Daniel Suarez - Freedom (TM)

“Laney. Laney!”

One of the soldiers leaned into view. “Tough little fucker, that one.”

Another soldier chimed in. “Yeah, you’re not going to reach him. He knows how to deal with torture. Don’t you, boy? You’re an old hand.” He smacked Price’s head.

Sebeck crawled closer to Price. “Laney.” Price’s eyes remained unseeing as his lips moved in a repeating rhythm. The scars all over his body looked old.

“Curling iron would be my guess.”

Sebeck turned to face the soldier who said it.

Another soldier shook his head. “This fucker had some sick parents.”

Sebeck felt his heart dropping. He remembered Riley’s words to him back at the Laguna reservation: You never asked about Price’s suffering . How could he never have realized? It nearly swallowed him with grief. He looked to Price. “Laney. Listen to me, Laney!”

The vehicle suddenly slowed and lurched into a steep turn.

The lead non-comm stood up and grabbed an overhead handrail. “Let’s finish this and get back in time for chow.” He wrapped a cloth around his nose and mouth, as did the other men.

The vehicle came to a complete stop and the back wall lowered like a drawbridge. Before he could react Sebeck felt himself grabbed by the feet and dragged roughly across the diamond-plate floor. He felt the pain of a dozen small cuts, and then he was unceremoniously dumped onto the dusty ground. All he could smell was the stench of death—so thick that he tasted it as much as smelled it. He heard the squawking and shrieking of birds.

Sebeck sat up and surveyed his surroundings. They’d been traveling in some sort of six-wheeled, armored personnel carrier and arrived at a series of tall wood chip piles—probably from brush clearing at the ranch. Nearby was what looked to be a well-worn wood chipper on a trailer, its chute aimed at the smallest pile of wood chips. Just beyond the blower, crows and buzzards fed noisily on carrion already splayed in a long streak of red-brown covered with chunks of gelatinous meat. They bickered over the scraps.

The whole place reeked of dead flesh. As he glanced around he saw nothing for miles in any direction. It was just flat scrubland.

Sebeck felt Price thrown against him, and as he sat there next to Price in the dust he leaned in once more to look Price in the eyes. He got up close. “Laney! Laney, it’s me, Pete! Talk to me. Please.”

There was a flicker of recognition in Price’s eyes, then they focused on Sebeck.

Sebeck looked around him as a squad of soldiers stared at two others pouring gasoline into the wood chipper’s fuel tank. Another was preparing a video camera with a ghoulish grin on his face.

Sebeck turned back to Price. “Laney, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it ended like this.”

Price’s brow contorted. “It’s not your fault, Sergeant. Sometimes things end badly.”

“I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I know you didn’t have to be here—and now I’ve gone and failed everyone.”

Price shook his head slightly. “Your quest wasn’t about you , Sergeant. It was about how people reacted to it. It was their quest. You’re just carrying the flag.”

Sebeck stopped. The truth of it hit him. It was the effect his quest had on others that was the purpose. He was just an icon. It made his burden suddenly easier to bear.

Just then the wood chipper’s deafening engine roared to life, and the birds lifted off in panic, fleeting shadows against the sun. Two soldiers walked up to Sebeck. One pointed first to Sebeck, then the wood chipper. They both nodded and slung their weapons. They grabbed Sebeck by the elbows and started carrying him to the bloodstained maw of the roaring machine. Sebeck felt primordial fear grip him as he struggled and dug his bare heels into the dirt. “No!”

They dragged him, twisting and shouting.

But then it suddenly became much easier, and he fell to the ground. Oddly, he was also sopping wet. He turned up toward the man carrying him on his right, but saw that the soldier was missing from the waist up. The man’s severed arm still tightly gripped Sebeck. He stared at it in disbelief. It was not the sort of thing a civilized mind readily computed.

Sebeck then realized no one was holding him to his left anymore either, and when he turned he saw his other executioner’s torso had emptied its contents across the dirt. The rest of the man lay farther on.

And now Sebeck noticed that the roar of the wood chipper was punctuated with crackling gunfire and the roar of more powerful engines. He turned to see several unmanned, blade-covered motorcycles wielding twin swords, slashing at the soldiers as they raced past. Already, one of the mercenaries lay on the ground, screaming and legless. Several of the soldiers were in prone positions, firing on the motorcycles to little effect, but then clutching their eyes as green laser light played across their faces. Blinded, they tried to grope their way back to the troop carrier, but got cut down.

One of the guards managed to make it through the open armored car door, but a motorcycle followed him up the ramp and chopped him into sections with a couple swift sword slashes.

Soon their captors lay in pieces on the ground, blood everywhere, and a score of automated motorcycles slammed down hydraulic kickstands and started preening themselves like praying mantises—spinning their sword blades to clean the blood off.

Sebeck looked to Price, who sat in stunned silence, spattered in blood, but otherwise apparently okay. The only sound was the piercing drone of the wood chipper engine. Sebeck glanced around but could see only fallen bodies and pieces of bodies. He crawled on his belly toward Price, who was trying to sit up.

Price shouted. “Are you hit?”

Sebeck shook his head. “No! This is someone else’s blood!”

Just then the pack of unmanned bikes parted to make way for a lone rider in a black helmet and riding suit. He drove directly up to Price and Sebeck and looked down at them. He dismounted his bike, and suddenly all the engines turned off. A gesture of his hand sent a bolt-straight arc of electricity into the wood chipper, killing its engine as well.

As the chipper wound down, the rider removed his helmet and riding gloves revealing an unnerving sight. It was a young man, early twenties, but his eyes had been replaced with black lenses with flat black rims. Wires ran from drill holes in his bruised temples to an enclosure at the base of his neck. All of his fingers appeared to have been replaced with titanium or silver prosthetics, topped by gleaming claws. He moved stiffly, as if in pain.

The rider knelt down in front of them, staring right into Sebeck’s face with his lidless, metallic eyes. An artificial voice, deep and menacing, spoke an inch or so in front of the man’s mouth—without his lips moving. It was apparently hypersonic sound. “Where is The Major?”

Sebeck shook his head. “I don’t know, but I just left him. They took us out here.”

The rider’s expression was unreadable with his metal eyes. He stood and stared at the horizon.

“Thanks for rescuing us. Who are you?”

Price answered. “He’s Loki Stormbringer, Sergeant.” Price leaned close and whispered. “You remember—Jon Ross mentioned him. . . .”

Sebeck did remember. The most powerful sorcerer on the darknet. And almost as ruthless as the Major himself. Sebeck couldn’t help but think they deserved each other. He twisted to reveal his tied hands. “Can you please untie us, Loki?”

Loki gazed at the horizon with his dead eyes. “You should leave this place. Everything here is about to die. . . .”

With that Loki walked to his bike, and started it. His two dozen razorbacks started up as well. Then an even larger swarm of razorbacks swept past—at least a hundred strong—and Loki merged into it. A flock of dozens of microjet aircraft also howled low overhead in close formation. The entire retinue thundered into the distance, back the way the truck had brought Sebeck and Price. Back toward the center of the ranch.