The Resurrected Man (24 page)

She shook her head. Who was she kidding? The timing was
too
fortuitous.

“We've been set up,” she said, half to herself, her cheeks flushed with anger.

Jonah cocked his head. “Who? How?”

“All of us. He's never done this before, so why now? Because things were about to blow apart, that's why. He
wants
us to work together. He's enjoying it. He thinks we're going to screw up.”

“Now
you're
being paranoid. Seems more likely that he would want to keep us apart—especially if he's me.”

“Maybe. I simply can't believe that the body just happened to come while I was in transit. And with the body on its way, Trevaskis had no choice but to let things go as they are. For the time being, anyway.”

“Pretty tenuous reasoning.”

“Call it a hunch, then. Supported by us being led to you in the first place.”

“The KTI-MIU link gets stronger.” Jonah ran a shaking hand across his emerging stubble. “If he isn't high up in either, he has access to the data of someone who is.”

“Not
Schumacher,” she snapped.

“If you say so.” He shrugged. “What about Herold Verstegen? He seems pretty keen to keep us together. Have you got an alibi file on him, too?”

“Of course. It's—” She stopped, sensing more behind the inquiry than casual interest. “Do you know something you haven't told me?”

“Maybe.”

“You've remembered something!”

“Perhaps. Look—” He shied away from her stare. “I don't know. It could be a memory. I might have concocted it. Either way, it's hard to be sure.”

“Tell me anyway. I can get you the alibi file if that's what you want.”

“No. What I really want is time to look at the file on Lindsay.”

She sat back on her haunches and studied him. His eyes were red and sunken, his cheeks hollow. He was barely moving, and when he did the tremors were obvious. He must have been continuing on sheer willpower alone.

He wanted to know what happened to his father; she wanted to solve the Twinmaker case. Together they could do both.

“Will half an hour be enough?” she asked.

“For starters.” He sighed, possibly in relief. “Give me a chance to look at some hard facts and I'll tell you everything I know.”

“How about letting QUALIA take a look at you as well? I don't want you passing out on me.”

“Lindsay's bedroom has basic medical scanners set into the ceiling.”

“I'll take that as a yes, shall I?”

He half-smiled and extended a hand. “Deal.”

She hesitated, then returned the handshake. His skin was hot and moist; his grip barely tightened around her palm. She didn't let herself hold too long.

“Deal.”

He had hardly blinked and he was in ACHERON, dressed in a sheer black bodysuit, floating breathless and impatient in a cruciform shape at the precise geometric centre of the cylindrical space. He glanced once around the chamber to ensure that everything was as it should be. Each end of the cylinder was in darkness, presenting the illusion of a perfectly straight tunnel ten metres across. The ends were actually “capped” with impenetrable boundaries; the lit area between comprised the sole space within ACHERON. The walls were
off-white in colour and smooth, broken by the occasional handhold or strap. Anything he required could be extruded by the walls or produced from an impromptu cupboard—or even conjured from thin air, if he felt inclined to be dramatic. The only thing he preferred to keep constant was the Rack.

A black mock-wood structure two metres by three, the Rack was secured by wires in position along the axis of ACHERON. It had been painstakingly modelled on a genuine centuries-old instrument of torture, minus the wheels and chains. The “wood” was heavily stained, a testimony to the grim past of the original, but its manacles shone. It was a beautiful piece of work and he was proud of it. He had received a splinter from it once, its verisimilitude was so precise. It thrilled him even when it was empty.

“How long?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. His voice resonated in the echoing space of ACHERON, sounding much stronger than it did in the outside world.

The answer came to him silently, voiceless: one minute.

He nodded. For all his eagerness to begin, the minute would give him time to adjust. No matter how thoroughly he prepared, the transition still left him slightly unnerved. It wasn't the free-fall. He was well used to that. The discomfort manifested in his primitive senses: smell, taste and touch. The air was faintly electric and his tongue felt as though it was covered in oil. The walls of ACHERON seemed to vibrate if pressed too hard.

Still, he had to admire his handiwork. If the structure seemed unstable at times, that was only to be expected, given its location.

He smiled. If only those fools in the MIU knew. Not to mention the morons in KTI. Little did anyone suspect what they had in their midst.

The light seemed to flicker once, then suddenly he had company.

The woman arrived in the same position she had left Europe: upright, hands folded across her stomach, eyes still grazing upon
infinity. His assistant had arranged her so that her back and legs were parallel to the flat of the Rack and given her pattern a slight tweak to make her groggy. The effects of the incoherence would last a moment or two, long enough for him to approach.

He kicked himself to the end of the Rack and hooked a toe under its lip, not far from her sneakers. She was staring, breathing heavily, beginning to move. In the flesh she was even more exquisite than he had imagined. Her blonde hair blossomed in zero-g, forming a halo around her head. Her scent—Calvin Klein One, another retro touch—filled ACHERON within seconds. He resisted the impulse to reach out and touch her.

Her eyes cleared and she stiffened. He could tell what she was thinking. First she looked up, around her. Wherever she had expected to be, this clearly wasn't it. She lost her balance, and reached for something to hold onto. In her head she was falling, not floating. Her movements were jerky, panicked.

Before she could hurt herself on the Rack, he grabbed her wrist and steadied her, She clutched at his hand, noticing him for the first time.

“Hello,” he said.

She made a small sound, half of relief, half of fear. Her eyes pleaded with him to tell her where she was, to explain what had happened, to reassure her that nothing had gone wrong with the jump.

He didn't respond. Letting momentum roll her over, he twisted the arm up her back and pushed her face-forward into the wooden surface of the Rack.

She gasped and wriggled in his grip. Alarmed but still groggy, she tried to push herself away from the Rack. He kept her pinned, pressing a shin into her thighs and using his free arm to obtain leverage. When he had the measure of her strength and was certain he could manage it, he flipped her over and thrust her wrist into a manacle. It tightened automatically, hard enough to cause pain.

Her eyes widened and she kicked up at him, momentarily
knocking him away. He let himself float backwards until he reached the nearest wall, then kicked forward. His rapid return startled her. He was on her again before she could even think of defending herself. He punched her twice, hard across the face, and, while she was distracted by the blows, locked her other arm in its corresponding restraint.

Then he pulled back to look at her.

Her eyes followed him, filled with the beginning of terror. Her nose was bleeding.

“Say something,” he said.

She shook her head, sending droplets of blood spinning across the room. They vanished as they hit the walls.

“Don't be impolite,” he chided. “At least say ‘hello.'”

“
Fuck you
.”

He struck her again. This time she tried to bite his hand, but he didn't let that deter him. As she flailed desperately at him, he slipped his legs through holes in the Rack, encircled her waist, and squeezed, pressing her hard against the wood. She gasped for breath, spat, cursed. Her knees pummelled his back, but he held on tightly. His hands tore at her halter, exposed her breasts. She shut her eyes at that and rolled her head back. He grabbed her chin and twisted her face towards him. Her teeth were clenched.

“Yes,” he breathed. The resemblance was good. He didn't know if she had noticed his erection, but it was there. She was beautiful and he had complete power over her: the perfect relationship, as far as he was concerned.

He released the grip of his legs and moved away to pin her ankles. She moaned and sobbed with all her newfound breath as he did so, but she didn't have the strength to stop him. The battle was already over.

Part of him regretted the fact that it had been so easy. But he had her, and that was the main thing. The rest was just a bonus.

He had her.

“Don't you want to know who I am?” he asked.

“No.” She shook her head, flicking tears at him.

“Why I'm doing this? What I'm going to do to you?”

“No!”

“You are already dead, you know. Nothing you say can change that, so there's no point fighting it. In twenty-four hours your body will make a nice little present for a friend of mine—a friend who doesn't like surprises, if you know what I mean. But I can make it easier for you. I can keep you sedated while I work and erase the evidence afterwards. I can ensure you feel no pain. I could even kill your brain so you won't have to think—”

“You're insane!” She pressed flat against the Rack, as far away from him as she could get. He couldn't tell if she was listening to him at all, or whether she was simply too frightened to believe.

“No.” His voice betrayed a slight wince. “I'm merely sociopathic. Do you know what that means? It means I don't care about right or wrong. You can't appeal to my moral code because I don't have one. I have my own sense of fair play and my own logic. I am my own boss. You have to reason with me on that level if you want to ease your suffering.”

She looked confused, and he couldn't really blame her. At least he knew, now, that she was listening. Two minutes ago she had been happily shopping in Europe. Now she was arguing the ethics of pain control with a dangerous maniac. The thought amused him, although he kept the feeling from showing.

“Why?” she sobbed.

“Ah.” He nodded. “Now you ask. What sort of answer do you want? Because I enjoy it? Because it concurs with my vengeful agenda? Because my mother hurt me as a child?” Now he shook his head. Her eyes followed him. “The truthful answer is that I need your body, and I enjoy torture. I like hurting. But I've learned to keep that urge under control. These days I only hurt people when they're unconscious—or when they make me angry. If you don't make me angry, I'll let you sleep. You won't feel any pain, except in your dreams. No one's ever
complained about that before—but that might be because no one's woken from sleep in here.”

He stopped to see if she was following him. Her eyes were wide, but again he couldn't tell if they had glazed over in shock or were watching him closely. “Do you understand what I'm telling you? I don't have to do this
at all
to get the result I want. I could design a corpse from nothing and put it where I need it. But that wouldn't be satisfying. I want to hurt your body. If you make it easier for me, I'll make it easier for you.”

“I don't want to die,” she whispered.

He felt a tickle of annoyance. They all said that. “But isn't that what you pay for every time you step into a d-mat booth? To be taken apart and killed? Am I not just fulfilling that contract more literally in this case?”

“What?” She frowned, and he wondered if she was remembering the WHOLE pamphlet she had discarded earlier that day.

“The Murdering Twinmaker.” He smiled down at her half-naked, squirming body. “Welcome to my parlour, pretty victim.”

Something touched the back of his head, and he batted at it, startled by the unexpected contact. A flash of colour rocketed away from him: one of her sneakers had become dislodged while they scuffled and returned to bother him. He caught it when it bounced off a wall and passed by a second time.

“Please,” she muttered, “please—”

“Please
what
?” He twisted the sneaker in both hands. “To hurt or not to hurt—that is the only choice you have any more.” He made a show of glancing at a nonexistent watch. “And if you wouldn't mind hurrying, I'm on a tighter schedule than normal. We have a lot to share, you and I, before we finally part company.”

Her sobbing became more animated. He tapped her on the forehead with the toe of the sneaker to attract her attention, but she only flinched away. He hit her harder, frustrated by her unwillingness to
communicate. Didn't she understand what he was trying to tell her? Did she really
want
to be hurt? Was she listening to him at all? Didn't she care what happened to her?

He tried talking to her again—one last time. “Look, there's a reason to all this. You won't have died in vain. In fact, you won't die at all in the long run. Not today. Just here. You're a copy. The real you keeps going.” Her stubborn introspection bothered him. He tried to appeal to
her
, rather than
the victim:
“Did you have a party to go to tonight, by the way, or was that just wishful thinking on my part?”

Still she didn't respond. His lips tightened. Gripping the sneaker more tightly, he struck her about the face until her cheeks began to bleed. She was screaming and thrashing by that point—more frightened animal than human. It was no use trying any more. She didn't give a damn. But he did.
He did.

It made him angry.

The time for talk was past. He tossed the sneaker aside and tore away the rest of her clothes. He really was in a hurry—hadn't just said that to impress her—so he didn't waste time with pleasantries. Twenty-four hours was a long time for torture, but barely long enough to reduce a human being to the depths he had seen and wanted to see again. Prolonged pain was the key, and the absence of hope. He had offered her a pain-free death, and he might have given it to her, for simplicity's sake, but many was the time he had offered it, delivered for a while, then reduced the levels of narcotics in order to see the despair blossom when the pain returned.

He was a sculptor. His medium was flesh. His message was despair. His agenda was revenge.

The girl on the Rack was just a means to an end. A means he intended to enjoy to the fullest now that she had rejected his offer.

Not once did she attempt to reason with him again. She was weak, irrational, pathetic. Even her screams began to lose their strength after barely an hour had passed. She deserved everything he gave her.

Marylin Blaylock would have fought harder.

That was the thought he kept foremost in his mind as the tools came out and he began to work in earnest.

Marylin Blaylock would have fought harder.
That would make her submission all the more sweet, when the time finally came.