all his merry men couldn't stop you two from wrecking a multimillion dollar operation in Nebraska and burning down half the state of Wisconsin. We've got a great security force, all right; it took a half-crazy giant and a gorilla to finally catch you as you were on the way up to my bedroom.'
'I wouldn't stand too close to the cell, sir,' Stryder London said drily.
Loge ignored him as he glanced back and forth between Garth and me. 'It's amazing that it should come down to the two of you. Jake Bolesh should be around to see what an incredible contribution he made when he tried to kill you with those injections. You may be the only two people in the world who could have survived this long, and we have to find out what it is in your genetic makeup that allows for a controlled reaction. That's the breakthrough. There are the answers to a lot of questions in your bodies.'
'What are you trying to do, Loge?' I asked. 'Is it a biological weapon for the Pentagon? Spell it out. What's the point?'
'Point?' Siegfried Loge removed his baseball cap and ran his fingers through a tangle of thick, wavy black hair. Then he began to laugh; the laughter began as a chuckle, but quickly built up to a kind of nasal bray that grated against my senses like fingernails scraping a blackboard. Obie Loge glanced uncertainly at his father, then also began to laugh-but nervously. Stryder London's face revealed nothing, and he continued to stare straight ahead.
'Why does there have to be a point?' Loge continued when he had finally managed to bring his laughter under control. 'Why can't science just
Now Garth decided to take matters-in this instance, Siegfried Loge's neck-in hand. In a blur of motion, his right arm shot through the bars and his fingers closed around Siegfried Loge's neck. The scientist's eyes went wide and his face started to turn blue as Garth, smiling grimly, squeezed his windpipe.
Stryder London reacted almost instantaneously, stepping forward and jabbing stiff fingers up into Garth's exposed armpit, attacking the nerve cluster there that controlled the arm and hand. Obie Loge was shouting obscenities as he engaged in the futile exercise of trying to pry loose Garth's fingers from around his father's neck.
Grabbing the bars for support, I kicked Obie Loge in the groin with sufficient force to ruin his sex life for at least a week. He dropped like a stone, mewling in a high whine as he rolled around on the floor and clutched at his testicles. I started to go for London, but the Warrior had already managed to break Garth's grip and had stepped back, out of reach. Loge had collapsed to the floor next to his groaning son and was holding his throat with both hands.
'Nice work, brother,' I said.
'Likewise, brother,' Garth replied as he shook and rubbed his arm to restore feeling.
Loge swallowed hard, with obvious difficulty, then took a hand away from his throat and pointed a trembling finger at Garth. 'Blind him,' he rasped. 'Do it right now!'
The basic Siegfried Loge: gone was the soft-spoken gentility, and the nasal laughter was just an echo in the bizarre in-house prison he had built. All that was left was the mad, naked cruelty of a man who tortured animals and men, and ordered children murdered. I stepped closer to Garth.
'London, did you hear me!' Loge continued. 'I want to see and hear that man's eyeballs pop! Get in there and do it now!'
'No,' Stryder London said evenly.
Ignoring his stricken son, Loge struggled to his feet. His face was livid as he confronted the Warrior, and his
