He thought about what he could do with the quarter-mile shield of death that surrounded him. He could find every secret CI-6 prison in the country. He could visit all of the front companies they had, scattered around the globe. He could stop into certain offices in the U.S. Capitol Building. He could kill them all with a flip of the switch. Death with a smile. They could throw everything in the world at him. The National Guard, even. Unless they had a sniper that could work with a quarter-mile accuracy, he was unstoppable.
And maybe he should. Because CI-6 wasn’t going to stop. This facility was just an interrogation room; there were others in the organization who knew. They wouldn’t give up a weapon like Proximity.
Maybe he should keep going until they were all dead.
Kowalski took another bite of the oatmeal bar. Another piece got stuck between his teeth. He pulled out the interrogator’s Pampered Chef knife then used it to dislodge the chunks.
He could still feel it, though. So he kept using the knife, digging at his jaw. There were no mirrors out here in the country. He had to go by feel. The blade against his tender gums. Scraping. Don’t mind me, he thought. I’m just a man sitting in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside doing a little dental surgery. The brown sugar was gone; his mouth tasted of copper pennies now. But there was still oatmeal in there. So Kowalski kept working. Strangely, as the pain enlarged, his vision grew clearer. Maybe it was the film of tears in his eyes. There was no sound except the occasional chirping of a bird, and his own heavy breathing. It focused him on the task at hand.
Eventually he realized that his chin and stolen shirt were covered in blood.
But the trigger came out, and Kowalski stared at it for a few moments, feeling the cool morning air on his fevered face, before using a rock to smash it to pieces.
Yeah, I’m a monster, he thought.
But not that big of a monster.
He wondered where Vanessa was now.