Damien
I’m not one for feeling, not usually. In this business, you try and keep that shit to a minimum. You don’t flinch, or wince, or shiver, or any of that. You just stare and keep on staring. Maybe that’s why I haven’t kicked Ogre out on his irresponsible ass yet—though I will be having words with him later. No, I’m not one for feeling, but as I charge through the door to the warehouse, barging it with the shoulder of my leather, I start feeling a few things. My men charge in around me, Gunner at my shoulder.
“Pan out,” I tell them. “Find the girl, and find Tinhorn if you can. If not, get the fuck out.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Yeah, I reflect as I sprint down the hallway, the sprinklers coughing out weak water onto my hair, I’m feeling a few things. The first is that I’m damned pissed somebody has stolen my chance to get to Tinhorn. No doubt, when this fire started, most of the Specters started running like chickens from the coop. That’s the sort of shit I don’t stand for, having my money casually stolen like that. The second thing is that I keep thinking about this woman, this woman they’re going to sell. Goddamn Specters into women-selling, now; sick rises in my throat and I swallow it down. The third thing is that as I think of this woman, I start thinking about that night, a long time ago, with the worm-fingered man and the first life I took.
I round a corner as rafters crash around me, fire and water spitting at my face. I push through it, ignoring the pain of the flames, and keep on. Everything is dark and yet light, as though the flames are struggling to transmit their light to the shadowy corners of the warehouse. Rooms lay each side of the corridor, old offices and storage rooms, crates piled high, desks thick with dust and grime. I run, and my mind runs, only I run forward and my mind runs backward.
I think of him as worm-fingered ’cause the first thing I saw when I woke up were his fingers, worming, wriggling, above me. He was messing with a needle, carefully inserting some chemical into the injector, pressing it, squeezing it, preparing it. I had no clue what he was doing, and then he brought the needle to my arm and complete exhaustion fell over me. I didn’t know where I was, only that I was moving—bouncing down some road—but when I woke again, there were the same wormy fingers, wriggling around a same needle, and then came the exhaustion. And on and on and on.
I duck low under a collapsed doorframe, covering my face with the leather of my sleeve, and jump over a crumbled portion of the ceiling. Through the hole above me, I can see the corner of a crate which is halfway falling out of the hole. I listen, try and hear something that might help, but all I can hear is the hiss-hiss of the sprinklers and the spit-spit of the fire and, occasionally, the dying screams of a Specter. And they are dying. You don’t outlaw for as long as I have without knowing what a dying scream sounds like. All the screams are coming from the same place. Finally, after a minute or so of running, I see why: they’ve been locked into a room together. It looks like a small communications room, with panels everywhere, and dials, and screens. The cameras have cut out; there is only static. And the men are dead, or dying, hair and eyebrows singed away, consumed in the fire.
I press on.
Eventually, I woke up strapped down to a table. The worm-fingered man leaned over me. I was young, twenty, nineteen. I can’t remember exactly but I was too young to be strapped to a table with some old man staring down at me. His face was carved with wrinkles, like somebody had taken the tip of a sharp knife and sliced and cut and then set the cuts with cement, deep crevices in his skin. He patted me on the hand, and I flinched away from him. I was sobbing. Dammit, I was sobbing and that’s the truth. But it sounded faraway, like the sobs of somebody else. I remember thinking: Get a grip, Damien, get a goddamn grip. But though I had been in a few scraps, I had never been in a situation like this.
I round a corner, another, another, smoke thick in front of me, thinking of the girl trapped somewhere in this building. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to give her up. That’s not something I want to do, but fire and smoke and death don’t care about any man’s wants. Then I hear her, dim, so dim I’m not sure if I really hear her over the crackle and hiss of flames and water or if I imagine it.
The man told me that he was a business man who specialized in procuring young handsome men for work overseas. That was how he said it. Work overseas. But I could tell by looking into his creviced face that he knew I knew; he knew by the way I clenched my fists as he said the words. He wanted to sell me for sex. Me, Damien Seed, a fighter, a scrapper, a biker, though not the leader of the Death Heads at that point. Still, I couldn’t stand for this. I strained against the bindings. The man just chuckled, and told me that there was no use in fighting. He told me he’d been through this before. He told me that one day I’m come to enjoy my work. When I think of that old bastard, I wish I could kill him all over again.
Another corner, and the voice grows louder. Still quiet, but louder. I think I hear words: “Let me the hell out of here! Please! Somebody! Anybody!” A high-pitched voice, a woman’s voice.
I push down the hallway. When I see the camera, toppled on its tripod onto its side, I know I am heading in the right direction. I jump over collapsed, smoldering portions of the building, coughing away the smoke, and then duck low and push through to the wall of glass.
The man had tightened my bindings well, but not well enough. When I tugged with my right hand, I could feel how the bindings tugged at the bed frame. The bindings were zip-ties, cutting into my wrists, and secure, but they were secured to the slats of an old bed. When I tugged, I felt the slats give a little, and then I tugged again, and I felt them give a little more, and on and on, until by the time the old man returned from grabbing a couple of burgers, I was standing beside the door, zip-ties still digging into my wrists, but no longer tied to the bed. I’ll always remember the look of surprise on his face, almost funny, and the anger which gripped me. I fell on him, fists smashing his deep-lined face into deeper, bloodier lines, over and over, roaring with animalistic fury that he was a sick old fuck and he’d never get the chance to sell another man again. I had never killed before, but I felt no compunction about killing this man. I beat him until his face was a bloody imprint on the carpet, and then I found some scissors and cut my wrists free. The only thing I felt as I left the room was relief that the ties had stopped digging into my wrists. It was only later, once I was back home, that it hit me. I was a killer now; I had almost been sold; I had escaped. From that day on, any fucker tried to hurt me, he was dead. No question. No hesitation. No compunction.
The girl stands before me, partially obscured by smoky glass, but visible. She looks young, around twenty, and she’s wearing a grey T-shirt which shows the outline of perky breasts underneath. Her bra and her hoodie are on the floor, I notice, next a thorn-stemmed flower. The flower looks out of place here, amidst the mayhem and the grime. Her hair is brown-red and jagged, as though she cut it herself, and her eyes are huge, seeming to take up half her head. Hell, half the room. She is lithe, athletic-looking. And she is panicking.
“Please tell me you’re here to help me!” she shouts, voice strained. “Please tell me you’re not one of them.”
Behind us, another part of the ceiling crumbles.
“I’m here to help!” I call through the glass and smoke. “Stand back!”
“It’s reinforced glass!”
“We’ll see about that! Stand back!”
She doesn’t look like she believes me, but she does as I say. I take my Desert Eagle from my pocket and aim at the corner of the glass. The Eagle is more of a hand-cannon than a pistol. When I fire it, my ears ring like crazy, but the glass shatters. The woman has been biting her lip. Now she releases it.
“Thank God for that,” she says. “I thought you’d have to find the switch.”
The glass crunches underfoot as I approach her. “We need to get out of here.”
“Who are you?”
She looks at me warily.
“We don’t have time for suspicion, girl,” I say. I call her girl even though she must be at least twenty; she looks young and vulnerable.
“Fine, okay. Lead the way.”
“Fuck that. Come here.”
I offer her my arms, making to pick her up. She looks at me a moment longer. Standing in a burning building, and here she is looking at her savior like she doesn’t know whether to trust me. Maybe most folks wouldn’t understand that, but I do. I understand it fine.
“I ain’t them,” I tell her. “They’re all dead. I’m somebody else. Now get in my fuckin’ arms before I pick you up and carry you out kicking and screaming.”
She hesitates a moment longer, and then the fire eats through a nearby wall, another part of the ceiling collapsing, a crateful of supplies dropping onto our floor. That seems to do it for her, and she steps forward into my arms.
When I pick her up, I feel like I’m picking up a winged bird, tiny and breakable.
“What is your name?” she asks.
I tell her, and then ask hers.
“Callie Pierce,” she says.
I heft her. “Okay, Callie Pierce. Let’s get you the fuck out of here.”