Vicious Circle

What did I know about truth serums? Only what I’d picked up from reading cheap spy thrillers, but that was enough to know that they didn’t work. They were just disinhibitors, cutting the brake cables of your subconscious so that you freewheeled endlessly, gabbling on about whatever came into your head. People injected with propofol or pentathol couldn’t consciously lie, but they could and did talk a load of free-associative shite. That was why truth drugs didn’t turn up much anymore even in cheap spy thrillers.

On the other hand, did I want to free-associate in front of Gwillam about Asmodeus and Abbie and Juliet and St. Michael’s Church? No, I didn’t. This was definitely a good time to be keeping my thoughts to myself.

And just then, another bit of trivia that I didn’t even know I knew popped up out of nowhere. I suddenly remembered what class of drugs the truth serums belonged to—and it gave me the bare bones of an idea; thin and pathetic but marginally better than nothing. No harm in trying, anyway: the only downside was that if it didn’t work, I might never wake up. I started to breathe fast and deep, forcing air into my lungs.

“Would it be better if he was unconscious?” Sallis asked, with what from my point of view sounded like an indecent amount of enthusiasm.

“Hardly,” Gwillam snapped. “How will he be able to answer any questions if you’ve put your fist through his skull?”

He loomed back into my field of vision, the needle raised in his hand.

“Gwillam!” I growled, still breathing in fast, forced gasps. I must have looked like I was starting a full-fledged panic attack.

Gwillam hesitated. “What?” he asked.

“I’m allergic.”

“Allergic to what, exactly?” Gwillam asked, his tone dangerously mild.

There could be any of twenty different drugs in the syringe. All I could do was guess.

“Propofol,” I said.

Gwillam shrugged. “Then you can relax,” he said. “This is something different.”

The needle came down towards my neck. I twisted suddenly in Sallis’s hands, and Gwillam stopped: he didn’t want to kill me—or at least, not until he’d asked the rest of his questions. “Hold him steady,” he rasped, and Sallis threw one arm around my neck, leaned in hard against me to restrict my movement as much as he could.

All of this was just playing for time while I drew as many breaths as I could, working my lungs like bellows until the actual moment when the tip of the needle slid into my skin and Gwillam’s thumb pushed home the plunger.

A red curtain fell across my mind. A black one followed, half a second later. But they weren’t curtains at all, they were solid walls, and I crashed into unconsciousness so fast and hard that I actually felt the impact.

* * *

I woke up slowly and painfully; bleeding fragments of thought running together like mercury, pooling like ultra-cold lakes in the fractal wastelands of my cerebellum.

The “I” came first, but there was nothing to join it to. Just I. What I? Where I? Who the fuck cared? It couldn’t matter. Whoever he was, let the bastard wait. There was pain going on somewhere nearby and I wanted to lie low so that it didn’t find me.

A minute or an hour later, an “am” trickled down from somewhere and attached itself to the “I.” I am. I therefore think.

It was me, again, bubbling up from under the chemical sludge of anaesthesia whether I liked it or not; being harshly, achingly reborn in a dark, cold room that seemed to be hanging at an angle. But no, that was me. I was lying skewed, my cheek pressed against the floor, my legs canted up into the air. I couldn’t figure it out so I let it go.

I was still alive, anyway. And I was still thinking. Any brain damage? How would I tell? If you’ve lost enough of your brain function to make a difference, you’ve probably lost the ability to see it as a problem. Maybe the terrific throbbing inside my skull was a good sign: there had to be a lot of nerves in there still doing their jobs.

Truth serums are general anaesthetics. They’re the primary inducers that you’re given to kick your conscious mind away into the long grass so that your body can be cut and spliced and sewn without any kickback from your cerebellum. By hyperventilating, I’d made sure that I got as big and fast a hit as the dose in Gwillam’s syringe could provide. I was hoping that I’d go straight past the rambling stage into full unconsciousness. It might even have worked: I didn’t have any memory of talking, anyway. But maybe a hole in your memory was normal with these things.

I opened my eyes, but there was nothing to see. Either I’d been struck with hysterical blindness, or I was in an absolutely dark space. I tried to move, and couldn’t. I could lift my head, just, but that turned out to be a mistake because it made the throbbing worse. I opened my mouth to swear and discovered that my tongue was glued to my dry palate.