Hellbent

The bedspread on his Maglev floating bed was dimpled where someone had sat and not bothered to smooth it back into place.

The door to his bathroom was open.

One of Joey’s sweatshirts was tossed on the floor by the bathmat. One corner of the bath mat was flipped back. With a toe he adjusted it.

The shower door was rolled open.

The hidden door to the Vault left wide.

He took five deep breaths before proceeding.

“Joey,” he said, stepping into the Vault. “The milk glass—”

The sight inside the Vault left his mouth dry. An adrenaline antihistamine reaction.

Various monitors had been yanked off the wall and rearranged on the floor, data scrolling across them. The computer bays had been dissected, torn from their racks. Cables snaked between hardware, connecting everything by no evident design.

Joey lay on her back like a car mechanic, wearing a tank top, her sleek arm muscles glistening with sweat. She was checking a cable connection. She rolled over and popped to her feet.

“Check this shit out!”

“I am. Checking this shit. Out.” Evan picked Vera II up off the floor, nestled an ice cube in her serrated spikes, and eyed her accusatorily: I left you in charge.

Joey breezed past him, using her bare foot to swivel a monitor on the floor so she could check the screen. The scent of girly soap tinged the air, lilac and vanilla, anomalous here among the weapon lockers and electronic hum.

She laced her fingers, inverted her hands, cracked the knuckles. “You are looking at a beautifully improvised machine learning system—262,144 graphics cores devoted to a single cause. Tracking down David Smith.”

Evan figured maybe he could forgive the milk. And the crumbs. And the smudges on the faucet.

He set Vera II back on the sheet-metal desk. She was now the only item in the Vault in the proper place.

He looked at the open door to the Vault and the rolled-back shower door beyond and bit his lip. Managed the words “Good job.”

She held up a hand, and they high-fived. “At least now you and Van Sciver? You’re running the same race.”

45

A Bit More Incentive

Listening to all that gurgling and choking wore on a man.

Van Sciver set down the watercooler jug of Arrowhead and wiped his brow. Enhanced interrogation was hard work.

Orphan L was strapped onto a decline bench, a soaked towel suctioned onto his face. Van Sciver had been pouring a steady stream of fresh springwater through the towel and into L’s sinuses, larynx, oropharynx, trachea, and bronchi. It didn’t actually reach the lungs.

It just felt like it.

Van Sciver had been waterboarded as part of his training. All Orphans were.

The discomfort almost defied explanation.

He’d been drownproofed as well, and by comparison that was a breeze. Bound at the bottom of a swimming pool, breathing in water, the head going hazy as in a dream.

But this felt like having a water hose opened up inside your skull. The more you gasped for air, the further you pulled the towel into your mouth, an octopus clutching your face, expelling an endless stream of fluid through your orifices.

Van Sciver nodded at Thornhill, who lifted the soaked towel from Orphan L’s face. For a time Draker bobbed on the bench, bloodshot eyes bulging, mouth guppying. He didn’t make a noise.

When the upper respiratory tract filled, water obstruction prevented the diaphragm from expanding and contracting to produce a suitable cough. You had to fight to earn your oxygen.

Five seconds passed as Draker contorted, clutching for air.

Thornhill gazed down at him with empathetic eyes. “I feel you, pal. I feel you.”

Candy leaned against the mattress cushioning the far wall, examining her fingernails. They looked freshly painted. Aubergine.

Van Sciver looked back at Thornhill, nodded again. Thornhill undid the straps around L’s chest and thighs, and L rolled off the bench onto his side. When he struck the floor, the impact loosed his lungs, his head seeming to explode with jets of water.

He coughed, heaved, coughed some more.

Thornhill slapped his back a few times, encouragingly. “There you go.”

Draker whipped up in a violent sit-up, driving his forehead at Thornhill’s nose. Thornhill wheeled back, nearly losing his footing. He looked down at his shirt, darkened by the spray from Draker’s wet hair. Draker’s head butt had missed him by inches.

“Whoa, cowboy,” Thornhill said, seemingly pleased by the effort. “That was close.”

Draker collapsed flat on the floor, spent.

Van Sciver squatted beside him, knees cracking, alert. “The boy,” he said. “The address.”

Draker gagged a few times. Van Sciver pressed two fingers into his solar plexus, and Draker vomited a water-clear stream so calmly and steadily that it was like opening up a tap. When he was done, he took a few seconds to catch his breath. Then he said, “What boy?”

“Right on,” Candy said. “Gotta admire the grit.”

She peeled herself from the wall and tested the plywood covering one of the rear windows. It was screwed in tight but not too tight. Which was perfect.