50 DETOX



Saturday October 27th

Holtzmann crawled into bed, terrified of what was to come.

He woke hours later to Anne shaking him. “I’m heading out, Martin. I’m going to see Claire. God help me, you’re both going crazy.”

Holtzmann just stared at her. He lay there in bed, miserable, nauseated, waiting for the full force of the withdrawal to strike, his mind spinning on how to free Shankari.

Anne came home with takeout. He tried to talk, but she turned on the news, responded in monosyllables. She went to bed after dinner. Martin went to his office, feeling ill, but not as terribly as he’d expected…

He was there, sitting in his office chair, thinking of how to free Shankari, when the aches came.

They started in the leg, intensifying, bit by bit, minute by minute, until they were pounding out from his femur where the compound fracture was still healing. They spread out from there, into the hip that had shattered, into his other leg, his ribs, his back, his neck, his arms, his head.

He arched his back and moaned. He writhed around in the chair searching for some relief. His skin was damp with sweat now. He was burning up. Snot was dripping from his nose.

Then the nausea was coursing through him. He dragged himself out of the office, stumbling around without his cane, his body contorted by the pain, made it into the hall bathroom just in time, and heaved up bile into the toilet.

Then his guts cramped. He made it onto the toilet before his bowels exploded filth into it.

When the episode was over, he collapsed onto the floor of the bathroom, wrapped himself in a towel, and waited to die.

Anne found him in the morning, still curled up on the floor, aching and feverish and a mess.

She took one look at him.

“My God, you really are sick.”

Holtzmann nodded weakly, then leaned over the toilet and vomited again.

Anne helped him into the shower, brought him a warm robe to wrap himself in, took him back to bed, put a trash can next to him, brought him soup and painkillers and anti-diarrheal meds.

“I’m going to call a doctor,” she said.

Holtzmann shook his head. “Just the flu,” he said weakly. “I’ll be fine.”

Then he leaned over and heaved into the trash can.

The agony lasted through Sunday, into Sunday night. Anne talked to him, tried to distract him from the horror that was coursing through his body. He found himself babbling to her, about the meeting with Barnes and the President, about the Nexus children, about everything but the Nexus in his own brain.

By Sunday night the sheets were twisted and damp with his sweat, his writhing. Anne insisted on getting him out of bed so she could change them.

She fell asleep beside him, while the fever and pain and explosive evacuation of his body kept him awake through most of the night. His world was a feverish, twisted nightmare, horrifying images of the President, of Barnes, of Lane. They were all one, a three-faced demon torturing him.

Monday morning. Anne offered to stay home with him, to nurse him to health.

Holtzmann insisted she go to work.

He fired up his slate long enough to send a message in to the office, to say he was still sick. Subject lines loomed at him, lurid sentence fragments that made no sense. He ignored them, sent his own message, and disconnected.

The withdrawal peaked around noon. He knelt before the toilet, his face over it, red and straining, his whole body convulsing as it tried to push some imaginary toxin out of him. He puked up water, puked up bile, puked up nothing at all, but his body wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop convulsing, wouldn’t stop trying to turn his guts inside out, trying to shove his stomach up through his throat and into this bowl.

Then the episode was past. He cleaned himself as best he could, collapsed back into the sweat-stained bed, and slept.

Holtzmann woke at 5pm. He felt awful, but fractionally better.

His phone buzzed at him. A moment later his slate did as well. More calls from the office.

He forced himself into the shower, forced himself to clean up, to dress himself, to make himself look halfway presentable. Anne had left him soup in the kitchen. He reheated it, drank a bowl, slurped down noodles. His body trembled, but he felt stronger. The food stayed down.

Then he checked his messages, and found chaos.

Half a dozen of his underlings had been trying to reach him urgently, their messages overlapping with one another, conflicting with one another. Barnes had been calling, asking where he was, ordering him to reply.

The codes. The passcodes. The ones Rangan Shankari had given them didn’t work.

Holtzmann nearly laughed in relief. Dear God. They didn’t work! Lane must have changed them before releasing Nexus 5! Shankari’s passcodes were obsolete!

Then he saw the other messages. They’d been torturing children. Barnes had overruled him. And they’d forced Nexus out of the brain of one child. Dear God.

Holtzmann felt the rage pump through him. He called Barnes.

The Acting ERD director picked up immediately, his boyish face with those dark, dark eyes filling up the screen of Holtzmann’s slate.

“Martin,” Barnes said. “How good of you to get back to me.” Acid dripped from his voice.

“What the hell are you doing?” Holtzmann yelled. “Torturing kids? Going around me and ordering my team around?”

Barnes scowled on the screen. “I’m doing your job, Martin. What the President ordered you to do.”

“They’re kids!” Holtzmann yelled.

Barnes stared at him coldly. “Not according to the law. Now do your fucking job.”

Holtzmann sputtered. I quit. The words were on the tip of his tongue. But then the audit would kick in, the missing Nexus would be found...

His mouth opened but no words came out.

Barnes solved it for him.

“Get your ass in here, Martin. Shankari gave us bogus codes for the Nexus back doors. Go figure that out. Now!”

Then Barnes ended the call.

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