Specimen

I try to clench my fingers, but I can’t move them. I want to wrap my hands around his throat and choke the life out of him for saying the words. I grit my teeth, wanting to tell him exactly what I’d do to him if he ever laid a hand on her, but the words don’t come.

Footsteps echo through the room.

“You aren’t going to be able to break him like that.” This voice is new to me. “He’s too conditioned. Maybe once the drugs are out of his system, but that will be weeks.”

“We don’t have that kind of time,” the leader with the accent says. “We need information, and he’s got it in his head.”

“Is there something we can do to flush his system?” It’s the voice of the man who hammered nails into my legs.

“No, but maybe we can interfere with the implants,” the new voice says.

“How?”

“Get Errol in here.”

For a few minutes, no one says anything. There are no questions and no added pain. I focus on my breaths, counting each one as I try to slow down the autonomic systems in my body and relax myself.

Errol. He had to have meant Errol Spat, the man I had been sent to bring back to the Mills Conglomerate base. He’s here, and they’re bringing him to me.

A hundred possible ways of escaping and bringing Errol Spat back with me run though my head, each less plausible than the last. I have no advantage now, but I will find it eventually. I will find it and exploit it.

Unless they kill me first.

Footsteps off in the distance get louder.

“So, this is the product of my life’s work?” The footsteps approach the side of the platform, and a face looms over me, partially blocking the light. I try to focus on his features, but all I can really make out are dark eyes and a long moustache that curves around his mouth.

“Proud of yourself?” the leader asks. His condescending tone is ignored.

“Looks like it’s all working as planned,” Spat says. “I assume he hasn’t said a word.”

“Got some screams out of him but only when we hooked him up to the car battery.” I feel a hand on my thigh, near one of the nails. He taps it with his finger, and I flinch.

“There’s no way that’s going to work,” Spat says. “You see, the implants are designed for just this kind of thing. As soon as the system recognizes the body is being harmed—tortured—it shuts down his verbal output. He literally can’t talk to you. Run current through him, and the system gets overloaded, so you’ll get some screams out of him, but you’ll never get any intel.”

“You built him,” the leader says. “You tell me how to break him.”

“No, no—let’s get this straight,” Spat says. “I didn’t build him. I designed the cybernetic implants and the interface between them and the implants placed around his body. It’s the doctors who link them up to his brain and administer the drug treatments that are the real builders. I can only tell you about the interface and the programming. I’m a tech, assholes, not a doctor.”

“So, what do we do? Take the implants out and run them through the computer?”

“If you want to kill him, sure—go for it. I’m pretty sure Merle was hoping to get him to turn though. Does he even know what you fuckers are doing out here?”

“He hasn’t arrived yet.”

“You don’t have any authority here, Spat. Don’t get shitty with me.”

“I’m just telling you how it is.” There’s a long pause before he speaks again. “Let me give something a try.”

He places an interface disk to the side of my head. Though Riley has done this several times, the intent was always to add information. Whatever this man is doing, it’s not the same. Instead of bright flashes of information inside of my head, I sense a dull whirring and a brief vibration through my brain.

“Weird,” Errol says.

“What’s weird?”

“This doesn’t look right. Something’s fucked up.”

I shift my eyes to the right as much as I can. With the light in my eyes, I can’t see much other than shadows, but it looks like Spat is holding a hand-held computer. I hear him tap at the screen. He adjusts the disk behind my ear and then taps again.