Right Through Me (The Obsidian Files #1)(59)

He wanted to play with the quick and dirty toys right now.

He looked out the back of the parked truck. Brenner was out in the gravel pit, setting up two extremely realistic dummies that Mark had found in Kitteridge’s vault. They even had fake blood pumping through surgical tubes and artfully simulated soft tissue and organs. A young woman dummy, and a child dummy, a girl about the size of a five-year-old. The little girl dummy held a doll, a detail which he found perversely kinky. Those Obsidian pricks thought they were so f*cking cute.

Brenner had finished getting them in place. Now he just stood, staring at them. There was a sickly gray green pulsing in his sig around the level of his liver. Dread.

Mark’s anger flared. Sloppy design. Brenner should have no emotions aside from an eager desire to serve his controller. Mark had to burn those feelings out of him.

There would be plenty of opportunities for that coming up real soon.

Mark approached him, savoring the moment. He could have used the pain setting on the freq wand from a distance, but it was more fun up close.

A long, hard zap broke the pattern of colors in the slave soldier’s sig into a muddle of disoriented agony. Better. Softening him up.

Mark gave Brenner a moment to recover as he looked over the settings on the amplifier. The one he was most intrigued with was the last option. TOT. DES.

Total destruction. At his fingertips. He liked it. Felt right.

Mark pointed at the female dummy. “First target,” he said. “Go.”

He pointed the console at Brenner, and pushed the TOT. DES. button.

The effect was immediate and violent. Brenner threw back his head and roared like a wounded bear. He leaped at the female dummy, knocked it to the ground, and proceeded to rip its limbs off. Then its head. Realistic high-pressure blood spurted out of the breached fake arteries, drenching him.

After he’d torn off all the limbs, he began to claw and bite the tissue away from the skeleton.

Mark was so enthralled by the spectacle, he let it go on for a while. Lydia had warned that leaving the soldiers on total destruction mode for too long would compromise their function, but Brenner needed a good hard whack to get him into line.

Brenner clawed and gnawed at the bleeding shreds of the dummy like a maddened dog. He would just keep at it indefinitely until Mark told him to stop, or until the target was pulped.

He pushed the stop button. Brenner rolled over onto his back, gasping for breath.

When the slave soldier’s sig once again looked more or less human and he’d struggled back up onto his feet, Mark pointed at the child dummy.

“That’s your next target,” he said. “Go.”

He pushed TOT. DES. and Brenner roared again. Then he staggered, and stopped. He stood there, swaying. His arms swung around, fingers clutching and fisting, seeking a target to strike and rend but remaining motionless. Three seconds. Five. Ten.

Mark cursed under his breath. Bullshit implant and stim design. Worthless turd was resisting his programming. If Mark pushed too far, he’d trip the autodestruct and Brenner would be toast. A huge investment of energy down the drain.

He stopped the amplifier, pulled out the freq wand and set it to maximum pain.

He let Brenner scream and writhe for a good ten minutes. He’d almost ceased to care if he damaged the guy. He had to learn his lesson, or else he’d be useless anyway. So why the f*ck not? Better to just have at. Get it out of his system.

He let Brenner catch his breath after his punishment, sweating and shaking, and then gave the man a rousing kick to the ribs. He pointed to the child dummy.

“On your feet,” he barked. “Again. That’s your target. Go.”

He pushed the button and Brenner leaped on the little girl dummy with a hoarse roar. He began to tear it to pieces, yelling the entire time, but his hoarse bellows no longer sounded triumphant. They sounded desperate.

Mark observed carefully. After a while, he concluded that as long as he functioned, Brenner could suffer as much as he liked. His inner conflict was irrelevant as long as the programming held. And it seemed to be holding. So it was all good.

He watched with enjoyment as the process ran its course. The bloodsoaked, howling Brenner reduced the child dummy to something unrecognizable as human. Skull crushed, bones shattered, tissue torn apart. Almost liquefied. It was enough.

Mark lifted the console and stopped him. A strange silence descended. Even the bird and animal sounds were gone.

“Go down to the creek,” Mark told the slave soldier, pointing to the nearby gulley. “Get cleaned up. There are fresh clothes for you in the back of the truck.”

Brenner got to his feet. “Callie.” His voice was scratchy and ruined.

“She’s not here,” Mark said. “If she were, I would tell you to kill her. And you would do it. So shut the f*ck up. Go clean up.”

Brenner was looking at the ground. Mark realized that the slave soldier was staring at the doll that the researchers had shoved into the girl dummy’s hand.

It was a baby doll, drenched with blood. Now missing an arm and an eye.

Brenner lifted his head, and fixed his eyes on Mark. His blue eyes shone weirdly bright, their color only heightened by the slimy fake blood that covered his face.

Brenner’s gaze was pure concentrated hatred.

It didn’t bother Mark. Hate was good. Hate was fuel.

He should know.