The Saffron Malformation (86 page)

             
“There is no, ‘what your father wants,’ anymore.  He’s through with you.  He’s given you to me.”

             
She was shaking her head.  “You’re lying,” she protested.

             
“I think of it as my holiday bonus.”  He smiled.

             
“I don’t believe you,” she said sharply.  “He wouldn’t…”

             
Sticklan’s grin faded.  He looked at her coldly and told her, “He did it to your mother.  And she wasn’t half the cunt you turned out to be.”

             
The words shuddered through her and shook tears from her.  It was her.  She’d broken into her father’s office all those years ago.  She’d stolen his hard drive and her mother had paid for it and she’d just stood there and let her.  ‘I deserve this and worse,’ she told herself.

             
“It was me,” she said softly.

             
Sticklan looked at her.

             
“I stole the files.  The one’s he killed her for.  It was me.”

             
Sticklan laughed so hard he doubled over.  “You’re making that up,” he finally said.  She looked at him and he knew it was true.  “I’ll be damned,” he added with a cock of his head.

             
“Tell him,” she spit sharply with a glare.

             
He smiled.  “Oh, I will.  …someday.”

             
There was something in the way he said that last word, the look on his face and the tone in his voice, that felt queer to her.  She didn’t have time to consider it further.

             
“We have to get started,” he told her.  “Unfortunately we’re on a timeline.”

             
“You could just let me go,” she told him and her eyes still held that it might happen.

             
He smiled at her and nodded.  “You’re right.  I could.”  He grabbed the chain linking her wrists and drew it over her head with one hand while the other pulled a clamp attached to a length of tension wire down from the ceiling.  She had to stand on tiptoes as he slipped the chain of her cuffs into the clamp.

             
Sweat beaded and glistened on her flesh as she watched him pull the prongs from her side before he moved to the cabinet.  Her heart raced.  “Sticklan,” was as far as she got before he reached into the cabinet.  What he pulled out of there was knotted leather lined with jagged metal barbs.

             
She rocked back and forth, struggling against her restraints.  He’d pulled the chord down with such ease, why couldn’t she do the same.

             
“Sharp or blunt?” he asked.

             
“I thought it was your cock you meant to torment me with,” she japed at him, hoping to buy time.  Hoping maybe he’d forget about this new idea.

             
Instead he grinned and said, “Patients my dear.  I like a little foreplay first.”  He took a step forward and the length of chord hissed as it moved through the air and slapped into her side.  There was the swatting sting of rawhide against flesh and the subtle bite as the barbs caught in her flesh.  She’d expected it to be worse, but in fact the shock gun had hurt more… until he yanked back on the handle.  She felt the skin along her ribs tear slowly, the barbs ripping through her like a knife slicing steak, as he pulled with steady pressure.  She writhed, breathing hard as blood began to drizzle down her side.  Pain was all that existed but she didn’t give it voice, even as he whipped her again.  Even as he whipped her the fifth time she didn’t make a peep, not even to ask him to stop.

             
That changed when he returned to the cabinet and pulled out the canister.  It had a hose and a nozzle and he grinned as he pointed it at her.  Her eyes trembled as she watched it.

             
“What is that?” she asked with more fear in her voice than she would have liked.

             
He stepped closer, aimed the nozzle at her, and sprayed her with a dull mist of fluid that beaded on her skin.  It didn’t take long for the burning to set in.  Her eyes felt like they were going to melt into tears while her nose filled with mucus and shot fire back into her brain.  Her throat clenched and every cut on her body—two along her left ribs, one to the right, and two across her back—screamed with acidic burns.  She could taste the pepper in the air as the mist slowly coated her, finding not just her eyes, nose, mouth and cuts but the tender folds of flesh and opening between her legs.  It wasn’t long before the searing was sinking deep into every wound and orifice.

             
Sticklan moved to the wall near the stairs and pulled a lever, releasing the tension on the wire and she fell to the ground.  “Why,” she finally shouted at him.

             
His feet moved quick and passed her.  She heard what she thought must be the table against the back wall moving but she was blind and gagging and then vomiting on the ground.

             
It wasn’t just pepper in that spray.

             
She cried when he sprayed her again, this time from closer, filling her wounds with bitterness.  She flailed on the ground and he sprayed again, a blast strait in her face and when she cried out another shot down her throat.  Gagging, she felt her abdomen clench violently as her body tried desperately to vomit.  Only a tiny bit of acid bubbled up from her stomach and she spit it to the ground.  She couldn’t breath, her nose was clogged with mucus, her throat clenched and burning.  Chest heaving with suffocation, she began to feel lightheaded then finally her throat opened just a bit and she gasped.

             
She was only allowed two breaths before she was in the air, rising up as he lifted her in the crook of his arm.  Next came falling as he threw her down and she collided with the top of the metal table with a loud bang.  She heard hydraulics hiss and the table lowered.  Wiping at her eyes, she struggled to see but the burning was fierce and opening her eyes was like shoving daggers through them.  Still, it was nothing compared to what was happening other places.

             
Then it happened.  As she lie on the metal table, cut bleeding and burning, Sticklan Stone raped her.  Whatever he sprayed her with had come inside with him and each thrust brought a new wave of fire crashing against her cervix.  She was little and he was big and not gentle.  She gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the burning in her eyes or any of the deep cuts drooling blood from her body.  She wanted to feel anything besides him in there.  Anything besides his ravenous thrusts.  As she recalled the way he leered at her all those years ago she knew this is what he was imagining.  She heard his breathing loud and heavy and for the moment she was glad she was blind.

             
“Scream,” he whispered.  “Cry,” he told her.  “Beg me and I’ll let it end.”

             
“No,” was all she said, more of a grunt than a word as she’d been dry and now her insides were as torn up and burning as her outsides.  He said the words again and again, asking her for a scream but she was determined not to give him one.  She held together until anger took hold of him and he pulled free of her momentarily then forced himself into the other hole.  When the burning made its way through there as well, shrill and guttural, she gave him his wish and screamed.

             
When he was finished he patted her thigh and left her, cleaning up his gear and locking the cabinets behind him.  She heard him ascend the stairs and then the door open and close, followed by the metal latch.  She’d expected relief when he was gone but it didn’t come.  Instead his absence only scared her more.

             
‘I’m not going to die today,’ she thought and wept.  It meant this wasn’t over.

             
Water sprayed from the ceiling and she gathered it in her hands and tried to clear her eyes.  If it helped she couldn’t tell.  She gathered more water and tried to wash between her legs but the flesh there was tender and raw and it stung.  Still, she could feel his seed leaking out of her and so she clinched her jaw and managed.

             
Hours passed before she began to relax a bit.  A short time later she was able to open her eyes.  They still burned but she could see again.  She was bleeding lightly from her wounds and the holes he’d used.  He’d be back, but it didn’t look like he’d be back today.  She tried to walk but couldn’t even stand, so she rolled back onto the table instead and wept until asleep.  Her last thought before disappearing into a dream was that at least the worst of it was over.

             
She was wrong.

Lost and Found

             
Quey’s eyes were wide as he looked at the set of wires Natalie had pulled from Ryla’s wound.  He took tentative steps toward the table but his brain refused to process what he saw.  It wasn’t possible… but there it was.  She was a woman, flesh and bone... but there were wires.

             
“She’s a robot?” Rachel asked.

             
Natalie shook her head and replied, “I don’t know.  She’s got a heart according to the monitor, and I swear I felt her kidney.”  Natalie looked around the room and her eyes locked on the imager stored against the wall.  “Help me with this,” she said to Rachel as she started for it.

             
“What is it?” Rachel replied as she moved to assist.

             
“It’s a body scan and imager.  I need to see what’s inside her.  What it looks like in there.”

             
Natalie gave instructions on how to detach the scanning device of the machine from its cradle while turning it on by flipping a series of switches and entering settings and parameters into a touch screen interface.  Then she and Rachel moved the scanner beside the bed and positioned the two arms over Ryla.

             
“Quey,” Natalie said and his name hit him like a jolt as his gaze left the wires and found her.  “Maybe you should wait somewhere else.”  He shook his head.  “The corner then?”  He looked toward a chair near the door and went to it.  If Reggie had been there she’d have removed him completely but neither her nor Rachel were in a position to do that just now.

             
There was a low hum as the machine kicked on and then Natalie tapped the interface on the scanner and the arms began to glow slightly and wave over Ryla’s body.  In less than a minute it was done and the machine’s holoscreen rendered a three dimensional image of what was inside Ryla.

             
“What are you?” Natalie asked the unconscious body on the table.  She peered at the display and furrowed her brow.  “This,” she trailed off.  “This isn’t,” again words escaped her.

             
“What?” Quey asked, sitting up.

             
Natalie looked up at Rachel.  “This isn’t real.”

             
Rachel looked over at the holographic image.  The full body scan could display anything from a picture of Ryla naked on the table to nothing more than her bone structure and everything in between.  Natalie was looking over the somewhere in between at the moment and Rachel spotted something.

             
“What the hell is that?” she asked, pointing.

             
“Some sort of wiring, but its not metal.  Not really.”

             
“I’ve read about something like this,” Rachel offered, stepping in and scanning the image diligently.  “Theoretical stuff, the kind of shit they claim could never be done but was being worked on when everyone was getting hardware implants for the new interface.  Some believed this sort of thing would eliminate the hacking and virus threat that led to the implant disaster but people were so wary of the tech after that no one would touch it.”

             
“What’s that mean?  What’s it show?” Quey asked hollowly.

             
Natalie looked up at the scan with wonder.  “Near as I can tell she’s skin and bone and lungs and liver and heart and everything else you’d expect.”

             
“But?” he asked.

             
“But,” Rachel took to answering as both women stared down at the image.  “She’s synthetic as well.”

             
“Her muscles, her bones, all her organs, they’ve been augmented by some sort of hybrid technology.”  Natalie looked up at Ryla, “How did they do this.  It’s not possible.  This amount of surgery would kill her.”

             
“They probably didn’t use surgery,” Rachel added.

             
“How else could they get all that hardware in her?”

             
“Look,” Rachel said, pointing to the image, enhancing a section of it.  “The hardware is mostly some sort of organic compound, it grows and fuses into her organs.  They built her to be this way by growing her, hardware and all.  Later they just added a few key elements.”  See,” she continued pointing, zooming in on key areas.  Natalie looked at what Rachel indicated.  “It’s like she has two circulatory systems only these veins carry data instead of nutrients and blood.  Probably why she likes it so cold as well.  These extra parts here,” she went on, indicating a mass that ran along her spine and into her brain and another between her lungs and stomach, “they must have been added after she was born… or whatever she was.  In any case they must keep her running pretty hot.”

             
Natalie checked and replied, “She is a bit above normal but nothing terribly noticeable.”

             
“She must have a way of cooling herself.”  Rachel looked up at Ryla and said, “This is amazing.  This sort of technology.  It’s biological and synthetic at the same time.”

             
“Holy shit,” Natalie groaned.

             
“What?” Rachel asked.

             
“Look at this.”  Rachel remained puzzled by the series of numbers Natalie was indicating.  “It means… I wonder how old she is.”

             
“What do you mean how old she is?” Quey asked.

             
“I mean her entire body is regulated differently than ours.  Her cell reproduction is impeccable.

             
“It’s the tech.  The precision of a computer monitoring and regulating every aspect of her physical functioning has drastically slowed if not eliminated the subtle flaws that make a person slowly break down over time.”

             
“She doesn’t age like we do,” Natalie told Quey plainly.

             
“Probably never gets sick either,” Rachel added.

             
“Anything in all this that makes it easier to keep her from dying right here and now.”

             
Natalie nodded and she and Rachel set to work.  Now that she had a clear idea of what she was dealing with, Natalie found it a lot easier to patch Ryla up.  Her body, it seemed, was better suited toward survival than an ordinary human one.  She seemed to lose less blood than she should and once a wound was cleared and bound it seemed to clot more effectively.  By the time she was done tending to the last wound the first was already looking better.

             
“She’ll be down for a bit but to tell you the truth I can’t say for how long.  Her body heals differently and I just don’t know.  To tell you the truth I’m not even sure why she isn’t awake right now.”

             
Quey sat silent, looking at Ryla sleeping on the table.  Rachel stepped forward, meaning to offer him some bit of comfort but then he stood and walked from the room.

             
Rachel and Natalie exchanged a glance.

             
“He’ll need some time,” Natalie offered and Rachel replied with a nod.

             
Air that’s been cooped up too long tends to seem heavier than the kind that moves from time to time, and has a tendency to carry an odor.  What Reggie found inside that house smelled different in another way.  The first breath he took unnerved him and forced his hands to adjust their grip on the rifle they held.

             
He moved into the empty space of the upstairs, dust hung in the air and drifted through the shafts of light streaming in through the windows.  At least there’s nowhere to hide, he told himself as he scanned the room.  But then he thought that meant they didn’t need a place to hide and he could feel the edge creeping up on him again as he moved through the house.

             
Reggie knew, just by looking at the door under the staircase, whatever was beyond it wasn’t going to be good.  It was made of thick wood and there was a large metal latch running across it.  The latch lifted easily, silently, and the door opened in the same manner.  Beyond was a staircase leading down into a dank hole of gloom that smelled of blood, sweat, and the bitter stench of death and fear.

             
He took the stairs slowly, listening carefully to the silence, ready to react to any change.  The stink grew worse the further down he went and when he was at the bottom he saw it.  Across the room, near the back wall, lying on the floor at the foot of a large metal table was a small naked body in a puddle of blood.  It had been abused to the point where it took him more than a set of ticks to recognize it was Rain.

             
“Shit,” he groaned to himself as he moved closer to and then squatted down beside her.

             
Her face was a swollen mass of purple flesh, with cuts above her eyes and a set of splits in her lips from when they’d collided with her teeth.  Teeth he could see that were no longer there.  Her body had been sliced into over a dozen times and was bruised and pale.  He could see the meat of her ribs and the white bits of bone between.  There were other wounds on her legs and arms that revealed bone and something in these was moving.  He edged closer and saw it was maggots all ready at her in the places where the meat was peeling away like the first cuts of a holiday roast.

             
He’d heard of this sort of torture.  They called it bugging.  Tie a person down, cut deep, add stuff the wounds with bugs.  Let the victim watch as the creatures slithered through their body and feel them crawling deep under the skin, devouring them slowly.  It made the big man tremble.

             
And then there were the burns, small bits of cooked flesh where someone had jabbed at her with something hot.  Whomever did this to her had enjoyed his work and taken his time with it.

             
Her finger moved, flicking at him and he jerked to his feet and stumbled back a set of steps.  A small bit of plastic tumbled to the ground at his feet.  He watched it, gaping for a long moment, then looked back at Rain, her broken body and the blood around her.  She was still alive?  His guts tightened and his heart raced.  He stepped to her.  When he knelt on the floor and reached a trembling hand toward her arm it jerked, terrified by his touch.  She wouldn’t last long, he knew as he watched red spittle gurgle in her mouth.  She was trying to say something but had forgotten how.  He’d seen this before, in a buddy who’d been hit by a landmine.  Even if he raced her to a hospital, even if that basement was a hospital with the best doctors in the world, the best she could hope for was to linger on a while and finally die a few days later.

             
Reggie looked over at the long thin bit of plastic she’d flicked at him.  It was a memory stick.  He looked back at her and saw the video camera lying on the floor beside her, a thin square of plastic that was nearly submerged in her blood.  That’s why she came down off the table, to collect this, to make sure it was her’s to give to whoever may come.

             
Reggie reached into his back pocket and retrieved his device.  He jammed the memory stick into its port and loaded what was on it.  He clicked play and saw it was the basement.  Rain was lying in the middle of the room, still clothed and still familiar.  Sticklan Stone stepped into the frame, walking from the camera to her.  He knelt near her, petting her gently for a moment, whispering something Reggie couldn’t make out.  Then he pulled out a knife and cut her out of her clothes.  He tore the last bits of fabric from her and caressed her flesh.  Anger filled the big man when he saw the sicko probe her with a finger and bring it to his nose before tasting it.  That was when he shut it off.

             
Puzzled, he looked at the girl and pondered why she would want to give him this.  The soldier in him answered and he nodded, knowing it was right.  She did it because this wasn’t just a psyco’s playtime.  This was torture and they would need to know what she told them.

             
Looking down at the girl, considering the brutality it must have taken to render her this way, it was likely she’d said plenty.  He nodded and told her, “Don’t worry yourself on this none precious.  I’ll let ‘em know what was said.”

             
Her hand began to tremble and tap feverishly, splashing slightly in the blood slowly hardening on the concrete around her.  Another gurgle came from deep in her throat and red spittle bubbled up through her split lips and the bleeding holes in her gums where her teeth used to be.

             
Reggie puzzled for a moment then added, “Leone won’t know a bit of it, not the details.”  After a moment he added, “I swear we’ll see he’s safe.”

             
Rain settled against the floor and died a few ticks later.

             
Reggie lingered beside her for spell before he heard the door slam shut and the clang of the latch falling into place.  He peered up toward the top of the stairs and he knew that this was the trap.  He looked down at his sheet computer and saw he had no signal down here.  His eyes hardened and he began to compose a message anyway.  There wouldn’t be much time once they came for him, but he’d have to manage to send what he’d learned to the others as soon as opportunity arose.