Sapience (29 page)

Wham! Another strike, more breaking ribs, more pain. The air burned as I struggled to take a breath. That would be the last time I tried to talk back.

“You will be sorry, when I am done with you.” The agent said. He started walking out but stopped at the door “Make him sorry, would you dear?”

The girl nodded and he left the room.

She stood there for a moment, looking me up and down. Her movements were mechanical, she tilted her head to the side, scanning with those white eyes.

Once she was satisfied with her evaluation, she turned and left the room.

Having her gone made me feel safer somehow. I’m not sure why, it’s not like she wouldn’t be back. I couldn’t seem to figure out why she didn’t recognize me. And her white eyes, something had been done to her, they had altered something.

I hung there, gasping in pain for well over half an hour. It felt like my arms were going to rip off at any moment. It was still better than what was in store for me when the user got back. The thought of what she was going to do was enough to make me break out into a cold sweat. I did my best to enjoy the silence while I still had it.

Eventually the door opened and two soldiers dragged in a long, steel table covered in random torture devices. I could barely bring myself to look at the assortment of blood thirsty weapons.

“I would sure hate to be you, buddy.” One said in a scruffy voice as the two left the room laughing.

Not long after they were gone the physical user entered and walked over to the steel table. She stood there, staring at the weapons for a while before picking up a pair of pliers and coming over to kneel down at my feet.

“You don’t have to do this.” I pleaded.

She took the pliers and started snapping my toes. I tried not to cry out but the pain was far to excruciating. Each snap brought on new pain and more screams. I tried to kick away but she held me in place.

I was trained to section the pain off from the rest of my body. Mind over matter our trainers used to say before inflicting pain. Having your bones snapped like they were nothing was impossible to section off. I shut my eyes as hard as I could and tightened every muscle in my body, yet I still yelled out every time she snapped another toe.

When the girl was done she stood back up and walked over to the table. I used the time when her back was turned to stare down at my bloody and broken feet. It was painful and disgusting, and yet I knew it was only the beginning.

She came back from the table, this time holding a whip. We locked eyes for only a moment and then she walked behind me.

I was finding it hard to breath. This wasn’t the first time I had been whipped. Knowing what it was going to feel like only made it worse. I did all I could to prepare myself before it was too late. I let my muscles go slack and distanced my mind, I concentrated on breathing steady and slowing my heart beat. I was midway through an exhale when it happened.

It felt like lightning had struck across my back. The room flashed in white hot agony. I tried to bunch up, to throw myself to the ground. The ropes didn’t budge and I was stuck hanging there as my back was lashed again. This time a wild cry escaped my mouth.

She whipped me a third time before I could recover, then again, and again. One lash faded into the next and eventually I could no longer keep count.

My mind became a blur. I had never been whipped this badly before. The walls and floor were being painted with my blood. Even the ceiling was becoming speckled in red.

Suddenly I was struck hard in the side with something heavy. In my delusional state I hadn’t realized the physical user had retrieved a new weapon. She held a bat.

Now the strikes were deeper and heavier causing far more damage. After the second swing I thought I was going to vomit.

“Enough.” A voice said.

I rolled my head to the side to see that the agent had returned. He was holding a syringe.

“The most peculiar thing has occurred to my men.” He said “They discovered that there is no record of your DNA in our database, nor are your finger prints on file, as is required under Kingdom law.” He stuck the needle in my leg and began to draw blood. “I am beginning to wonder what secrets you are trying to hide.” He pulled the needle and turned for the door.

I tried to fight through my daze of pain to respond. It was far too hard to think clearly, I only managed to groan at him.

This was not good. If he tested my blood he would discover who I was, who I really was. I could not let that happen, yet what could I do? Even if I wasn’t tied up, my body was in no condition to fight. On top of all of that, I would still have to get through both a physical user and an agent.

“Take him down from there.” The agent said before leaving the room.

The user followed him out but soon returned with two soldiers and a chair. They weren’t very friendly, nor were they gentle getting me down. Their hands were like fire as they grabbed my injured sides to lift me off the hook in the ceiling. I could feel every bruise and break as they set me down in the chair.

Once I was down I started to feel slightly better, even though my hands were still tied behind my back, It felt far better than hanging from them.

I sat there panting, my body slumped, helplessly trying to fall the rest of the way to the floor. The soldiers and the users stood there watching, ready to spring if I tried to get up.

It was tense, the seconds turned into minutes, the minutes into hours. I just wanted to close my eyes and pass out but couldn’t bring myself to take my eyes off the enemy. My injuries had made me astonishingly tired.

My sides, feet, and back throbbed with pain. What was left of my strength was slowly ebbing away. Sleep was trying to force itself upon me. I struggled helplessly against the foggy haze trying to take over my vision.

Finally, as my eyelids were beginning to give in, the door flew open. Ten soldiers rushed in and pointed their rifles in my direction. The agent followed them in and grabbed me by the throat, forcing me to look him in the eye. “You traitor” He practically spat. “You killed your own men!”

“I’m not one of you.” I said as loud as I could muster. Though my eyelids were drooping, I made no attempt to look away.

He let go of my throat and snapped his fingers. “Let’s find out what the president thinks of all this, shall we?”

A soldier came in carrying a large black telephone that he set on the table. The agent walked over and typed a number into the key pad. Several seconds later we were all listening to a dial tone and then a lady’s voice.

“Military station Hawthorne, state your reason for calling.”

The agent leaned in “I need to be placed in immediate contact with the president.”

“Do you have the required code?”

“Blue, October, three, one, twelve, one, ten.”

“And the nature of your call?”

The agent flashed a dark grin in my direction. “We found his lost sheep.”

“Please hold while we contact the president.”

The line clicked over and elevator music filled the room. It seemed so out of place here. Nobody acted like they noticed. They all just stood there staring at the phone. My heart was racing, I felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into a dark hole. When the line clicked back we could hear the hum of a car engine. The noise echoed from the speaker phone.

The agent spoke first “Mr. President?”

And then I heard something that made my heart leap into my throat, Adrian.

“Sorry but the president is a little busy, feel free to pour your heart out to me instead.”

The agent turned beet red and squared off with the phone as if it were a threat. “Who is this!?

“Your worst nightmare.” Adrian said, and then the line went dead.

“WHAT?” The agent started, turning towards me. He was cut short as an explosion somewhere else in the vicinity rattled our room.

The soldiers were all glancing nervously back and forth, the agent looked even more furious than before, the user just looked indifferent.

“You,” The agent said to one of the soldiers. “Post extra guards outside the cells of the others. No one gets in to see them under any circumstance.”

The soldiers nodded and were off. Another two explosions went off shortly after he was gone.

Patience was running thin. It looked like the agent might kill one of his own men simply to blow off some steam.

A few minutes later the soldiers came back panting. “She’s gone sir, and the men guarding her are all dead.”

“What!?” The agent yelled.

“Yes, and I sent a battalion to post careful watch over the boy. Most of the men seem to be unsure of what to do. They are waiting for your direction sir.”

“It’s starting to look like bringing us here was a bad idea.” I said, another explosion added emphasis.

The agent dove at me, knocking me backwards in the chair. He kneeled on top of me and began squeezing my throat. I tried to fight back but my hands were still tied behind my back.

His superior muscle strength was astounding. Not only was he choking me but if he squeezed any harder I think my neck might break. When he finally let go I was gasping for air. The soldiers sat me back up right. Every wound in my body hurt with fresh, severe, pain.

The agent turned to the user “If I’m not back in ten minutes, blow his head off. The rest of you come with me.”

I watched everyone shuffle out of the room as the user cocked her pistol. Her expressionless face was haunting. She wouldn’t care either way what happens to me. In her eyes I was nothing more than a number speeding down to zero. 

I was forced to sit there and stare down the barrel of a hand gun while the physical user counted down the minutes before she pulled the trigger. The room had grown so quiet I could almost hear the second hand on her watch ticking away what was left of my life.

Chapter 19

            
 
“You don’t have to do this.” I pleaded. “There is another way. Look at me, I turned away from the Kingdom to live a free life.”

My only chance, if there was one, was to play the physical user card. I had to convince her that we were still the same. I was doing everything in my power to keep my voice from shaking and sounding weak. Even after all my effort everything I said came out hoarse and defeated, I was simply too exhausted from being beaten.

The physical user paid no attention to my words, she just stared down the barrel of her gun with that blank expression, her white eyes never blinking. As far as I could tell, she couldn’t even hear me.

We had stayed like this for so long, I knew that at any moment the ten minutes would be up and she would pull the trigger. I had kept myself calm and collected this whole time, thoughts of Brianna helped me drift away to a better place. I wonder what we would be doing right now, had the Kingdom never found us. We would probably still be in the dead lands, curled up on the hood of my car, under the warm sleeping bag, watching the stars. I could almost smell her perfume.

The dead lands had been such a desolate place, the president had done a good job destroying the land. Yet, with Brianna so close it wasn’t bad at all. For a moment I was no longer tied to a chair, the blood speckled walls and physical user were all gone.

“Hey.”

I looked up and Brianna was standing before me. There was nothing else, just her and I in an infinite abyss. The air radiated with blue energy.

She looked at me, concerned yet confidently. “Don’t give up on me.”

The energy in the abyss lifted her hair in strands as if there were no gravity. I recognized the sensation that charged the air, it was energy I had once known very well, the source of power for both physical user and mental user, Peleus.

The user cocked the gun, snapping me back to the real world. My heart began to pound in my chest. I wasn’t ready to die.

“Goodbye traitor.” She said in that dead voice.

Instead of the gun going off as I had expected, the mirror on the wall exploded as a chair was thrown through it from the other side. I watched in awe as Brianna leapt through the window frame, tackling the user to the ground. The gun went bouncing to the far side of the room.

The user elbowed Brianna in the side and flipped her onto her back. Brianna kicked her in the chest, sending her tumbling back words. They both stood up slowly and squared off with each other.

The physical user flexed her power and summoned a long knife from the assortment of weapons on the torture table, it flew into her hands. Brianna created two ice spears out of thin air.

Every cell in my body longed to get Brianna away from the user, to make sure she was safe. I struggled, frantically trying to free my hands from behind my back. It was slow and painful work.

“What did you do to him?” Brianna yelled. “I’m going to kill you!”

She charged forward, thrusting one of the spears. The user stepped to the side and used her own weapon, missing Brianna by inches. Brianna tried to stab up into her gut, the user turned to the side and brought her elbow down on the spear, breaking it in half. She swiped the knife at Brianna’s throat, Brianna stopped it with the broken spear. She dropped it and created a new one simultaneously.