Toxicity (31 page)

“Can’t do that,” said Herbert.

“What?
Why?”

“Can’t do that. Oh, no.
Traditional gunslinger showdown, this is. You’ve, er, laid down the gauntlet,
buster. Given him the challenge. Innit?”

“What, by riding my horse here?”

“Yes, to rescue your good lady
woman from the evil banditos, sort of thing.”

“She’s
not
my good lady
woman.”

“Your bitch, then?”

“Listen,” growled Svool, close to
the horse’s twitching metal ear, “you need to release my ankles, turn around,
and walk slowly away.”

“So you’re fleeing, then, are
you?”

The sounds of a harmonica floated
up the street. Svool thought it was a cat being slowly massacred.

“No! I mean, well, I can’t
possibly face him...”

Herbert started trotting down the
street towards General Bronson, whose fingers were flexing slowly. Svool
struggled like mad to free his ankles, cursing and thumping the hollow body of
the metal horse.

He gave up, and lifted up the
pistol. He squinted towards General Bronson, but the sun was in his eyes and he
realised with alarm his error. Bronson had picked the battleground and the
position. Now, not only was Svool disabled by his complete lack of usefulness
with his pistol; he was also effectively blinded.

“Drat,” he said.

“Good luck!” Herbert grinned
optimistically.

Herbert stopped in the middle of
the street. Awkwardly, the harmonica music faltered, and all was quiet, except
for the sad sound of the tinkling watch.

“Er,” said Svool.

“Congratulations, son,” growled
Bronson, switching his cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right. “You
did the right thing coming here to rescue this young green lass.”

“Fuck you,” snarled Lumar.

“She’s a feisty one, all right,
but once us boys have killed you dead, we’ll all be having our wicked way with
her and then probably cutting her throat. Sorry. That’s just the way it is out
here in the West. Well, south. You know what I mean.”

Svool glanced across at Lumar.
Fear filled his face.

“Why didn’t you run and fetch
help, you idiot?” she snapped.

“That’s what I was
trying
to
do!” wailed Svool. “And then I felt all guilty and stupid and like a cowardly
idiot, and I knew I had to do
the right thing
so we could both escape!”

“So facing down seven gunslingers
is the right thing?”

“Shut that bitch up,” growled
Bronson, and there was a thud.

Svool’s teeth clacked shut. His
eyes narrowed. From nowhere surfaced the words, “You’re going to regret hurting
the little lady.”

What?
mouthed Lumar silently.

“That may be so, or it may not be
so,” growled Bronson. “But - you hear the music?”

“The tinkly, jangly, crappy,
cheap elevator music?”

“Yeah, son. When the music stops,
then draw and fire. I’ll do the same. Whoever is left standing, well, he gets
the fun with the little lady.”

“Will you
all stop calling me
a little lady!”
hissed Lumar, struggling on the rough-planked porch.

“Er, Mr Bronson?”

“Yes, son?”

The watch tinkled away, the tune
getting slower, and slower, and slower...

“I have a question?”

“Yes, son?”

“About this music, about when it
stops...”

But it was too late.

The music stopped.

~ * ~

EIGHT

SLOWLY
CONSCIOUSNESS DAWNED, and with it a bright, brittle fear. Jenny Xi was still in
the glass-walled cube beneath the ocean. It was dark now, the ocean a gloomy,
murky black.

Night.

The real fear came when she tried
to move. Her arms were strapped by her sides, wrists and ankles tightly
manacled to the cold black obsidian slab. A steel band across her brow pinned
her head. The steel dug into the flesh of her forehead, biting her like teeth.

She wanted to cry out, to thrash,
to scream, but she controlled herself. No. Why give them the satisfaction?

Jenny had been tied up before, of
course. As part of kinky sex games, or even when she’d been arrested in her
younger days; but never like this, never with such cold callousness, and with
the stakes so high.

There came a cough, signalling
that she wasn’t alone. Jenny was itching to turn her head, to focus on the
sound, but she could not. She had to wait for the figure to come to her.

It was Vasta. The blonde woman
was smiling. Jenny couldn’t help but note she was wearing thin leather gloves.

“How are you feeling, Jenny?”

“Like I was hit in the face by a
train.”

Vasta pulled out her lower lip,
as if sulking. “Oh, dear me. Well unfortunately, that’s as good as it’s going
to get. From here, it all goes downhill. Very, very quickly.”

“Fuck you.”

“Not me, my little sweetie. But I
am sure
fucking
will feature high in our priority list when we get down
to the real... torture.”

She left the word lingering in
the air like a bad smell. The effect was not lost on Jenny.

Jenny, her squad, and the
entirety of the Impurity Movement had been through “torture training.” How to
react in these situations, the do’s and don’ts for when they start stripping
skin from your bones... of course, it was all well and good in theory, and even
in the role-play exercises they did, very much in the manner of military
special forces. But Jenny knew, deep down inside - as she was sure most human
beings knew - that when it came down to it, when it
really
came down to
it, everyone had a breaking point, everyone had a trigger. Jenny always said
she would rather kill herself than be tortured. She cursed herself now. She’d
had the gun, and put a fucking bullet in Randy, when she should have been
putting a bullet in her mouth.

“Let me explain your situation
very, very carefully,” said Vasta. “By attacking and shooting Randy, you have
condemned yourself to our care. We were, of course, filming the meeting, and by
attacking the recently
seriously
wounded and highly honourable and
decorated Greenstar Company Governor of Internal Affairs, you highlighted your
guilt within the eyes of the law on this planet. Under Quad-Gal Military
Policy, to protect the rights of Greenstar against further terrorist attack, we
are allowed to detain you for questioning for six months.” She let that sink
in.
“Six
months, Jenny XL”

Jenny said nothing. Her lips
compressed harder.

Vasta came close then, looming
into view. Jenny would have twisted her head away, but the steel strap held her
tight, pinned like a butterfly awaiting scrutiny on a lepidopterist’s
examination board. And, no doubt, impending dissection.

“You obviously do not know my
name,” said the pretty blonde woman, and it just didn’t fit with Jenny. This
beautiful little lady, and the words that poured from her mouth like filth. “I
am the chief torturer for Greenstar Company. Obviously this is not a position
they broadcast or acknowledge; I am simply referred to as Head of Security. But
let me assure you, I have thus far tortured nearly two hundred prisoners for
The Company. Some of them even lived.”

Vasta’s face disappeared, and
Jenny realised she was panting softly. She forced her breathing to calm. The
woman appeared again, and her face was a perfect mask of concern. Her eyes
seemed to soften, and she leant forward, intimate, until her lips were only an
inch from Jenny’s. So close Jenny that could smell her sweet breath, the musk
of her skin. So close, so intimate, and yet so far.

Vasta said, “We are going to grow
very close, you and I. It will be a relationship of love; my love for you. I do
not want to do the things I am going to do to you. I want only that you tell me
the information I seek. If you do not speak to me, Jenny, then I cannot help
you with your pain.” She kissed Jenny then, a long, lingering, passionate kiss.
There came a dart of her tongue, and then she pulled away, and Vasta’s hand
came to rest on Jenny’s belly. With a start Jenny realised she was naked. Idly,
Vasta started to stroke Jenny’s skin with long, gentle strokes.

“What are you going to do?”
snapped Jenny. “Torture me or fuck me?”

Vasta smiled, a genuine look of
humour. “Probably both. Now lie back and relax. Sleep if you like. But consider
my words. I will give you an hour before I begin. If you choose to co-operate,
then there will be no pain. If you choose
not
to tell me everything
concerning your friends in Impurity5, the Impurity Movement as a whole, your
Cell Commander McGowan, and his contact with the higher echelons of Impurity,
Mr Candle; well, then we will not be friends. If you cooperate fully, who knows,
maybe Greenstar will be thankful and allow you to live.”

“Get fucked,” said Jenny.

Vasta tutted, and held a finger
against her lips. “Spoken like a terrorist,” she said. “Now don’t go anywhere,
my sweet. When I return, I will bring my tools. Then, we will dance together.
You shall see.”

~ * ~

IT
WAS PERHAPS the longest hour of Jenny Xi’s life. It was up there with the death
of her father and the subsequent funeral in terms of sheer enjoyment. She lay
still on the obsidian bench, the dark ocean above her, all around her, shifting
and dancing and coalescing. Cramps gradually wormed into her muscles, into her
calves and thighs, into the intercostal muscles between her ribs, into her
forearms and shoulders and neck, every single cramp making her want to writhe
in agony as her muscles rebelled, turned against her own physiology, and she
spasmed, rigid, in agony, unable to move, unable to break free. The pain was
incredible, but one by one her muscles eventually relaxed, leaving just a dull
throbbing and her own panting loud in her ears.

How long has it been? How long
before the
real
fun begins?

As part of her anti-torture
training, they had been lectured by a man, a broken man, a bent and hammered
and twisted individual who had been the unfortunate victim of the heartless
junks,
the scourge of the galaxy, during the long-distant, half-forgotten Helix
War. The man, Jabez, had been the victim of an interrogation he could not
answer - simply because he did not have the answers. As a result, he had been
permanently crippled. All fingers and toes that still remained were bent and
broken, deformed, bones allowed to fuse at odd twisted angles during the length
of his incarceration and sustained agony. His legs, also, had been broken and
forced to set at odd angles. His knees had been smashed with sledgehammers, he
told the group.

They had sat in a chilled
silence, in awe at this broken wreck presented before them in a tiered, sterile
lecture theatre, like some circus freak on a stage for their pure entertainment.
Jabez showed them scars from where his skin had been stripped from his body. He
showed them scars in his legs, where whole veins had been teased free like
strings of spaghetti. His fingernails had been torn off, each knuckle cracked
with pliers, his testicles ripped free with tongs of steel, the end of his
penis slit with a scalpel over and over and over again; they’d let it heal, and
scar, then slice it again. He joked with the recruits, said it gave him extra
holes to piss out of. Said that when he peed, it was like a sprinkler for his
hosepipe. Nobody had laughed. How could they? This man before them was
destroyed. They’d put out one of his eyes, shaved his ears with a cut-throat
razor, striped his neck and his wrists, allowing him to bleed like a pig. They’d
cut off his lips, smashed out his teeth, cut off half his tongue -not all of
it, you understand, because they still expected him to talk. But he couldn’t
talk, he said to his horrified watchers. How could he tell them what they
wanted to know, when he did not have the answers?