Written in Fire

CHAPTER 24

Soren woke.

Hips aching and back stiff from the metal bunk, he began the slow process of sitting up. As ever, his mind ranged ahead of his muscles, processing the sound that had awakened him. It was the door to his cage opening. Normally his captors just flooded the room with gas and did with his unconscious body as they liked.

So little changed in his tiny kingdom. Whatever this was, it would not be pleasant. He focused on calm, centering himself in nothingness.

The men who came had the broad shoulders and beefy necks of wrestlers. They wore dull uniforms marked with the rising blue sun of Epstein Industries, and leveled Tasers. In the leisure of his perception, Soren watched one squeeze the trigger, saw the pop of gas as the metal probes flew, cable looping through the air like a striking snake, and then the fangs hit his naked chest and tens of thousands of volts surged through him, washing away conscious thought and control. His muscles spasmed and a guttural sound wrenched from his throat.

The guards moved forward and wrestled his twitching body into a garment he was too scrambled to recognize at first. It wasn’t until one of them used a length of steel chain to lash him to the wall that Soren realized he wore a straitjacket.

Torture, then. They evidently didn’t understand him after all. He supposed they imagined his lingering perceptions of the agony would make it worse. From a certain perspective, they were right, but the results wouldn’t be what they wished. He would simply retreat into nothingness and let them destroy him. Better than an eternity spent counting.

There was even room for victory of a sort, he realized. Simply not revealing the things they wanted to know would be the foundation. But the triumph would be in rising above. He would not scream. He had spent his whole life in pain. There was nothing they could do that he could not endure.

Once the guards had him bound to their satisfaction, they left. A stranger entered. Slender and unremarkable, with dark eyes and prominent cheekbones. He carried a chair in one hand and pushed a rolling tray laden with shiny instruments. Soren almost laughed at the theatricality of it.

Until Nick Cooper walked in, dragging a woman behind him, his fingers clenched around her arm. Pale and perfect. Samantha. She gasped when she saw him, then jerked free and ran to him, and he watched her come, slow, so slow, her brown eyes broad with horror, golden hair drifting behind, arms flung wide, and then she was on him, hugging him, her lips on his, the warmth and scent of her filling his world. Samantha was trembling, her mouth forming sounds more like whimpers than words.

“That’s enough.” Cooper yanked her away.

Soren lunged, but the straitjacket held his arms uselessly to his sides, and the chain snapped taut when he’d gone no more than an inch. He strained, the muscles of his legs knotting and locking fruitlessly as the only woman he’d ever loved, the only one who understood him, was forced into a chair, her arms and legs cuffed to it, a belt lashed around her narrow waist and duct tape stretched across her perfect mouth.

Cooper said, “I offered you a better way.”

Soren stared, his nothingness shredding like a spiderweb in a hurricane. “I’ll tell you. Everything.”

“See, that’s the problem.” Cooper shrugged. “You’re still negotiating. If you had just started telling me everything, maybe I’d feel different. But right now, I can’t believe what you say.”

Soren stared at him. Opened his mouth to share the things he knew. John wouldn’t want Samantha hurt any more than he did. Besides, what could it matter? His friend planned for every contingency. He must have planned for this one.

But he might not have.

Then, Cooper isn’t the type to do this. It’s a bluff.

Soren hesitated.

“Yeah. What I thought.” Cooper grimaced. “I wish I didn’t have to do this, I really do. But today your friend killed two thousand of mine. And he’s got worse planned for tomorrow.” He nodded to the other man. “Go ahead, Rickard.”

The dark-eyed torturer made a show of bending over the tray, fingering instruments. He lifted a scalpel to the light, brushed a bit of dust from the tip, then replaced it on the tray and chose another, a short, jagged blade curved like a grapefruit knife. Even from here, Soren could see the silver flicker of the edge.

Rickard stepped behind Samantha and trailed the point up her cheek, not quite touching. She moaned against the tape and strained at the handcuffs. Inside the straitjacket, Soren clenched his hands so hard his nails broke the skin of the palms, thinking, A bluff, it’s a bluff, they won’t—

With a smooth motion, the slim man pushed the blade through the lower lid of Samantha’s left eye, slid it sideways to open a broad red ribbon, and then, with a deft scoop, popped the eyeball out of the socket, the optic nerve trailing behind, a mess of blood and fluid spattering her cheek as the gory thing dangled.

Soren screamed.

But Rickard wasn’t finished.

Not even close.

Cooper clenched his fists, fought a rising in his stomach.

This has to be done.

He looked at the hologram, saw Soren twitch and jerk. The man’s eyes were closed but moving frantically behind the lids as he lay on his bunk, the cable running up from the wall and to the interface in the back of his neck.

Beside him, Rickard typed frenetically. The terminal was layered with windows and wireframes that reacted as the programmer tweaked the controls. It was strangely chilling to stand in the control room outside Soren’s cell, this bland computerized space, watching the holo of the man sweat and convulse.

“Pretty impressive, right?” Rickard’s fingers danced. “No display as high-res as the one in our skull.”

The audio of the virtual reality was turned low. The effect was like listening to a slasher film in the next room. Soren’s screams were high-pitched and raw, skating on the edge of sanity. Samantha—no, not her, just a digital construct, a program, nothing more—moaned strangled sounds through the duct tape.

“Gotta hand it to you, never thought of this application. I designed the system as a game, you know, run around shooting aliens, get to feel the adrenaline and see the blood and stuff. We developed the personal scans so that people could do it together, save the universe with a buddy.” Rickard smiled. “Not that I minded scanning her. I mean, damn, but that chick is something.”

One of the display windows showed Samantha the way Soren saw her, and when Cooper looked at it, he fought a gag, bile burning the back of his mouth.

“What?” Rickard looked up, his bland expression changing when he saw Cooper’s. “We didn’t actually hurt her. Just a multi-angle camera scan, skin scrapings, hair samples. Exactly like before your little trip to Rome. The subconscious does the heavy lifting. Same as when you have a dream, and you know someone is your wife, even when they look like your mom. It’s not real. We’re not torturing anybody.”

“We’re not torturing her. But look at that”—Cooper pointed at the quadrant of the display showing Soren’s vitals, the indicators deep in the red line on heart rate, respiration, hormones—“and tell me we’re not torturing him.”

“Sure, but it’s not real.”

“He’s still living it. As far as he knows, someone is cutting her up in front of him.”

“Hold on,” Rickard said, and tapped a command to trigger a subroutine. In another window, a digital version of Cooper said, “Are you ready to tell me where Smith is?”

In response, Soren wept and whimpered.

Digital Cooper said, “Rickard. Continue.”

Cooper made himself watch as he said, “Why use yourself as the torturer?”

“Just easier. I’ve got myself thoroughly scanned.” He took one hand off the keyboard, brushed back his hair to show the interface implant in his neck. “Did it when I was developing this.”

“And you’re okay with it? Being a torturer?”

“Well, I mean . . . it’s not real.”

“So you keep saying.”

The programmer looked up. “Didn’t this guy kill you?”

“He also put my son in a coma and tried to murder an innocent family, including a baby. And those are just the ones I was around for.” Cooper paused. “If a dog is rabid, you have to put him down. But you shouldn’t enjoy it.”

Rickard was about to reply when something on the display caught his attention. “His betas are shifting.”

“Huh?”

“This monitors his brainwave activity. He’s been high beta, which makes sense given the stress. But the pattern is shifting.”

“Which means?”

“He’s about to talk.”

In his private virtual hell, Soren yelled, “Stop!” He hung his head.

Then, in a halting voice, he began to tell them what Smith planned.

Cooper said, “Holy shit.” He leaned forward and thumbed a button. “Epstein. Are you watching?”

“Yes.” Erik’s voice came from the speaker. “Readying a strike team now.”

“I’ll lead them.”

“The NCH tactical division—”

“Isn’t as good as I am,” Cooper said.

“Negative. Two previous opportunities. Both failures.”

“That’s why it has to be me. This is John Smith we’re talking about. I’ve been chasing him for almost a decade. No one knows his tactics the way I do.”

For long seconds there was only silence. Cooper could picture Epstein in his cave, his face lit by a mass of data. That’s the answer. “Erik. Put aside personal concerns. What course offers the statistically highest probability of success?”

More silence. For a moment, Cooper wondered if the abnorm had already broken the line. Then the speaker sounded again. “What do you need?”

“Your best people. Transportation. Weapons. And schematics, not only for the building, but for the surrounding blocks, as well as all civic and maintenance structure diagrams.”

“Yes.”

“One more thing.” Cooper paused, smiled. “Shannon is in Newton. How fast can you get her here?”