Scott Nicholson - Liquid fear

He squeezed her throat, choking off any sound but a faint, nasal wheezing. Through the night-vision goggles, her eyes appeared as bulging green orbs in her beautiful, heart-shaped face.

“Come on,” Briggs said. “I’ve waited ten years for this. I know you’ve been waiting, too.”

As he dragged her to his office, she grew limp, and he wasn’t sure she was still breathing. He let go of her hair and put one arm around her slim waist, letting his hand trail across those breasts he had fantasized about for so many years. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

A hundred feet away, Alexis and Mark were calling to one another, feeling their way in the dark. An occasional piece of equipment clattered to the floor. Roland must have decided to play it safe and keep his mouth shut.

Briggs had instructed Kleingarten to wait by the front door. Even though the lock wouldn’t release until Briggs had keyed the command from the security console, he didn’t want to take any chances. Plus the task would keep Kleingarten safely out of the way until Briggs was ready to assign him mop-up duty.

And then Briggs would dispose of him along with the rest of the trash.

He reached his office just as Alexis began shouting for Roland. “I need my pill!” she shrieked.

He’d never known she was such a bitch. But then, he’d forgotten what she was like on Seethe. He hadn’t watched the video recently.

He propped Wendy in his leather swivel chair by the computer and turned her to face the rows of video monitors. “Here, my sweet, let me make you more comfortable,” he said, loosening her top two buttons.

Her breasts were as pert as he remembered. He dipped to have a sample, even though the night-vision goggles cast it in an unappealing shade of muted green. Her nipple puckered in the cool air; he told himself it was because of his skill.

“I know you’re anxious, but there will be time for that later,” Briggs said, and she gave a distant moan in response.

He withdrew a syringe from his top drawer. He’d wanted to save it for later, but he couldn’t control himself any longer. He realized he was as juiced up as any of his monkeys. Except his juice was natural.

The Seethe serum was engineered for intramuscular use, so he could stick it virtually anywhere. He moved the point of the needle over her breasts, stroking. Then he inserted it just below her collarbone. She sighed as he flooded her system.

He hit the electrical override breaker, which would prevent Kleingarten from switching on the lights if he chose to disobey Briggs’s orders. He connected the battery backups, which had just enough power to run the equipment in his office.

On the top row of monitors, with the hallway camera switched to thermal imaging, he saw the orange-and-yellow outlines of Anita and Burchfield copulating on the floor, their bodies radiating heat. A smaller man, obviously David Underwood, was making a pathetic attempt to pull Burchfield from atop her, but the senator was pumping like a man possessed.

If the electorate could see him now. But no surprise there. He’s been fucking Americans for years.

The final captive, Wallace Forsyth, had not left his cell, and the isolation camera showed his form huddled in the corner, apparently on his hands and knees, hands clasped in front of his bowed head.

Ah, prayer. The last refuge of the hopeless. That’s what happens when you come face to face with yourself. You become your own worst nightmare.

He checked the wide-angle cameras attached to the factory ceiling, thirty feet above the floor. He zoomed in the one pointed at the rear of the building.

“Ah, that explains it,” he said to Wendy. “Mark must have locked them in. Not exactly according to plan.”

Because the door had a regular lock in addition to the electronic lock, Briggs couldn’t open it again without doing it manually. And he wasn’t going to leave his office until this was over. It would be the only safe place when the subjects degraded to their most primitive selves.

He slid the cage door into place and secured it with a hasp lock.

Then he rolled Wendy in the chair over to the monitors and faced her toward the largest screen in the middle.

“I have something I’d like you to see,” he said, taking her hand. “And something to remember.”

Mark found Alexis in the dark, though he’d cut a gash in his cheek prowling through the clutter of the factory. The pain was sharp enough to cut a swath through the clamoring fog of murder, and he ran his tongue over his shattered, throbbing tooth.

Pain is my ally.

He chanted it to himself like a mantra, fighting off the madness that threatened to engulf him.

Alexis was screeching Roland’s name, her voice echoing through the high metal rafters, and all he had to do was anticipate her direction, press back into an opening, and wait, focusing on the red streak of flaming agony in his face.

When she passed, he jumped her, counting on his familiarity with her height to hit her in the right spot. He thought he was tackling her around the shoulders, but his skull thudded against something solid. He went blue-minded for a moment, and she tried to raise her arm, but he gripped hard, fighting for consciousness.

“Lex, it’s me,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I have to hurt you now.”

He moved his mouth to her upper arm and bit hard, causing her to scream and drop whatever she was carrying. He didn’t let up, but instead let his teeth dig until they stopped on bone and the coppery sweet blood painted his lips.

“Owww, Mark, you’re hurting meeee,” she moaned, trying to fling him off, but her struggles subsided as the pain took hold.

“Pain,” he said wetly, pulling his mouth away. “It clears the Seethe. But you have to keep it fresh.”

Taking his own advice, he slapped the spot on his skull where the metal had struck, then dug a fingernail in for good measure.

“Yeah,” Alexis wheezed, relaxing in his grip. “Like rock-paper-scissors. Pain covers fear.”

“And lust cuts pain,” Mark said. He wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but even now the twin powers of Anita’s lingering touch and his wife’s warm body threatened to reduce him to a slavering satyr.

“We need the Halcyon,” Alexis said. “We have to find Roland.”

“What if Briggs screwed with the dose? What if it’s a placebo?”

“No, he wants it like ten years ago.”

“When Susan Sharpe died?” Mark weighed the impact of her sudden silence before adding, “I know what happened.”

“Don’t say her name, Mark. Please, God, don’t say her name-”

She trembled in his grip and he said, “Yeah, okay. Focus on the bite wound.”

“Roland!” Alexis shouted to him in the dark. “We have to work together.”

“If he’s as messed up as we are, he’ll be too paranoid. We’ll have to find him.”

“Unless he took one of the pills. Then he’s okay for a little bit, though he won’t remember why we’re here.”

“Then he’ll be scared as shit anyway,” Mark said, realizing he’d lost all orientation. “Have you seen Briggs?”

“Not since the lights went out. Wendy’s gone, too.”

“I locked the others back there. At least they’re safe for now, assuming they don’t rip each other’s throats out.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Me, too.” He punched her in the stomach and she grunted. Her arm flew out reflexively and caught his mouth, causing a fresh eruption of blood and torment.

“Now let’s find Roland before we beat each other to death,” she said between gasps. “He’s got three doses of Halcyon.”

They held hands as they hustled down the dark corridor as fast as they dared. Mark kept his free arm out in front of them, in case they ran into one of the obscured mountains of junk.