Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (22 page)

Screw that
, Harrison thinks as he shoves Destiny hard to the side and launches himself at their enemies.

There’s a bright blue light and the crackle of electricity and then his body goes limp, burning with heat and shaking like a child’s plaything.

The last thing he sees before losing consciousness: the gray-black cloud-full sky, painted with spinning snowflakes rather than stars.

B
right white light greets Harrison when he regains consciousness, like an alien spacecraft landing on his head.

He jams his eyes shut, groaning when he feels the dull ache in his ribs and abs. He tries to shift a hand to feel for permanent damage, but his arms won’t budge. He tests one foot, then the other, with the same result. He’s tied to some sort of bed. Well, bed is being far too generous. More like a metal plank, cold and hard. Like an operating table.

The thought causes an icy finger of fear to start probing in his gut, as if checking that all his internal organs are present and accounted for. Are they going to do something to him? Cut into him? Or have they already? God knows how many hours have passed with him lying prostrate and defenseless on this steel slab. They could’ve done anything to him in that time.

Anything. The word holds an endless number of horrifying possibilities.

And who is they?
he wonders for a moment, before the darkness behind his eyelids is shattered by memories. Shunned by his ex-girlfriend. Betrayed by his best friend. Tased by the Crows. And now…
I’m alive
.

The truth hits him like a hard slap in the face. He knows all too well that his crimes are punishable by death, and yet, he’s alive. But for what purpose?

An iron spike of anger strikes him in the chest as he realizes there’s no one who can save him. His father built a lifetime of lies in an organization he hated all so he could save Benson at some unknown time in the future, which, by the way, may never have even come to pass. But now his father is dead, so who’s going to save Harrison?

No one, that’s who.

And what of Destiny? he wonders. Did they spare her, too?

The answer sucks the breath out of him, beating like a bass drum.

No.

No.

No.

Pop Con would never spare a Slip. When it comes to unauthorized beings and Slips, “Shoot on sight” is Pop Con’s mantra. They would have shot her less than a second after subduing him.

The pain he feels in his chest is indescribably worse than any lingering effects of being Tased. He grits his teeth and forces his lungs to breathe, his heart to beat slowly, evenly. Falling into a well of despair won’t help anyone, himself included. And he needs to stay strong so he doesn’t fail what’s left of his family.

He knows he should continue to pretend like he’s sleeping, but fear of who or what might be standing directly next to him forces his eyes open. Squinting at first, he gradually raises each lid, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the bright sheet of light overhead. The light is so close and so fiercely bright that he can feel heat emanating from it, like a bonfire.

It’s intended to make him sweat. A slab of ice beneath him—a burning fire above him.

Something is holding his head firmly in place, so that he’s unable to move it from side to side. He strains against his bindings, heat flooding his head and neck, his muscles popping. Sweat rises from his pores, instantly cooling his skin and making it slippery. Despite the tautness of the strap clamping his head to the hard surface, he manages to tilt his head by a single degree, opening up his peripheral vision just enough to take in the small room that is clearly his prison.

He’s naked from the waist up, with only a tiny white towel wrapped around his hips. The thought of strangers’ hands undressing him while unconscious makes him want to punch someone’s teeth out. He sighs, letting the urge pass. It’s kind of hard to punch someone’s teeth out when you can’t move your arms.

From the edges of his vision he can tell the walls are dark. Not cast in shadows, but actually dark. Giant holo-screens. What are they going to do, show him bad sitcom episodes until he gives up?

His brief moment of indulgent frivolity passes when he sees her.

Although she also has a panel of lights overhead, they’re switched off, casting her in a shroud of inky shadows. The dead don’t require lights, he thinks grimly, swallowing a thick wad of sadness.

Like Harrison’s, Destiny’s clothes have been removed, with only two thin towels to cover her modesty—a small and unexpected kindness. As his eyes continue to adjust, he morbidly scans her lifeless body for signs of injury. Subconsciously he realizes he should just STOP FREAKING LOOKING, but, for some reason that’s beyond his own comprehension, he has to know how she died. Was it quick and painless or a long, drawn out death? He has to believe it was the former. Anything else would kill him.

Her long, lean body looks dark and athletic. Even in death Destiny appears strong and capable, as if a single touch would wake her up fighting.

There’s not a mark on her—at least none that’s visible. Whatever they did to her, it was internal, perhaps an injection of some sort.

A groan, a creak, and a door opens. The bright light paints a dark silhouette in the doorway.

Any number of vile threats burn in Harrison’s throat like bile, but he holds them back, saying nothing. Because that’s all they would be—threats. He won’t speak them until they’re promises.

“Hello, Harrison,” the silhouette says. A familiar voice, one heard across the dinner table on multiple occasions. Corrigan Mars. Once his father’s friend—now his murderer. Maybe Destiny’s murderer, too. Soon to be his murderer?

Not if he can help it.

“You killed her,” Harrison says coldly. Not a question. An accusation.

The new Head of Pop Con steps into the arc of light. He looks older than Harrison remembered. More tired. More lined. More weather-beaten.

More deadly.

He wears a thin smile, like he’s about to utter a joke’s punchline. “She was a Slip,” Mars says, as if that makes everything all right. “The people demand justice.”

“Justice?” Harrison says, his voice cracking. “Like my father? Like you want to give my brother? My mother? Will it ever be enough? Or will you have to destroy my entire family before you’re satisfied?” The rage boils over faster than Harrison can tamp it down, and although he knows it’s futile, he strains against his bindings.

Which. Don’t. Budge.

He slumps back against the table, hitting the back of his head. The sharp jab of pain in his skull is welcome, clarifying. Necessary to extinguish his anger enough to let him think. For now, words are his only weapons, his brute strength stifled.

“Harrison, Harrison, Harrison,” Mars says, remaining frustratingly calm. “This was never personal, my boy. This is strictly a legal matter. If I’d had it my way, your father would’ve made the right choice all those years ago and then we wouldn’t be in this pickle, would we? I respected your father a lot, son. At least up until the point when his brain fell out of his head and he went half-crazy. Then he became just another criminal to be punished.”

“The only criminal here is you,” Harrison says.

Corrigan Mars sighs, the way a frustrated parent might react to a particularly disobedient and patience-testing child. “It’s not too late to change your mind, Harrison,” Mars says. “If you do the right thing and tell me where your brother and mother are, I’ll ensure you get less than a ten-year sentence. You’ll survive. In less than a decade you’ll be considered rehabilitated and you’ll have your life back—whatever life you choose.”

Harrison tries to shake his head, but the restraints prevent him. “You can shove that idea right up your—”

“And,” Mars says, holding a finger in the air and cutting him off, “if you give me information on where the rest of the Lifers are, our generous mayor has given me free reign to offer you full and uncontested immunity from prosecution. You would go free, son.”

And so it starts, Harrison thinks. Stage one: an offer he can’t refuse.

Except he can. “You can eat your own crap,” he growls.

Stage two: “Very well,” Mars says. “Time to meet the Destroyer.”

“What?” he blurts out. Benson told him about the cyborg Hunter that almost killed them. He also told him how they were able to destroy him.

Mars laughs. “Isn’t modern technology fantastic? Those that should be dead live on.” He laughs again. “Kind of like your brother.”

Harrison says nothing, his eyes darting around the room, inspecting every nook and cranny for potential torture devices. He half-expects to find a cliché steel cart with various razor-sharp instruments of terror, silver and shiny and ready to be poked into his skin. Instead, he finds the same thing he found before: An empty room, save for the dead girl resting nearby. Destiny…dead…how could he have been so stupid to bring her with him? He thought he was saving her, but he was only delaying the inevitable. Tears prick at his eyes, but he holds them back with the tenacity of a cobra.

Corrigan Mars seems to realize the purpose of Harrison’s eye movements, because he says, “The Destroyer needs no tools. He is the tool.”

“That’s the first true thing you’ve spoken,” Harrison says.

Realizing his verbal slipup, Mars tightens his jaw and exits the room, tossing a darkly ironic “Have fun” over his shoulder like a grenade.

Silence falls like a thick blanket. The door remains open, like an unassuming portal to hell. Harrison blinks, holding his breath.

He gasps when there’s a silence-shattering scream and the blank walls turn white with blinding light. Through narrow slits he watches the doorway, which remains a black hole of emptiness.

Although there is only audio, Harrison can immediately picture the scene being replayed by the speakers. After all, he was there. He lived it. There are shots and shouts and frantic commands uttered by his father. In his mind, he can see Michael Kelly to his right. He’s wielding dual black guns, firing shot after shot down a long corridor. Black-garbed Hunters, also shooting, die under the onslaught, piling up like discarded clothes until his father is hit, blood bursting from his skin like the splash from a puddle. One of his guns clatters to the floor.

Harrison wishes he could close his ears as easily as his eyes, which is perhaps why they chose to torment him with only the
sounds
of his father’s last stand, rather than the full video, which he’s sure Corrigan Mars watches every night before bed. Hearing his father defending his family seems to open a door inside him. For just a moment, he can almost see Michael Kelly the way Benson does, as the loving father and doting husband that he once was.

The moment fades as he hears his father’s gun click with expired ammo.

Footsteps ring out and he can picture Corrigan Mars stepping into view, striding slowly but purposefully toward his father. Pointing a gun at his head. A shot rings out and Harrison hears a scuffle and a grunt of pain. Did his father dive away from the shot? Was he hit again? There’s more scuffling and frantic gasping breaths and then another gunshot. His father screams and Harrison’s muscles tense in protest, as if he can stop the past by sheer strength of will. There’s a thump and a groan, the sound of his father growling through his teeth. His eyes are dry and burning, but he doesn’t close them for fear that the sounds will intensify behind the shadow of his eyelids.

He doesn’t know if his imagination is worse than reality, but he can see Mars standing over his father, grinning from ear to ear, gloating, pointing the gun at his head. Silence falls, desperate and heavy, and Harrison thinks the audio has been cut off at the penultimate point, almost like a taunt.

But no. The sound of the final gunshot makes him flinch, so real it’s as if someone just pulled the trigger next to his head. The gunshot that ended his father’s life. Although it’s a shot from the past, he knows it’s also a promise of violence. A threat of bodily harm if he doesn’t cooperate.

Silence returns and Harrison closes his eyes, seeing images of his own creation replay endlessly in his mind, like a waking nightmare.

Then he hears breathing in the dark.

His eyes flash open and he scans his surroundings from edge of vision to edge of vision, seeing nothing, nothing, nothing…

There!
A glint of metal in the dark; a silver spark like a summer firefly. While Harrison was trying to block out the images, the cyborg somehow managed to steal into the room, as silent as a ghostly wraith.

“The only thing I regret about my sister’s death,” the Destroyer says with a voice like grinding sand, “is that I wasn’t the one that pulled the trigger.”

The cyborg steps into the light. For some reason Harrison expected to find a creature more gruesome, with flesh torn apart by metal parts jutting out at odd angles, like a new age demon. And he thought he’d be older, not some teenager around his own age. Instead, the cyborg is the best that money and technology has to offer, a fluid combination of man and machine. Half of his face is forged from titanium, the metal plate curving around the edge of his lips, past his nose, and missing his eyes, which are dark with menace, like a pair of storm clouds blotting out the sun. The rest of his body appears to be mostly machine, although it’s difficult to tell beneath the Hunter’s garb adorning his tall, athletic form. Some might even refer to the cyborg as perfection, technological and human beauty at its best.

Some might say that he’s flawless, like a diamond.

But not Harrison. “You are one ugly-looking son of a bot-licker,” he says.