The next moment, I heard voices. I tensed. I lifted my head, held still, listened. They were men’s voices, murmuring, right outside the room, right outside the metal door.
My first instinct was to shout to them, to scream for help. But something stopped me. If I was here, someone had put me here. If I was hurt, someone had hurt me. Someone had strapped me in this chair. Someone had used those instruments on my flesh. The odds that the men outside that door were my friends seemed very slim.
So I kept my mouth shut. I listened to the low voices, straining with all my might to make out what they were saying over the pounding of my own pulse.
“… Homelander One,” said one voice.
A second voice said something I couldn’t hear.
Then the first voice said, “We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.”
When the second voice answered, I could only make out part of it: “… two more days… can send Orton… knows the bridge as well as West.”
West. That was me. Charlie West. What were they talking about? What bridge? I didn’t know about any bridge.
The flame of panic roared through me again. Without thinking, I renewed my struggles. Trying to pull my arms up, trying to wrestle my body free, trying to tilt the chair one way or the other. Useless, all of it.
Tears came into my eyes-tears of terror and frustration. This couldn’t be happening. It didn’t make any sense. Where were my mom and dad? Where was my life? Where was everything? It had to be a nightmare. It had to be.
Now there were footsteps in the hall outside. Someone new was approaching.
“Here’s Waylon,” the second voice said.
The footsteps stopped outside the door. The first voice spoke again-louder this time, clearer, more formal than before. It was the voice of a man speaking to his superior. It was easier for me to make out the words.
“Did you reach Prince?” the voice said.
The new voice answered-the voice of authority. Waylon. It sounded like an American name, but the voice had a thick foreign accent of some kind.
“I reached him. I told him everything.”
“We did exactly what he said. Exactly what he told us,” the first voice went on. I could hear his fear, his fear of what Prince might do to him if he failed.
“The kid may be telling the truth. You have to consider that,” said the second voice. I could tell he was frightened too.
Waylon answered them with a voice that was ironic and smooth. He was enjoying their fear. I could hear it. “Don’t worry. Prince understands. He doesn’t hold you responsible. But whatever the truth is, the West boy is useless to us now.”
I was straining so hard to hear that my body had gone rigid, my head leaning toward the door, my neck stretching out, my hands pulling hard against the straps.
But for another second or two, there was nothing. Only the silence and my trembling breath, my wildly beating heart.
Then in the same smooth, cool, ironic voice, Waylon said softly, “Kill him.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Word of the Day I’ve heard that when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes in an instant. That’s not what happened to me. I was too wild with panic, too crazy with confusion to remember my whole life. Instead, my brain was desperately trying to grab hold of something- of anything-anything that made some kind of sense, that offered some kind of explanation for this sudden madness, this pain and terror. But there was nothing, nothing that explained it, nothing I could hold on to. I felt as if I were slipping down a sheer wall of ice, slipping down and down and down into emptiness, my fingers scrabbling for even the smallest handhold in the smooth, unbroken surface.
Eyes wide, body pulling wildly and uselessly against the straps, my mind raced back over that last day, the last day I remembered, hours flashing through my brain in a single second as I went back to before I had gone to bed that night, before I had finished writing my history paper, before the argument with Alex, back and back to the beginning of the morning… The alarm clock had gone off at 7:00 a.m., a pounding bass and a wild guitar blasting out of the iPod dock. I reached out sleepily and felt for the off switch. Hit it and sank back into a half doze. Then, exactly ten minutes later by the digital numbers on the clock, my mother’s voice reached me from the bottom of the stairs.
“Charlie! It’s seven o’clock! Time to get ready for school!”
I groaned and rolled over, swinging my feet to the floor, sitting up on the edge of the mattress before I’d even opened my eyes. When I could, I stood up. I staggered out of my room and directly into the bathroom next door.
I assembled myself. Showered the bod. Brushed the teeth. Shaved the beard, which still sprouted only in patches on my cheeks, chin, and neck. Viewed the finished product in the mirror. Not bad. Tall enough-edging up toward six feet. Slim but with good shoulders, and a lot of muscle def from all my workouts. The face? I don’t know. Presentable, I guess. Lean, serious, with a mop of brown hair spilling into it. Brown eyes. I’m good with the eyes. I try to keep them honest, you know. I try to make it so they’re not afraid to look straight at anyone.
I went back to my room to get dressed. But before I started, I tore off the page of my desk calendar. It was a Word of the Day calendar, and I liked to read the new word and memorize it while I put my clothes on.
Today’s word: timorous. “Timid, fearful, prone to be apprehensive.”
Timorous. That was a good one. It was the perfect word to describe my mother.
Now don’t get me wrong. Mom was a pretty good mom, all in all. There were a couple of times in my life when she even approached Mom Greatness. She was just… timorous. Timid, fearful. Prone to be apprehensive. As in frightened out of her wits about every little thing. Are you feeling all right? You don’t look good. Do you have a fever? Wash your hands after you touch that or you’ll get sick. Don’t walk on the road after six, the cars can’t see you. Don’t go into that section of town. Put on your jacket, you’ll catch cold. On and on and on. When I rode my bike, she was afraid a car would hit me. When I drove the car, she was afraid I’d hit another car. Oh, and my karate- she hated that. If she’d had her way, I would have had to wear a full set of metal armor before going to practice. In fact, if she really had her way, I would’ve worn a full set of metal armor and then stayed home.
When I came down to breakfast that morning, she was turning a couple of fried eggs in a pan. As I walked to the kitchen table, passing about two full feet behind her, she said, “Careful, it’s hot.”
Dad was at the table already, reading the paper. The Word of the Day for Dad would have to be: oblivious, meaning “unmindful, unconscious, unaware.” He wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he could be pretty cool, pretty smart about things. But he was an engineer for a corporation that manufactured a lot of the secondary systems that go into airplanes-guidance and communication systems and things like that. And sometimes-times like now-when he was involved in some important project, his mind got occupied and it took a lot to get his attention. You basically had to win first prize at a karate tournament or get the Best Grade Point Average of the Year award or wreck the car or set the house on fire before he even realized you were there. Otherwise: oblivious. Unmindful, unconscious, unaware.
And finally: overwrought would have to be the Word of the Day for Amy, my older sister by one year. Overwrought-“extremely or excessively excited or agitated.” Emo to the extremo, in other words. In fact, as I poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down next to my dad, I could already hear her shouting from the door of her room down the halclass="underline" “Mo-om! I just don’t have any others!” Whatever that meant. Something about clothes, probably. Whatever: the Amy crisis of the day. Overwrought.
“Ah, the cry of the wild older sister in her natural habitat,” I muttered, rooting through the newspaper for the sports page.