Spiral

A woman stepped in front of him, her face illuminated by the dim, pulsing glow coming from behind. He recognized her immediately as the woman who had been following him. She was Asian-Chinese, he was nearly certain. Somewhere between twenty and thirty, wearing small, round glasses. She leaned forward, her face no more than twelve inches from his, features illuminated by an ever-changing mix of yellow, green, and red light. She was pretty, made more so by the flaws of two thin, perfectly symmetric scars that ran along her cheekbones. She wore all black, down to the gloves on her hands.

She flicked on a photographer’s light, mounted on a stand beside her. He blinked against the sudden brightness, waited for the blotches of white to settle down into shape and color. He tried to speak but couldn’t open his mouth. He felt as though his head were in a vise.

Once his eyes adjusted, she held up a small mirror so he could see himself. She adjusted the angle until he caught his reflection.

He was a shocking sight. His head was encased in a metal frame, with struts and bands holding his skullcase like a patient with a neck injury. A rubber-and-steel clamp held his jaw rigidly fixed. He looked old, incredibly old, even older than his eighty-six years. The wrinkles on his face were a cracked riverbed, and tufts of white hair stuck out every which way from his skull. He was a corpse, a ghost, strapped into headgear from a Frankensteinian nightmare.

She lowered the mirror. When she spoke, her English was excellent but still bore traces of her native land. “A mutual friend sent me,” she said.

She was Chinese, from the north, he guessed. He felt a tremor at the base of his spine. What she said next nearly stopped his heart.

“I came for the Uzumaki.”

Tink, tink, tink.

The sound. He knew the sound.

He looked down. A glass petri dish sat in her lap. Four sparkling objects were in the center of the dish, scurrying about, each no larger than a dime.

MicroCrawlers.

They skittered around in the petri dish with terrifying speed, colliding with the walls, tink, tink, tink. Their legs were segmented etched silicon, sharp as razor blades.

He closed his eyes, but he could still hear the tink of silicon against glass.

“I’ve taken this place apart. Where is it?”

He forced himself to focus. He hadn’t yet seen a gun. If he could get loose, he’d have a chance. He was a small man, impossibly old, but he was still quick, and he could be brutally vicious when he needed to be.

Tink, tink, tink.

She reached toward him and touched a spot on his headgear. A whirring sound. The headgear pried open his jaw with a mechanical precision, rigid, like the door of a safe. The air was cold on the back of his throat.

Tink, tink, tink.

She lifted her right hand and closed her fingers into a fist. The Crawlers stopped their incessant scurrying in the glass dish. The sudden silence was jarring. Somehow she controlled the Crawlers with her gloved hand.

She picked up one of the Crawlers with a pair of tweezers. She placed the little robotic creature deep inside his mouth, on the back of his tongue. He had to fight not to panic, not to gag. The legs were like tiny scalpels, cutting into the tissue with even the slightest movement. He could taste droplets of blood rising up on the back of his tongue.

She touched another button and the piezo motors buzzed, closing his mouth for him, clamping his teeth together with an audible tock! She placed a hand on his mouth, sealing his lips. With two delicate fingers, she reached out and pinched his nose closed.

“Swallow it,” she said.

The seconds ticked away, probably a minute, before he panicked. He struggled violently against his bonds, his body rebelling against the lack of oxygen. He felt as though he might break a bone at any minute. His will was strong, but he knew his body couldn’t take this kind of punishment. He held out as long as he could, thrashing and pulling, but then his vision started to go.

You can’t not breathe; breathing is involuntary.

You swallow.

He felt the Crawler progress down his esophagus, the sharp burning as the legs tore at the soft tissues. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t move his jaw, couldn’t lift his tongue. He was locked down, frozen, the sound of his scream trapped inside his head.

She removed her hands, and he gasped for air through clenched teeth, chest heaving. He tried to make sense of what was happening.

She pushed the button, and his mouth again opened. She used a small flashlight to look inside. “Good,” she said.

She repeated this agonizing procedure three more times, until he had a total of four Crawlers in his belly. Liam fought to get control of himself, to quell the panic. He had to stay strong. He knew what she wanted. He couldn’t let her have it. No matter what it took. No matter how much he would have to suffer.