Reflex (15 page)

Anders lifted his head. "They're just children, after all."

Dr. Gautreau looked at Anders with a level, skeptical gaze. Finally he said, "In fifteen years I've talked to a lot of Lacandon children, too. It's
still
unusual to me."

Millie shook her head.
If you only knew. "Kisin?
Is that the god they thought the woman was?
La Llorona?"

"Her husband. To the Lacandon, the gods are like people. They have spouses and children and one parent,
K'akoch,
who made the flower that all the other gods were born from, and doesn't care at all about the affairs of humans. They are subject to a lot of the same constraints, too, that people are."

He looked at the outspread fingers of his hand. "Hmm. There was an additional description of
La Llorona
as possibly being
N'ail Äkyantho',
the wife of the god of foreigners, but they rejected it immediately. The Lacandon describe
Äkyantho'
as a light-skinned man carrying a gun, as foreigners carry a gun, so it was probably her weapon that made them consider this."

That reminded Millie of something the children had said. "They said her eyes were bleeding black, or at least Porfiro translated it like that. Do you have a take on that?"

Dr. Gautreau pursed his lips. "The kids pretty much said just that. It was raining though. Mascara?" He traced his fingers down his face like tears.

"Perhaps."

Anders said, "She's probably the fake waitress from Interrobang—the one who drugged him. The description was of a young woman with heavy makeup. We tried to do a composite, but the different witnesses came up with wildly varying images. Lots of makeup, though. That they did agree upon."

"Ah. Is there anything in the description of the ambulance that didn't get translated? Or the people."

He shrugged. "The facts are pretty much all there. The interpretations that the Ruizes gave it were quite different."

Millie took the last of her Scotch and swirled it in the glass before swallowing it. She was starting to feel the alcohol now, a glow in the stomach and a relaxation in the shoulders. "I wonder," she posited, "if I should ask Señora Ruiz where to find Davy?"

Dr. Gautreau shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. Ninety-nine percent of all Lacandon dream interpretations are, uh, negative—not informational. The depiction of danger, sickness, or bad luck to come. As Porfiro and Señora Ruiz said, it's not fixed. Forewarned is forearmed, but finding things or people is not part of the tradition. When she left you, she said, 'Sleep well you. Be careful what you see.' Dream, in other words. It's the traditional goodnight, but it shows what they think about predictions. Not only can dreams of trouble help you avoid it, but there's an implication that controlling what you dream also keeps you from trouble."

"She did tell me not to sleep in my room tonight."

"I was once warned by a Hach Winik not to travel to a particular village because of a dream I had. Because it was late in the day, I stayed with my hosts overnight. The next day, when I drove that road, bodies were everywhere. There had been a battle between the paramilitaries and the EZLN." Dr. Gautreau tilted his head down and looked at Millie intently. "If she had said that to
me,
I would change hotels immediately."

Anders looked uncomfortable. "I don't believe in dream warnings, but it might not be such a bad idea, after all. Especially considering Mr. Padgett is still at large and—" he looked down "—the blood on your boots."

There were four blank end pages in the last signature of
The Count of Monte Cristo.
Davy tore them out carefully, under the covers in the middle of the night. Initially, he hid them in his pillow case, but in the morning he slipped them, folded in tight creases, next to the roller of the toilet paper dispenser inside the cardboard tube.

He wanted a pen or a pencil, but if worse came to worst, he could improvise something using food or, he shuddered, other substances he'd been seeing too much of lately.

What he wanted, really, was to send a message to Millie.

Dearest Millie. Have been kidnapped and wired for electricity. Hope you are well. Davy.

He laughed to himself, but felt his eyes sting suddenly and took a shuddering breath.
Too close?

He'd been avoiding even the thought of Millie. If he even started thinking about her, there were too many things to worry about.

Did she get out of the Aerie safely? Does she have any idea what happened in D.C. or did she just think I abandoned her after our fight? If she did find out about my kidnapping does she realize I'm alive? Is the NSA watching out for her and is that a good thing? Is she actively looking for me and, therefore, in danger of being found by these psychopaths?

And that was the biggest worry of all.

His hands hurt and he looked down, surprised. His fingernails had left a series of curved lines across the palms of his hands. He consciously relaxed his fingers, then rubbed at the marks with his thumbs.
Could use some fingernail clippers.

Could use a lot of things.

He shook the chains.
Freedom to leave this place. Freedom from observation. Freedom to go
to
Millie.
He felt his hands clenching into fists again and grabbed the chains, instead. He jerked heavily on them, an up and down motion, and they cracked against the wall, chipping the paint. He took all four chains in his hand and jumped ten feet back, still facing the wall, to the extent of the chains' reach. The chains jerked rigid, but did very little to the wall. Instead, Davy was yanked forward onto his hands and knees.

Oh!
He froze, staring at the floor, hammered by a sudden realization. It wasn't the grief he'd been avoiding by not thinking of Millie, of the things taken and kept away from him.

It's rage.

He jumped to the bathroom door, bracing automatically as the chains whipped around and cracked into the wall. Then to the opposite side, by the bed. Sheetrock cracked and paint chips dropped to the floor under the impact. The noise was awful.

The noise was wonderful.

He jumped again, alternating sides, accentuating the effects by timing his leaps to correspond with the sinusoidal waves running down the chains. His wrists and ankles were being wrenched painfully and he was aware of this, on some level, but on another, it didn't matter at all. Sheetrock was exploding away from the edges of the hole. Entire foot-wide sections were cracked, hanging off by the thinnest shreds of paper laminate. Sheetrock dust hung in the air, dancing eddies of particles stirred by the whipping of steel links through the air.

And then he was standing in the square, in the green box, his throat tingling from the aftermath of the warning signal.

He rocked on his feet, surprised. He hadn't been conscious of a cough. He wondered if he'd mistaken some physical reaction—the dust in the air would make anybody cough—and had jumped in response, but when he leaned over the green tape, it was there. The tingle in his throat, the incipient nausea.

He stepped back to the center of square, blinking, his nose suddenly itching from all the dust in the air. He surveyed the damage. The hole from which the chains emerged was three feet high, exposing upright two-by-four studs and a smaller hole in the Sheetrock on the other side of the studs, the wall of the adjacent room. That room was as unlit as ever, but there was enough light coming in through the newly enlarged hole that Davy had high hopes of actually seeing what lay beyond when the field was shut off again. But the wall was a real mess.

Hmmm. They're not going to like this.

They kept him "in the box" for hours. They did not bring him lunch.

His first awareness that he was no longer "in the box" was the computerized voice. "You have two minutes to use the restroom."

He didn't need telling twice. For the past hour he'd been considering peeing on the floor. When he'd finished, they reeled the chains in through the now larger hole in the wall. He crouched and looked through, keeping to the edge to allow light through.

It took him a minute for his eyes to adjust. It was a small room with a bed and dresser stacked against one wall, crowded, as if they'd been pushed out of the way to make room for the large drummed marine electric winch that had been bolted to the middle of the floor.

The door opened and Davy turned around, suddenly very nervous.
Of course, if they wanted to punish me, they could've just turned off the field.

Miss Minchin led in two men, dressed like maintenance staff, though they did wear the ubiquitous paper surgical mask, as did Miss Minchin. She pointed to a spot just inside the yellow square about halfway between the green box and the bathroom door. "About here, I suppose. Make sure and straddle one of the floor thingies. The beams." In addition to the masks they were wearing rubber gloves.

"The joist," said the first man, thumping a half-inch-thick, foot-square steel plate onto the floor.

"Whatever!" Miss Minchin snapped. More calmly she said, "Keep your masks on. Believe me, you don't want to catch his disease. And keep your tools in the hall unless they're in your hand."

She walked across the floor to Davy and said quietly, for his ears alone, "I'm going to be in there—" she pointed at the mirror "—with my hand on the button. You say one word to them and you'll be puking and coughing all over the place." Then she leaned forward and added, "And I'll have to kill them." She jerked her head minutely back toward the middle of the room. "Got it?"

Davy considered head-butting her in the nose. He took a deep breath and said quietly, "Got it."

He couldn't see her lips smile but he saw it at the corners of her eyes and her cheekbones.

"That's Mama's little angel." She turned back to the men and said to the two workmen, "Quick as possible. We'll be getting you the chains in a moment."

She exited the room without looking back.

When the door had shut, the man closest to the door said, "Now thaaaat's what comes from keepen your dildo in the freeeeezah."

The other man laughed nervously. "Don't. I helped wire this room for sound."

The man grunted. "Ah." He began tapping the various spots on the floor with his hammer until it made a less hollow sound, then slid the plate to that point. "There. Take the other plate downstairs—I'll drill the holes and drop the bolts through and you can get the nuts on, eh? Then you can bring the welder when you come back." He tapped the floor. "And a fire extinguisher. Just in case."

I know that accent.
It was an extreme New England accent, only different.
I've been where they speak like that.

The man who stayed behind used a long-shafted half-inch drill bit to drill through the floor, using the corner holes on the plate as a guide. In less than fifteen minutes, they'd bolted the plate to the floor, presumably anchored to an identical plate in the ceiling below. The two ankle chains were cut with an abrasive wheel in the room behind him, and Miss Minchin came back into the room to pull them through. They measured the distance from the plate into the bathroom, and then trimmed the chain back.

One of them took a U-bolt out of his pocket. It had been bent so that the open end was at a right angle to the closed loop. They threaded last links of the chain onto it and began welding it to the plate.

Davy coughed. His throat tingled. He jumped, even before he thought, but slammed back against the wall, his shoulders flaring with pain. He stared wide-eyed at Miss Minchin. "Did you turn it off?"

The two workmen looked up. They hadn't seen him try to jump but they heard the sound of his back hitting the wall.

Miss Minchin frowned and looked at the mirror.

The computerized voice spoke over the speaker. "It's the arc welder. It's jamming the signal. It'll be all right if they keep their arcs under one second."

"We can do that," said the welder.

"No!" Miss Minchin said. "The conditioning will be compromised." She pulled the welding unit's plug from the wall socket. "Wait," she told the welder. "He's got an electronic prosthesis. You could kill him." She left the room at a run.

One second? Is that the new time limit between warning and full-out convulsions?

Miss Minchin came back carrying a plastic box with a short, stubby antennae. She walked right up to Davy and held it out, toward his chest. Davy started to reach for it and she slapped his hand. "Hands off, vomit-boy." She turned a dial and said to the welder. "Try it."

He tapped the electrode to the plate and there was a flash, but this time there was no tingle, no cough.

Miss Minchin held her thumb up. "Looks good."

They started to weld in earnest and the overhead fluorescent lights went off and a small emergency light, mounted in the corner, came on.

"Sonofabitch," said the welder.

His partner voice said, "It's just the breaker. I'll get it." He left, propping the door open. Distant sunlight showed dimly in the hall.

Miss Minchin backed away from Davy and looked at the mirror. "What's the status on the primary?"

There was no reply.

Hmmmm. Are they out over there, too?
He stared at the box in Miss Minchin's hands. "Would I be puking if you didn't have that here?"

She looked at him, apparently thinking it over. Finally, she clicked it off. There was no tingle. "See? The primary is on a battery backup. The green square is always safe."

The lights came back on. When the workman came back, he said, "It's a thirty amp breaker, but there's a lot of other equipment on the circuit. You'll have to keep the welding current down."

"Can't they shut down the other stuff?"

"No," said Miss Minchin. She turned the box back on.

They shrugged and went back to work at the lower setting. It seemed to take forever.

Miss Minchin kept her eyes on Davy, but her hands relaxed a bit and the device tilted forward enough that Davy could see the faceplate. It was a gray plastic prototype enclosure of the sort you could buy at RadioShack. Its only features were the antennae, an LED power indicator, and a rotary switch marked OFF, 2m, 10m, 30m, 100m, and 500m in magic marker. The switch pointed to 500m.