Into the Fire(94)
Evan crossed the cell in three strides, rotating the spear around his hand in an iaido-sword spin to draw Bedrosov’s eye. Sure enough, the man staggered back, hands flailing. His head oriented to the spinning cone, leaving his neck exposed.
Evan sank the tip of the spear into the side of Bedrosov’s throat and snapped off the end.
The tip protruded about an inch, a golf-ball tee sticking out of his neck.
Beyond that, nothing happened.
Evan dropped the newspaper stick. The two men stared at each other. Bedrosov blinked a few times.
Shocked, almost absentmindedly, he reached up and pulled the tip free. Blood spurted from his carotid, painting the wall to his side.
He sagged forward, knees bending but not giving way.
Another spurt and he struck the floor.
His cheek smashed into the concrete. A shimmering halo spread out beneath his head. One foot twitched and twitched again and then went still.
Evan scooped up a few packs of ramen and jogged back to his cell. Behind the tempered glass below, deputies were appareling themselves in riot gear, readying a charge. There was not much time left. As Evan vectored up the catwalk, he saw Teardrop down in the bay circling frantically around the fallen lieutenant’s body, still trying to get a bead on what had gone down.
Evan whistled through his teeth. Loudly.
Teardrop’s head snapped up.
He backtraced Evan’s trajectory from Cell 37, and his face seemed to constrict around the angry points of his eyes. He sprinted for the stairs.
Evan hustled to his cell. Inside, a few tufts extinguished themselves on the floor, bits of lit stuffing rising like flares. Ash textured the air, instant twilight. The heat started to fire his symptoms, the first flush of light-headedness threatening.
Evan went to Monkey Mouth’s bunk and rested the ramen packs on the slab of metal where his mattress used to be. At the end of his own bunk, only two objects remained—the Bic pen refill and that last third of the soap bar.
He squared to the door. Sparks swirled around his shoulders. It was like standing in a furnace. Footsteps hammered the catwalk, and then Teardrop wheeled around the corner, breathing hard, neck sheeting with muscle. Exertion and rage had turned his face a pronounced red that glowed beneath the patches of his scruffy beard.
“Glad you could make it,” Evan said.
Teardrop flew at him. Evan sidestepped his first punch, hooking him around the stomach and hurling him back. Teardrop lunged to grab Evan’s oversize shirt. Rather than step away as expected, Evan darted forward. Catching Teardrop’s chest with both forearms, he drove him backward with all his force. Just before Teardrop struck the wall, Evan twisted his torso and thrust his own chest up into Teardrop’s. The men were the same height and build, their bodies aligning maximally for a triple-tap slam into the concrete. Chest hit chest, Teardrop’s shoulders slammed the wall, and then the back of his head cracked against the concrete.
A classic wall stun, perfectly executed.
Zero contact with Evan’s head.
Evan hooked his hands behind Teardrop’s neck, clamped his elbows around his ears, and slammed his face down into his own rising knee.
A crackle of gristle as bone and cartilage yielded.
Teardrop slapped the floor, unconscious, his face destroyed. Shattered nose, cheeks, and eyes already starting to swell.
Soon enough he’d be unrecognizable.
Clangs and hisses carried up from the bay, as well as warning shouts about the deputies’ intrusion. “Fire on the line! Hats and bats coming!”
In rapid succession came three booms, the thundering percussion of flashbangs.
They’d be upstairs within minutes.
Evan grabbed his lump of soap and doused it in the sink. He used it to grease his wrist, and then, clamping his fingers into the shape of a tulip to narrow his hand, he tried to slide his electronic wristband off. The hard plastic edge cut into the meat of his thumb pad, but he ignored the pain, ripping it free.
He repeated the procedure on Teardrop and then switched the loose wristbands, fighting them into place.
Downstairs came screams, cries of pain, the hiss of teargas deploying. A deputy yelled, “Move it out now, or it’s gonna feel like you went bobbing for french fries!” Batons banged against shields, the sounds of the conflict moving closer.
Evan wiped the soapy residue from his wrist and his hands and then bit the top of the Bic pen reservoir to crack it open. Using the metal side of the commode as a mirror, he squeezed out a dot of ink onto the pad of his bare pinkie and dabbed it three times at the corner of his eye, simulating Teardrop’s tattoos. He couldn’t tell if the reflection was blurry or if his eyesight had slipped further. He blinked hard, refocused.
The tattoos looked imperfect but passable.
Especially given Evan’s growing beard and what he was about to do to his face.
He ran his palm across the floor, besmirching it with a layer of ash. Then he smeared it across his cheeks and forehead, even into the creases of his eyelids. For good measure he dirtied up his shirt as well. He streaked Teardrop’s face heavily also until—between the soot and the swelling—he could pass for Evan’s alter identity, Paytsar Hovsepian. The sutures in the cut on Teardrop’s chin had strained but held, remaining obscured by his beard.
After finishing, Evan rose and staggered out onto the catwalk, doubled over, hacking as loudly as he could manage. With all the heat he’d breathed into his lungs and the fire blazing in the neighboring cell, it wasn’t hard. He didn’t have to fake being unsteady on his feet. A smoky yellow haze of tear gas billowed up from below, creeping through the metal mesh of the catwalk. The first sip sent him over the top.