Chapter 29
Zade stared at the guy for a long moment before he spoke. “Who the fuck are you?”
The man’s ravaged face contorted into something like a smile. “You don’t remember me? But we were so close.” He let out an oily chuckle. “I know everything about you. On a fucking cellular level.”
With that, recognition slammed into him, though this man no longer looked anything like Braxton. His stomach lurched. “You’re the Ratcatcher.”
Braxton placed his bandaged hands against the barrier. Zade recoiled, even though his former tormentor couldn’t touch him. There were pus stains on the gauze. The fingertips sticking out had thick, cracked yellow nails.
“I never liked that nickname,” Braxton said. “But considering that you’re in my cage, I guess it’s appropriate. I’m the Ratcatcher. And now you’re my pet rat.”
“Braxton,” Zade said, for Simone’s sake.
Please, God. Let her be running. Already at the car. Speeding away.
Braxton stared at him hungrily, leaning closer so that his breath fogged the clear plastic. “Did you miss me?”
“What the hell happened to you?” Zade asked.
“Same thing that happened to all the Braxton Boys,” Braxton said impatiently. “Gene mutation. You and D-14 are the only ones who didn’t develop it. Lucky boys. After a while, cells get inflamed. It gets worse and worse. You decay from the inside out. Like this.” He turned his head and spat out a lump of something that looked like rotten flesh onto the glass. It slid slowly down, leaving a slimy trail.
Keep him talking. Piss him off. Hatred keeps him motivated. Distracted.
“If they all died, then why didn’t you?” Zade demanded.
Braxton wiped his slack mouth and stared at him, his yellowed eyes glittering. “I developed antidotes,” he said. “None of them worked for long. But that’s where you come in.” He slammed his hand against the barrier. “Gift-boxed, no less.”
Zade flinched.
“Nothing wrong with your reflexes.” Braxton traced a filthy fingertip over the plastic, making circles that Zade’s eyes tracked automatically. “Good boy. Fun game. Nothing wrong with your deep brain. Yet.”
Zade snapped out of it and stepped back.
“Don’t move too much,” Braxton said, smirking. “I turned off the fan, see. You’ll use up all the oxygen. Die choking. What a waste.”
The air already felt stale, now that he mentioned it. “What do you want?” Making conversation with a psycho freak.
“Nothing much to start,” Braxton said. “Four or five pints of blood.”
Almost enough to kill him, Zade thought. But not quickly.
“And deep tissue samples,” Braxton went on. “You’re a game changer, D-13. You and your brother. I was almost resigned to dying before I found D-14.”
Zade’s hands banged against the barrier. He was electrified. “Where is he?” he demanded.
Braxton waved that aside. “You know Mark Olund, right?”
“Yeah. Another crazy prick just like you. This is his place. Where’s Luke?”
Braxton’s ruined teeth showed in a manic grin. “I’m getting to that. Olund disappeared two months ago. I monitored this place to see when he would come back. He didn’t, so I went in to check it out. And there was D-14. Gift-boxed for me, just like you. Almost dead of starvation and dehydration.”
“Is he here?” Zade yelled. He’d moved too fast on his way down the six levels. Hadn’t looked closely enough, hadn’t listened hard enough.
“Mark had a machine rigged to drop food and water bottles at timed intervals, but it only lasted a week. I counted the empties. He was barely breathing when I found him.” Braxton leaned forward, bloody spit spraying the barrier. “He would have died!” he bellowed. “I saved his fucking life!”
“Thanks for that.” Zade forced the words out. Keep him talking.
“D-14 had his uses,” Braxton said.
Had. The single word was chilling.
“And now I have you.” Braxton’s eyes burned. “My fucking dream come true.”
“Yeah, you have me,” Zade agreed. “What about Luke? You gave him back to Obsidian?”
Braxton snorted with laughter. “Fuck no! They didn’t deserve to get him back. But I won’t make the same mistake with you that I made with him. Your brain doesn’t need to function for my purposes. I’m thinking a high dose of Trib-Theta to melt it down. Right after I stun code your miserable ass.”
Zade tried to breathe less. Like that would help. “Is Luke still alive?”
“I kept him conscious so I could interrogate him, but he never—”
“Is he alive?” Zade slammed his hands against the plastic hard enough to make them sting. “Did he escape? Answer me!”
“He deafened himself to beat the fucking stun code!” Braxton yelled back. “Son of a bitch almost killed me!”
So Luke could still be alive. Zade’s heart pounded as he listened to the man rant on.
“The cold got him. Not me. No way he could have survived out there. He has to be dead by now. But not you. You’re alive.” The man’s breath fogged the plastic once again. “And you won’t get the chance to fuck with me like he did. Your cerebral cortex gets shredded before I harvest your cells for the new serum. Okay with you?”
Braxton moved his finger in circles again, but Zade looked beyond them, straight into the other man’s crazed eyes. He didn’t answer.
“I think the blonde gets a shot of Trib-Theta, too.” Braxton leered at him. “She’s a hot bitch. I wanted to fuck her since I first saw her at the lab. She was fourteen, maybe fifteen years old. So I waited. Looks like it’s my lucky day.”
“She’s gone,” Zade blurted.
Braxton laughed at his face. “Gone rogue, maybe. Fucking a sewer rat like you. That’s some wonky programming, huh? They should pay me to recondition her. But I’d do it for nothing. Think about it, D-13. You, bound and gagged. No blindfold. Your personal bitch gets stripped naked. Slapped around hard so she knows who’s boss. Cuffed to the cot spread-eagled so I can punish everything you fucked and licked. She’ll beg me to stop, but I won’t. It’ll just go on and on. Until she’s all done. All used up. And you get to watch it all. And I’ll make it last.”
Zade’s teeth ground to the cracking point.
“Take a deep breath, fuckface,” Braxton said gleefully. “You’ll be choking for oxygen when I stun-code you. Ready for it?”
He braced himself. As if that ever made a difference.
Braxton spoke. Loudly. Three words … and everything turned to pain.
His vision narrowed to a tunnel with Braxton’s death’s-head smirk at the other end. He remembered hearing the words of the stun code, but he couldn’t hang onto them. The memory disintegrated in his mind like always.
Fuck it hurt. Simone yelled in his ear, but he couldn’t understand her.
Run away. Fast. Please.
His muscles were rock hard, cramped in agony. Straining, but no release was possible. His blood raced, his stomach heaved. He could barely breathe.
Braxton smiled and pushed a remote he’d been holding, unseen.
Zade heard a whirring sound. Bolts unscrewed, and the heavy plastic barrier retracted into the ceiling.
Braxton stabbed a needle into a vial, aspirating the brain-death potion with leisurely precision. “Game over.”
He seized Zade’s wrist, and shoved up the sleeve of his leather coat, holding him steady. Zade’s heart thudded wildly. The only part of his body that still worked.
He could still hear Simone’s voice in his ear, yelling something. He couldn’t make out her words.
He wished he could understand her. Wished he could say goodbye. Run.
“There’s a good vein right here,” Braxton observed, lifting his rigid arm higher. “Don’t be scared. It’s for a good cause.” He grinned evilly, putting what was left of his rotting teeth on display. “My cause.”
He lifted the needle to Zade’s wrist.
The jab felt like a live coal against his skin.