Brainrush 04 - Everlast 01: Everlast (10 page)

“I’m sure your mind is racing,” de Vries said, “as is mine. Because
I now know from our connection that it can be done. Your influence allowed me
to focus and for a brief moment I felt myself encased in my new body. It was
like nothing I’d ever—”

Jake tuned him out. Settling a consciousness into an
entirely new body was a baffling task, even with his help. He remembered the
difficulties he’d faced with patients at the VA dealing with a single limb.
Some cases had required numerous sessions before the slightest connection was
made, and with others he had been unable to achieve any progress whatsoever,
like with Mississippi Mike—

The recollection of what Alex did stopped him cold.

“No,” he said, stepping back.

“But, Mr. Bronson—”

“Absolutely not,” he said, making his way toward the sitting
area to retrieve his pack. He had no clue where to go next but quickened his
pace anyway. Any association with Everlast was a risk to Alex. They must never
know the truth. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he rushed into the
corridor. He was halfway to the front exit when he felt the vibration from the
smartphone in his pocket. He pulled it free, clicked on a link that Doc had
forwarded, and the news article pummeled him like the exhaust blast from a turbojet.

Actress Lacey Hunter Critically Injured,
read the headline
.

He absorbed the article as fast as he could scroll, every
word taking permanent residence in his brain. The car crash was labeled an
accident but he knew better. He imagined Lacey on her deathbed and the air was
crushed from his lungs. He needed to be there.

As he rushed out the main entrance, he had a moment of
indecision regarding which direction to turn, not remembering where he’d parked
the car.

Not yet! he thought, clenching his hands. He growled in
frustration and finally the memorized maps clarified in his consciousness.

But it was a warning sign.

The loss of contact with the mini was beginning to take its
toll. 

J
AKE RAN ACROSS THE BRIDGE
spanning the canal next
to the Everlast building, racing across the park toward the red-light district
where he’d parked his rental car. He had just turned the corner half a block
from his destination when he spotted them—two young Asian men lingering near
the vehicle, their gazes averting a fraction of a second after he’d popped into
their line of sight. One turned to look in the shop window beside the car and
the other strolled casually across the street—too casually. Alarm bells went
off in his mind, and he slid to a stop and swiveled his view. Another man appeared
around the corner behind him, eyes targeting Jake, his lips moving as if talking
to himself. A fourth man stared at Jake from across the cobbled street.

All at once, the team moved toward him like a pack of wolves.

Jake took off like a sprinter at the starting gun, dashing
past a row of windows that would later be occupied by women hoping to hook a
customer. The four men charged forward, the two in front on a collision course.
Jake shouldered through the front door of the establishment and sped down a musky,
dormitory-like corridor lined with doors, several of them open to reveal small
bedrooms and dressing tables. A barely dressed young woman stepped into the
hall and he stumbled in an effort to keep from bowling her over. She screamed,
their legs caught, and they went down in a tangle.

The noise brought a rush of other women out of their rooms,
and he found himself facing a gauntlet of angry glares. One girl smacked her
palm with a black leather riding crop, daring him to try anything. Some were
young, some were middle-aged, and he knew from his reading that they practiced
their profession with the support of the community. But it was the manner in
which they came together in aid of one of their own that touched a chord in
him.

“Are you okay?” he asked breathlessly, helping the girl to
her feet.

She nodded.

He gave her and the others the most disarming grin he could
muster. “I’m really sorry. No time to chat but trust me, I’m one of the good
guys.”

A few had started to smile back when the men chasing him
stampeded through the front door. “And they’re the bad guys,” he said, backing
down the hall.

The men hesitated when the girls pushed their way forward to
shield Jake from view. The girl he’d stumbled into grabbed his arm and pulled
him down the hall.

“This way!” she said.

Jake had started to follow when the first gunshot echoed
down the corridor.

Girls screamed, men shouted, Jake spun around and charged in
a fit of rage. The women scattered, one of them helping a girl with a shoulder
wound into a room just as Jake barreled past and launched himself into the man
holding a pistol. The Asian tumbled backward, taking another man down with him.
The gun clattered to the floor. Jake’s fists pummeled the man’s face and it
felt good when he heard the crunch of nose cartilage. The man went limp but
Jake’s fists continued to jackhammer into him. Hands grabbed him from behind
and he reared back and head-butted someone in the jaw, then his elbow lashed
around and shattered a knee. The other men jumped into the fray and suddenly
Jake’s world was filled with grunts and groans and a blur of flying fists,
heaving muscles, and snapping kicks. He embraced the violence, fighting with
all his might.

An ordinary man can do extraordinary things when fueled
by the need to protect those he loves.

The thought broke through his fury and he was yanked back to
reality, reminded of why he was here—
to allow himself to be taken
. He
stopped struggling, and was about to be rewarded with a kick to the head when
the men around him froze as one, seemingly responding to a silent order to
stop.

“Understood,” one of them said to no one in particular. Then
each man leaned over and lifted Jake to his feet. One secured his hands with
zip ties.

Jake’s mind cleared and he took in the scene. The first
attacker was unconscious, his face a bloody pulp. A second was on his butt,
grimacing in pain, his hands nursing his right knee, his lower leg canted
unnaturally to one side. The two men holding Jake were breathing heavily, one
with an eye that was swollen shut. The other yanked Jake toward the exit.

As he turned to go, the young girl from earlier leaned
halfway out her doorway. Her wide-eyed expression was filled with horror and a
wave of shame washed over him.

Like a propeller with loose restraining nuts, he was spinning
out of control.

***

The scene was like a recurring
nightmare, Jake thought. Tied up in a chair and surrounded by assholes.

Someone removed the silk hood from his head and he had to
squint against the sudden brightness from a bank of overhead lights. Three
people stood before him—the two guys who had remained standing during the
brawl, and a striking Asian woman he guessed was in charge. Her black hair was gathered
with rings into a braid that hung over the front of her shoulder to the waist
of her black jumpsuit. Three metallic bobbles dangled from its end. She had the
high cheekbones, smooth skin, and pouty lips of a model, but there was a hunger
in her dark eyes that unnerved him.

“We can do this the easy way,” she said, her voice soft as
she studied him with crossed arms. She rummaged through a red-leather purse on
the table beside her and pulled out a filled hypodermic. She flicked it with a
finger, removed the cap, and squirted out a short stream. “Or the easier way.”

Interesting, Jake thought. He’d expected to be hauled away
to join his family and friends. Instead, the woman had questions.

Me, too.

Her two thugs stood at parade rest behind her in the small
room, which was furnished only with the table the woman was using and two armless
wooden chairs, one of which Jake sat on. One of the thugs was now wearing
glasses. The second man glared at Jake through one eye, the other sealed tight by
puffiness and bruising. Jake smiled inwardly. He had a few cuts and bruises of
his own but they were nothing compared to the damage he’d dished out. They must
have been under orders to go easy on him.

Too bad for you, suckers.

His ankles had been zip-tied to the legs of the chair and his
wrists were still zipped together in front of him. He turned his wrists over
and glanced at his watch. It was 12:44 p.m. The drug would’ve begun to wear off
by now. If he was going to make a move, it had to happen in the next few
minutes.

He had few options and limited intel. The drive in the car
had taken less than ten minutes, so despite the hood they’d made him wear, he
knew he was still in the old city. The room had a shuttered window, but even
through its closed slats he could hear the muffled sounds of traffic. He
suspected he was on a second floor. A second vehicle had followed them, and
from the sounds of car doors closing when they’d arrived, he guessed at least
three more guards were close by.

“You have questions?” he asked the woman.

“Of course.”

“So why don’t we have a conversation?”

She arched an eyebrow, lowering the hypo to her side. He had
the distinct impression she was disappointed he’d decided to go the easy route.

“Why don’t I go first?” he said. “Where’s my family?”

She snickered. “I’ll be asking the questions. And one way”—she
held up the hypo—“or the other, you will answer.”

“No.”

Her reaction told him the response wasn’t what she’d
expected, but her expression morphed quickly into a leer like that of a
torturer who’d just received permission to break out her tools. “We’ve
discussed the easy and easier way,” she said. “Perhaps we should discuss the
hard way.”

“You don’t scare me, bitch.”

Her face flushed and she moved in a blur. Her body coiled,
her free hand flipping her braid to one side with a snap of her wrist. The
braid’s momentum accelerated tenfold as she spun a circle in a half crouch, and
its bobbled end whipped around and struck Jake’s jaw with the force of a brass-knuckle
punch.

His head snapped to one side, hot pain exploding from his
jaw. He spit blood from his mouth and stared defiantly at her. “Listen, lady, I’m
the Brainman. Isn’t that what you call me? I’ve been beaten, poked, prodded,
and drugged by some of the most imaginative creeps on the planet, and there
isn’t a damn thing you can do to make me talk unless you answer my question. Now,
where the hell is my family?”

She still held the hypo in one hand, but her other gripped
the end of her braid as if she was about to launch another strike. Jake braced
himself but suddenly her eyes grew distant—just as the men’s had earlier during
the fight at the brothel—and he realized she was wearing a comm as well.

While she hesitated, he raised his cuffed wrists and rubbed
his forearm against his swelling chin, using the move to hide his mouth as he
slid his tongue around to confirm that the ampoule was still affixed behind his
molar.

Not yet.

If the woman had a boss speaking to her over a comm net,
then it was likely the boss was located elsewhere. And if Jake’s family and
friends had been taken there, instead of here....He recalculated, considering
the tilt of the people before him. While the woman spoke English with a refined
British accent that could have originated locally, the goons behind her had
spoken with thick Asian accents. The team could’ve come from anywhere.

The woman sighed and refocused her attention on Jake, releasing
her grip on her braid and replacing the hypo in her purse. “Very well, Mr. Brainman,”
she said, drawing out the name and dragging the free chair around to sit
directly in front of him. “Let’s have a conversation. You may call me Min. I’ll
start by telling you that your family is safe.”

“Where are—?”

“Now, now. I have a few questions for you first. Let’s start
with a simple one. Who are you?”

“I need to know where they are!”

“They’re safe, and you need to accept the fact that I’m not
going to tell you where they are until after you answer my questions, starting
with your name.” She sat back and crossed her arms.

“You took my family, for God’s sake. You know my name. What
the hell is going on?”

The two guards stiffened at the outburst. They each took a
step closer.

Min’s dark eyes flared and her voice was sharp. “Francesca.
Ahmed. Sarafina. Alex. They are depending on you,
Mr. Brainman
,” she
said, spitting the name through clenched teeth.

A clutch of fear choked him.

She pulled a smartphone from her pocket, tapped the screen,
and tilted it in his direction. It showed a video of Francesca seated in the passenger
compartment of a plush aircraft. Her hands were zip-tied and her eyes were at
half-mast as if she was drugged, but otherwise she appeared unharmed. The woman
pulled the phone back and placed it facedown on her lap. “Last chance. What is
your name?”

The sight of Francesca broke something in Jake and he fought
to control his breathing. Finally, he sank back in his chair. “My name is Jake
Bronson.”

Her satisfied smile fueled his anger, but he checked himself.
His turn would come.

She nodded to the man with the glasses and he pulled a
knife, snapped open the blade, and moved toward Jake.

Jake flinched, cocking his bound hands defensively. The man
hesitated.

“We’re going to remove the wrist cuffs, Mr. Bronson,” Min
said. “We’ll leave the ankle restraints in place for now, but those will come
off when you show us that you can behave.”

If they wanted to kill him, they could’ve easily done so
before now. He held up his hands and the guard cut them free with one swipe of
the blade. When the man stepped back in place, he adjusted his glasses, as if
to get a clear view of whatever was coming up next. Jake rubbed his chafed
wrists.

“Tell me,” she said. “Why is it that you launched the alien
pyramid from the Afghan mountains eight years ago?

“W-what?” The question was so unexpected that he had
difficulty wrapping his mind around it.

“In your own words, tell me what happened,” Min said, her
index finger casually tapping the back of the phone on her lap.

He understood the not-so-subtle message. So, despite the
fact that he had no clue as to why the topic was of any interest to her or the
man pulling her strings, he thought back to his first encounter with the alien
pyramid in Battista’s mountain fortress and told her what had happened. She
guided the conversation, leading him like a lawyer would a witness on the stand
as she jumped from one topic to the next, stopping him at one point when he’d
gone into too much detail.

“We’ll get into that later,” she said. “For now, let’s stick
to the highlights.”

The conversation dredged up memories he’d have preferred to
keep buried. It fueled his feelings of guilt. But he continued to cooperate,
hoping it would lead to answers about what was happening.

After Afghanistan, they talked about the pyramid launched
from Venezuela, the nuclear explosion that had followed, and the drug that had
been used to poison the water system in Los Angeles. Finally, she asked about
the assault on the island, the triggering of the Grid, and the devastation it had
caused around the world. He answered in general terms, freely admitting his own
role but omitting any reference to the involvement of his friends and family,
especially Alex’s part in saving the planet. She didn’t press those issues but
he suspected that would come later. When he spoke about the explosion and
volcanic eruption on the island, her gaze seemed to lose its focus for a
moment.

“How many died?” she asked.

“One thousand four hundred and fifty-two.”

“You know the exact number?”