Remote (19 page)

He studied the pipe he was shackled to.  He was pretty sure he could rip it right out of the wall, but not without waking the woman.  He could also yell his head off—she hadn’t tried to gag him—but that ran counter to his deepest instincts.  Goliath had never asked the cops for any favors, and he sure as hell wouldn’t let them rescue him.  He’d never live it down, and after all his brothers were done mocking him the Mantises would devour his soul.

No.  He would wait for his chance.  He’d rape the woman, then kill her, then rape her a few more times just for fun.  Maybe poke her eyes out, first.

The Mantises, howling in the depths of his brain, seemed to like the idea.

***

Jack glanced over at his captive.  Still out.  He put the book down, then limped over to the bathroom.  It was well-stocked with medical supplies, right down to tools to perform minor surgery: scalpels, suturing needles and thread, antibiotics to stave off infection, hypodermics—but no morphine, no local anesthetics.  He searched further, but there were no painkillers of any kind, not even aspirin. 

He paused, thinking.  Recovering substance abusers sometimes avoided drugs or alcohol of all types, not even allowing products like mouthwash in their homes—but he found a bottle of isopropylene alcohol next to a sealed package of sterile swabs. 

He used tweezers to pull out some of the wooden splinters the bomb had imbedded in his flesh, smeared on some antibiotic ointment and bandaged up the worse wounds with gauze and tape.  A search of Remote’s bedroom turned up some sweatpants and a black T-shirt he could wear, as well as socks and a pair of loafers that were a size too small but would do.  Jack cracked open a bottle of water from the fridge and drained it, then did it again.  He used the microwave to get some soup in a plastic container up to lukewarm and ate it.

Then he went back to the desk and its wall of monitors.  Studying the active ones, Jack learned a few things.  One, they seemed to be on an island; two, they were far enough north for a thick layer of snow to have built up on the ground, even this close to water; and three, there was a boat tied up down at the dock that was Jack’s ticket off the island.

If he could get out of the house.

There was one screen slightly different from the rest with their still shots of Eden in mid-attack.  It had a small symbol blinking on the bottom of the screen, indicating something running in the background.  Jack studied the keyboard, then hit a key at random.

The screen changed, showing him a desktop filled with icons and folders.  Jack clicked on one marked GAMES and was surprised to have it open; he’d expected to be completely locked out of the system.

A few minutes of exploration proved him right, or mostly so—the only folders he could access were GAMES, COLLECTION, and ARCHIVE, none of which were terribly revealing.  GAMES was exactly that, a library of computer games, and COLLECTION was a detailed list of the clockwork toys displayed in the cases throughout the house.  ARCHIVE contained dozens of reality TV shows downloaded from the Internet.  Remote had probably kept the files open until the last minute to give himself something to do while waiting for Jack to break in—everything else was locked behind a wall of encryption. 

Jack thought about that. 
A maniac’s trying to break down your door, intent on torturing you.  The best weapon you have to hand is a weight-lifting bar.  And what do you do while your own imminent destruction is hammering away at the walls of your castle?

You watch television reruns, of course.   Maybe play a few video games, or sort through your catalogue of toys.
 

Jack shook his head, then winced as a bolt of pain lanced along his spine.  It didn’t make sense, not unless Remote was so deranged he was incapable of considering his own defeat.  That didn’t describe the man that lived in this house—he was highly intelligent, with a scrupulous eye to detail and preparation.  No, Jack wasn’t looking at evidence of arrogance.

He was looking at fear. 

Jack knew what people under intense pressure did, both from research he’d done and from his own direct experience.   They looked for a physical way out, and if that wasn’t available they looked for a mental one.  Jack himself had used fiction to relieve some of the pressures of childhood, escaping into a book when he couldn’t actually run away from his problems; when caught in an emotionally stressful situation, he sometimes found his attention searching for text, any text.  He could remember one particular nasty fight with his wife during which he read the back of a cereal box over and over without even realizing he was doing it. 

The games, the toys, the shows—they were Remote’s escape.  Caught inside the fortified confines of his own house, he’d tried to calm himself with what he found the most familiar, the most comforting.  It was a way to reinforce his sense of control.

Jack permitted himself a small smile.  He’d found an important chink in Remote’s armor—but things still didn’t add up.  He was missing something. 

He got up and walked around the room, examining the exercise equipment, the desk, the chair—and realized an important fact.

There were no sharp edges. 

The desk was all rounded angles.  Foam pads capped the ends of the barbells, except for the one Remote had used as a weapon—he’d removed the caps on it and set them aside in a drawer.  The drawers themselves didn’t close all the way, some sort of block keeping them open a few inches. 

No doors on the rooms, just the single entrance.  No cutlery that wasn’t made of plastic.  No glass except for the monitors, and that was protected by more shatterproof plastic.  Thick carpet on the floor.  It was as if the entire panic room had been childproofed. 

Jack had assumed the rooms downstairs had been stripped of potential weapons in case a prisoner like himself had gotten loose—but he’d been wrong.  The entire house was like that, and it had nothing to do with unexpected visitors—though the precautions
were
there for Remote’s safety.

Jack blocked the door open, then gagged Remote as a precaution against any possible voice-activated defenses.  He ducked carefully under the electrified panel, and made his way downstairs to the library.  He scanned the shelf that held medical textbooks until he found what he was looking for, and pulled it out.  He didn’t even have to use the index; the section he wanted was well-thumbed and bookmarked with a sticky note.

He took it back upstairs and sat back down.  This time he read very carefully, and when he was done he turned back to the start and read it over again.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

Remote’s eyes flickered and then opened.  “Hmmm?”

“Congenital universal analgesia,” Jack said.  He sat in the white leather rolling chair, which he’d placed directly in front of Remote’s. 

Remote blinked a few times before answering.  He had a broad, handsome face, with a square chin and a flattened nose.  “Yes,” he said, smiling.  He seemed perfectly at ease, not at all disoriented or afraid.  “I see you’ve raided my library.  Good, that saves me having to explain a few things—though I must admit I was looking forward to seeing the expression on your face when you found out for yourself.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.  If it’s any consolation, during our little tussle you surprised the hell out of me.”

Remote chuckled, a friend sharing a joke with an old comrade.  “Well, that’s something, I suppose.  You know, that’s the first fight I’ve ever been in—I quite enjoyed it.  How’d I do?”

“You lost.”

“But not easily, you must admit.”  He seemed proud of himself, not at all worried that he was now in the hands of the man he’d tried to beat senseless with a metal bar.  Which, Jack considered, made perfect sense in and of itself.

“So you can’t feel pain.  Any pain, at all.”

“No, I can’t,” Remote said cheerfully.  “Never have and apparently never will.  It is a color I cannot see, a sound I cannot hear.  And yes, I was born this way.”

Jack nodded.  “From what I’ve been reading, you’re not a typical case.”

“Because I still have both my eyes?  Or because I’m not an idiot?”  For the first time, bitterness crept into Remote’s voice.

“Both,” Jack admitted.  Individuals born without the ability to feel pain often irreparably damaged their own eyes when very young, scratching the retinas with a fingernail or some other object.  Many also had some degree of mental retardation. 

“My mind, as you can tell, operates just fine,” said Remote.  “Luck of the genetic draw.  I keep my body in matching condition through careful maintenance, including a closely followed exercise regimen and twice-daily inspections of every square inch of myself.  You probably noticed the mirrors?  And as for my vision—well, let’s just say I had a very closely supervised childhood.”

Jack had been listening very closely to Remote speak.  “You also lack any sort of speech impediment.”

That stopped Remote for a second.  Once again, a trace of something darker crept into his voice.  “You’ve read the material quite thoroughly.  Yes, children with congenital pain insensitivity often bite off their own tongues.  I wasn’t
allowed
to.”

  There was unmistakable anger in the accent he put on the word, as if biting off your own tongue was a privilege he deeply resented losing; Jack didn’t know quite how to respond.  After a moment he said, “I haven’t been able to find anything with your name or address on it, either.”

“You know who I am, Closer.  Or would you prefer
Mister
Closer now that we’ve formally entered into a professional relationship?”

“I suppose we have, Mister Remote.  But not the partnership you were hoping for.”

“Or the one you expected, Mr. Closer.”

“No.  I guess both of us will have to alter their expectations.”

“Oh, mine remain high, Mr. Closer.  In fact, I believe my position is a good deal stronger than you perceive.”

“You’re my prisoner.  You may not be able to feel pain, but there are other options available.”

“Yes, I know.  I’ve made a list.”

Jack blinked.  “Excuse me?”

“It’s purely a mathematical problem at this point.  I suppose if I felt pain, multiplication would be an appropriate—if inexact—metaphor, but all you have to work with is subtraction.  It’s on my computer’s desktop in the folder marked,
Options
.”

“That file is encrypted.”

“Of course it is.  The password is Closer 79CL97.”

“I’m not stupid, Mr. Remote.”

 “I don’t mean to suggest that you are.  In fact, if you give the matter a little thought, you’ll see you have nothing to worry about.”

Jack leaned back, considering.  Remote had had plenty of time to erase anything he didn’t want found, and if he had any sort of computer-activated traps—a hidden gas canister or some sort of fail-safe bomb—he would have used it already.  He was right—Remote had thrown everything he had at Jack and failed.  The only weapon left in his arsenal was information, and he was demonstrating that by offering Jack some for free.  Unless . . .

“If I were you,” said Jack, “I would have preprogrammed a call to 911 into the system.  One that could be activated even if I were captured—maybe by entering a password.”

Remote grinned.  He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.  “Yes, that would seem to be the intelligent thing to do, wouldn’t it?  But if that were the case, voice-activation would be the way to go.  Simply speaking the password out loud would be enough—which I’ve already done.”

“But there’d be an element of risk to that.  I might be smart enough to keep you gagged and have you write things down.”

“Ha!  Oh, I think you’re
smarter
than that, Mr. Closer.  Because the simplest, most foolproof way would be to have the call activated at a predetermined time; I wouldn’t have to do anything at all.  And you’re perfectly aware of that.”

Jack nodded.  “Even turning off your computer system wouldn’t affect it, because the call would be sent from offsite—somewhere on the web that you use as an online backup.”

“Yes.  You have my physical body, Mr. Closer, but my operation—my resources, my records, my procedures and connections—are beyond your reach.  They live in an electronic network initially designed to withstand a nuclear holocaust, and the only way to access them is through me.  I could have destroyed them, but I didn’t see the need; nor did I see the need to call the authorities for help.  The conflict between you and I is far from over—it’s simply moved to the next level.”

Jack stared at the man bound to the metal chair.  Held captive by someone he knew to be experienced in torture, in an isolated location, facing his own death . . . and not only was he not worried, he’d just admitted he’d thrown away his once chance at rescue
because he didn’t think he needed it.

But it wasn’t arrogance or madness Jack saw in Remote’s dark eyes.  It was confidence—and just a touch of eagerness.

“I believe you,” Jack said, and rolled his chair over to the keyboard.  He clicked on the
Options
folder and entered the password.

The file contained, as promised, a list.

1-2: Eyes

3-4: Eyelids

5-6: Ears (external)

7: Ear (internal)

8: Nose

9: Face

10: penis

11: scrotum

12-13: thumbs

14-21: fingers

“I’ve excluded the tongue and lips because you need me to talk,” said Remote.  “I don’t have the tools here to perform the amputation of a major limb, and the risk of accidentally killing me would be rather high.  I suppose I could have replaced the lips and tongue with the fingers and thumb of one hand—you really only need me to be able to write and hear for us to communicate—but I couldn’t resist the symmetry of the total.”

Remote grinned at him with teeth he hadn’t even bothered to list.  “A game of twenty-one questions, Mr. Closer.  Are we ready to begin?”

***

Jack put the gag back in Remote’s mouth and did another slow, careful look around the place.  He didn’t think he’d find anything new, but he needed some time to think.  Sometimes, making the subject wait was the most effective process—their imagination did far worse things to them than Jack ever could.