“And then she put something in me, like in my groin area.”
Agent Scanlon led Ian out the door in handcuffs. “I think it’s better for you if you stop talking now.”
“I’m serious.” No one had come until morning. Scanlon was the first person Ian could talk to.
A white van was parked at the back of the building. Agent Scanlon sat Ian on a long metal bench that ran along the driver’s side wall. An identical bench ran on the opposite side. Both had a stout metal bar underneath, and she chained Ian’s handcuffs to it. He could slide back and forth, but he couldn’t get up. And his hands were held together.
“Thanks,” he said. It only seemed polite.
Scanlon wasn’t amused. “Stay away from little girls,” she warned.
“No, no, no.” Ian’s eyes got big. “It wasn’t like that.”
The van shook as she stepped down. Her colleagues brought another suspect, a woman. She was taller than Ian and muscular. She looked Hispanic, or maybe Middle Eastern. Her head was shaved. She had tattoos on her neck. Both her hands and feet were chained and she wore an orange jump suit with a large number six stenciled in black across her chest. She sat down opposite Ian and the officers chained her bonds to the bar.
She stared at him like she was sizing him up for a takedown.
“Looks like we’re on the same bus,” he joked.
“How nice for you.”
Doors shut. The van started. Ian rocked back and forth as it pulled away. He put his head back and shut his eyes. He was tired. He’d barely slept. Every time he’d drifted off, a stiff pinch of anxiety had gripped his heart.
The back of the van jostled over every bump in the road and kept him awake. Ian sighed. He was sick of worrying about his predicament. He tried to think of any enemies he might have made, someone who would want to see this happen to him, but came up with nothing. He’d barely made friends. It didn’t make any sense.
What if it wasn’t supposed to? Ian opened his eyes. What if he was some kind of patsy? Like Lee Harvey Oswald. He was certainly acting the part.
Ian noticed Betty Six counting softly to herself.
“135 . . . 136 . . . 137 . . .”
Ian glanced at her, but she didn’t return his gaze. When she hit 200, she leaned over and brought her head to her hands. Ian watched as she pulled back her right eyelid and removed her eyeball. His eyes got big.
It was fake.
She pressed the white ball between the fingers of both hands and twisted. The two halves began to unscrew. She turned and pulled them apart. Pressed tightly inside was a small folding tool, two sets of foam earplugs, and a glob of gray putty attached to a button-like disk.
She removed the tool, held the eyeball in her teeth like a ghoul, and began picking the lock on her bonds. Ian sat still, repeating the same words over and over in his mind.
I’m a witness. I’m a witness.
He heard metal scratch on metal. She was counting out loud now, lips rippling around the fake eye.
“272 . . . 273 . . . 274 . . .”
After a few seconds, she pulled a long chain free and dropped it on the floor, then she unlocked the cuffs on her hands and feet. She stood and looked at Ian. He looked back, then immediately away. His heart thump-thumped in his chest.
Betty Six took the eyeball from her mouth and put a foam plug in each ear. Then she put plugs in Ian’s, removed the putty with the button, and put the eye back in her head. She walked to the front of the moving van and pounded on the metal walls.
“Hey! Hey, hey, hey, hey!” She slapped the walls like a drum, over and over. “Help!” the woman yelled. “He’s trying to rape me!”
Ian slid down the seat. He thought about his parting words to Agent Scanlon. Oh, no. No, no, no.
There were voices in the cab. The van began to slow. The agents were pulling over.
Betty Six was tall and had to hunch as she walked to the doors at the rear. The van stopped with a creak of the brakes. She pressed the putty into the crease between the doors, then turned to Ian and pointed to the back.
Ian slid across the bench, dragging his bonds across the bar. She pressed the button on the putty, walked back, and hunched over him in the corner.
The agents were talking at the rear of the vehicle. A key slid into the lock. The handles turned.
BOOM!
The van rocked violently back and forth, bouncing on its tires. The bomb ripped one of the rear doors free of its mount, and it shattered against the windshield of a parked car. The car’s alarm blared as its lights flashed. The van’s other door dangled by one latch. Two agents lay motionless on the pavement. Ian didn’t recognize the first. The second was Agent Scanlon. Her eyes were open, facing the sky. She wasn’t breathing.
Ian stared. His body tingled from the blast. Agent Scanlon was dead. He’d never seen a dead body before.
Traffic stopped. People on the street ran behind parked cars and trash bins. They watched curiously, but no one moved. Betty Six hopped out and grabbed a pistol and a set of keys from the first agent’s belt. Ian heard her walk to the front and start the van, which pulled away with a jerk.
“Shit.” This wasn’t good.
The van disappeared down surface roads. It ran an intersection amid honking horns and drove through several old neighborhoods before crashing through the gate at a train crossing just before the engine barreled through. That’s why she had been counting. She’d bought herself a little time.
The van pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a self-storage building.
Great place to hide a body.
The engine shut off. A heavy, sliding door was raised. Betty Six appeared around the back and hopped into the van. She unlocked Ian’s chains and pulled him to his feet. She was strong. She pushed him out the back. Ian’s hands were still cuffed. He stumbled to the pavement and fell.
She hopped down after him.
“Please don’t kill me.” It was the stupidest thing, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Why would I do that?”
Ian looked confused.
“Then I wouldn’t get paid.”
Ian’s mouth opened. She wasn’t breaking out of jail. She’d turned herself in to break him out. That’s why there were two sets of earplugs.
This had been planned.
“Are you with the Minus Faction?”
She pointed to an open storage room behind him. Inside was a black Mustang. It barely fit. The trunk was open.
Ian looked back as if to confirm the silent order, then climbed into the rear of the vehicle. It smelled like oil and marijuana.
“Tell me something,” she said with her hand on the lid.
Ian shuffled to get as comfortable as he could, but it was awkward.
“What’d you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“What makes a snot like you worth a quarter mil?”
Ian’s eyes got wide. “A quarter million? Dollars? Holy fuck . . .”
Betty Six closed the trunk and locked it. Her voice was muffled through the metal. “You want a tip, kid?”
Ian didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t trust anybody.”
Ian was bound to a metal chair with packing tape. It wound around his wrists and ankles. He was groggy. His head throbbed. He felt like he’d just come out of surgery. He was still in the orange jumpsuit, but his shoes and socks had been removed and the soles of his feet were pressed to cold concrete. He couldn’t see anything. He coughed.
Someone removed the shroud from his head and he blinked. He was in a warehouse, or maybe a garage. It was big—every shuffle returned a faint echo. Other than that, it was totally quiet. It smelled too strongly of industrial cleaner, as if someone had been overzealous in their attempts to remove a stain.
Betty Six sat two meters in front of him.
She was in exactly the same predicament.
Ian wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but that certainly wasn’t it. He stared at the woman. Her real eye was bloodshot. She was sweating profusely and her lip was swollen. It looked like she’d been beaten. She’d traded the orange jumpsuit for a T-shirt and jeans. As the pair faced each other in silence, her warning echoed in his mind.
There was a clatter at Ian’s back, as if a bucket or metal container hit the ground. Or was kicked over. Cold water ran along the floor under the chair, dousing his feet. He shivered and instinctively tried to lift his legs, but they were held by the tape. His wet toes wiggled. It felt like the kiss of death: icy, prickly, and uncaring.
The water ran slowly forward, darkening the floor and filling the space between Ian and his companion. He saw Betty shiver when the puddle reached her. Her toes clenched. They looked each other in the eye. He could tell she didn’t know what was happening either.
To Ian’s right, a white plastic crate filled with dark foam rested on the ground. Next to it, a lensed device, like a large gray LED projector, was mounted on a tripod and pointed directly at him. A trio of thick wires emerged from the side and snaked away across the floor behind him. There was no brand or marking of any kind on the device, but Ian saw a small symbol on the case near the electronic lock: three circles connected in the center by three lines.
The woman cleared her throat. She looked sheepishly at something behind Ian. “I’m supposed to tell you . . .” She paused. “There are many nightmares in the world. And one of them is in this room.”
Her voice was hesitant and her cadence irregular. Her eyes moved back and forth. Ian realized she was reading from a prompt, a screen maybe, something behind him that he couldn’t see.
Her words were slow and deliberate, as if she’d been warned to read exactly what was displayed and be very clear. “I am going to ask you some questions. You need to listen. And answer. If you don’t answer, we will”—she closed her eyes and swallowed—“both be tortured. Please nod if you understand.”
Tortured. Ian heard the word and lost all rational thought. He nodded. His bare toes gripped the cold floor. His heart beat faster. His fingers felt the metal of the chair and the biting stick of the tape.
“First, they want to apologize.” Her eyes tracked back and forth, reading the prompt.
They? They who?
“They prefer to make friends rather than enemies. Unfortunately, time is not on your side. But if you cooperate, you will be released unharmed. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
She read. “According to the police report just filed, your name is . . . Lando Calrissian?” She turned her eyes from the prompt and looked at Ian, who gave no expression. The woman pleaded with him in silence.
Ian thought about the little girl and what she tried to show him on the tablet. “Okay,” was all he could muster.
Betty Six’s eyes were wide. Without the freedom to use her own words, she was begging Ian not to lie.
She began reading again. “What do you know of the Minus Faction?”
Ian shook his head. He answered quickly. “Nothing. I hadn’t even heard of them before.”
“Before what?”
“Before yesterday.”
Ian’s heart was pounding so fast he could feel it rocking the chair. He could hear the blood rush through his ears. His skin tingled. His senses were electric. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face and onto his neck. It seemed like something terrible was about to happen.
“You received a series of messages before you were arrested. Who were they from?”
Ian wasn’t sure what he should say.
“Answer the question.”
“They were from someone named Prophet. I’ve never heard of him before.”
“What did he tell you?”
“He warned me I was about to be arrested. That’s all.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I swear. That’s all. I’ve never heard of him before. Please, I’m telling the truth.”
“Are you? Then what is your name?”
Ian thought about Emli and Digby and everyone he knew. They wouldn’t get hurt because of him. No one would. “Lando Calrissian.” His voice cracked. He sounded like he was twelve.
Ian heard steps behind him, heavy but muffled, like thick-soled boots.
Betty saw something. She turned her eyes from it and continued reading. “This is your last chance,” she warned.
Ian clenched his fingers and toes. He was starting to panic. Then he saw the woman’s eyes go wide . . .
His entire body convulsed. His bare soles burned. His muscles locked. His heartbeat went irregular, like a bongo drum. His temples throbbed. He saw lights in his eyes. Then it stopped.
He panted. His heart had gone haywire. He felt utterly helpless as it sputtered like a stalled engine inside his chest. He felt his lungs quiver from the irregular beat. He began to breathe in shallow gasps. His long muscles twitched randomly. It felt like his pulse was hammering his eyes out of their sockets from behind. His head rolled back.
Ian forced several long, slow, deep breaths and tried to reclaim his heartbeat. The soles of his feet alternated between a total lack of feeling and a prickly, stabbing pain. He lifted his head. From the look on her face, he guessed Betty Six had felt it too. Ian glanced at the stretch of water between them, then at her bare feet. It was their only connection. It must have carried a current.
They’d both just been electrocuted.
She blinked and after a moment started reading again. Her voice shook. It was weak. “What is your name?”
“Lando Calrissian,” he repeated with tingling, blubbering lips. His skin was flushed. His heart was still skipping beats. He thought he might genuinely shit his pants. He clenched his ass.
“Where is the man Prophet?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I swear.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know any others.”
There was a long pause. Ian swallowed hard. His fingers were twitching.
Betty read slowly. “It’s difficult for those with a conscience to stomach seeing someone else suffering. Because of them. Because of their weakness. Only a sociopath, someone with a clinical absence of empathy, is unmoved.” Her lower lip quivered. “Are you a sociopath, Mr. Calrissian?”
Ian’s heart sank to his toes. “No,” he whispered.
“Then tell them what they want!” The scream echoed. It wasn’t prompted. Betty Six strained against her bonds like she wanted to fly across the gap and strangle Ian. “For fuck’s sake, they’re going to kill me!”
Ian shut his eyes. Her voice had cracked. Each word was a tire over uneven pavement. Ian couldn’t look.
“Bastard . . .” she gasped.
Ian waited with closed lids, breathing hard. In and out. In and out. After a moment, she began again. Their captors must have encouraged her.
“Do you believe they will kill?”
Ian nodded.
There was a noise, a snap of a shutter run backwards. Then a fading, high-pitched whine. Ian looked into the projector. Behind the lens, he saw pulsing stars.
“You will be given orders. You will carry them out. If you do not, those close to you will be hurt. Or killed. We know who you are.” She stopped. “Mr. Tendo.”
He shut his eyes again.
“Don’t worry. We want only your obedience. But know this. If you talk to the police, we will see. If you try to run, we will see. If you pass a note to a stranger, we will see. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Now we will give you . . .” Betty Six looked at Ian. There was a tear. She didn’t finish.
“No, no, no. Don’t do this. I agreed, okay. Just tell me what you want me to do. Okay? That’s it! I said yes. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Yes. You will.” It was a man’s voice, raspy and cold like the water under Ian’s feet.
He appeared to the left. He wore dark clothes that hid his entire body. They were padded and thick and looked like a motorcycle racing suit. Or maybe armor. His gloves were ridged and had round knobs on the palms. His thin helmet was barely larger than his head. It was dark and sleek and masked all his features. The faceplate was polished and impenetrable. On the chest of his jacket, a silver oriental dragon snaked back and forth. It clutched curved lightning in its claws.
He walked to Ian and stood over him for a moment, looking down. Ian could see his own twisted reflection in the shiny, dark helmet. He saw his orange jumpsuit. He saw a clear screen at his back, like a long teleprompter. It had light blue letters. That’s what Betty had been reading. Whoever was interrogating him wasn’t in the room.
The dark man grabbed Ian’s chair and slid it out of the puddle. Ian felt dry concrete beneath his swollen, throbbing feet. He winced. It stung like sandpaper on a ruptured blister. Then the stranger walked to Betty Six.
Her lips quivered. She shook her head and whispered pleadings like the babble of an infant. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I asked for more money please don’t do this.” It was one long stream of syllables. “Please please please.”
The dark man walked around behind her. He stretched his gloved fingers and made fists. He flexed his arms downward as if he was a bodybuilder at a show. Then he grabbed both sides of the woman’s shaved head and pressed. His whole body tensed.
Everything in the garage hung still like the calm before an ocean surge.
Betty Six screamed and thrashed about, convulsing like an epileptic. Ian watched in horror as flashes of light, like the occult lightning of a thundercloud, rippled through her. It flashed behind her eye, at the back of her skull, deep in her chest. The skin of her face bubbled and blistered. The ink of her tattoos bled and ran. The stubbly hair on her scalp shriveled. Her eyebrows caught fire. Her real eye burst over her face.
Then it was over.
It had lasted only seconds, but the damage was incredible. Smoke drifted upward from her body. Every visible patch of skin was flushed and flaking if not blistered and peeled. She had round, charred impressions on the sides of her head matching the knobs on the dark man’s gloves. She stared forward, one-eyed and lidless.
Ian could smell the sweet-pungent odor of burnt flesh. It turned his stomach. He stared at the fuming wreck. Something hard hit him in the face. A fist.
Crack.
Right in the nose. Blood drained over his lips and onto his tongue. He tasted metal. His eyes watered so heavily he couldn’t see.
He heard the dark man’s cold, raspy voice. “You belong to us, now.”