He was dragged along again, for what seemed an age; but in reality he had no real concept of time. Finally, they entered a chamber. It was large and cool: the floor was paved with white marble, and silver pedestals were set out in symmetrical patterns, each one capped with a shallow bowl containing a liquid which burned on the surface, providing light. At the centre were ten benches, ornately carved from marble and sandstone. As Jam was lifted and placed on one, he noticed curious grooves and channels -and his unease grew. It reminded him of a sacrificial altar.
‘What’s happening here?’ he croaked through smashed lips. One of the Nex swiftly planted a wide fist in his face. Stars exploded in his vision and when he could see again he realised that he was alone.
For long hours he lay, shivering with the biting cold until a figure finally appeared.
It was the slender black-garbed figure of Mace.
‘Hello again, Mr Jam.’
‘What do you want of me?’
‘Of you? Now we require ... nothing.’ He smiled and nodded, like a psychiatrist listening attentively to one of his patients.
‘I thought you needed answers to questions. About Spiral.’
‘We have cracked your ECube. As we suspected, you are Level One. You are a Prime. We have all the answers we could ever need. We know your identity, and we have your codes.’
‘What the fuck is this?’
Mace simply smiled, and more figures moved from the shadows. These were cloaked and masked, and they carried metallic objects with slender silver pipes. Jam looked from one to the other, then Mace pulled out the hypodermic syringe filled with bright mercury and Jam started to struggle against the wires that bound him. They bit through his flesh, bit deep, and blood wept tears across his bruised skin.
‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Get away from me ...’
‘I fear this will sting a little.’
As Mace came close, Jam stared into the twinkling copper depths of the Nex’s eyes. ‘I
will
fucking kill you for this, you cunt,’ he snarled.
‘Of course you will,’ came the gentle reply. ‘As you can see, my patients always do.’
He chuckled. The sound was ice.
The needle slipped into Jam’s vein again. Fire screamed through his system and just as vision was failing and pain was consuming him in the flames of a billion infernos, he heard Mace’s voice quietly say, ‘Take his measurements ... decide which advanced inhibitors will work ...’
And then he was falling, falling into a well of desolation and he had always thought he was so strong, so powerful, so in command and in control and these fuckers had reduced him to little more than nothing, a shell, a carcass of rotting flesh.
Jam awoke in his cell. This time he was lying in the sand, staring at the heavy stone door with heavy-set steel bars across a small opening that was an excuse for a window. It was through these slits that the flickering light came, and Jam slowly rolled into a sitting position, thankful at last to be alone.
He breathed deeply, but pain lashed at him from his broken ribs. He slowly rubbed broken fingers across his battered face - everything about him felt tender, loose, shattered. Bones in a tin can. He examined his hands -four fingers were snapped. His hands moved across his naked body: every inch of skin, it seemed, bore a bruise and was tender under his gently probing fingers. One ankle had a torn ligament, and there was some damage to one kneecap. His broken arm had been realigned and tightly strapped with some kind of bandage - bloodstained - but at least it meant they possibly had some further use for him. Besides these wounds, it was only his back that was giving him problems and he hoped to God they hadn’t damaged his spine with their heavy blows.
Focus.
Jam settled his mind, using army meditation techniques taught by an old sergeant now dead. His breathing became more deep, more relaxed, and he inspected himself more thoroughly - internally and externally. Apart from the physical injuries, it was more the mental strain that worried him ... and he felt it, nestling at the back of his mind like a dark maggot feasting on his brain.
Fear.
He acknowledged the word, the feeling, and realised that it was something he was unused to. The fear was of the hypodermic and the silver fluid - and the incredible pain that would follow. Because he knew; Jam knew that they could do that to him, again and again and again until his will was broken. Until he was nothing more than a spastic shell.
Escape.
The word flared in his mind. Before, while being beaten by the Nex, the only feeling that had flared in his subconscious was a need for survival; but now that he had a moment to think and reflect he knew how great was the danger that he - and the rest of Spiral - were in. For a start, the Nex were far more numerous than he’d realised. Spiral were winding down the SAD anti-Nex teams when they should have been putting more manpower and more
fire
power into them.
These fuckers are far from fucking dead. And they’re up to something bad ...
But who commands them?
Who leads?
And just what are they doing?
He mused over this for a while, until the word sidled back into his tortured mind.
Escape.
The impossible.
How to achieve the impossible?
His stare scanned the walls; solid and slippery and very, very high. The room seemed almost to be carved as one unit, although he could in fact see very fine joins between the building materials. The floor was covered with a fine detritus of sand, which meant that they were probably somewhere hot - a desert region, or at least adjacent to one. Therefore he had been airlifted, carried some considerable distance from Slovenia.
The torturer - Mace - had claimed they did not need to question him due to their cracking of the ECube, but Jam doubted this very much. Yeah, just fucking with me prior to more torture, he thought grimly to himself. But then, if they
had
cracked the ECube, had wormed their way through its security features, then in theory they had access to all the Spiral networks and criminal databases ... and maybe even staff files, mission specifications - everything was stored
somewhere.
They would know where the new major Spiral HQ was, in the heart of London ... and the other secondary HQs ...
He shivered, chilled to his very core.
Focus.
One step at a time.
Escape.
Jam dragged himself to his feet, using the low bed to lever himself into a standing position. Waves of pain throbbed through his injured body, but at least he could stand. He limped around the cell, and spotted a tray near the door with a bronze jug of water and a loaf of fresh bread. At least they didn’t intend to starve him to death ...
He ate the bread slowly, for it hurt some of his broken teeth to chew. The water stung his mouth but he forced himself to drink despite the curious stale taste. If they wanted to kill me, he thought, they wouldn’t have to use poison - a single bullet would do the job more neatly.
When he had finished his spartan meal, Jam hobbled to the cell door and quietly peered through the bars. The corridor beyond was fashioned from the same huge sandstone blocks that he had seen when he’d been dragged to the large chamber for his second experience of torture under the needle. He could see two brands burning further down the corridor.
‘Hello?’ he called.
Nothing. No sound, no reply, no interest.
Returning to his bed, Jam sat and picked up the bronze jug. He drained the last few drops and went to work to see what weapon he could fashion from this primitive piece of metal.
The door opened. Three figures stood silhouetted against the flames of the torches.
Jam groaned, lying on the floor, and the figures moved to stand around him. Slowly, Jam rolled over and pulled himself into a seated position, shading his eyes - for with them his torturers had brought light.
As they halted, Jam noticed that one of the Nex had a limp. He lifted his eyes to connect with the burning copper gaze, and he smiled sweetly. ‘Fine piece of meat.’ He licked his lips. ‘Put a bit of Savlon on that, did you, laddie? To take away the sting?’
The Nex growled.
Jam laughed. ‘Come on, fucker, I’ll eat your fucking heart.’
‘Enough.’
The voice was rich, deep, commanding and Jam transferred his gaze to the speaker, who was shrouded and hooded but still dominated through sheer size. Then he glanced at the third figure, standing slightly back - again wrapped in a cloak but with a deformed face showing patches of black and a mouthful of crooked drooling teeth.
‘My, but you’re all butt-ugly. Like mescaline-popped whores on a crab-riddled Russian sailor.’
The dark figure made no sound, no movement. ‘Let me introduce my companions,’ came the rich deep voice. ‘This is Yushalo.’ He gestured to the Nex with the limp whose gaze burned with hatred. Jam smiled, licking his blood-crusted lips. ‘You owe him a great debt for his pain. And this is Xsala, apprentice to a Nex you know well -Mace. He would wish to test his newly found skills on your flesh.’
‘Hey, you not brought Mace with you? We could, you know, sit down, maybe party a little. You brought any cider? It would be so much fucking fun.’
Xsala moved forward and looked down at Jam. He towered over the Spiral operative and growled something low and crude. His hands, black and twisted, came from beneath the cloak and long black claws slid free of sockets. ‘Little man need know when not to speak with disrespect. We cause much pain.’
‘Fuck me, bit of a drool problem you’re having there, old fella.’ Jam smiled, wiping the slime concerned from his skin. Xsala backed away, giving a heavy bass growl, and Jam transferred his gaze to the shrouded figure. ‘You fucking want something, or have you just come to watch a weakened man suffer in pain, you perverse arse-fuck?’
‘Perfect,’ said the shrouded man softly, and turned with his colleagues, leaving the cell. The door closed and the light retreated as Jam frowned, face twisting with confusion.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ he bellowed through the bars, but only a gentle hiss of cool breeze, sending a veil of sand swirling across the floor, replied.
Durell stood in the cold chamber, listening to the hum of the cooling fans. Ice rimed the smooth stone walls and made the polished marble floor treacherous to walk upon. The chamber was huge, the ceiling vaulting far above, the slightly concave walls stretching as far as the eye could see. Low slabs of stone were arranged in order, rough-hewn beds of natural rock, many bearing bodies covered with foil sheets.
Durell sighed, moving between the slabs, the cool air caressing him. He pulled his robes tighter around him, despite enjoying the cool air on his skin. He shivered.
It never used to be like this, he thought.
As he approached a slab, anonymous among all the others, Mace rushed towards him, a sorrowful look on his face which Durell knew had been placed there for his benefit. Nex felt few emotions, and a display was nearly always for effect - a throwback to the times when the Nex had been wholly human; a reminder of origins before the integration with insect kind; an almost unconscious physical echo.
‘We can do no more.’
Durell reached out with a clawed, twisted hand and pulled back the foil. There lay a body — the body of a man called Feuchter. His head lay twisted to one side, most of the back of the skull missing and what was left glittering with ice. His body had been laid out: parts of the skin were scorched and while the face was perfect the contents of the brain behind it had been destroyed during the final battle he had fought so many months ago against Carter ...
‘He was like a brother.’
‘The brain matrix is too far destroyed; we have tried and tried again to repatch and rebuild and model the organics, but there just isn’t enough left. We could bring the body back to life, but not the mind. He would be in a deep vegetative state.’
Durell toyed for a while with the notion of bringing the body back, just so that he could look at his old friend animated again, just so that he could talk to him ... But then, they would not be able to talk, they could not laugh together, they could not
plot
together ... Feuchter had been one of the few first Nex who had not been horribly deformed by the process of blending.
However, Durell himself had not been so lucky.
He reached out, one clawed hand resting against Feuchter’s cold dead forehead. He closed his eyes deep within the folds of his hood, tears welling, burning his skin as they rolled from eyes that were no longer human. And he felt rage welling from some unknown source within him, burning him like a poisoned blade ... and he knew that he did not have emotions, that he was cold and calculating but this finality and hatred came from somewhere deep inside him. He would destroy Spiral, he would destroy the DemolitionSquads - and he would kill Carter.
And that just as an aside. As a footnote.
Footsteps echoed across the cold stone, and Durell’s head came up. Xsala was there, flanked by Nex guards with JK49 sub-machine guns. ‘We have problem,’ rumbled the huge warrior.
Durell nodded, tears still burning his skin, and covered Feuchter with the foil sheet one last time.
The door opened quietly and a Nex guard stepped in with a tray containing bread and water. His gun was slung across his shoulder negligently and he bent to retrieve the old tray - but it was gone.