Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

As Loki looked around, the doors and walls of this place indicated it was a stable. There were thick, wooden doors, split into two parts—like a Dutch door. That’s where the horse would stick his head out and feed. That’s how it worked, wasn’t it?

There were cameras and lights all around him in the room, creating a harsh glare. He was having difficulty breathing in this position, and the pain in his shoulders was almost unbearable. They’d also strapped some sort of muzzle over his mouth that had an almost stirrup-like piece of metal forced between his teeth. Sleep was impossible.

He felt the loss of the darknet like the death of a close friend. No, that wasn’t right because he’d never really had a close friend. He felt the loss of his connection to the darknet like the amputation of a limb. As though someone had castrated him. His electronic contact lenses were gone. His haptic vest was gone. His gloves, his bone mic—everything. Everything except the implant near his aorta—that remained. However, it was just a locator—he couldn’t interact with the darknet through it. But it was his only hope. The question was: how much time had elapsed?

After what seemed like an eternity of pain, he heard the slap of heavy bolts and looked up to see the big wooden door open on squealing hinges.

There before him was the devil himself—The Major—followed by several other men, some of whom were wheeling metal carts on rubberized wheels. The Major stood in the doorway for a moment to regard Loki.

Fuck you, too, motherfucker.

“So you thought your fanboy toys would destroy us, is that it? Do you think you’re the first group to come at us with novel tactics? It’s not about how many people you can kill—it’s about who runs out of people first. And I promise you, it will be you.”

The Major moved into the room. His entourage began to set up equipment and workspace behind him. The Major was wearing what looked to be surgical scrubs. Loki heard the clank of metal tools being arranged behind The Major. He felt a cold dread creeping up his spine. Fear gripped him, causing him to tremble despite his exhaustion.

The Major accepted rubber gloves passed to him by an Asian man wearing a face mask. The Major did not wear a mask. He grinned humorlessly as he pulled the rubber gloves on.

“Loki Stormbringer. That’s what you call yourself isn’t it? Fiftieth-level Sorcerer—or something like that? The most powerful darknet operative known. Your fingerprints bring up nothing in government records. Was that the first thing you did, Loki—destroy your old identity? No footprints from birth. No fingerprints from child abduction prevention programs. No DNA samples from prior arrests. It’s like Loki is the real you—as though you wanted to pretend the white-trash loser you were before never existed. But I’m going to show you that you do exist.”

The Major walked right up to Loki’s face. “I’ve been amused by the debate in America over whether torture is effective.” He paced a ways away and picked up a pair of nasty-looking clippers from a metal table that had been set up. “Of course it’s effective.”

The Major returned holding a tool shielded by his hand. “But not at producing information. Torture isn’t about extracting information.”

He brought the sinister-looking clippers up to Loki’s face. “Torture is about control. You let me torture a thousand people, and I can keep five million working obediently with their heads down. The more innocent the victims, the better. And after they’re broken and maimed, you release them so that everyone can see what awaits those who resist.”

Suddenly the hook on the ceiling started to lower, and in a moment Loki’s feet touched the ground. It was the first time in hours that the pressure on his breathing and shoulders had eased. But before he could relish the relief, strong hands grabbed his wrists, and he was forced down onto his knees. Two powerfully built men forced his wrists into clamps that were bolted to the floor. They shoved pieces of two-by-four under his palms to prevent him from closing his hand into a fist, and even though he struggled, Loki soon found himself with his arms splayed out before him. The Major was kneeling right alongside him.

“There is no debate about torture in here, my friend. So you see, there’s nothing you can tell me that will stop the pain. You’re no longer Loki, the sorcerer. The only thing you are is a billboard—on which I’m going to write my message: this is what happens to people who join the darknet. . . .”

At which point The Major clamped the tip of Loki’s index finger in the metal clippers, and though Loki struggled to pull away, the steel jaws snipped off his index finger up to the second knuckle.

The pain shot through him like needles moving through his bloodstream. He tasted blood in his mouth from where he had bit his tongue.

The agony was followed by still further searing pain as the Asian doctor in a lab coat applied a red-hot filament to the stump, cauterizing the wound and sending up a sickening sizzling sound.

Loki thrashed around, pulling a muscle in his back, but it was only the beginning. The Major cut off another fingertip, and another, and another. The doctor cauterized each wound before the next digit was clipped off. Loki felt his consciousness ebbing, but they waved smelling salts under his nose.

The Major was in his face again. “How will the Daemon know you if you have no biometric markers left?”

The unbearable agony continued as the spawn of Satan himself snipped off the tips of all eight of Loki’s fingers. And finally the most painful ones of all—his thumbs.

In his mind Loki was begging for death. To use his powerful intellect to will his heart to stop. To die and let the universe take him.

But his world was nothing but a white-hot wall of pain.

And yet it got worse. Before he had a chance to realize what was happening, he felt his left eyelid pried open and he saw a pair of surgical scissors coming for his eyeball as they pulled it out of the orbital socket. He tried to scream—tried to turn away, but they’d clamped his head into place. With a dagger of pain, he lost all sight in his left eye and saw through his tear-filled right eye as they dropped it into a metal pan.

The next few moments brought utter blindness as the horrific event was repeated. Loki prayed—actually prayed—for death, yet it did not come. He heard horrible groaning, and realized that he was the source. He was like an animal being butchered. He no longer wished to live.

He heard the devil’s voice in his ear one more time. “And so that the Daemon cannot recognize you by your voice . . .”

No. No!

Loki felt the stirrup-like gag they’d fastened over his mouth expand with the force of a car jack—opening his mouth and keeping it open no matter what he did. He felt the sharp pinch of a pair of pliers pulling his tongue forward roughly and then the searing cut that bored right into the center of his mind. Loki’s tongue was cut clean from his mouth.

As he died within himself, trapped in the broken shell of his body, Loki felt the shell’s head pulled back and the devil’s voice whisper again.

“The Daemon no longer knows you. And I have all the biometric markers I need to become you . I will be Loki Stormbringer. Your identity is my reward. The only reason I’ll keep you alive is so that you can pass the occasional fMRI test for me.”

It was the final nail. Loki felt his soul guttering, flickering, and though he prayed with every fiber of his being for death, it did not come. He existed, just as The Major said he would, as a vessel that spoke of torment.

Oscar Strickland’s interest in medicine arose from his many blissful years hunting white-tailed deer in the Colorado Rockies. Cleaning and dressing carcasses beneath the aspens awakened in his young mind a fascination with all living things. This ultimately inspired him to join a volunteer rescue squad and become an EMT—which exposed him to the miracle of human anatomy as he helped to pry victims out of crumpled wreckage on mountain roads. And it was here where he discovered his connection to pain. Namely the infliction of it.