Freak Camp, page 29
This time was different. Terrifyingly different. There were five or seven men—Tobias couldn’t keep track, they seemed to change, and they kept a blindfold on him half the time—and they pushed him around, each taking a turn doing whatever they could to him, anything that wouldn’t mark him up too bad, lose him a limb, or scar his face.
After the blindfold went on—as well as the muzzle that kept his mouth open so he couldn’t bite down, even by accident—they started pushing him to his knees. Voices he knew, voices he didn’t still asked the question, taunting him to show them he was a freak even though at that point he didn’t think they expected anything.
If he had any gift, any power, he wished it would come now. He wished he could kill them all. Or that it could be over faster. Sometimes he just wanted it to be over, all over, that they’d push him past the point of feeling anything ever again and there would be nothing left to do but throw him in the incinerator.
By the time they got to waterboarding, Tobias wasn’t sure how he was still breathing. They had tried not to hit him hard enough to break anything, but he was pretty sure he had a couple of cracked ribs. And it was hard, so hard when they shoved his head into a dirty bucket, or pressed a wet cloth to his face, to wait until there was air to fill his aching lungs.
Why don’t you just fucking breathe, whispered the little voice that wasn’t numb and far away. It would be so easy. They would never notice. You might die anyway.
That sparked the old reminders. Jake. He had to stay alive, he had to keep gasping air through his abraded throat, raw from screaming and gagging. Jake had promised, and even though Tobias didn’t think he was coming back, knew he didn’t deserve Jake to come back, he couldn’t give up. That would be like saying he didn’t believe in Jake.
He was weeping, choking, breaking down, the thin numb edges in his mind dissolving and sliding toward blessed unconsciousness and even more blessed death (I’m sorry, Jake. I tried, I really did, but I can’t stop them), when Crusher pulled his head close.
“You want it to stop?” His fingers dug into Tobias’s throat under his collar. “I can make it all end.”
Tobias looked at him. It was just a movement of his eyes—motor function seemed to have cut out a while ago, and they had been passing him back and forth like a rag doll—but Crusher saw. He leaned so close that Tobias could feel his hot breath on his ear.
“Let me fuck you,” he breathed. “Just say yes, freak. He can’t touch me if you say yes.”
Tobias had thought he was past fear. Fear had slid away hours ago into numbness, into nothing at all. Now there was a rush of pure terror, of the sudden need to fight, to scream. But he couldn’t move his mouth quite right (fuck, did they break his jaw?), and all he could think was No, no, no, that’s Jake’s, only Jake, no no no.
Somehow he managed the word, the only word he wanted. “No.”
Crusher snarled into his face, his hand tightening around Tobias’s throat before he threw him back into another guard’s arms.
“Dump him again,” he said. “He can’t even fucking answer a question right.”
And every time after that Tobias still answered no until he couldn’t hear the questions anymore.
When Tobias opened his eyes and the shadowy infirmary room came into focus, he had no idea who the gray-clothed monster sitting in the chair staring at him was. Then he remembered Kayla had taken on a new, uglier face recently.
“I heard them say you’re as dumb as a dog,” she said, monotone voice as flat as ever. “But it’s not true. You’re even dumber.”
Tobias blinked twice, wondering if this would make any sense if he hadn’t been kicked in the head so many times.
She continued to stare at him, face as expressionless as the blank white wall behind her. Maybe shapeshifters had to get used to showing emotion on new faces, or maybe this was just Kayla. “Even dogs know when to roll over and die. Every stupid animal does. Why don’t you, Tobias?”
He closed his eyes, but she kept talking.
“You stupid—lucky—stupid son of a bitch. If they gave me just one chance, I’d’ve jumped on it. I’d’ve gone through the incinerator by now, whoosh, where none of them could ever touch me again. Why don’t you, Tobias? Is it true, then, do you like what they do to you?”
At that, Tobias mustered what was left of his voice, shredded from screams. “No.” It hurt, coming out.
“Then why don’t you die, you stupid whore.” Kayla didn’t raise her voice, but it came out in a furious, contorted hiss. That might have been emotion, he thought distantly. “Give up. Just give up already. You’ve been here longer than any of us, it’s time for you to go.”
Tobias shook his head, eyes still closed.
Now Kayla’s voice rose in pitch, though she still kept it low enough that none of the guards outside would hear. “Why? Why the fuck not? What is wrong with you?” He offered no answer, and after a moment her voice dropped back down to the monotone. “It’s that hunter boy, isn’t it? You’re waiting for him. Because he said—”
Tobias didn’t answer. Didn’t move.
Kayla made a strange sound, almost like a cough. It might have been her attempt at a laugh. The chair legs squeaked back as she stood up. “You really are dumb as shit. He’s fucking you over like every other hunter, like every other real. He’s not coming for you, Tobias. He’d probably be laughing right now if he knew how much you believed him.”
Tobias rolled over, away from her, even though his ribs and head nearly made him scream. “Go away, Kayla.”
After a moment, he heard soft footsteps across the floor and the door swing shut.
He promised. Jake promised. And he’s always kept his promises.
Tobias had no belief that he would survive until Jake came for him. If he was honest with himself, he had more faith in his own death than for Jake taking him out of the facility in time.
He wouldn’t court death. He wouldn’t ask them for it. He wouldn’t be the one who broke Jake’s promise. But he could feel death over his shoulder, closer every week, more surely than Jake’s promise had ever been.
He didn’t even have the strength to hate himself for giving up.
When Tobias limped next into the Director’s office, head down, the Director was as he always was: a cool, cold-eyed presence. But there was a different set to his expression tonight, something else on his mind compressing his lips into a tight line.
The guard in the corner was new. New to Freak Camp, not just to the Director’s sessions. Tobias looked at him a little longer than he should have. It hurt to move, hurt to breathe, and that slowed his reaction times, slowed them dangerously. He knew he had to ignore the pain—they wouldn’t keep him in the infirmary much longer—but it was hard.
The Director saw the look. He saw everything. Tobias couldn’t find the energy to be more afraid. He had felt numb since the interrogation. Blank. He was torn between terror of this hollow feeling and hoping that it would stay until he died. It wouldn’t be that long now, not with how little he could care about his self-preservation.
“Mr. Sloan is on suspension, as is Mr. Gomez. Though I suspect for this stunt Mr. Sloan will be out for a good bit longer, and he will not be rejoining us for our little conversations.” The Director smiled, but it was not a happy smile. “He did not have proper authorization for the damage he inflicted.”
The Director was pissed, but not at Tobias. Tobias wondered if it would still hurt.
But instead of teaching Tobias how he had fucked up that week (and the week before, when he had been in the infirmary), the Director told him to get him a glass of water before returning to his paperwork.
That Wednesday, for the first Wednesday in a long time, Tobias had a quiet hour without any new pain, and afterward he went back to the infirmary where he didn’t have to be afraid of the other monsters in the dark.
He didn’t think it would last, but for now, he curled up, hid his eyes, and slept as deeply as he could.
Chapter Thirteen
July 2000
Another Wednesday found Tobias kneeling against the wall of the Director’s office. He was still numb, hollow, stiff from the night that almost killed him, but he could feel that wearing off, and that terrified him more than anything else. The Director could have him beaten—he had done that last week because Tobias had hesitated too long before responding to one of the senator’s commands during another visit—but nothing could hurt more than the return to feeling.
Still, some of his survival skills were returning, and he supposed he should be grateful, even if he wasn’t—though if the Director asked, he would say so and mean it. He didn’t need to look at more of the Director than his hands, and Tobias was no longer consciously aware of watching his hands. Each long finger was buried deep into his brain, locked into his spine where all the nerve impulses radiated out, and any twitch of his finger, any snap of his wrist could make Tobias act without conscious thought. Come here, pick it up, stop, sit, kneel, crawl, and Tobias would find himself moving.
Tobias would have felt relief at that if he felt anything at all. Responses so ingrained as to be instinct were responses that wouldn’t earn him a beating, responses that would keep him alive without requiring him to feel, think, or process.
Victor stood stiffly next to the door. True to the Director’s word, Crusher had never joined their sessions again, and other guards learned quickly what the Director liked, what he wanted, what his little nods and gestures meant. Today, the Director sat at his desk scrawling his elaborate signature over a pile of pale red forms. He used a dark fountain pen that gave his J’s a particular swooping look and bled through the sheets onto the plain white paper he kept beneath them.
Tobias recognized the color of the papers. He had been assigned sometimes to sort piles of ASC paperwork, and execution permission requests were always that shade. He had been grateful, at the time, not to come across his or Kayla’s numbers on the papers. Now he wondered dully who was going to die in the next few days and if they had been in Special Research for very long already, or if part of what the forms authorized was their induction there.
The Director let Tobias kneel for a while, the scratch of his pen the only sound in the office, and then he glanced up and made a tiny scooping, jerky motion with his left hand. Stand and come here.
Tobias stood and walked forward. He stopped when the Director’s hand told him to stop.
The small table that usually held the Director’s interrogation tools stood in the middle of the room; a black handgun rested on top of the pristine white sheet. Tobias didn’t look at it, didn’t let his hands stray.
The Director signed the last sheet with a flourish and dotted an I with enough force to punch a hole in the paper. Tobias flinched—he had scrubbed the Director’s desk once, trying to get those little black dots out of the hardwood—but otherwise gave no reaction.
“Good,” the Director said. “That’s done.” He turned the full force of his brown eyes on Tobias, and Tobias felt a throb of terror beneath the hollow and numbness. The Director’s eyes flickered to the gun and then back to Tobias’s face. “Pick it up.”
Eyes locked on the clawed feet of the Director’s desk, Tobias picked up the gun. His hands were shaking slightly. He willed them to stop.
“Take the safety off, put it to your head, and pull the trigger.”
It was an awkward angle, and Tobias couldn’t manage it as smoothly as he should have. The fumbling gave him time, too much fucking time, and thoughts tumbled like hail pounding on the aluminum roofs of the barracks, like broken bodies thrown out of a black van.
Was this really it, the moment of death, the moment of release? Should he angle the blast so that brain matter flew more toward the less expensive—and easier to clean—area around the conference table, or move it to be sure that Victor wouldn’t catch any of the gore? What would Kayla do when she learned? Would it hurt? Would he still be numb in hell? Oh God, would the Director really make it this easy? Would Jake know that he was dead? Would he care? Had he asked that Tobias be put down because he couldn’t come get him after all?
Did the Director wait until he signed my execution form to give the order? was Tobias’s last thought before he pulled the trigger.
The empty click of the chamber was loud in the room, and the hammer vibrated through his skull. He clenched his eyes shut—they had been open, fixed on the Director’s desk, locked onto the Director’s hands—and fought to keep any other reaction off his face, any sound coming from his mouth.
Of course the Director would never make it that easy. He would have done it in the yard or in his interrogation room, not in his office. Tobias had been a stupid freak even to guess, to wonder, to hope.
He should have known better from the start than to wish the gun was or wasn’t loaded. That was the lesson.
He forced his eyes open again, homing in on the Director’s hand. He kept the cold barrel of the gun pressed against his temple and hoped his expression gave away nothing, even though the Director knew it all.
“Clean it. Put it back. Get out,” the Director said.
Tobias quickly and silently used the plain white sheet to rub down the gun—get the filthy monster fingerprints off the shiny black—placed it back in the middle of the table, turned, and left. He didn’t change his pace as he walked out of Administration, across the yard, and into the showers. He made his movements there as methodical, impersonal, and obedient as they had been cleaning the gun.
In the library, Tobias hunched over the massive spell book, occasionally checking that the notes in his notebook were still legible, in spite of how his hand had been cramping the entire day. He took a moment to close his eyes and massage his right hand, ignoring how the healing flesh screamed at him. He was off computers for the week since he had failed to report a possible demon sighting. The Director didn’t want him back on the electronics until his hands healed enough to be decently fast on the keyboard.
“Why did you not report the weather changes?” the dry voice asked him once he had gotten the involuntary whimpering under control.
Tobias gasped against the thin cords that bound him to the chair, his hands palm up on the table. “There w-wasn’t enough data to conclusively prove any kind of s-supernatural activity. It was a micro-irregularity and had not been confirmed with nonweather data, or even confirmed as something other than a m-mechanical malfunction.”
“You don’t have the qualification to make that call,” the Director said. He nodded at the guard, a new one, who pushed the electric prod into Tobias’s shoulder again.
After he stopped shaking, the Director moved closer and laid a thin switch over his wrist. “89UI6703, you have no right, no ability, to accurately judge what is and is not important. You find a sign like that, you report it. I don’t care if it’s supported. I think you thought that you were doing what you had been told, but you didn’t. The next time you allow a sign like this to go unreported, I will assume you are protecting the enemy, and your punishments will reflect that fact. Do you understand?”
Tobias dragged in a ragged breath. “Yes, sir. It was an accident, sir. I will report everything, sir.”
“Good.” The Director handed the switch off to the guard. “I’m pleased that you understand your failings. Because this was simply about your stupidity, your punishment will be light.” He nodded to the guard. “Beat his hands like I told you. Make sure the damage isn’t permanent. And muzzle him first.”
Tobias wouldn’t be on a computer for another week, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t continue to research.
He still liked the smell of the library, the musty paper and bindings, and sometimes he could almost hear Becca’s voice in his ear. He hid it better now. He kept the same blank expression whether the Director said he was serving him dinner, or Victor was giving him a choice, or they sent him to the library. He thought that it worked. The beatings had become fewer since he stopped . . . wanting this room, the feel of the pages under his fingers, the silent reliability of the words. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t given it up completely, hadn’t truly let it go—like he had long ago stopped hoping that the Wednesdays would stop, or that his stomach would ever feel full—unless it was because this was the one place and time that he could pretend that Jake would still come back, that his life was just like it had been before the Director.
A dangerous illusion, but one that kept him going. Though he wasn’t certain anymore why he wanted to keep going.
The other reason he liked the library was that he was often alone. Not that that would keep him safe, but the camera in the corner wouldn’t catch him closing his eyes, rubbing his hands, or taking the time to think of nothing at all. As long as he got the work done, no one caught him not working.
When the door opened, he didn’t flinch.
“Freak, you’re going!” Lonny stood at the door and smacked his billy club against his thigh. “The Director says put everything away, you’re not coming back.”
Tobias’s jaw clenched. That could mean anything from He doesn’t need what you were researching to You’re not ever coming back to the library. Or worse.
But he didn’t let it show on his face. He closed his books and replaced them on the shelves, mentally filing away the page numbers and notes in case the Director asked. He closed his notebook and set it on the shelf with the rest of the research documents.
The first inkling Tobias got that his luck had run out was when Lonny took a heavy lead line from his belt and snapped one end onto his collar.
Tobias froze, too shocked and horrified to not let it show.
The guard grinned at him. “I told you, freak, you’re going,” and he jerked the line down hard, sending Tobias crashing to the floor.
He caught himself on his knees, but what was the point of keeping himself together when his luck was gone? Eleven years of surviving, eleven years of clawing onto nebulous hopes, and here was the ultimate outcome.
