Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(117)

Caro, Hannah, Zade, Asa, Sisko. Counting on you. Wake . . . the f*ck . . . up!

Couldn’t do it. Sedated. Massive dose.

He forced his brain to rev up, enduring the pain. Neuron by neuron. Hurt like a bastard. He kept his eyes closed, hoping nobody was measuring his brain waves, or looking at his sig.

His own fault, thinking he could outwit Mark. The guy had more than a decade of evil deeds on him. Dickbrain stupid to assume that Mark had only unmods to back him up. He’d dug up some slave soldiers even without Lydia’s safe.

He tried to move a little, willing whoever was watching not to notice. His hand tried to obey. Nothing. Like shoving a truckload of bricks.

Noah felt himself hoisted, then dragged. His legs trailed behind him, limp and helpless, scraping over rocks, dirt, dead branches. Caro. Hannah.

Hannah, lying still on the ground. Caro, dragged away screaming. No. Stop.

He pushed the terrifying images away, reminding himself of what he had to do.

Remember how to f*cking move.

The slave soldier heaved Noah into the back of the truck and started to pull Noah’s body armor and weapons off. All of it, right down to the briefs.

OK. Robots had their reasons.

He was hoisted into a black case lined with metal, chilly against his bare skin. They used cases like that at Midlands. Designed for the transport of modified humans. The flat, dead-eyed face of the slave soldier gazed down at him without curiosity.

The heavy lid thudded shut, swallowing him and the light.

But darkness was relative for him. He could still see with his infrared. He used his combat program to reassess his physical condition. He was metabolizing the drug quickly, but not fast enough.

Thinking of Caro and Hannah in Mark’s grip made his numbed body twitch. That was a start. Anything to change the cards on the table.

He closed his eyes. Seized onto his last analog, imbed and all. Volcanic crater with his father’s murder festering inside it? Bring that shit on. Very intense, very toxic.

The details appeared one by one: The hot fissure, the steam, the smells.

But it had changed. The fissure was larger now. Tracks led out of it, like an old-time mine. Battered ore carts waited to be filled.

He packed the carts with every memory he could think of that carried a punishing, gland-jolting kick, transforming each one into a visual analog. Dynamite, Semtex, C-4. There were plenty. Hannah, head shaved, skull drilled and sawed open for experimental surgery. His friends, suffering and afraid. Rebellion Day filled two carts. Leon bleeding out, eyes open to the sky. Kane on the ground in a pool of blood, a bullet lodged in his leg. Devon screaming as Noah cut a geotagged tracer out of her back.

Mom, gone without a note or a word. That was a ton of ANFO blasting agent, right there.

Caro tied to that bed, blood trickling down her naked chest, was his detonator.

By now the whole mental mountain rumbled in anticipation of what was coming.

Might kill him. Who gave a f*ck. Living could be worse. Depending on how things went.

The loaded carts began to move down the tracks, picking up speed and momentum. He followed along, right into the hot red glow of the ominous fissure as the tracks curved . . . and then led straight into the glowing yellow light of his imbed.

Noah heaved the train forward, sending the loaded carts rattling straight into that image of the strip mall parking lot, where the grizzled man loomed over Noah’s father’s corpse with his bloody baseball bat. He squeezed the detonator.

He must have had a seizure. He came to with his feet drumming the inside of the carrying case. Warping it, then breaking it open.

A blaze of light assaulted his eyes. He leaped out with a shout, and stood, fists clenched, ready to do battle.

The slave soldier was gone. His body armor, clothing, guns and knives were gone. The truck was full of crates. He wrenched one open. Stared blankly at the contents. Weaponry, but he had no clue how that crazy shit worked and no time to figure it out. Back to basics.

The space-age cyborg freak had devolved into a howling cave man armed with sticks and stones.



*



Mark gestured at the grisly corpse with the hole in his forehead that lay behind him. “That’s thirty million dollars, lying right there,” he said. “Too bad your f*ckboy has such good aim.”

Caro was mute. She just kept seeing Noah, shot with that dart. Endlessly falling to the ground, over and over.

“Open the safe,” Mark said. “Then we’ll have a talk about the money and trouble you’ve cost me, and what’s to be done with the f*ckboy. Where did you find him? And how did you pay him? Never mind. Stupid question. Obvious answer.”

Asa lay pinned beneath one of the slave soldiers, who held a gun to his head. Blood oozed from a gunshot wound in his upper arm, but his clear gray gaze never wavered, even when Mark sauntered over and kicked him viciously in the back.

Asa huffed out air, but made no other sound.

“I’ll open the safe,” she burst out. “Just don’t hurt him.”

“But I want to,” Mark said. “He’s going to die. Today. Though how loud he screams and how long it takes will be up to you.”

He seized a battered old chair that lay on the floor, and placed it in front of the safe, positioning both in the ruddy shaft of sunlight.

“Lights. Camera. Action. Ready for your closeup?” He indicated the chair. “Sit.”