Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (18 page)

I thought of Seno and how wrong I’d been about him, and how Tanis had pulled at my heartstrings and played me like a harp. Somehow, probably because of the look in Seno’s eyes, I knew he wasn’t lying to me about Tanis or Zoey. I knew that he’d been betrayed and had to live each waking moment with hatred running through his veins.

After what felt like hours of running through my adrenaline, I made it to Amdia’s brothel. I slipped in through the back door with the code that few people had. To make it past the second security checkpoint, I needed Amdia’s approval. I entered my code, which signaled her, letting her know to check the monitor on her cybernetic arm to see who was requesting access.

The small waiting room wasn’t much bigger than me, with thick metallic walls and barely even enough room to stand. The ceiling was low and the walls were unpolished metal that carried and resonated every little sound. I was breathing hard, practically gasping for air. My body felt wrecked after so much running, and my mind was wandering to places I didn’t want it to go.

I kept thinking about Carver and Tanis and Seno and Vcue and Ko and wondering what would happen to all my teammates. I wouldn’t let myself believe that someone as smart and cunning as Carver had been caught. He’d know when and where to hide, how to evade the cops and make it to his safe house.

The metal door slid open, and I felt a small sense of relief. I walked through the door and down the long, stark hallway to the room Amdia kept as her own. I lifted my fist to bang on her door, but it opened before I could even touch it.

She was standing on the other side of the door in one of her loose, flowing gowns, this one a delicate blue color reminding me of Carver’s hair. I slipped in past her, uncaring if she had someone in the room with her, and began to throw my hands in the air and rant.

“A fucking setup, Amdia. The entire thing was a setup. I should’ve known. I knew something wasn’t right, but I didn’t trust my instincts.

“Jones—” she started, but I ignored her.

“Bruno found out too much and they threw him in the Bazaar for it. Hell, when I was away on my mission, he might’ve even found out more information I don’t know about. He might’ve known who was setting us up!” I was yelling, frantic and completely in a frenzy. I continued to pace up and down her brightly colored room.

Amdia just continued to stand near the doorway, watching me with her arms down by her sides.

“The cops got Ko and Vcue and Seno. I don’t know if they got anyone else. They couldn’t have grabbed Carver; he’s too smart and too fast. God, Amdia,” I said, scrubbing my hands over my face. “What will I do if they have him?”

A few moments ticked by and she still said nothing. I moved my hands from my face and looked at her. The second I did, I knew something was wrong.

She was rod-iron straight, with her jaw clenched and her hands at her sides, balled into fists so tight, the knuckles on her one real hand were white. Amdia was looking at me with huge, pleading eyes as I stared at her.

The door on the opposite side of her room slid open. Before I knew what was happening, an electric rope was wrapped around my neck. It stung less than a stun gun, but enough to have me falling to my knees in seconds. Some kind of black sack was thrown over my head the moment my knees hit the ground, and my arms were being grabbed and yanked behind my back and my wrists tied. The pain in my neck was enough to keep me from talking or fighting back.

Through the fog of my pain, I heard Amdia yelling.

“Let go of me, you pig!” she screamed. “Jones, I’m so sorry! They took my girl; they took Karel from me! They told me they’d break those beautiful bones of hers if I didn’t help them. I hate myself for it, but not as much as I love her!”

I couldn’t blame her or hate her for it. The things people did for loved ones surpassed all reason and most loyalty. I might’ve done the same thing if I were in her place. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I forgave her and to never think twice about what was about to happen to me.

A sharp pain arose somewhere near my lower back.

Everything went black.

* * * *

I woke up in darkness.

My initial thought was that I was running through the recap simulator, and it terrified me. I didn’t want to experience that again, shooting Carver and watching him fall to the ground, usually dead on impact.

But then something cold washed over me, and my eyes shot open, and I began gasping for air.

“Wake the fuck up, Sunshine,” someone to my left said. My head was full of cotton and fog, unable to focus on a single thing. I tried to pull myself together, figure out where I was and who that voice belonged to, but I couldn’t place it.

When I opened my eyes again, there was a little bit of light in the room. I was dripping wet, soaked with freezing cold water that had been splashed over the top of my head. I was also completely naked, strapped firmly into a metal chair with leather cuffs that were cutting off my circulation. There was one bright, white light hanging above me, but all four corners of the room were blacked out from shadows.

The person to my left wasn’t one I recognized; neither was the other man sitting at a table on the opposite side of the room, touching whatever was on the table in front of him. But there was one person sitting in a chair in the corner to my right whom I did recognize. It was the attractive woman doctor who’d come to speak with me in the ENAD facility. I couldn’t say I was surprised to see her there. From the first moment I laid eyes on her, I’d had a dark feeling somewhere in my chest.

The man who was standing came up right in front of me and backhanded me across the face. I’d been hit harder by Tanis, so I started to laugh. It probably wasn’t the appropriate thing to do at that time, but it was my gut instinct. This resulted in my getting punched, much harder, across the face, and that time it did hurt.

He crouched down in front of me. He had an ordinary face comprised of a long nose and a big chin. His eyes were a little deep set, and his skin was naturally tanned. The hair on his head was shaved off at the sides, but the top was dyed an inky blue that shone a bright white from the reflection of the lights. His shirt was dark red and was covered in dirt and grease.

“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.

“Speeding tickets?”

Red-Shirt smiled at me. The man in the corner stood up from his chair and walked over to us, holding a short knife in one hand. He was traditionally handsomer than his friend, shorter also, with an almost boyish face and light brown hair. He had a few freckles across the bridge of his nose, which added to his innocent looks.

“You’re here because of something your friend said to you. You’re easier to get to than him, so,” Freckles said with a shrug.

They were talking about Bruno. So he had figured something else out while I was away on my mission with Ko. Bruno had likely taken the log-in information that Song had given him and found something big. Whatever it was, the information must’ve been worth a lot to warrant kidnapping and torturing an ENAD soldier. And I knew someone inside had to be involved. After all, not many people even knew that ENAD existed. We were elusive, and only a select few people had the privilege of knowing anything about our missions.

“So you’re going to tell us everything he told you, or I’m going to make you scream. In a bad way,” Freckles told me, taking the tip of his knife and running it from my temple, down the side of my neck, my chest, my stomach, and along my thigh. I didn’t like the way Freckles looked at me.

They both stepped back and let their eyes run over my naked body, apparently waiting for something. This wasn’t my first time being tortured. I was a highly trained soldier, built to endure torture far past my pain threshold. Even if I knew something, I’d never tell them, and if they were smart, they would’ve known that. I’d had my nose broken in two places, broken ribs, broken fingers, been shot in the leg and the side, and even been whipped. Hell, if at least my ribs weren’t broken, I wouldn’t even consider it torture.

I smiled at them.

Freckles grinned right back. “Oh, I’m going to have fun with you.”

He stepped back and Red-Shirt stepped up. He punched me across the face twice more, and once in my side. He hadn’t even broken my nose. When he barely received a response from me, he stalked off toward the table. Meanwhile, Freckles came up to me like a cat with a ball of yarn. He dug the end of his knife inch by inch into a fleshy part of my right thigh. I maintained eye contact with him the entire time, willing myself not to wince. The pain was terrible, but my resolve was still set.

He pulled out the knife and laughed, deciding then to make dozens of cuts across my pecs, stomach, and neck, just wide enough so that I started to bleed and itch. Every few moments, he’d dig the knife in a little deeper and openhandedly hit me across the face. The second time he did it, the cut in my lip split open again. All the while, the good doctor was sitting in the corner, watching.

Red-Shirt came back and put a hand on Freckles’s shoulder, signaling him to stop. He held up a blazing green laser machete and shoved it right in front of my face, forcing me to look at it.

“Last chance. What did your boy Bruno tell you about the upcoming election? Otk? Deleviv? What did he do with the information before he was thrown into the Bazaar?” he asked me again. I said nothing, looking down at my bloody chest, trying to even my breathing.

He sighed and pressed the flatter edge of the scorching machete against my left pec. The pain was unbelievable, like a burning of flesh mixed with a poison that laced itself into my bloodstream in mere seconds.

“Still don’t remember anything?” Red-Shirt asked me. I didn’t answer him. He pressed the pointed tip of the machete a few inches into the flesh on my arm.

Laser machetes left scars like chemical burns that never quite healed right. I knew I was going to be scarred deeply from this knife play, if I even survived.

“Nothing?” he asked once more, slowly dragging the machete across my chest in an
X
pattern. It dug in so deep, my body was almost completely coated in my own blood.

Freckles was there again, this time with a slightly larger knife. He slowly, carefully pushed it into the same place he’d stabbed me with the first knife. Freckles began twisting the knife, and it was then that I finally screamed.

When he yanked it out of my leg, I was gasping, looking up at him with all the anger that I felt displayed on my face for him to see. He was smiling at me like a psychopath, probably loving the anger radiating off me.

Red-Shirt hit me hard across the face, cracking open my eyebrow and cheek. Then again even harder, and that time I heard the bone in my nose crack. Blood dripped down my forehead and into my eyes, impairing my sight. I tested the restraints on my wrists, arms, and legs once more. They were just as tight.

One of the legs of my chair was kicked out from under me and I fell to the floor on my side. I landed with a heavy thump, skinning the entire right side of my body. My hair was slick with sweat, pressed against my forehead. The ground smelled wet like mold and dust, and was coated with a thick layer of dirt, mud, and the blood I’d already deposited on it.

Red-Shirt knelt down in front of me, looking at my face.

“Last chance, Sunshine. We know Bruno talked to you about it. Deleviv’s little fuck buddy already told us.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, or the information he wanted, but I wished that I did hold that information deep down inside me so that I could take pleasure knowing that I was never going to give it to him.

When I still didn’t answer him, he proceeded to stand up and kick me hard in the ribs. I cried out, feeling first the pressure and then the throbbing begin.

He kicked me again, lower the next time, somewhere closer to my kidneys. I coughed, spitting up blood on the floor. Red-Shirt didn’t stop; he kept kicking me, probably breaking more ribs, but I was unable to do anything other than remain strapped to the metal chair and take what he was giving me.

“That’s enough,” I heard Dr. Keeri say.

My vision began to fade. I was losing a lot of blood. Slowly everything started to get hazier and hazier, until even the sound of their voices was a thick, heavy fog that loomed around the coast. I wasn’t sure if they eventually shut off the light in the room and left me, or if I’d completely passed out. Either way, the abuse had stopped, at least momentarily, and I found myself drifting away, my last few thoughts lingering on Carver.

* * * *

I woke up again much the same way as before, cold and shaking and gasping for air. I was covered in water again, and was still lying on my side on the cold, dirty floor of the room. My eyes blinked through the water running down my face, trying to focus on whoever else was in the room with me. My body was sore, indicating the adrenaline must’ve worn off because they’d left me for at least a few hours. There was dried blood all over my skin; I could feel it cracking each time I moved a muscle.

The doctor was there, taking my heart rate before injecting me with something via syringe to the neck. I sucked in all the air my lungs could manage.

“I knew something was off with you,” I gritted through my teeth.

“Yes, well, aren’t you observant?” she said.

“You’re not really a doctor for ENAD soldiers, are you?”

“Of course not. I’m Otk’s personal physician, but he loans me out to ENAD every now and again for special cases like you.”

“Like me?”

“Don’t worry soldier; you’re not special. I was merely implying that you’re somewhat valuable to ENAD, so Otk wanted me to make sure your marbles weren’t too loose.”

“So if you work for Otk, why are you here?”

She laughed. The sound was piercing to my ears. “Because he’s a son of a bitch! He wouldn’t know how to run the city properly if he was given a step-by-step booklet.”

Red-Shirt and Freckles came over to me and hoisted my chair into the correct sitting position once again, likely gearing themselves up for round two.

“Remember anything yet?” Freckles asked. I tried to smile at him, but my face felt too sore. Whatever the doctor had injected me with had helped stop the blood from flowing so freely through my open wounds. It also made me feel more awake and aware of my surroundings.