Tom’s dark eyes drifted across to meet hers and, for a long time, he said nothing. Then, as Lopez watched, he spoke in a quiet voice.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked.
‘Came to check up on you,’ Karina replied.
Tom’s eyes flicked up to the clock on the wall, as though he knew she was lying. ‘You’d only just left me.’
‘It had been a couple of hours,’ Karina said, ‘and I was worried about you.’
Tom glanced back at her. ‘Worried I might do something stupid?’
Karina looked at him for a long beat, then nodded.
Tom looked across at Lopez. ‘Who are you?’
‘Working a case with NYPD,’ Lopez replied. ‘In town for a couple of days.’
Tom looked at Lopez as though sizing her up, then looked back at Karina. He sighed softly.
‘It was so easy,’ he whispered. ‘Once I decided to do it. So easy.’
Karina squeezed his hand. ‘That doesn’t mean it was right.’
‘Right for whom?’ Tom challenged her. Karina struggled to find an answer and, when she failed, Tom squeezed her hand back a little. ‘You should have let me go, let me leave. I didn’t want to be here anymore.’
Lopez caught the way Tom used the past tense, as though he had changed his mind since. Karina noticed it, too.
‘Things change with time,’ she replied. ‘It’s all just empty words right now, I know, but, someday, you’ll be able to move on. You’ve just got to take it one day at a time.’
Tom shook his head.
‘It’ll be easier next time,’ he said.
Karina’s features became stern as she leaned toward him. ‘There isn’t going to be a next time, Tom. Okay?’
Tom looked at her. ‘I saw something.’
Lopez felt a chill ripple down her neck and spine as Tom’s softly spoken words drifted through the room around her.
‘Saw something?’ Karina asked. ‘When? What do you mean?’
Tom’s face looked both elated and haunted at the same time, as though he were struggling to decide whether he should speak at all.
‘You have another friend in town,’ he said finally, and looked at Lopez. ‘A tall guy with light brown hair and a Chicago accent.’
Lopez felt another chill tingle across her shoulders and she shivered involuntarily as she replied. ‘Ethan, my partner. How did you know?’
Tom looked at her, his expression serious now. ‘He checked my pulse and told the paramedics I’d been out for no more than five minutes.’
Karina’s jaw dropped as she stared at Tom. ‘You were out cold,’ she protested. ‘Barely alive.’
Lopez stepped closer to the bed. ‘Where were you, Tom?’
The young detective looked at her and smiled faintly.
‘I was hovering above you all, up on the ceiling. I saw everything.’
Karina withdrew her hand from Tom’s, as though his body had shocked her again, her features horrified as she struggled to comprehend what her friend was saying.
‘What else did you see?’ Lopez pressed.
‘After that, I wasn’t in the room.’
‘Where were you?’ Karina asked, overcoming her shock.
Tom shook his head as he replied.
‘It’s hard to describe, I don’t know where I was. It was dark, totally black, but the blackness seemed huge, infinite. I was rising up, could feel myself going up and up, and then there was a light. It was so bright, brighter than the sun but I could look right into it.’
Lopez moved closer to the bed.
‘The tunnel of light,’ she said. ‘You had a near-death experience, Tom.’
Tom looked at her, but he shook his head.
‘Well, if I did, then the experience is highly overrated,’ he replied.
‘What happened?’ Karina asked.
‘I was floating up this tunnel,’ Tom said, ‘and I felt great. I can’t even begin to describe it. It was as though every bad thing I’d ever done or seen or heard of suddenly was just utterly gone. I had no body but I could feel everything, could see everything, and there were people there waiting for me.’
Lopez shivered again.
‘Friends?’ she managed to ask; and then, more cautiously, ‘Family?’
Tom looked at her and his expression of wonderment and joy faded away.
‘They weren’t there,’ he replied, grief returning to stain his features. ‘I could tell somehow that they weren’t there, and then suddenly I could remember what had happened on the bridge, that I’d lost them, and then everything changed.’
‘What changed, Tom?’ Karina pressed.
‘The tunnel of light faded away and I felt the darkness coming back. It was surging up toward me, cold and black and full of something I’ve never felt before.’
There was a moment’s silence, as Tom sought the word he wanted, and then he looked at them both.
‘Hate,’ he said finally. ‘Pure, undiluted, raw hate, more powerful than anything I can describe. I thought it would swallow me whole but it suddenly disappeared just like the tunnel of light did and, I was back in the apartment watching you all try to resuscitate me.’
Tom shook his head as he looked at Karina.
‘I think I saw a little piece of Heaven,’ he continued, ‘and then a tiny fragment of Hell.’
18
‘It’s not working.’
The voice came from behind where she sat slumped in the chair, eyes staring blankly at the screen before her. A thin stream of congealed saliva lay drying on her chin. Her eyes were utterly dry and stinging painfully, but she felt removed from the pain as though it were a distant color or sound. She could not feel her arms, and, in her mind’s eye, images flashed past continuously, even though the monitor before her was turned off. Those same images played all day in front of her, accompanied by fearsome jolts of pain delivered at cruelly random moments, and all night in her mind, awakening her as she jerked in expectation of electrical currents searing her body.
‘Pull her out.’
The voices sounded as though they were part of a dream, monotone and indistinct, but, even now, she recognized them as American. From beyond the beam of light, she saw a figure approach, gray-suited. His face was long and sepulchral, his ashen skin matching his suit, as though he had been drained of color, and his expression as devoid of emotion as she was.
They had become more relaxed around her as time had passed, although, even now, she had no idea just how long she had been in captivity. There was no daylight, there were no clocks and the men using her for their bizarre experiments were extremely careful not to expose her to any sense of the outside world, be it through conversation or any other means.
She had lost all sense of her identity, long ago forgetting who she was, where she was, why she was there. Her memories had been scoured from her mind, leaving only the incessant flashing images grinding around the interior of her skull.
It had got worse when they had added video and sound. Her mind had been programmed to flinch at the slightest mention of terrorists, communism, socialism and a hundred other creeds and beliefs that clashed with the American Dream. She felt physical pain at the sight of images of wounded American soldiers or images of 9/11, even when no current was applied to her weary body. Utterly unable to sleep properly and exposed to countless hours of footage over immeasurable periods of time, she was now an empty shell, devoid of soul and spirit.
The gray-suited figure lifted off the headphones and unclipped the electrodes from her temples. As he removed the support pads, her head fell forward and her chin dug into her chest. Thick, lank hair spilled either side of her face.