A wise idea. But while Sara and Frank might be looking for her, so were a legion of creepy mother fuckers.
Besides, she needed to find the stairs for when Mal came back.
Mal.
As crazy frightened as Deb was—and she was one scare away from curling up into a ball and sucking her thumb—the thought of her husband gave her strength. When he kissed her before he left, she saw the man she remembered. The one she hadn’t seen in such a long time. Brave. Strong. Determined.
Deb swore she would be just as brave. She would fight and fight and fight until she saw him again. And when she did, there would be no more sleepless nights. No more bad dreams. No more constant paranoia.
Because together, they could conquer anything.
Deb ached to remind him of that. And it ate at her that she hadn’t understood it before now.
She bent over, butt against a wooden support, and rubbed her thighs. As could be expected, her stumps ached. The prosthetics she wore weren’t suited to running on dirt, and the constant balance adjustments she had to make were taking a toll on her muscles. It had been a long time since Deb had lost her legs, but she remembered with crystal clarity what it had been like. Obviously walking and running were sorely missed. But there were other, little things as well. Dipping her feet in a cool lake. Wiggling her toes. Feeling sand on the beach beneath her—
Deb sensed someone. Nearby.
She tried to peer into the darkness around her, but her eyes couldn’t pierce it. The low watt bulbs strung up on the ceiling were few and far between, and the glow light Tom had given her was fading fast.
“Hello?” she croaked.
“Hello, Deb.”
It wasn’t Mal. Or Tom. Or Sara or Frank.
Deb knew that voice. From the examination room.
“It’s so good to see ya again,” Franklin said, walking out of the darkness. He still wore the plastic gloves he’d put on when he tried to take her blood earlier. But this time, he was holding a long, white stick that ended in forked prongs.
A cattle prod.
“This is quite a house, ain’t it?” Franklin said. He pressed a button on the stick and the electrodes crackled, throwing a bright spark. “Reminds me of home. A home that you took away from me, Deb.”
Deb backed away, but backing up in fake legs was even harder than navigating stairs. What she needed to do was turn around and sprint away. But she couldn’t stop staring at him. Especially since, like Pang, Franklin’s eyes had turned completely black.
“I owe you for that, lil’ girl. Owe you lots.”
He lashed out with the prod, and Deb dodged it but fell backward, arms pinwheeling, landing on her butt. She tried to crab away on all fours, but her prosthetics couldn’t gain any purchase on the dirt ground.
“You look so a’scared right now.” Franklin grinned. His teeth were also black. “Gettin’ me all kinds of excited.”
He zapped one of her artificial legs with the prod. Deb yelped at the sound.
“This here’s a special kinda prod, called a picana. Make ‘em down in South America. Those dictators love to interrogate rebels. Twenty thousand volts, low amps, so it won’t kill. Supposed to be gawd-awful painful. Especially when applied to sensitive regions.”
Deb backed against the wall, feeling like she was about to have a heart attack.
The feeling got worse when Franklin touched the prod to her thigh.
It was like being hit with a pick axe. A glowing hot pick axe. Her entire world was reduced to one infinite pinpoint of absolute agony.
“Yes indeedy,” Franklin purred. “You ‘n Mr. Picana are gonna get to know each other real intimately, lil’ girl.”
Forenzi
Dr. Emil Forenzi was extremely agitated, and more than a little frightened.
This was bad. Really bad. Once an experiment of this magnitude began to spiral out of control, it was time to pull the plug.
But he didn’t know if he could stop this, even if he wanted to. So many unexpected variables had been introduced that stopping now could be catastrophic.
He sped through the steel doors of the clinic and peered into Gunter’s habitat. But the monkey wasn’t in his usual spot, hanging upside down from the tree. Forenzi moved closer to see if Gunter was hiding in the fake bushes.
He wasn’t. The primate had either turned invisible, or someone let him out of his cage.
Or…
Forenzi checked the habitat’s door latch, saw something thin and blood-stained sticking in the spring mechanism.
A bone. Probably from one of Gunter’s unfortunate cellmates.
The Panamanian Night Monkey had learned to open his own lock.
Forenzi took a quick look around the lab, suddenly paranoid. While small, Gunter was a strong little animal, and he had a well-documented history of violence. He could also apparently utilize tools. If he got hold of a scalpel, it could become a very dangerous situation.
Trying to act nonchalant in case he was being watched, and he went to the closet where he kept the elbow-length Kevlar gloves, which would protect him from animal bites. He didn’t like to handle Gunter without them, especially when the animal wasn’t sedated. He was just about to put them on when the phone rang, making Forenzi jump.
“What is it?” he demanded, checking the ceiling to make sure Gunter wasn’t hanging there, ready to drop on him.
“We have a problem. He figured it out.”
Forenzi digested the words. It was, indeed, a problem. And the problems were piling up. How many set-backs could this project absorb before it imploded?
“Seal the perimeter,” he said, setting the animal gloves down on a countertop. “I’ll be right there.”
Forenzi was halfway to the door when he stopped, turned, and went back for them.
Just in case Gunter was prowling the tunnels and in a bad mood.
Sara
The sharp stench of ammonia woke Sara up.
She was sitting down, immobile, legs, arms, neck, and chest all strapped down tight. The device was known as a restraint chair, and during her years working with troubled teens she’d seen them while visiting prisons and mental institutions. Supposedly a humane way to immobilize dangerous or violent inmates who posed a threat to themselves or others, Sara knew how often it was used for cruel and unusual punishment.
Sara looked around, saw she was in some sort of laboratory. White walls, bright lights, shiny tile floors, counters topped with medical equipment; beakers, Bunsen burners, glass bottles, scales, microscopes, storage racks. A far cry from the poorly lit, filthy underground tunnels she’d been chased through.
She also noticed that she had IVs in each arm, the tubes red with her blood and connected to a machine.
Could this be a hospital? Had she somehow been rescued, and they’d restrained her to make sure she was okay?
Another whiff of ammonia, and Sara gagged. Her forehead was strapped to a headboard, but she lowered her eyes and saw a male hand holding some smelling salts.
Someone was behind her.
“Who’s there?”
The figure didn’t reply. But the hand brushed up against her neck, and a finger drew itself across Sara’s lips. Then it moved down her neck and squeezed her right breast.
This wasn’t a hospital.
She hadn’t been rescued.
Sara set her jaw, fighting not to cry out. She endured the groping, and then felt hot breath on her ear.
The horror she’d experienced on Rock Island had never gone away. Part of her had died that day, and she’d been coping with that loss ever since.
Meeting Frank, and daring to dream of a future that wasn’t haunted by the past, had given her a small measure of hope that things might change.
But now, being molested in a restraint chair, Sara knew that life had no happy endings. It was failure and misery and torture and nightmares and cruelty. And the only escape from it was death.
Her tormenter walked around the chair to face her. Blackjack Reedy, his eye patch as black as his uncovered eye. Ghost? Demon? Psycho? It didn’t matter, and Sara didn’t care. She was frightened, but more than that, she was sick of living. Jack had been taken away, Frank was no doubt in a similar situation to hers, and now she was once again evil’s plaything, suffering and dying for no reason at all.