Breaking Point

Chapter 1: The Devil's Bargain

They must have changed my drugs recently.  I'm starting to hear voices and this one sounds just like Draygon.  That evil hiss.  Like a snake.  I wonder if the authors of the Adam and Eve myth heard voices like that and decided it's what Satan sounded like.

Subtle buzzing pain pulsed through Zaid's shoulder, emanating from the spike stabbed through the opening of his collar bone.  He closed his eyes and breathed in calmingly through his nose for an inhumanly long time, filling his spacious lungs with the sterile laboratory air, tensing his jaw as the spike rubbed against his bone.  Getting a deep breath was hard without irritating the electrified spike.

The spike was Col. Lee Majors' contribution to the prison cell's design and Zaid knew it.  Nobody but he, Lanesra, Rellik and Jesim had been there when his juggernaut of a body slowed to a stagger when he was struck by an electrified harpoon.  Of them, only Majors had believed Zaid's actions a month ago on the Mars-Jupiter Lagrange Point station merited discipline.  Lanesra had died two years ago, sacrificing her own life to save Zaid, yet another thing he blamed himself for.  And Jesim and Rellik had both testified to the threat Zaid had eliminated, the Morphic Polymer, and that the destruction of both the station and the 21 Lutecia Asteroid were not only justified but essential to the safety of all life in the solar system.

The United Earth council disagreed, stating that the study of the Morphic Polymer was essential to their efforts to restore peace to the Earth.  Zaid knew better.  This stuff was far beyond dangerous. Clusters of networked autonomous nano-drones, colonizing to form arbitrary structures, it could become anything.  Or anyone.  The tiny computer brains knew only survival instinct, joining with their trillions of brothers to transform from a blob of liquid metal into the shape of whatever it observed surviving.  They were capable of replicating themselves by feeding on raw organic material, which they processed to more fully take the form of their victims.  They had to die.  All of them.  Otherwise they would consume everything.  No peace.  No utility.  Only death.  Only replacement of everything by Polymer.

Zaid slowly breathed out through his mouth, careful not to jostle the spike.  His muscles throughout his whole body ached.  His movement was restrained at every limb.  Feet fastened to the floor.  His left hand to the top of a pillar, three intravenous tubes inserted into his wrists to keep him fed, hydrated and sedated.  His right arm was similarly restrained, but fastened at the elbow with his lower arm an amorphous shiny blob, its shape-changing ability disabled.  He was chained to the ceiling at an armor mounting point between his shoulders.  Movement was restricted so that he couldn't flail himself out of his restraints.  Not that he wanted to, but just in case he did.

Twenty seven days and counting, never so much as laying or sitting down.  No movement, just whatever stretching could be done in the restraints.  No contact with anyone.  Complete isolation.

Nothing but that hissing voice.

Alan Darius.  I've come to bargain.  Your body craves freedom.  Your mind craves atonement.  I offer you both.

"Get ou..." Zaid started vocalizing before coughing uncontrollably, his collar spike sending stabbing pain through his left arm with every cough.

Get Out Of My Head.  You're not real.  It's the drugs.  You're dead.  You died.  I dropped you into the receiver beam of a space fountain.  Nobody could survive that.  It's impossible.  How are you here?  You can't be.  You won't be.  If you are, I'll kill you again.  I'LL KILL YOU AGAIN YOU BASTARD.  I'LL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF AND PISS DOWN YOUR NECK THIS TIME.

So you want to kill me again.  Excellent.  You'll get that chance.  

Another chance?  You're already dead?  How am I hearing you now?  I must be insane.

Perhaps.  But you wouldn't have died had I thrown you down the fountain.  You've survived worse than that.  You and I, we're the same.

We're both monsters.  We're both insane, or at least I think I'm insane right now.  Beyond that?  I may be a bigger monster, but at least I'm not the Devil Himself.

I'm flattered, but I don't have time for an unarmed battle of wits.  Tomorrow I set you free.  You will do something for me, and then you will have the chance to kill me.  I will clear your name and your guilty conscience.  And then one of us will be dead.  Either way you will be happy.

What makes you think I even WANT out of this prison.

The serpentine voice laughed.  You will see tomorrow.  Your bonds will be loosed and you will know whether or not I'm right.  Atonement for your sins.  Absolution for your legacy.  A chance to finish what you've started, or die in glorious combat against the one you hate the most.

Or, you can try to choose to stay imprisoned, only to create yet another of your worst moments as they come to contain you.

The choice is yours.

Zaid's eyes shut.  The voice remained silent.  Drowsiness was overwhelming and Zaid took a deep, sharp breath, cringing as the spike grated against bone.  With the restraints, true sleep was impossible, but that didn't stop the momentary blips out of consciousness.

That's it.  I'm insane.  I have to be.  There's nobody coming.  Nobody wants to free an unstable juggernaut who might rip the spines out of his rescuers.  Especially not my mortal enemy, who isn't even alive.  What was the term for this?  When you hear voices that aren't really there?  I read this in a medical handbook.  Schizophrenia.  That's it.  I must be schizophrenic.  This happens with sleep deprivation and now I know my limit.  Twenty seven days without sleep, heavily drugged, and finally I've lost my marbles.

Another drift out of consciousness, interrupted by the sensation of the chain tugging on his mounting point.  He let out a groan, interrupted by coughs again.  More stabbing pain with each cough.  He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but he saw the room light up from a distance with red flashing lights and alarms, followed by silence.  And darkness.  Then unconsciousness again.