Jezebel's Ladder (12 page)

Benny was shouting to everyone around him. “Steve, get me Frisco
Life Flight, now! You in the van, get me a satellite feed on the Arkansas meeting!” Into the cell phone, he said, “Eye Corps, what’s happening? Uncle Buddy,
override Cosmic Purple.”

 “Cornflake Girl here. Oobie
surfaced from his dive too fast and is suffering from the bends. Vader won’t
let me medicate him. He took control of the operation and ordered everyone back
to the bus.”

“Give the phone to the Doc,” Benny
said, dropping the code names.

“Weiss,” he answered, obviously
running and panting.

“Explain,” ordered the former
actor. “What’s with the Al Haig routine?”

“Jez inoculated me last night and
gave me orders.”

In the background, Benny could hear
a guard in Arkansas report, “SUVs, five of them incoming.”

Weiss terminated the connection.

Benny spiked the phone into the
sidewalk out of frustration. Then he swore at his own idiocy for breaking the
communications link. “Will somebody give me a status report?”

The man in the van said, “Satellite
shows one friendly being carried away. Smoke is pouring out of the building.
Jesus, this doesn’t look good. Hostiles in riot armor coming out. Five. Ten.
Shit. Twenty gas masks. A couple are limping. One of them is carrying a white
ball under his arm.” When the view shifted enough, they could make out Seth’s
severed head.

An obscenity went out over the open
line.

Another guard reported. “No word from
the driver at the country club. All the monitors are dead.”

“Helicopter lands in ten,” Jezebel’s
guard said.

Benny paced in circles. “Zoom in on
the survivor.”

Another technician took over. “No
face, but the hair is light and long.”

“Butterfly,” several people said in
unison.

“She got tossed into the back of a
Suburban.”

Benny snapped, “Do
not
lose
track of that SUV or I will personally kick your ass all the way back to LA.”

“Oobie’s team reports gunfire. The
rear van is slowing to cover the others. Vader has ordered them to use their
rocket on a telephone pole.”

Benny put his hands behind his head
and gripped his hair.

“The pole is now blocking the road!”
A cheer went up from the others, but the radio man's face fell. “Sir, they lost
the trailing van to enemy fire, but the bus and lead van have escaped unharmed.”

Benny sat on the grass, waiting.
When the countdown for the helicopter reached one minute, one of the guards
handed him a phone. “Vader, sir.”

“Good job,” Benny said glumly.

“It was a cluster… you-know-what,”
said the doctor.

“Jez put the right man in charge.
You lived. How’s Oobie?”

“In shock. I don’t know whether it
was the people dying near him or flashbacks from his own explosion, but the boy
is a mess.”

“Try to have him up in about two
hours. I need eyes for a rescue. Use DNA from Olive to track her.”

“Olive?”

In the background, Nena said, “The
stuffed reindeer, I’ll get it from her bags.”

The sounds of an approaching rotor
could be heard. The doctor said, “You aren’t coming here, are you? Dirt Bag
said that was expressly against policy.”

“I can’t hear you!” Benny shouted
into the phone before hanging up. Next, he used his formidable powers of
persuasion on the pilot and then they were underway. The Life Flight
administrator on the radio took more monetary means, but was swayed just as
quickly.

****

Dr. Weiss hid the remaining team at
a cheap motel behind the State Police building outside Fayetteville. He sat on
a plaid-orange bedspread with a lucid but terrified Daniel. The teenager was
sitting on the bed, hugging his own legs.

Clutching a handful of maps, the
white-haired doctor did his best to sound confident and soothing. “I know this mission
has been hard for you, but it’s not over. We’ve tracked Jez to the Fossils’
headquarters complex outside of town. It’s about forty miles from here. There
are fifty-six acres of office buildings on that campus. That’s as close as we
can pin-point her for now. I’ve moved the satellites to watch all the incoming
roads to our site.

“We’re as safe as you can get in a
war. We’ve got coverage from the satellites for another two hours, but then we
have to bug out. I need you to scout for Butterfly, a quick in-and-out, just to
tell us her building number on this map.”

Daniel shivered. “Their death
screams burned into my brain. It’s like seeing purple spots for minutes after a
flashbulb goes off. Only it was worse. I knew every one of them.”

“I don’t mean to be cold, son, but
you have a window of opportunity here. If you fail to take this chance now,
you’ll wonder for the rest of your life. It’ll affect your ability to make new
friendships and even make you question your manhood.”

“You’ve had a choice like this?”

The doctor shook his head. “Not
exactly. But I had a defining moment in my aerospace career. I only wish
someone had told me how important it was at the time. I knew that a piece of
equipment they were sending up on a mission was sensitive to cold, not like an
O-ring, but enough to make it squirrely till it warmed up. I put it in a
report, but did not explicitly inform mission control of the danger. When the
main cabin got tight, someone moved the device to the cargo bay.”

The young man furrowed his brow. “That
opens to space, really cold.”

The doctor nodded.

Daniel looked down at the sheets. “What
if she’s dead already?”

Softly, Weiss replied, “Then we’ll
mourn her properly, but not risk the rescue team. Going in blind, they will
certainly die. Benny is leading them. We need intel, son, and we need it now.”

“Only if Nena can be there to hold
my hand. If Jez is dead…”

“Understood.” The doctor shouted
through the door, “Monitors, crash cart, Olive, Cornflake Girl, stat!”

They set up in record time. As
Daniel received the green injection, he stared into Nena’s eyes. He held the
reindeer in the other hand.

“You don’t have to do this,” she
insisted. “They don’t pay you to die.”

“This isn’t for money,” he replied
as he drifted off.

Daniel appeared in a narrow section
of steam tunnel. The walls were covered in duct-taped, plastic sheeting. Jez
hung from a pipe, held up by a pair of handcuffs. Her gear and clothing had
been removed, leaving only a white jogging bra and underwear. Her arm bandage
had been joined by several cruder patches, super-glue field dressings on
numerous facial and arm scratches. She dangled over a plastic kiddy pool lined
with a thin layer of cat litter. The balls of her feet could barely touch the
gritty surface.

A female technician with her hair
in a bun attached electrical leads to several medical-monitoring points on her
body. There were also electrodes on the feet, armpits, and other sensitive pain
points. Then, the technician announced, “She’s awake.”

Jez suddenly gripped the woman with
her legs. The technician screamed for help as Jez dragged her close enough to
bite an ear. The woman thrashed and shouted incoherently. Her hair spilled down
as the captured agent head-butted her in the nose.

With smug satisfaction, Maverick
thumbed a button he was holding. Voltage coursed through both women, and both
went limp. Releasing the button, Maverick kicked the technician clear.

Daniel flickered back briefly in a
moment of panic. “They’re torturing her!”

“What building?” demanded Weiss.

“Steam tunnels. I didn’t check
where.” He described the scene.

“She wasn’t trying to kill the
technician,” Weiss explained. “It was a diversion so she could grab a security
badge or something. Jez is a big girl. She can use it to escape if we can just
distract them long enough.”

“That’s right,” Daniel brightened. “Jez
did this for a living. The hair fell—she stole a bobby pin and hid it in her
mouth.”

“What?” Nena asked.

“She’s a professional escape
artist.” Daniel explained.

Nena looked confused. “I thought
she was just a secretary.”

Both men smiled. Wavering but
encouraged, Daniel said, “I think I can do it one more time.”

Closing his eyes, he concentrated.
Back in the tunnel, he saw Maverick holding her by the jaw, giving Jez the
ground rules. They were alone in the room. A sturdy, metal office chair and a
TV tray of odd garage paraphernalia sat beside the head of Fossil security.

Daniel waved, but she couldn’t see
him. Frantic, he scanned the area for any kind of room number or distinctive
marking. The outlet that the torture device was plugged into had a string of
odd numbers associated. A pillar off to the right had a fire-escape-route arrow
and the label AF73. He memorized both as he listened to the interrogation.

Maverick said, “You weren’t
supposed to be the one at the meeting, but I’m going to keep you alive until
Buddy shows up for you.”

“I’m the bait? It’ll never happen.
It’s against Dirt Bag’s rules.”

Maverick shrugged. “Then, I cut off
a body part each day and mail it to him till he breaks the rules.”

Jez stared into his stone-black
eyes. “I thought you were into rape, not mutilation.”

“You mean Claudette?” he grinned. “She
submitted willingly. Every time I pushed into her, I thought about how crazy it
would make Fortune. Sadly, she’s a bit old and tires easily. It got boring, but
she begged for everything I did to her.”

He pulled out a knife and whispered
in her ear. “You’ll beg, too. When Buddy gets here, I’ll strap him in that
chair and make him watch while I do you. I want to watch him squirm while he
sees what a real man can do. You’ll live as long as you beg for more of me, and
I stay interested. The more exciting you make it, the longer you live.”

“That’s the second time you
admitted needing to fantasize about a man in order to get an erection.” That’s
when he used his knife to cut off the little toe on her right foot. Blood
dripped into the cat litter and clumped.

Daniel vanished again, vomiting
before he could even turn his head. Dr. Weiss kept him from choking. The
monitors were triggering alarms. Nena popped out a red syringe, but the doctor
knocked it out of her hand. “You people always overmedicate. Just let him
breathe.”

Daniel recited numbers from the
steam tunnel as tears poured down his cheeks. A guard wrote them down and
started a search of the blueprints. He relayed the events as quickly as
possible, his voice getting higher. “Why her little toe?”

Nena answered. “To help break her.
She has to learn who’s in control. It’s particularly personal because of her
love of dancing and shoes. Those will never be the same, even if she’s rescued.
It will also make running away difficult.”

Daniel was horrified. “Why did she
antagonize him like that?”

Weiss answered. “She can’t lie. If
he thinks to ask her certain things, she might tell. It’s a side-effect of the
page. So she has to keep him emotional, off-balance, and stall.”

“Stall how?” asked Daniel.

The doctor seemed unable to stop
his own reply. “The pain of cauterizing in such a circumstance will likely make
her pass out again. It’ll buy much-needed time.”

“The car cigarette lighter. Oh,
God!” Daniel whimpered.

Nena whispered as she stroked his
hair. “She won’t remember afterward. Pain erases memories.”

After calmly bagging the toe he had removed as proof of
life, Maverick clipped his digital recorder to Jezebel’s bra so he could pick
up every detail and replay it later.

She was deep in theta, trying to
escape him. He grabbed her ponytail and said, “Good show, Jez.” When her eyes
fluttered open, they went wide with horror. The Fossils had her post-hypnotic
key. If they had everyone’s, this was very bad for the Project. He said, “From
now on, each time you try to go unconscious, I will remove another digit.”

He hung up his jacket and Kevlar
vest on the utility pegs studding the wall. She could see the photo-ID badge on
his jacket’s front pocket, a key to every door in this complex, just out of her
reach. After he removed an extra layer of body armor from under his t-shirt,
she noticed that the strength of his active signal went down, like someone
using a dimmer switch on a light. Had Maverick been carrying a page next to his
skin? Maybe he drew comfort from the alien device, or maybe it was an added
layer of bullet protection.

The sadist ended her speculations
when he chose an implement from his surgical table: two feet of steel pipe with
a rubber grip. “Meet the rod of instruction. As part of martial arts training,
they taught me how to administer public canings. I can punish someone for days,
and they will feel every nuance. Allow me to demonstrate.” Maverick beat the
bottoms of her feet, kidneys, breasts, and other sensitive places. “This will
happen every time you fail to answer fully and with proper respect. Do you
understand?”

Jez shrieked, “Yes.”

He struck the arch of her right
foot so hard that something had to have broken inside like glass. Tears flowed
down her face. She hadn’t cried since the day she heard the news about Chance,
not even at the funeral.

“Yes, what?”

Choking, she gave him the answer he
wanted. “Yes, master.”

From then on, she answered
questions as completely as possible, padding with unnecessary details wherever
she could. When the topic of the country club came up, she asked, “How could
you kill all those people?”

“Seth was a thorn in his father’s
side for years. This trap was years in the making. We would have killed a
hundred people to get him. Your people were just a bonus.”

“Who betrayed us, other than you?”

Maverick smacked her across the
face, bruising her jaw and lips. “I ask the questions.”

Blood trickled down her chin. This
gave her good reason to speak more slowly and slur her words. She had to go
back several times for clarification. Eventually, they got to the important
questions.

“What’s the combination for the
safe where the pages are kept in the LA office?” Maverick demanded.

This was the question she dreaded. “Checkmate,
you bastard.” She was interrupted by the sound of an explosion ripping through
the night.

This was followed shortly after by
a report over Maverick’s headset. “Machine-gun fire in the north parking lot.”
Jez surprised him by giving the type and military specification for the device.
He eyed her with suspicion. “How did you know?”

“The attack is straight out of our
contingency book for see…seizing your pages in an emergency. I know because I
objected to the potential loss of life. Trench Coat overruled me. A rocket
attack on the office with the safe could start a fire. Dogs… would kill the
fire crews. Innocent lives could be lost.”

Maverick snapped orders into his
headset over the next several minutes. “Concentrate on zone three. Move all
forces there except squad four. Do not allow a breach in the command bunker.
Pull in the dogs between there and the main gate. Contain, but do not pursue in
the north parking area.”

Alarms of all kinds were going off
around the complex. “What’s going on?” Maverick demanded into his headset.

Jezebel responded, “The Virus is
helping.” The corporate computer systems were under attack to add to the
confusion. There could be only one reason for this.

Before she could explain, Maverick
shouted, “Shut up, bitch! I'm trying to hear my lieutenant.”

Dumbass,
she thought,
already planning her escape.

When Steve kicked in the door, she
tried to smile, but the movement hurt her face too much. Reflexively, Maverick
threw the dagger, and it struck Jez’s guard high on the right shoulder. A
normal-sized man would have been pierced through the heart. As it was, Steve
cursed and his gunshot went wide. The pistol dropped from his twitching
fingers.

Maverick kicked the pistol aside as
Benny strode through the door. The head of Fossil security wrapped his
well-muscled arm around Steve’s neck, positioning him as a human shield.
Lifting Steve off the floor, the mercenary said, “Drop it or he’s dead.”

Steve rasped and kicked like a man
swinging from the gallows. His face was turning red.

Benny held his gun up. “I think you
should throw him out in the hall, and the two of us can settle this like men.”

“No grenades?”

“We used all the flash-bangs and
smokers on the dogs.”

Maverick grinned at the prospect.

Jez said, “Don’t do it, Benny! He’s
murdered two dozen people, and you played a boxer in a movie.”

Maverick back-kicked her in the
stomach so hard she gagged. “Thirty, actually.”

“Let’s dance,” Benny said, laying
his gun on the floor and stepping to the side.

Maverick tossed Steve out the door
and into the far wall hard enough to give him a concussion. Rolling his
shoulder, he said, “I’m going to enjoy putting you in your place, pretty boy.”

They traded a few feints, Benny
trying hard to analyze the more-experienced fighter’s style. On the first,
solid body blow the actor landed, the mercenary didn’t react as expected.
Instead, Maverick trapped his arm and twisted. The elbow cracked.

“One limb down, three to go,” the
mercenary said with glee.

As soon as the distracted Maverick
had his back to her, Jez looped her legs over the pipe and swung herself up.
While the men circled in earnest, she spit out the hair pin and went to work on
the handcuffs. Shuffle, whoosh, slide, tap. This was the ultimate test of the
new Simplification combat techniques. Benny had the evasion techniques down,
but couldn’t seem to hurt the mercenary. Normal techniques like a kick in the
groin didn’t slow him in the least. As Maverick ducked a fist, he took a knee
to the face, bending his nose to the side. His eyes watered, leaving him at a
disadvantage.

“Kick boxing?” asked the mercenary.

Benny grinned. “Tan’s been teaching
me. His whole village does it. That’s why we were filming… Aaargh!”

While he’d been gloating, Maverick
grabbed a steel baton from the tray and broke his left wrist. “Two down,”
announced the mercenary.

In answer, Benny head-butted him in
the jaw, making him stagger back. Her hands free, Jez dropped onto her torturer’s
back, and clamped her left arm around his eyes. “For crimes against the Union
of Souls,” she began.

Maverick slammed her back into the
wall. The storage pegs made her whimper as they snapped. Benny ran over with a
bellow and kicked him in the solar plexus. This knocked the wind out of him
long enough for her to do what she required. Peeling back her bandage, she
exposed the paragraph. “I sentence you to forced reflection.”

When she touched the paragraph to
his temple, Maverick went rigid. In the span of three heartbeats, he collapsed.

Benny stared in wonder. “You
escaped and knocked him out.”

“Good to see you,” Jez said with
tenderness.

Over the open link, Weiss said, “I
told you she just needed a distraction.”

“When Maverick wakes up in a few
hours…” Benny began.

Jez shook her head. “He won’t be
waking up. He didn’t pass the test. He’s stuck in a coma indefinitely,
examining the stain on his own soul.” She tried to stand, but her feet betrayed
her, causing her to collapse with a gasp of pain. “Can’t walk.”

Instinctively, Benny reached out to
help her, but she shrieked, “Don’t touch me! You’ll be reformatted, too. Let me
cover up. Give me his gloves, jacket, and armor. Don’t touch the inside.”

While Benny used his chin and elbow
to grab the jacket and body armor, Jez peeled the headset off the vacant-eyed
mercenary, “I’ll monitor their frequencies and keep my radar out for Rexes.
They’re weakest in the south.”

Benny said into his comm set, “Did
you hear that? Have a vehicle waiting for us. We’ll be outbound in one.”

When the actor handed her the
mercenary’s clothes, she said, “Kick over that garbage bag of clothes he cut
off me, and I’ll tie together a couple slings for you.”

She used the gloves to fold both
pages into the vest’s left pouch. When she opened the pouch, she said with
disgust, “Dog biscuits. The prick was nice to dogs.”

Benny snorted, “You want to stay on
the good side of those vicious brutes. Wait, Cornflake wants to talk to you.
Switch headsets with me.”

Nena said, “I’m so glad you’re
alive! The dogs respond to Czech commands. The word you want is ‘
sedeti
.’
It means sit.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?”

The secretary sighed, “Nobody
asked. I only know because I used to give the boys table scraps. I don’t want
my friends to hurt each other. The commands might not work unless you smell and
dress like the owner first.”

“We’re already ahead of you on
that. Doc, can you talk me through some first aid?” With a few hints from Weiss
and the steel pipe from the floor, Jez tied crude splints and slings for both
of Benny’s arms. As she worked, she told the doctor what she had done to
Maverick.

The doctor absolved her. “Although,
you broke the requirement of having three judges to pass sentence, he confessed
his crimes to all of us. You did the right thing for the community. What do you
think the penalty should be?”

“I don’t think I should be
permitted to judge other actives anymore.”

“A bit harsh, but you wanted us to
set a high standard. Agreed,” said the doctor. “We’ll do the paperwork later.
Now, on to Steve’s knife wound so we can get you out of there fast.”

Jez searched the instrument table
on her knees till she found the smelling salts and the field bandages. Benny
didn’t like it. “That stuff’s dangerous.”

“We’re out of time,” she said.

After he was patched up, Benny
couldn’t carry her in his arms or give aid to Steve. She couldn’t crawl far in
her condition. They solved the problem by having her ride piggyback. He was the
feet and she was the hands. Together, they made a whole person.

He carried them out to the hall.
She slapped a super-glue bandage on Steve’s shoulder wound. Once they woke the
guard up, he retrieved his own weapon. He also passed Benny’s weapon to Jez,
which she holstered without comment.

They were silent after that, except
for what they needed to say to escape. Steve covered their rear, clenching the
pistol in his off hand. They changed direction several times in the maze of
corridors when Jez sensed a Rex nearby or Benny heard orders over the radio. It
took till the fire trucks arrived for them to reach the dew-covered lawn.

Only one dog greeted them and he
was happy for the treats Jez gave him.

Someone had ordered an extra ambulance.
In the confusion, they were driven away with no sirens and no incidents. Jez
collapsed from exhaustion, with her head resting on Benny’s chest.

As the paramedic tended to Steve’s
wound, the guard whispered, “You are one lucky bastard.”

Benny said, “I know.”