Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) (38 page)

“No, not at all, ma’am. We’ve got security clearance for the labs.”

“Fine. Follow me, please.”

Those hands began pulling Black along through what had to be the lobby of the building.

Still fighting grogginess, he struggled to track everything around him as they walked. He heard a lot of people pass them in the larger front room and then fewer when they entered an adjacent corridor. Almost a dozen more walked past him by the time they reached the first turn. No way to know anything about security, but obviously a lot of people walked around freely in here, so security was relatively lax, at least at the front end of the facility.

Maybe that’s why they kept him hooded in here, and drugged. Maybe it was less about the ride in the back of a series of windowless vans and more about not being able to recognize any part of the facility until he got to the secure area.

After walking down a few different corridors, it got a lot quieter.

Then, all at once, they stopped. Doors pinged and opened in front of him, and Black realized he was standing outside of an elevator.

They brought him inside, and for a moment, the doors remained open as a series of smaller beeps happened by what must be the elevator panel to the right of the doors.

There must be some kind of security measure on the elevator itself. Pass card maybe. Maybe even a bio-scan. Either way, after a short delay, the doors closed and his stomach dropped.

It seemed to go down a long ways.

When the elevator car finally stopped and the doors pinged again, Black had no idea how many floors they’d passed. The best he could do was estimate how long it had taken them to get from the upper floor to this one.

Whatever stood on the other side of those doors was quiet.

The woman’s high-heeled shoes clicked hollowly on the floor as she walked in front of them. Again, they stopped a few times and he heard several series of beeps that told him they had more security down here. After the fourth of these, the door opened to the sound of other people, as well as warmer air that smelled of human beings.

He knew they must have recycled air down here, too, so he couldn’t guesstimate their number, but he heard at least three greet the woman as they passed.

They called her “Dr. Nguyen.”

They walked through a few more whooshing glass doors, then Black found himself in a smaller room, which he determined from the air flow as well as the acoustics. They guided him over to a padded table, pushing him to sit on it, then to lie down. He felt his muscles tense all over as they un-cuffed one of his wrists, cuffing it to something metal over his head while they cuffed his other wrist to the table.

He clenched every muscle he had when they then cuffed his other wrist to the opposite side. They fastened a chain to the collar on his neck then, doing it on both sides so that he couldn’t raise his head.

Then they repeated the process with his ankles.

“This one is compliant,” Dr. Nguyen remarked. “He’s not struggling at all.”

The guard finishing up with his right ankle let out a humorous sound. “I think it’s probably the drugs, doc. We gave him a bit extra, because of the size of him. He was a fighter in the yard, so don’t take any chances with him.”

“Noted,” she said, sighing. “Thank you for bringing him down.” She raised her voice slightly. “Jonathan? Would you mind escorting these men back upstairs?”

“Sure thing, Dr. Nguyen.”

A few seconds later, the doors closed, and the room suddenly got a lot quieter. Black could still feel at least one other person in the room besides Dr. Nguyen. He found himself breathing harder, fighting to remain silent. They still had the hood over his head.

Even as he thought it, Dr. Nguyen sighed, speaking to someone else.

“Okay, let’s have a look at him.”

Someone walked over to him, wearing rubber-soled shoes that squeaked, versus the high heels he’d heard on Dr. Nguyen. As soon as they reached his side, the hood was yanked off his head. The sudden brightness of the room made him wince and blink.

He heard twin gasps and found the faces of a woman and a man over him.

“What?” The woman attached to the voice he’d heard of Dr. Nguyen walked over to the other two, so then he had three faces over him.

Dr. Nguyen paused, staring down at his eyes.

She was prettier than he’d imagined her in his mind, a petite Vietnamese woman with long black hair, maybe in her mid-forties. The two others in the room included a slim man with thinning brown hair and hazel eyes behind designer-framed glasses who looked to be in his late thirties, and a blond woman with a pug nose who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“Is he one of them?” the man asked. He continued to stare at Black’s eyes, his own holding a kind of wonder. “I’ve never seen eyes like that before.”

Dr. Nguyen frowned down at Black too, but shook her head. “No. The eye pigmentation for those carrying the V-gene is always the same. They gave him blood tests at the prison. He’s definitely human.”

The blond woman giggled, staring down at him. “He’s really cute,” she said. “Did they say what he was in for?”

“Murder,” Dr. Nguyen said, her voice cold. “Multiple homicides, at least two of them with special circumstances. Like all of them, his crimes were bad enough that he’s not eligible for parole, Gina, so pull yourself together. I don’t care what he looks like, he’s a monster.”

Black was looking around the room, fighting to clear his eyes.
 

It was surprisingly bare, but definitely had the stamp of science and medicine. Glass walls enclosed the relatively small space on one side, and he could see people walking by in the corridor outside the room, a few looking through the thick glass at him curiously. An EKG machine and a ventilator stood near the wall, along with defibrillator and paddles. He saw a cloth-covered tray with various instruments lying on the counter attached to a wall-length storage cabinet. By the bed or table itself, he didn’t see anything apart from a stool, though.

That, and an I.V. stand.

He found himself watching warily as Dr. Nguyen began attaching a bag to that stand, checking the writing on the front before she attached the tubing.

“You’re going to start him already?”

“It’s better to give them the first dose while they’re still drugged from transport,” Dr. Nguyen answered coolly. “And I want to be here in case he flatlines.”

Black felt his stomach drop.

“What’s in it?” he said, his voice short. “What’s in the bag?”

Dr. Nguyen frowned down at him, then looked at the blond girl with that strangely pig-like nose. “Prep an additional 0.05 milligram dose of
lorazepam, in case he goes into convulsions.” She glanced at him. “Check his vitals first. He could be an addict, with tolerance like that... assuming the Crenshaw people knew what they were doing in dosing him.” She leaned over him, checking his pupils with a small flashlight. After checking his pupils twice, she frowned again. “He shouldn’t even be conscious right now.”

She met his gaze, her mouth firm. “Are you a drug addict?”

He shook his head.

She continued to look at him, her mouth pursed, then glanced at the man with the designer glasses. “He’s probably lying. I’m going to go ahead and start the first dose.”

“What’s in it?” Black said again.

She gave him another hard look, but ignored the question.

When Black tensed his arm up as the blond held the needle over him, she frowned at him, wagging a finger like he was a dog.

“Now just relax here, okay? We’re not going to hurt you.”

“Bullshit,” Black snapped, glaring up at her. “You just said I might fucking die from this. Do you think I’m deaf?”

But Dr. Nguyen apparently had heard enough. She looked at glasses guy.

“Hit him with the lorazepam. Just have the paddles ready.”

Black struggled for real that time. Even remembering why he was there, what Brick wanted from him, what he’d threatened Miri with, threatened him with, it wasn’t enough for him to lie there and let them try to kill him. The three of them ended up holding him down while they slid the needle into the arm on the opposite side of the IV. He gasped when it went in, and within seconds it seemed, his mind tilted, nearly making him sick.

“Fuck,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. He blinked, fighting to focus his eyes.

“What’s with the collar?” the man said from over him. He fingered it, like it was an expensive piece of jewelry. “Did they tell you, Dr. Nguyen?”

Dr. Nguyen only shrugged. “They just said he’s dangerous. I guess they’ve used it to control him when he gets too violent.”

“Don’t they have solitary for that?” the man asked.

She gave him a level stare. “He was
in
solitary, Chris.”

The man nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Black was having trouble focusing on them now though. He could only watch, his neck feeling like it was made of cement, as she inserted a second needle in his other arm, this one connected to the IV. He watched her tape it there, then check the tube up to the IV bag. Turning on the tap, she squeezed it between her hands to get it going.

“I hope this one survives,” Gina breathed, watching his face as his eyes struggled to stay open. She smiled at him shyly. “He’s way too pretty to die.”

Dr. Nguyen didn’t answer. She only stared down at him with that faint frown on her lips, and checked her watch.

It was the last thing Black remembered.

HE WOKE UP screaming.

Pain ripped him out of unconsciousness, but the pain alone couldn’t force his eyes to work, or his mind to function, much less to move in straight lines. He couldn’t control his thoughts. He couldn’t control his body, or the sounds he made. Sounds echoed around him, distorted as if coming from under water, but he couldn’t make sense of any of it.

People were there, but he didn’t want them.

He screamed for her...

He screamed... his whole mind reaching for her, his light...

He barely felt it when the collar ignited.

That pain that ripped through him––the other pain, that liquid heat setting his blood on fire, trying to eat its way through his skin and bones and flesh, a pain even the drugs couldn’t force him to sleep through––wiped out every other sensation. It felt like dissolving in a vat of acid. It felt like watching himself burn alive. Like being hacked to bits with a dull machete.

Eventually, however, the collar did what the drugs could not.

Black’s mind cut out... and he slumped back to the bed.