Toxicity (33 page)

“So you’ve been watching me?”

Saul nodded.

“And now you’re going to watch
him,” said Randy, stepping forward suddenly with a click and stamp of boots. “Isn’t
that right, Saul, my friend? We’re going to torture you in front of your
sister. And if you don’t talk, we’re going to torture
her
in front of
you. And if she doesn’t talk... well, it’s going to be a long fucking night for
both of you. It’s too fucking convenient that you both work for Impurity and
yet Jenny claims ignorance of you. There’s so much shit here it’s blurring the
lens. What I need from both of you is focus. I need clarity. I need truth. But
most of all, I need
information.”

Jenny and Saul allowed their eyes
to meet. Both were hard and narrowed; filled with steel. But Randy was
grinning, and Vasta, the Head of Security, looked sad.

“Last chance for you both to
talk,” said Vasta. Then, almost as a whisper,
“Last chance.”

Randy appeared again, and he was
carrying a set of steel pliers. “Let’s loosen their tongues,” he said.

~ * ~

JENNY
FELT SICK. Another
crack
echoed through the chamber and Saul screamed,
and gurgled. In the periphery of her vision she saw him arch his back and then
slump again. Blood dripped from the trolley with a steady
pit-pat-pit-pat
sound.
There came a rattle as Randy dropped a tooth into a steel bowl.

“It’s as easy as pulling teeth,”
he cackled, and Jenny caught a glimpse of steel soaked with blood.

“You’re a despicable human being,”
said Jenny through clenched teeth.

“You just keep showing me those
lovely perfect ivories, my darling,” said Randy, and loomed close, face a
horrorshow mask, making her jump. “You’re just prick-teasing me to pull them
out, aren’t you? You want me to take them, one by one, just like with Saul.”

Saul groaned on his own trolley.
There had been seven
cracks
so far, each accompanied by a straining
against steel bands. In the movies, Saul would have broken free, knocked Randy
to the ground, released Jenny and they would have fled their imprisonment
killing the guards en route. But this wasn’t the movies. The steel bands held.
Saul strained. He screamed. He bled.

Randy whirled on him. “Will you
talk?” he beamed through his lipless hole. At least Jenny took it to be a
smile; it was difficult to tell with so many tatters of flapping skin.

“Fuck you,” mumbled Saul, and
spat blood at Randy.

Randy turned back to Jenny, and
he was obviously enjoying himself. He gestured to her with blood-stained steel
pliers. “Are you ready to talk, my little sweet? First I want to know the names
of your team. I want their names, ages, serial numbers, waist sizes, favourite
soup and how many times they wank in the morning.”

Jenny said nothing.

Randy shifted close, and Jenny
shivered. He moved the steel pliers to her face, held them just under her nose.
She could smell the coppery stench of her brother’s blood. Randy moved his
mouth hole closer to Jenny’s ear. When he whispered, the air tickled her. “Go
on. You can talk, girlfriend. You can tell old Randy
everything.
And I
know what you’re thinking, because, believe it or not, I’ve been there, been
where you’ve been. I was tortured, many years ago. They were saving my face
until last because they knew what it meant to me; so they cut off my testicles
with blunt shears. Ironic, yes? I spoke then, Jenny Xi; I sang like a fucking
songbird. Don’t fool yourself that I’ll get myself a conscience and stop the
hurt. Once I start, Jenny, I never stop. So do yourself a favour and start
singing for me now.” He kissed her then, on the cheek, then on the lips, the
ragged hole of his smashed mouth caressing her lips, and she squirmed in
absolute horror. His tongue slipped into her mouth, his bomb-blasted tongue,
and she could feel its lumpy, tattered meat. She gagged, and Randy pulled back.
“Sing for me,” he crooned, and in his eyes Jenny saw the light of madness.

“I always knew you had no
bollocks,” she said.

He smiled; well, she
thought
it
was a smile through the twisted flesh of his face. He came in at her, fast, and
her muscles strained as she tried to deflect the blow. Something cold and hard
and steel forced into her mouth, clamping it open, and she swallowed back the
urge to scream, for she was stronger than that, tougher than that, she’d been
through enough bad stuff and pain in her life to get past this. The cold metal
felt alien in her mouth. It was slick and smooth, chromed. It glittered with
reflected lights and was frustratingly out of focus. She felt as though she was
in a dentist’s chair as a child, and wild giggles rose through her belly but
were savagely quelled. This was no dentist chair. This was no childhood
escapade. This was real and this was bad.

Randy was close to her, she could
feel his proximity, his warmth, hear his panting, smell his sweat. She flexed
her fingers, trying to grab him in some way, but she could not. And then he was
looming over her, his face in hers, his blasted features leering at her, and
she was sweating now, panic bubbling inside her, and Randy grabbed the steel
pliers, forced them into her mouth and she wanted to shout “No!” but only a
garbled mess of words tumbled free. She felt the serrated pincers of the tool
fasten over one of her back teeth, sliding and grating against bone. She could
taste saliva, and oil, and steel, and fear. She tried to swallow, she tried to
wriggle her head, she tried to wrench the pliers from Randy’s grasp. And then
he was squeezing, leaning his weight on the lever, and pain ripped through her.
But instead of abating, the pain grew as the pressure rose, building like a
rising torrent behind a pressure valve until she believed she could take no
more - and there was a
crack,
and blood flooded her mouth, so much blood
she thought she would drown, and she choked. There was a moment of relief, and
then the pain came back tenfold.

But the worst part was Randy,
swinging on the pliers, wrenching at her head, at her jaw, at her tooth,
tugging at it, twisting at it, until it finally broke free of the root and came
away in a sudden rush. Jenny gave a guttural moan, mouth full of blood, fists
clenched, urine pushing through her pants. But even through the pain and the
disbelief
(are they really doing this to me, who can do this to another
person, what kind of sick fuck? It must be a dream, it has to be a dream, and I’ll
wake up and be back at the blasted factory site, detonator in one hand, Randy’s
severed head in the other...)
Randy came back at her, bludgeoning into her
view, and the pliers dived into her mouth again, cutting her lips and tongue,
and she chomped her teeth, trying to fend off the long cold steel pliers, her
head twitching within the confines of the restrictive steel band, and the
pliers fastened on another tooth, and again she felt the pressure, only this
time it was accompanied by a pressure in her
skull
that built and built
as the pain built and built, and when the
crack
and the rush of
exploding damn blood came it vomited from her mouth, into Randy’s face, and
flowed down her throat and the blackness was there, punctuated by glittering
lights, and she fell into the galaxy, spun away into infinity, and was lost
forever down an eternity well.

~ * ~

“YOU
KNOW I love you,” he was saying, softly, whispering the words into her ear. “You
know I love you, I’ve watched you, every subtle movement, every tender
footstep, every twist and tilt of your hips, every hand gesture with those long,
beautiful fingers, every toss of that head, that luscious brown hair. I’ve
watched you, and I’ve coveted you, and one day I was sure we would be together.
But then you blew the factory and you took my face. When you look at me, do you
see a monster? Do you see a deviant strain? Do you see somebody who you could
love?” Soft laughter. “I doubt it. You never loved me. You could sense my
decadent nature, but more, I fear; you could sense my loyalty to The Company,
and that was something you would never forgive.” She felt his hands then, on
her belly, touching her skin. The pressure was gentle, searching, and his
fingers slid across her belly to the tops of her thighs. They paused, and she
sensed him watching her, then looking down, and his fingers stroked down her
thighs and pushed between her legs...

She coughed, and the pain
battered her like a hammer, and her mouth tasted bad. Like a rat had died in
there. Like dried blood had formed a solid dental cast, a toad in her mouth.
How many teeth had he taken? Which teeth? Her tongue probed around her mouth
and a chilling cool settled on her brow. He had removed four. So, even after
she had passed out, he had continued working on her throughout unconsciousness.
That was not even torture. What was that? It was a simple satisfaction of
his
needs.
The cunt.

She opened her eyes. For some
reason, the pain seemed to get worse. It was like a fist pounding at her lower
jaw, beating against her temple. There was a soft white light. She was no
longer under the sea. She was...

She moved her head, was amazed
that she could. She turned to the side, and saw large stone block walls. Randy
continued to explore her but she shut off her mind to his intrusion, filing it
away for revenge. He was turning her into a different creature, she knew, and
her eyes narrowed because surely this alteration of her mind was worse than any
physical brutality he could inflict.

It was then, with certainty, she
knew she would kill Randy Zaglax. One way or another.

He was back to whispering in her
ear, and kissing her hair, and touching her breasts. She was still tied down;
she tested her bonds gently, trying not to give away the fact that she was
awake. It was incredible what one could learn when others thought you weren’t
listening. But the pain, that was the problem, the pain in her skull and her
jaw and her mouth. Randy had invaded her face, and for a while forgotten about
the act of torture, of asking her questions, of seeking answers. It had been a
simple act of sadism, that was all. A personal achievement. A satisfaction.

Oh, I’m going to fuck you up,
she whispered to herself in the
dark halls of her mind as her tongue probed the huge gaps where her teeth had
been. Huge gaping wounds in her skull that felt bigger than was humanly
possible.

Silently, tears rolled down her
cheeks.

“You are awake,” said Randy,
suddenly, jumping a little. He stood, fingers withdrawing from her. He stood,
erect, and stared down. Jenny sighed. “Are you ready to talk?”

“I will talk.” Her voice sounded
funny to her own ears. By removing her teeth, Randy had removed her voice.
Changed her. Changed her mind. Changed the person she was.

“Tell me about your team.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Their names.”

Slowly, she spoke. With each
word, with each syllable, with each sound, with each
breath,
she felt as
if she was dying. With pain beating at her skull, she told him the names of her
team because, hell, he already knew them. He’d been part of the team. He’d
known the men and women involved. Of course he did. They must have told him a
thousand tiny secrets over the year he’d infiltrated Impurity. They must have
let slip a million miscellaneous facts that they’d thought boring and harmless
and useless, and yet together could be woven into a tapestry of the
person.
And
so, yes, she knew he knew, and she knew he knew that by getting her speaking he
might set her going, loosen her tongue, begin her at the top of a slippery
slide and then
push
and whoosh, down she goes in an attempt to stave off
more pain.

And he was right. Sort of. She
was buying herself time, buying herself courage. She did not think she would
survive this place. This torture hole of Greenstar.
Oh, you motherfucking
scum, you parade around the Four Galaxies, you claim to be cleaning up the
place, ethical recycling of all toxic matter, making the Quad-Gal and Manna a
Cleaner Place to Live and creating lirridium for the benefit of all. When all
the time, you’re taking back-handers, big cash advances to bury the shit and
cover the shit and hide the toxicity. It went right to the top, and the top
were corrupt, from Director Renazzi Lode, Assistant Director Sowerby Trent,
Chief Recycling Manager haul Thon Lupy, Helle Mic, Sanne Krimez, gods, even
down to Randy Zaglax... the bastard puppets who appeared on TV, nodding and
bobbing and grinning and pontificating and spilling their vile dishonest vomit
down their designer suits. Most of their faces and voices went out to trillions
of souls in Manna, talking about the future of recycling, of saving the planet,
of respecting the planet and its denizens and cultures...
what
fucking
respect?
She wanted to scream it.
WHAT FUCKING RESPECT?
But instead,
she told Randy what he wanted to hear, what she knew he knew, because that
way... A tear ran down her cheek.
That way,
she might survive.