Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (16 page)

The figure smiled, pleased that he had found me.

“Wakey, wakey,” he said, his voice glowing with playful elation.

He had found me.

Zundergrub had found me.

Part Two

“Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light”

Chapter Nine

I hit him.

My muscles complained, like straining a rubber band too far, tendons close to tearing, but they complied just enough to raise my gauntleted right hand into his face. There was a metallic thud and I felt the impact as he recoiled, blurring away into the murky depths of my vision. Something came closer and struck me, another blur I couldn’t recognize. I knew it wasn’t Zundergrub because the doctor’s voice was muffled and distant; I might not have understood the specific words, but I could guess who he was cursing about. My dulled senses felt another blow, my body reflexively contorting against the force, but it barely registered as pain.

“Hey,” someone said, a loud, familiar voice. “That’s my boy. Just take it easy.”

Looking around, the source of that voice wasn’t easy to discern among the muddled shapes. Only one shape had any definition, the unmistakable bald head, the same facial hair and burning dark eyes, the long nose, now stained with crimson, the dirty lab coat. Somehow Zundergrub was clearer to me than the rest, though I didn’t know if that was his doing, or my seething hatred filling in the gaps subconsciously.

Getting up was impossible, a herculean task that sent my head spinning, as if I were sitting in one of those test pilot centrifuges at fifteen Gs, my eyes rolled in their sockets, spinning the world on its axis. I collapsed onto the gooey bed. What that was about, I didn’t even want to guess. Were we in some dream? Was that the goddess’ power? A woman rose over me, coming close enough that I could smell her aroma, lilac mixed with sweat and leather, but her face was a blurry mess, her hair like a flowered field waving in my face.

“He’s going to choke,” she said, close enough that I could understand her words clearly. Her companions were out range and their words were garbled mush. My ears wouldn’t cooperate; the canals felt stuffed full, which probably contributed to my shaky balance.

I thought about hitting her, but something pinned me; another figure behind her held my arms down.

“Sonofabitch, he’s strong,” the man joked, but he held me without much difficulty as the woman reached for my face, pulling something out of my nose, a tube that seemed to end at the back of my stomach. I felt it dragging through my insides, coming up my esophagus, sinuses, and finally out of my left nostril.

“Oh, my god, the mucus,” the woman said, and I felt someone wipe a damp rag across my face.

I tried speaking, but my mouth was obstructed, made worse a moment later when she stuck her fingers down my throat. I looked at her face, which was like an ambulating Van Gogh, wild and undefined, strained and full of colors, hoping to find amicability. Straining my eyes did little to define her.

“Fucking endotracheal tube,” she complained, and my clouded mind raced to find the definition of the word. “Endotracheal” could only mean I was intubated, a procedure used for people in a long-term condition where their lungs needed assistance. They basically wormed a plastic tube through your mouth and down your windpipe, just above where the lungs met the rest of your body, and pumped air through it. Suddenly, I realized I was short of air, and I flinched, trying to open up my airway.

“Hold him,” the woman said, and more figures came over, dwarfing out the light. “Listen,” she said, talking now directly to me, close enough that I could make out her features. She was pretty enough, but then her face shifted and it was Aryani looking at me with all her imperious beauty. “Stop moving. You’re making it impossible to take this thing out.”

She recoiled, and only then did I realize I was fighting off the blurred figures holding me back.

“Holy shit,” one said, and I looked back, seeing Elgar getting a better hold on my arm. He smiled at me, and I almost smiled back, thinking of how he must have hated touching a dirty Keshek like me. My treacherous vision flashed and the world became dim again. The strong arms holding me down were attached to a man, a villain. Killswitch? Boomhammer? I couldn’t remember where I knew him from, but something in the pit of my stomach blanched at his touch.

“You’ll choke to death, you stupid fuck,” raged the woman.

“If he dies, you all die!” said Zundergrub from the distance.

Was he coming to save me? To ask for forgiveness for the horrors he had unleashed? My mind flashed to his the look on face back on Hashima, moments before gutting Apogee with Shivvers’ dagger, the glee he found in each cut. The absolute evil that possessed him allowed no forgiveness. No, if he was here, if this was real, then I was in danger.

“Come on, man,” the woman said, struggling with something stuck to my mouth, something obstructing my throat, making me gag and want to vomit. It was hard to focus. My mind kept trying to stuff images of the goddess’ chamber into the landscape. The figures around me kept losing definition, reforming into Drovani, Zann, even Gav, before shifting again, surrounding me with agitated lumps of clay moving in and out of my visual plane.

Not Zundergrub, though. Despite being at the edge of my working vision, partially obscured by the small throng of ever-changing figures surrounding me, his outline was static against the room’s sterile light. I saw him wipe the blood from his nose as he stood, and dread filtered through me like cold fire. In that moment, I realized that whatever was going on here, if I didn’t calm down, things were going to get uglier. I forced myself to calm down, though my lungs ached for air, for a single desperate breath. Once I settled down, the woman pulled the tube out of my mouth, taking care to guide it past my vocal chords. As the tube came free, I was overcome by a coughing fit, gagging on saliva, mucus, and vomit, feeling the horrible mixture race up my sinuses and out my nose. My body shook and the other figures released me, leaving me free to quiver on the invisible bed.

My throat was raw, coated with gag-inducing balls of hardened mucus that I couldn’t fully clear by coughing and or blowing out my nose. I spit them out, feeling their congealed consistency, salty and bulbous as they rolled over my tongue. Finally, I couldn’t hold it further and vomited, but nothing came out, just a tiny bit of bile that burned my throat and mouth.

“Help him out,” Zundergrub commanded, and one of the blurry figures grabbed my shoulders and sat me up on the bed. Their forms shifted as they approached, but I concentrated on keeping them in one fixed state. One grabbed at my legs, rolling them over a thick plastic lip at the edge of the invisible bed, a translucent protector to keep me from falling. Between the two of them, they lifted me so first my buttocks rested on the lip, then my feet touched the ground. But when I touched the floor, I felt nothing. I couldn’t even move my legs.

“He’s slip–” one of the two figures said as his grip on my goo-covered skin failed. The second man couldn’t hold me and I collapsed to the hard floor. Then again, I couldn’t feel the pain. My hands shot forward to stop my descent, but I crashed hard, helpless as a baby.

“Look at him,” Zundergrub spat, then giggled. “How far we have fallen.”

“Sorry, doctor,” someone said behind me. “I can’t hold onto him covered in that shit.”

Another figure laughed, moving behind me.

“Check it out,” it said. “He’s got some shit stuck up his ass.”

“That’s a rectal tube,” said a voice, the woman who had taken out the endotracheal tube, I thought.

“Clean him up,” Zundergrub said.

Someone pulled at me, tugging at the tube, which slid out easily if uncomfortably enough. The other guy grabbed another tube, this one dangling from the end of my pecker. The pain was tremendous, and I lost my grip on the situation as my mind grasped at where they could’ve put me that required artificial means of breathing, pissing, and shitting. The guy yanked the catheter, but it caught on along my urethra and stuck causing me to recoil in pain.

“Stop that,” the woman said.

“No,” Zundergrub said, overruling her. “Rip it from him,” he said, and his minion pulled at catheter, tearing it out of my body. The catheter had something at the tip that was larger than the tube, something that raced down my urethra, ripping at the internal walls. I screamed, knowing finally what passing a kidney stone must feel like at high velocity. The thing was out in an instant but the agonizing torment lingered with spasmic waves of pain causing me to convulse and free my bowels.

I howled in pain, but making any sound made my throat clench, and I dry heaved as my stomach convulsed. I gathered up my feet, clutching them as best I could as a powerful jet of cold water hit my body. I felt the full length of my skin tense up, as if unused to the chill. Every pore sparked a complaint at the cold, unyielding water, rolling across my flesh and washing away the gelatinous gunk that covered me.

“Hey,” the loud guy yelled. “Do that shit again, and I’m going to have a serious disagreement with you.”

“Oh, fuck you,” someone replied, but I couldn’t even tell from where.

“I’m not kidding.” Loud guy again. “This guy is my friend. This is fucking Crashdown. Hell, I named him. I thought of the name, okay? You hurt this guy again I’m going to peel your fucking skin off.”

That could only mean one person, muddling my tenuous grasp between reality and madness even further.

“Razor?” I said, but the word was more like a hoary gasp than a functional form of communication.

“See? It’s my boy.”

The water continued, spraying over my body and face. I looked over at Zundergrub, but he was just watching me silently.

“Where am I?” I meant to say, but I couldn’t be sure my mouth was cooperating. It felt like trying to talk to someone while at a concert, or with the television too loud, except in reverse. My muffled ears couldn’t report on whether my attempts to talk were working or not. My internal sounds were more akin to a groan.

“That’s enough,” Zundergrub said, and the cold water stopped. I wiped my face, and the figure I had identified as Razor came over, helping me into a sitting position. My legs felt like deflated rubber, and I leaned hard on him.

“Can’t see shit?” he said.

I shook my head.

“I told you this place sucked,” he said.

We were just a few feet apart, but his face was still undefined, the details hard to fill.

“What place?” I said, blinking water from my eyes.

“Utopia, kid. Come’ere, let me help you up. Hey, can we get those things off his hands?”

Zundergrub stepped forward as Razor tried getting me to my feet in vain. “They will stay on. Leave him on the floor,” he said, walking toward us.

“Why don’t you go outside?” the doctor suggested to Razor.

“Outside? Why?” Razor said, from comforting to manic in a heartbeat.

“Malleus, Spectra, escort him down the hall.”

Two figures moved closer, and Razor slipped away, in an instant beyond the range of my vision.

“Zundergrub,” I said, but it only sounded like a croak. “If you’ve hurt her–”

“You will what?” he taunted. “You can’t even stand.”

He knelt next to me, grabbing my hair and pulling it back. “You should see yourself,” he said, laughing. Then he turned to one of his cronies. “Get the power dampeners ready, I want to leave this place at once.” The doctor released me and stepped back as someone came beside me, taking off the manacles. It was the woman who had taken the tube.

“What are you doing?” Zundergrub asked once the first one had come off, freeing my fingers.

“The power dampeners go around his wrists and neck,” she said. “I can’t put them on with those things on his hands.”

Zundergrub bristled but he watched the procedure unfold. The woman took off the second manacle and tried wrapping the dampener around my freed left arm. I felt the cold metal of the manacle go around my wrist, stopping short of clicking into place. The woman tried maneuvering the unyielding metal at different angles, but the cuff wouldn’t settle into its latch.

“These are too small,” she complained.

“Get the proper size, damn you!” Zundergrub said.

I started laughing then. It was fear, sure. Fear because I knew he was coming to kill me and I was helpless. Fear for Apogee as well, since he undoubtedly had her already, maybe even among the shadows that crowded the room. Worse still, I was desperately afraid that this was the real world. That Zundergrub wasn’t just alive, but that he was here, with me, in Utopia prison. I laughed harder because Shard World had felt real, the Lady’s Nightmare had felt real, Aryani had felt real. But despite all of that, the pirate ships and alien princesses, none of it had the stark, believable reality of Zundergrub breaking into the world’s most impregnable prison to kill me. It was concrete evidence, but it was also something comical about watching the doctor and his team fumbling around. His first mistake had been to include my old friend Razorman, but then again, how could they know that he was my friend? The funniest thing, though, was watching the rest of his team getting everything wrong, from dropping me on the floor to the failure with the manacles. My laughter was hoarse and spotty, tinged with tears and weeping.

“Pathetic,” Zundergrub spat. “To think I went to all this trouble for this. It’s hardly worth it.”

Someone spoke to him and he waved it off. I found it odd that I could see him as clearly as I could, and everyone else was so obscured like dimmed figures outside of the light.

I tried to stop crying, but my body seemed to be enjoying the racking anguish, the skipping of my muscles as they returned to functionality, though in my present condition, I would be long dead before I could defend myself.