Panoptic

Panoptic - Chapter 14

He woke in darkness, serpents coiled around his arms, digging their teeth into his flesh. He blinked and struggled, but the snakes held him fast on the ground, gouging into his skin, mocking his paltry strength. No light came to his eyes, no freedom to his arms and legs. He tasted coppery blood in his mouth, and an oily stink of smoke filled his nose and stung his eyes.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath, and one more, to clear his head. He felt heavy and dull, as if he'd spent all night drinking cheap whiskey and cheaper vodka. His lips felt dry, his stomach empty, gnawing hunger growing within. He twisted again, and the snakes bit deep into his skin and writhed against him with a soft clink.

Clink?

His head started to work, neurons flashed messages one to another, lighting up like a city at dusk.

Snakes don't clink. They may slither, they may coil, they may rustle through the undergrowth or swish through water, but they do not clink.

As he woke to that fact, he grasped his true situation. He was chained.

Now he knew something vital; he was a prisoner, a captive of... He couldn't say. But a captive. Perhaps this had happened to his brother. Poor Sam had gone to sleep one night, and woken the next morning chained in darkness.

He wanted to burst into tears. He wanted to collapse into a huddle of bones and skin, and wail. But he didn't cry. He couldn't afford to waste the water. He was as dry as five hundred year old vellum, and if he lost any more water, what few synapses had flickered to life might just flicker back out. He needed the water to stay conscious and semi-functional. He needed to be functional to get the gronking smunk out of this dumbass bear trap and get his brother out too. For all he knew, Sam was next door. He sucked air and tested his chains. As he did, he reflected that he must have spent too much time with Arima. Her peculiar dialect was rubbing off on him, at least in the cursing department.

He twisted and turned, trying to get up into a sitting position. It took a lot of grunting, heaving effort, and he choked down the urge to curse, for fear that his captor or captors would hear him, and come; that they would reveal the act of chaining him to be a prelude to something much, much worse. He'd worked up a chilly sweat by the time he'd finished, but in this he succeeded: he sat before that much worse could materialise. Soro had a vivid imagination. He could picture 'much worse' without any effort. It took an effort not to picture it. Rusty hooks biting into flesh, jagged saws ripping into meat, nails hammered to crack, pierce and splinter living bone...

He ground his teeth, and tried to free his hands. He couldn't do it, but he tried anyway. He wrestled with the chain until it chewed his skin, until blood wept from his wrists, then he paused, tensed himself against the agony, and shifted his efforts to an attempt to stand.

The sun burst. It ripped apart like a smashed egg, and spilled light like stellar yolk. He gasped, clenched shut his eyes, and strained his arms and shoulders in an involuntary attempt to shield his face.

"I think you've had enough exercise for today."

The man's voice had a sickly, oily quality, like the smoke that gusted on his breath. It sounded too warm, too friendly. It sounded as cloying and nauseating as the stink of rotting fruit.

"You've run me around but good," the man said. "I'll admit it, you're an agile fellow. As agile as a monkey. In fact, I would bet a modest sum that you have more than a smidgen of monkey DNA. You certainly seem closer to the monkeys than to any human family."

He blinked and strained to see through the glare. It was a real glare, and not just the first glare of light on dark-adjusted eyes. Whoever he was, the speaker had aimed a battery of lamps smack at Soro's face, and he stood against them, a stark man-shaped shadow, eye-catching as a stage dominating performer, anonymous as atmospheric nitrogen.

But the voice...

"I know you," he said. He didn't add that he couldn't place the man, but he prodded his weary, anxious brain to name him.

"Know me?" The man laughed. "You've broken bread with me. You've stood beside me as a brother in the profession. When we first met, you were pathetically eager to be my friend."

He cursed himself. "Typhoon."

The man laughed again. "You're really very slow, a very second-rate fellow. Your brother worked it out a lot faster. Of course, he would, he's much the better man."

Sam. His gut twisted, and he let out a painful sob, so consumed by a rush of anguish he couldn't speak.

"Yes," Typhoon said. "He is, or should I say was, the better one. Better photographer, better brain, better brother. Shame he wouldn't play with us. Meant we had to turn to you... A most unsatisfying buffet."

He found his voice, and he had to work hard to keep it from turning into a wordless cry. "You took him. You did this. Give him back to me. Give him back!"

Typhoon chuckled, and waited until Soro shouted his voice to a dry whisper. "It's too late for that. And it's too late for you."

His mind recoiled from the horror of this prison. He had failed. His efforts, his brilliant plan, had come to naught. He'd believed he had caught Typhoon, out-tricked the trickster. Now he sat in chains, helpless before his murderous enemy. Murderous, yes, he'd discovered that, and much more the night he'd broken into Typhoon's stateroom on the New Dawn.

Thoughts of the past weeks tumbled through his mind, and he grabbed at them with relief. He couldn't stand the present. It wasn't just the chill fear that clawed at his vitals with talons of broken glass. It was the sense of utter, abject failure. He'd believed he had won. He'd even celebrated with Arima.

Thoughts of Arima rushed on him, and choked his throat with anguish, renewed terror, all dripping with thick, dark, oily shame. To imagine her sweet face, her laughing eyes, her full, succulent lips, contorted in fear as Typhoon or some hired fiend approached her, grunting with loathsome excitement as he watched her futile struggle, and heard her useless screams.

"No," he said. "No!"

But his words could not change the present. If only he could go back to the past, and warn himself. If only...

Typhoon roared with laughter. Soro knew his every thought and feeling, his every fear marked his face, and Typhoon approved of the picture.

He squeezed his eyes shut, and wished himself back, back to the past.

...

He hurried along the street to the hotel. Arima had wanted to stay at his home, and why not? Because Belle Stakker, and her thugs - not Gell Shield, he was now certain - knew where he lived. He'd got them a room at a shady joint in north Manhattan, close enough to visit Belle at the UN building, far enough to move without being tracked.

He thought.

He hoped.

He turned the corner and saw the modest brick façade of the Hotel Flammarion, gilded revolving doors flanked by tall green Norwegian pines. He started across the road, but a black truck roared in front of him and forced him to jump back, biting down a curse. He ran over the road, and started into the revolving doors, but a hand grabbed the point of his shoulder and whirled him around.

He found himself looking up into the skeletal features of Typhoon, but the urbane mask was off. Typhoon's lips were peeled back in a grotesque snarl, his long, abnormal teeth flashing like fangs. His great eyes stared down at Soro, gleaming with victory, the victory of a hunting leopard as it lays its paws on some frozen, terrified beast of prey. His victory appeared greater because it was not complete; a row of scratches marred the left side of his face, fresh and red with blood.

Soro focused on the scratches, his legs went weak, his vision blurred, and he felt as if he might collapse right there in the turning doors. "What have you done?"

Typhoon grinned with cruel satisfaction. "You forget about that girl, my fine little fellow, and save your tears for your own sack of bones."

Soro thrust aside the hand that held him and threw a punch at Typhoon's face. He felt the man's nose crunch under his fist, and saw blood splatter from the injury. Typhoon didn't utter a sound. He glared down at Soro, and struck him a gut blow so hard and so fast it seemed to come from nowhere. Soro fell to his hands and knees, choking on his pain. He tried to stand, but couldn't. He looked up, to see Typhoon's black shoe fly at his face.