Absynthe, page 35
The others stopped, silently questioning him.
“Just give me a second.”
Earlier, Liam had tried to cast an illusion and failed. He’d had no reason to suspect there were any illusions around him to dispel at the time, but he did now. After a deep, cleansing breath, he slipped into the proper frame of mind. He cast about carefully, looking for anything, one small stray thread. He found it near the door—oddly, because it was the only thing that felt real. He picked at its edges and, slowly but surely, found the thread he needed to unravel the illusion entirely.
The feeling of the air pressing in on him suddenly intensified.
—Liam, run!
It was Grace, and she felt close. Very close.
He was just reaching out to her to speak when, ahead, the doors swung open and Leland De Pere stepped out. “I’m afraid it’s rather too late to run, Liam.”
With the illusion so close to being dispelled, Liam continued what he’d started. It was powerful, surely cast by De Pere himself, but eventually he managed it.
The sterile white hallway melted away, leaving him and the others in a room that beggared description. They stood in a massive, open space with concrete walls, lit by huge, cone-shaped lamps that hung from the ceiling. At its center, behind De Pere, was a circular room with glass walls. Watching from within it was a doctor in a white lab coat and four nurses in blue scrubs surrounded by all manner of medical equipment, plus several operating tables.
Beyond the glass-walled room were rows of military cots that radiated outward like rays from the sun. Lying on the cots were men and women of varying ages, from teens to octogenarians. Those closest to the central room were clearly scourges. Their pupils had gone black as night, and their skin was marred by stark blue veins that stretched over their necks, cheeks, and especially around their eyes. Like Morgan and Dakota, each wore a dog tag, likely with their name and an assigned number. Those farther along the rows had sallow skin, a redness around their eyes, and expressions that could only be described as deep disinterest. They were thralls, and outnumbered the scourges twenty to one.
While the thralls seemed oblivious to De Pere, Liam, and everyone else, the scourges were different. Their heads were lifted, and they were staring with the black pits of their eyes at De Pere, only at De Pere. It sent a chill down Liam’s spine just to watch it.
“You’ve led us a merry chase,” De Pere said as he strode toward Liam.
Liam aimed his rifle at De Pere’s chest. “That’s far enough.”
De Pere stopped.
Alastair, meanwhile, swiveled his head back and forth, taking in the vast room around them. “Illusions aren’t supposed to work here.”
“He turned the antennas off,” Clay said with a sneer. “He only made us think they were active.”
“But how could he have known we were coming?” Alastair asked.
Liam had been wondering the same thing, but he suddenly figured it out. “He heard what Grace and I were talking about. He had a full day to plan for our arrival.”
“I’m impressed, Liam,” said De Pere.
“So where is she?” Liam asked.
“Somewhere safe. Now put the weapon down.”
Liam considered it, but how could he? He felt as if he were standing on a precipice, and that if he didn’t do something, all would be lost—not just him, not just Clay, Stasa, and Grace, but the country, the entire world. Almost without thought, he aimed and fired at De Pere.
The bullet exploded from the barrel. De Pere blinked out of existence, reappearing to Liam’s left, beyond the nearest row of thralls. Liam felt for the edges of his illusion—just one thread, one small fray, and he’d be able to pull it apart—but it was seamless.
He fired again, this time at De Pere’s head.
When De Pere blinked away and reappeared to their right, Clay swung his rifle and fired twice in quick succession. Alastair let his repeating rifle go. Even Stasa squeezed off a round. But De Pere merely smiled and vanished each time. And every time he appeared somewhere new, the scourges swung their gazes to follow.
“Enough,” De Pere said. “You’re going to get someone hurt.”
He was standing in front of the doors to the glass room again, and this time there were two dozen soldiers standing behind him. Their rifles were aimed at Liam, Alastair, Clay, and Stasa.
An arm suddenly slipped around Liam’s neck from behind. “You shouldn’t have come,” came Max Kohler’s harsh voice.
An officer broke away from the soldiers. It was Sergeant Kowalski, the man they’d spoken to on the elevator. “Your weapons,” he said calmly.
Liam tried to summon an illusion, of Cabal soldiers rushing in from the far side of the room, but the moment he did, Kohler tightened his grip and wrenched Liam back and forth until he stopped.
“Your weapons,” Sergeant Kowalski repeated.
While struggling to breathe, Liam handed his rifle to Sergeant Kowalski. Clay and Stasa followed suit. Alastair, meanwhile, brought his hand back into place, effectively deactivating his rifle. His wrists were immediately locked in manacles and secured to his sides with chains. Only then did Kohler ease his grip on Liam’s neck.
“What happens now?” Liam rasped.
De Pere smiled. “You’ll see soon enough.”
He nodded to Kohler. Moments later, Liam felt a sting in his neck and the cold sensation that came with an injection. De Pere’s handsome face swam before him. Everything began to swirl—the lights, the cavernous room, the soldiers, the many scourges and thralls in their cots, his friends. Then Liam melted too, and he lost track of who he was, where he was, and what fool steps had led him there.
Forty-Two
Liam woke strapped to a white leather chair with broad arms, the sort used to draw blood. His limbs were leaden, his mind foggy, but those effects faded the longer he took in the scene around him.
He was inside the large room with the glass walls. All about lay medical equipment. Nearby stood a console with dials, switches, gauges, and a myriad of lights colored red, amber, and green. Beyond the glass walls, the scourges and thralls lay on their cots. The same team of four nurses Liam had seen earlier moved about the room, monitoring the equipment or checking vitals. A bag filled with clear liquid hanging from a hook near Liam’s chair fed the needle stuck into his left arm.
The doctor, a burly fellow with a full red beard and mustache, glanced at Liam, then pressed a button on a console and spoke into a microphone. “He’s awake.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” came President De Pere’s voice.
Something weighed on Liam’s head, likely a helmet of some sort. He could feel small points of pressure—electrodes, surely—pressing into his scalp and forehead.
The doctor came to Liam’s side, and made some adjustments to the helmet. “Can you hear me?”
Liam nodded. “Where are the others, the ones who came with me?”
“They’re safe for now, but rest assured, you and your traitorous friends are going to get what you deserve.”
With those words, all hope of reasoning with the man vanished. He was already set against Liam and the Uprising. To him, anything that happened to them was justified.
The doctor finished his adjustments and began walking away, but he’d not gone three strides before he suddenly disappeared. The nurses vanished next, then the thralls and scourges beyond the window. The room around him shifted and smeared, the scene eerily similar to what had happened in the sphere atop the Kovacs P&L building, and again at LuxCorp, so much so that Liam was unfazed when Max Kohler stepped into the room.
For a time, Kohler seemed lost in thought, lost in his worries. He paced behind a padded green chair, then stopped and stabbed a finger toward the glass walls. Beyond them, the scourges, only the scourges, reappeared. “Do you know why he made them?”
“To infect others,” Liam said.
“Yes.” Kohler resumed his pacing. When he spoke again, it was like he was talking to himself more than Liam. “But there’s more, a grand design you can’t see, not until you’ve stepped away from it. And you need to. You need to see the bigger picture.”
Liam shook his head. “I don’t understand, Max. Why are you trying to help me? You’re De Pere’s right-hand man. You’ve been with him from the start.”
Kohler’s movements slowed, then stopped altogether. “With him?” On the window behind him, images flashed, memories of Kohler torturing himself, using razors, fish hooks, broken glass and more. On and on it went, with De Pere standing by, watching. As the images continued to play, Kohler reached up, worked at the straps holding his mask in place, and lifted it to reveal a face dominated by scars, a catalogue of pain and misery. His right eye, where the red lens had been, was missing, replaced by a dark pit. “Ask yourself, Mulcahey, does this look like I’m with him?” He waved to the images on the window. “Does that?”
“Then why would you stay?”
“Because I’m trapped! He took me, made me his own personal thrall.”
“Then how can you be here now, acting of your own free will?”
“Because he can’t focus on me all the time. I’ve found ways to avoid his attention, but it doesn’t last long, and you’re wasting time with stupid questions.” He paused. “I know what Grace told you.” He waved to the window, and the bloody memories were replaced with a vision of an army officer lying wounded—the memory Grace had shown him of De Pere in the war’s last major battle. “That’s what he’s been so afraid of. It’s why he’s coming here himself, to find the truth of what Colette shared with you, learn who else knows.”
“Colette didn’t share that with me, though. Or if she did, I don’t remember.”
“Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean she never did. You have to remember, Mulcahey. You have to learn why he’s so afraid. Everything depends on it.”
Feeling sick to his stomach, Liam focused on Kohler’s ruined face. “Then help me. Fill in some details. Tell me what he has planned. Maybe that’ll jog something loose.”
Kohler swallowed hard, and the images of torture finally faded. “You know part of the story. De Pere means to turn the thralls into obedient slaves. The psis will carry his will to every corner of the earth. But the scourges are the real key.” He paused. “Years ago, I found a journal De Pere writes in. One entry said he wanted to free himself, to untether his mind. That mean anything to you?”
Though Liam was curious and concerned over the word Kohler had just used, untether, it was the second bit of information he’d just revealed that shook him. “De Pere keeps a journal?”
“I don’t know if he still does, but he did then.”
“Colette did, too.”
Kohler’s good eye narrowed. “So?”
“Stasa Kovacs gave me a serum that’s helped to uncover some of my memories. Except, each time I remember more, I see some of Colette’s memories as well. Stasa thinks that Colette’s giving me the permanent serum before anyone else linked us in some way.”
Kohler stared at him hard. “Please tell me there’s more.”
“In the last memory I saw, she was writing in a journal. Except it wasn’t just writing. She was having a conversation.”
“With who?”
“Stasa thinks it’s another part of herself, a split personality. It felt hungry and malicious. Inhuman. It called itself Echo.”
Kohler’s lone, blue-eyed gaze traveled beyond Liam, becoming restless in the process. “Echo . . .”
“You know about it?”
“Sort of. After the war, De Pere wiped your memories, you and the other Henchmen, and sent you away. Crawford came to Novo Solis in ’21 because he was starting to remember. When De Pere tried to wipe the memories away again, Crawford resisted, and De Pere lashed out.” Kohler paused. “I visited Nick in the hospital afterward, to see for myself what De Pere’d done to him. I’ll admit, it shook me.”
“Shook you, after all he’d done to you?”
Kohler shrugged. “Torture’s one thing—some of it I deserved—but he destroyed Crawford’s mind. When I asked De Pere how he could have done it, he said, ‘It wasn’t me. It was Echo.’ He looked embarrassed, shocked that he’d said it. He flew into a rage. He tortured me like never before.” Kohler pointed to the ruined pit where his right eye had once been. “That’s when he did this.”
“You said he wanted to untether.” Liam jutted his chin toward the window, to the scourges beyond. “Do you suppose he meant into them?”
Kohler nodded. “I’m certain that’s what he meant.”
“How? And how can we stop it?”
“That’s precisely what you need to—”
Just then Kohler’s face screwed up in pain. He released an agonized scream and fell to the floor. The nurses and the doctor suddenly reappeared, turned, and stared in fright at Kohler, who writhed on the floor.
A moment later, Leland De Pere, still dressed impeccably in his cream-colored suit, opened the doors and strode into the room. He was flanked by four CIC guards. For a time, De Pere watched Kohler writhe and scream. Then the screaming was cut short and Kohler went still, his breathing labored.
“We’ll discuss this later, Max.” De Pere waved to him, and the guards picked Kohler up and carried him away.
De Pere, all but ignoring Liam, walked to the instrument panel and spoke to the doctor in a low voice. Liam listened carefully, trying to catch what he was saying, then heard a familiar scuffing sound.
He turned to see Nana shuffling toward the empty green chair. “You’re in the shit now, boyo.” She sat and stared at him with an intense expression. “De Pere’s preparing to take what he wants from you, and you’re just sitting there.”
“I can’t fight him,” Liam whispered. “I’m trapped!”
“There’s more than one way to fight.” She glanced at the helmet on his head. “He’s about to go rooting about in your memories. That means a connection’s going to be made between the two of you. Use it, Liam. Use it to take what you want.”
Liam looked up as a nurse approached with a needle in hand. When he looked back at the chair, Nana was gone. As the nurse injected something into Liam’s IV, De Pere broke from the doctor and strode closer. He took his jacket off and laid it carefully on the back of the empty chair, then arranged himself in it, looking pleased beyond measure.
Liam’s eyelids grew heavy, his limbs leaden. He felt like a golem made of clay, not a man of flesh and bone. He tried to speak, but something prevented him. All he could manage was to swing his head lazily back and forth.
“I overheard Max speaking to you about Nick,” De Pere said. “It’s unfortunate. I always liked Nick.” He nodded to the doctor, who flipped a switch on the instrument panel.
Liam felt suddenly potent. He gained a sharpness of mind that had been completely absent moments ago. He felt as if his mind were expanding, as if he could recall anything he wished. And that in turn made him feel as though he’d been laid bare. It made it difficult to concentrate, but he managed to retain one overriding thought: “You were a good man once,” he said to De Pere. “What happened to you?”
“It’s not what happened,” De Pere shot back. “It’s what’s about to happen. What needs to happen.”
De Pere’s gaze became more intense, and Liam suddenly recalled the interview where he’d first met Colette. He’d been led to a room, where he sat at a table across from the stunningly pretty doctor. She’d been wearing a dress with a lab coat over it. She had a small white tag with her name engraved on it: Dr. Colette Silva. Her long, curly hair had been tied back. She’d asked him a series of questions about his past, his upbringing, his family. The more questions he’d answered, the more he’d wanted to ask Colette similar questions, to learn more about her. He’d been infatuated, but he’d stifled the urges as inappropriate. Besides, a woman as poised and refined as Colette would never be attracted to someone like him, a man of simple tastes, of modest means.
His mind shifted to the first time he and the other Devil’s Henchmen had been given the serum, Echobacterum sentensis. He recalled how his mind had warmed to everyone—no more than this, a simple warming, but it was clear they were connected. In following trials he’d felt their emotions if not their thoughts: Vankoningsfeld’s worry, Kohler’s disregard for what anyone else thought of him. Clay’s reaction of childlike wonder, so starkly different from the image he normally projected, had made Liam laugh with joy.
More memories. Another meeting with Colette came and went, and another, his history with her playing out in greater detail than he had been able to manage on his own. Perhaps it was necessary for De Pere to start from the beginning and follow it like a trail of breadcrumbs. Or perhaps he wanted no stone left unturned. Whatever the case, Liam found himself becoming more and more convinced that when they came to the end of this trail of memories, De Pere would have what he wanted: an unimpeded path to his untethering.
Liam’s attempts to stop him were feeble at best. It felt as if he were playing chess with a grand master, any move he made foreseen long ago.
Liam blinked, and suddenly Nana was sitting in the chair across from him, not De Pere. “Fight, Liam.”
“I don’t know how.”
“He’s opened a door for you.” Grace now sat in the bulky chair, wearing the same stunning, beaded dress she’d had on when he’d first met her in Club Artemis. Her blond, wavy hair reflected the harsh lights embedded into the ceiling. “Doorways work both ways. You can find what you need, too.”
“And what is that? What do I need?”
When Liam blinked again, Colette had taken Grace’s place. She had a sly look on her face, the sort she used to give when Liam was a bit slow picking up on her jokes. “Secrets, Liam.” She leaned forward with a hungry stare. “His most cherished secrets. Things you can use against him.”
