Reflex (11 page)

The florist van was twisted at the far end of the alley, the windshield starred with bullet holes. A large cloud of steam was billowing from its front end. There seemed to be another car across the far alley.

"Don't do that."

It was Anders, standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the alleyway. Becca was right behind him.

Millie pulled her head back. "Why?"

Three rapid gunshots suddenly boomed down the alleyway and Millie jumped back. "Oh."

Anders, not taking his own advice, was looking down the alley. "Hmmm. Okay." He stepped across the alleyway, moving briskly. He looked at the four men who were now handcuffed and being frisked. "This isn't exactly what we had in mind, you know. We thought we'd actually let them start the snatch before we moved in."

"I wasn't going to resist. I didn't have time to warn Ms. Johnson."

Anders tried to frown, but he couldn't. He covered his mouth, then laughed outright. "I can tell I'm going to need a personal copy of this videotape."

Millie stared at him. "You videotaped it?" She looked around, wondering where the camera was. "Of course you taped it."

Becca was looking around the corner, then squeezed her coat lapel and said, "Roger that." Millie noticed the earplug. Then the FBI agent jerked, her eyes going wide. "Agent down!" she said loudly, and tore down the alley, drawing her gun as she went. Three agents followed her.

Anders, his eyes narrowed, gestured for them to cross the alleyway. He drew them further down the sidewalk.

"You and Ms. Johnson will find Curtis at the end of the block in the same White Cab. He'll take you to The Burro for your appointment."

"We don't have to make statements?"

"Later. The video will do for now."

Sojee was staring around her, her lips smacking, her cheek twitching. At the mention of her name, she stared at Anders specifically, then asked Millie, "Are these friends of yours?"

Millie hesitated for the briefest interval before saying, "Allies." She brushed some beaded water off of Sojee's coat. "Are you all right?"

"I'm gonna need some more pepper spray."

Millie nodded. "I may get some myself." She linked arms with Sojee and started walking, wondering what had happened at the end of the alley. When they'd gone several yards, she said, "Thanks, Sojee, for protecting me back there."

Sojee snorted. "Looks like you didn't need no protectin'. Those assholes who jumped us sure did, though. They better stay away from me, I'll whup their asses again." Then she smiled. "You
nailed
that man in the nose. You pretty hot with that can of whup ass, yourself."

"You hold 'em, I'll kick 'em."

Thug One, the blond man with the nearly invisible eyebrows, put the lunch tray down just inside the door, then slid it within chain reach.

Davy was ravenous for lunch. He'd not had breakfast and the involuntary purging of his stomach worsened matters. He ate slowly, though. His throat was still raw from the bile and he didn't want to risk repeating this morning's experience—with or without outside help.

After finishing every crumb, he used the bathroom. On the way back the chains started retracting through the wall again.

Oh, great.

When he'd been pulled up to the wall again, they came back, the blond Thug One who'd brought breakfast, the brunette who'd killed Brian, and the hook-nosed man with the reddish brown hair—Thug Two.

What now?

They ignored him. The woman held a small plastic meter of some kind, with a stub antennae. She was watching a digital readout closely as she walked across the room. When she was in the middle of the room, about three feet out from the foot of Davy's bed, she crouched and began moving it from side to side. At several points she made marks on the floor with a felt-tipped pen, then, after about ten minutes of this, she waved at the other two.

"There. As marked."

Thug One held a roll of two-inch-wide gaffers tape in fluorescent green. He put long strips of it on the floor, forming a square four feet across.

While they were doing this, the woman was working farther out, again, looking closely at the meter and making marks on the floor. When the men had finished the square, she said, "Yellow tape here."

When the men were done, they had a yellow square with truncated corners eight feet outside the green square. They didn't bother completing this larger square near Davy or the bed, but when they were finished, the woman ran her meter around its perimeter both inside and out, then checked the green square again.

"Right. We're good to go." She handed Thug One the meter and jerked her thumb to the door.

Both of the men went to the door. Thug One turned right before he went through the door and looked at Davy, then, for the first time since entering the room. "Be a good dog," he said, his mouth twisted oddly.

When the door was shut again. The woman backed up, outside the line of yellow tape. Almost immediately, the chains went slack again and Davy sat down on the edge of the bed, just inside the larger square.

"You'll not be staying there," she said.

"Great. I'd love to get out of this room."

She shook her head. "Not my meaning."

"Who are you, anyway?"

She didn't answer him.

"Well, I might as well call you
something.
Murderer is accurate, but it just... well it lacks something. I believe I'll call you Miss Minchin."

The woman looked intrigued, despite herself. "And this refers to?"

"Miss Minchin's Seminary for Select Young Ladies." Davy wasn't sure he wanted to get into the plot of
A Little Princess
with this woman, especially detailing what a cast iron bitch Miss Minchin was. "She liked little boxes, too, and people to stay in them."

"I don't have time for sweet talk. Get in the green square."

Davy stayed where he was.

She lifted a hand toward the mirror and snapped her fingers.

Davy doubled over, coughing violently. He was nauseated, on the edge of throwing up, his forehead covered with clammy sweat. He pushed off the bed and, bent over, still coughing, shuffled toward the green square. Almost immediately the coughing and the nausea lessened. When he stepped over the green tape, the urge to cough and the nausea ceased completely.

She went on talking. "Outside the green box, you'll feel it. Just outside the yellow box, you get a repeat of this morning's ride. You do remember this morning, don't you?" She looked over at the empty mop bucket and mop, leaning in the far corner.

Davy wanted to wipe the sweat from his forehead but he forced himself to stand there, unmoving, watching "Miss Minchin" with eyes cold and distant.

She continued. "You go outside the yellow box and the convulsions will probably kill you."

Box is the right word.

"Do you intend for me to live here? In this four-foot square? Are you going to bring the portable toilet back?"

She shook her head. "Your body will let you know when you need to be in the square."

"If you turn this on while I'm taking a shower, I could crack my skull and die. I'm pretty sure you guys don't want me dead."

"There are a lot worse things than dying, darling. You'll get a warning, sort of like being in the yellow square. If you're not in this big square," she indicated the outer yellow boundary, "within two seconds, it'll be like this morning and worse. You won't be, ummmm, 'symptom free' until you're all the way inside the green square."

"Miss Minchin was the right name."

"I really must look that up. We're going to leave the zone on for a few more minutes.
You
figure out when you can leave it."

She turned. As she walked away she swung her hips. Davy watched her ass sway from side to side. In the doorway she paused, blew a kiss, and let the door swing shut behind her.

Nice legs.

I'd like to break them.

He stuck his hand over the edge of the green tape. Nothing happened. He sat down and stuck his feet over the edge. Again, nothing happened.
Did they already turn it off?

He scooted up to the line. As his torso edged over the tape, he coughed lightly and felt a mild wave of nausea. He scooted back again. The coughing and nausea ceased. He lay down on his back and started inching out of the square, feet first. He didn't feel anything until his upper chest crossed the line.

No surprise there.
That's where the scar was, where they'd put the device, whatever it was. He stood back up inside the square.

He experimented, leaning out into the larger square. His stomach heaved and his coughing was rough but he could walk two thirds of the way to the yellow line before he had to stagger back in defeat. He thought he could probably push it even further in an emergency, but they were watching and there was no reason to let them know his limitations. He believed them about the far edge. The memory of flopping on the floor like a freshly caught fish was still strong in his mind.

He was testing the border again when the sensations cut off abruptly—the coughing and nausea dropped away—and he staggered. He felt like someone who'd been shoving at a stuck door, when all of a sudden the door is opened from the other side.

He wanted to wash the sweat from his face and rinse his mouth but it took a definite act of will to step over the yellow line on the way to the bathroom.

Two seconds,
he told himself.
Two seconds is lots of time.

They started testing him an hour later. He was lying down, reading
The Count of Monte Cristo,
when he felt a tingling in his throat followed almost immediately by a wave of nausea, then the inevitable cough. Then it stopped and he wondered if it was a fluke.

Then he doubled over, coughing and throwing up, getting vomit on his sheets and covers. He scrambled for the end of the bed and the safety of the green square.

Shit! Shit! Shit!

The scrambled voice over the speaker said, "Two seconds—we meant it."

He felt like crying when the wave of nausea quit but he couldn't stand the thought of giving them the pleasure. He stood slowly. He'd gotten vomit on the pants of his scrubs. He ripped the side seams open, pulled them off, used the unsoiled section to wipe his mouth, then bundled them up and threw them into the bathroom.

He tried the border but felt the telltale tickle in his throat. He stepped out far enough to snag the railing at the end of the bed, coughing heavily, and then dragged it toward him, backing into the safety zone. He stripped the soiled sheets and threw them into the bathroom as well. The still-clean blanket he wrapped around his waist, sarong-style.

Then he dragged the bed farther, until the head was in the green square, and lay down, his chest centered over the green square.

He tried to read, but couldn't concentrate. For a while, then, he counted slowly to twenty and turned pages as if he was—a defiant form of meditation. Then he made a show of yawning largely and, putting the book down, he rolled over on his side facing away from the mirror, and pretended to sleep.

This is not going at all well.

He was awakened by movement, disorienting, as he hadn't been aware he'd fallen asleep. He sat up in time to see Thug One backing away, again. Looking around, he found that they'd moved his bed back out of the square.

Why? Oh. They can't
train
me if I'm not out of the square when they turn it on.
He hopped back out of bed, swinging his chains clear automatically, and started to drag the bed back.

The blonde shook his head and started back toward him. "You've got to leave the bed against the wall."

Dammit!

Davy jumped, not toward the man, but toward the mirror, to the full extent of the chains. Almost immediately the chains began reeling through the wall, slowly pulling Davy back as his unseen jailers realized he was closer to the door than the blonde was.

Thug One looked frightened and his hand went up to the scab on his cheek, left over from when Davy had snatched the mask from his face. He started back toward the door.

Davy jumped, before the chains were pulled up too short, past Thug One, across the man's path to the door, and braced himself.

The chains moved so fast you could hear their passage through the air. They caught Thug One at the shin, knee, hip, and stomach.

The pull on Davy's wrists and ankles pulled him forward two meters but it
threw
Thug One across the room and into the wall with a dust-raising crash. The man hung there for a beat, like a cartoon character, and then he crumpled to the floor. Where he'd hit the wall the Sheetrock and paint were caved in.

The slow reeling of the chains continued and Davy shuffled back, keeping up with them. He felt ashamed of himself.
Show some control! Don't show them what you can do until you can use it to get free.

When he was all the way up against the wall the door opened and they came for Thug One. They used a backboard and a cervical collar and they carried him out like he was made of glass.

Davy expected the chains to loosen again, but they didn't. They were too short for him to reach the bed, too short, even, for him to lie down. He could sit with his arms hanging in the wrist cuffs, level with his shoulders. He couldn't reach the bed, or the book, or his Styrofoam drinking cup.

He coughed twice and a wave of nausea passed over him.
Oh, Jesus!
He pulled on the chains but they were unyielding. He was just outside the yellow line.

It was the worst yet and it went on and on and on until he finally passed out.

He woke up slumped in a pool of vomit and feces, still dangling from the chains.

Miss Minchin was standing there with the mop and the mop bucket. She was watching him closely, her head tilted to one side. "Was that fun?" she asked.

Davy didn't say anything. His throat was raw from bile and, even though the device wasn't activated, he was nauseated.

She persisted. "Was your little chain trick worth the result?"