Brain (8 page)

Ice

I awoke in a cage, an iron band locked around my ankle, attached to a heavy chain that led outside the cage, locked to a wall.

The man outside the cage scared the daylights out of me. He was big — not huge, but large and
solid
, all muscle and testosterone and you could just
tell
he was pissed at the world. He had a scruffy beard, his jeans were so worn and faded they looked to be a permanent part of him, and a tight, black t-shirt molded to bulging muscles that cut into his body as if carved by a sculptor. His black leather vest proclaimed him a member of the RTMC, and his eyes looked like he’d just as soon cut me with the knife on his belt than talk to me.

I sat up on the cold, hard concrete, looked around, and leaned forward to puke waffles and eggs all over the floor. Some of it splashed back on me, and I realized I was naked.

My cage was floor to ceiling, six feet wide and about five feet deep. More of a cell than a cage, really.

My jailor sounded pissed as he asked, “You done? Or is there more?”

“There’s more. Can I get a wet washcloth? And maybe some Coke or something, to settle my stomach?”

“Orders are you can’t have anything to keep in the cell. I can let you have some Coke, but you’ll need to drink it while I hold it.”

I nodded, and didn’t argue as he got a bottle of soda from a mini-fridge, and then held it inside the bars and I drank from the straw. The Coke helped, and I told him, “Okay. I think I’m done throwing up, but I’d still appreciate being able to clean myself up a little. I can stay near the edge with the washcloth.”

He walked to a wall, lifted a hose out of a bucket, and said, “I’ll clean you up. Stand so I can get your front, then turn.”

Humiliated, I stood and let him hose me down like an animal, and turned because I wasn’t sure some hadn’t splashed onto the back of my thigh. When he was done washing me off, he pointed the hose to the floor and aimed the mess outside of my cell to a floor drain. It took ten minutes for him to clean both me and the floor, and I desperately wanted a towel so I could dry off, but didn’t ask for one. I sat in the corner and pulled myself into a ball to keep warm.

“Where’s Duke?”

He shook his head. “Brain has GPS on all club member vehicles, so he can find us if we get into trouble. I just bought a new car, so Brain hasn’t had a chance to outfit it yet. I met Duke outside of the next town over, brought you here without him. It’s just you and me until Duke talks Brain down, convinces him he’s too close to you.”

“And you don’t trust any woman,
ever
, so it’s safe I won’t use my wily ways to bring you to the dark side, too?”

He leaned back, grinned, but it wasn’t a nice grin, and I had to force the terror inside me down again.

“Something like that. Duke tells me you’re as smart as Brain, and if I let you have anything in the cell, you’re likely to figure out how to use it to escape. He wanted me to be clear you aren’t naked because I’m perving on you, said to tell you no one will hurt you as long as you behave. I turned the heat up when we got here, but it’ll take a bit to bring the temp up.” He shook his head. “He said to make sure I don’t let you escape, but not treat you as the enemy, either. He also said you’re supposed to be coming up with your suggestion of how to kick the Disciples’ ass while destroying every copy they might have of the data you gave them.”

“I’ll need something to either write or type it out on. I can’t think it through in my head.”

“Yeah, he said I can type it as you think out loud. I have a big screen TV upstairs I can bring down, prop against the wall, and hook up to my laptop, so you can see it.”

I’d get farther with this group by showing them they could trust me than I would by fighting them. I nodded, and he went upstairs.

Surprisingly, he brought a towel down, and handed it through the bars long enough for me to dry myself and a section of the floor to sit on. I gave it back to him when I was finished, though I was tempted to move it to the middle of the cell and sit on it.

I outlined the Disciples strengths and weaknesses, had him put them in two columns, side by side, and sat and analyzed them a while. Finally, I said, “Don’t suppose you’d be up for a game of chess or something? I need to get out of my head a while.”

He shook his head. “I unplugged the router when I got here, so there’s no wi-fi, and Duke gave me a burner phone and took my regular one. We’re internetless, and I don’t have chess on my laptop.”

I grinned. “All that, for a little girl?”

“I’m thinking what I’d do to keep Brain in that cage, if he was here. He’s the smartest person I know, and Duke says you bested him for a week before he caught you.”

“Duke must trust you a lot. You not only have to keep me in here, you have to keep Brain from finding us. That’s a pretty tall order.”

“You don’t look like a Grace.”

Okay, so flattery wouldn’t work on him. It’d been worth a try. I shrugged. “Not a lot of choice in my name.”

“I’m one of the few in the club who knows you’ll be getting a new identity. You don’t look like Grace.”

“Not even with girly clothes and longer hair? A chin implant, the bridge of my nose shaved down, and the tip perkier?”

“Too much wisdom in your eyes to pull off vapid, senseless female. Don’t know what you’ve been through, what you’ve been forced to do, and don’t want to know… but Grace doesn’t fit.”

“What else did Duke tell you about me?”

He shrugged. “You hurt us enough to be our enemy, but you seem to be trying to make it right, now. You didn’t know enough about us before, thought we were trash, and that’s on you for not finding out enough about who you were fucking over, and he assures me it’ll be dealt with, but says the end game is to have you on our side, not as our enemy.”

“Do you know what my name will be?”

“Christina Grace, can’t tell you your last name, yet.”

“Right, so what other names can I get out of that? I prefer Destiny, but I’m thinking if I make a clean break, I should stop using the name. Maybe Harmony, or Hope?”

He looked at me a few seconds and said, “Christina… Tina… Trina. You could legitimately use Trina as a nickname, maybe go as Trinity, if you’re going for something religious, though I hadn’t pegged you for a bible thumper.”

I shook my head. “Not a bible thumper, just… I’ve been so close to death, more than once, and it’s changed the way I see the world. The things most of society thinks of as
needs
, I realize are shallow
wants
. I was raised to care about nails and hair, fashion and status, but none of it matters.” I spread my arms. “I’m naked, you aren’t. I’m your prisoner, and yet we’re having a normal conversation. I don’t even know your damned name, and you know more about me than anyone’s known in
years
. Life is fucked. I want a name that reminds me there’s more to life than society wants us to believe.”

“You can call me Gonzo, and Trinity fits. Not because of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but because of the chick in the Matrix. Your short hair, thin build, the way you handle yourself… reminds me of her.”

“If Duke hadn’t told you not to hurt me, would you?”

He nodded. “You got my friend hurt, but I’m not president because there’s some decisions I shouldn’t make. Duke helps me stay sane, and out of jail.”

Well, alrighty then. Coming from someone the club had nicknamed Gonzo, I made a mental note not to try manipulation through irritation with this one. I nodded towards the now-dark big screen television propped against the wall. “Wake the laptop and let me see our list again. Ready to type some more?”

I brainstormed for what seemed hours, and when I finished, I straightened my legs and stretched my arms. I had no idea what time it was, and with no windows, didn’t even know if it was day or night. He’d let me have some more Coke, again with a straw while he held the bottle, and he’d given me some crackers and cheese, but I needed real food, and a toilet would be nice, too.

“Tell me we have more than crackers and cheese to eat?”

He nodded. “I was instructed to buy frozen pizzas and stuff to make sandwiches, as I’d need to feed you with no dishes or silverware. I have chicken I can cook in about five minutes, put it on bread and bring it down, or I can put a pizza in the oven and come down while it cooks, go back up to get it out. I won’t tell you the security precautions, only warn you not to try to get out while I’m gone.”

“I don’t care which. Whatever you want is fine. If you do sandwiches, I want mayo and mustard, heavy on the mayo. If there’s lettuce and tomato, that’d be great. Pizza’s fine, though, if that’s your preference.”

“I’ll do sandwiches. If you want to get as close to the drain as you can to relieve yourself while I’m gone, so you don’t have to do it while I’m here…” he shrugged and added, “I can hose the floor off when I get back, rinse you off again if needed. I’ll bring some hand sanitizer for you, too.”

I hadn’t taken a crap in days, as I hadn’t wanted to do it in front of Brain. At least then, it would’ve been in a flushable toilet, and I’d have had toilet paper.

I went to the other end of the cell as soon as he left, squatted, and did my business. It stank to high heaven, and I gagged as I went to the other end of the cell, hating Duke, Bash, Gonzo, and all of the RTMC except Brain. On second thought, if Brain hadn’t gotten
attached
to me, they wouldn’t have put me in this hell-hole with Gonzo as my jailor, so I added Brain to the list of people I hated.

I sat in the floor, pulled my knees to my chest, curled into as tight of a ball as I could, and tried not to cry. I let my anger seep into every cell of my body, as it was the only way to keep from feeling sorry for myself and turning into a ball of emotions, and I would
not
cry in front of Gonzo. I wasn’t going to lose it, either. I kept reminding myself there was no threat of torture, so I needed to just chill and deal with it until I had a chance to escape. If I lost it, I might miss my chance.

Gonzo came down with the food, set it to the side, and hosed the other end of my cell down without comment. When he finished, he brought me the hand sanitizer, squirted it on my hands as I looked at the floor, and then brought my food. I accepted it without comment, and he didn’t try to talk.

He brought himself three sandwiches, and finished them before I finished the one he’d brought me — which had lettuce and tomatoes, as well as mozzarella cheese, was on sourdough bread from a bakery, not a factory, and was quite possibly one of the best sandwiches I’d ever eaten.

He curled up on a cot and went to sleep when he finished his sandwich, leaving me to sit and stew — and to plot ways of escape.

My ankle shackle was held closed by a combination Master lock, and it was likely I could figure the combination out in under a half hour, if I could manage to fiddle with it without waking Gonzo. If only I had my tools, I’d be out of here in ten seconds with a shim.

I looked at the nail on my left ring finger, which had grown quite long. I kept my nails cut short for a couple of reasons — they were removed by the Russians, and anything bumping or moving them sometimes set me off, also, keeping them short let me quickly go into disguise as a man. However, I’d let my left ring finger grow long, partly to convince myself I could, without losing it every time something bumped it, but also because, as a man, it worked to insinuate I was part of the drug culture. I used my ring finger instead of my pinkie because the nail is so damned strong, and I’ve been able to use it as a screwdriver a few times. Having your nails pulled out with plyers can make some of them grow back thicker and stronger, apparently.

Now, I wasn’t sure if it was long enough to use as a shim, but I bit it off as close to the quick as I could, wrapped it around the left shaft, and jammed it into the body of the lock. It popped open, and I quietly removed the shackle from my ankle and looked at the bars. I’d already realized two were just a little farther apart than the others. Whoever had built the cell had done so with men in mind, not size-three women.

I shimmied between the bars, moved to the steps as quietly as possible, and walked up them with my feet close to the sides, skipping the fifth step, which had squeaked as Gonzo went up.

I was giving up the opportunity for a fresh start, but no way was I going to sit naked in the cell and poop in the floor another day.

Besides, now that I knew there was an auction for the identities of people with fatal illnesses, it shouldn’t take me too much time to make the connections necessary to bid on someone myself.

Once I got beyond the upstairs door, I flew through the house, out the front door, down the steps, and breathed a sigh of relief when the car was unlocked.

It seemed a shame to rip into the steering column of a sixty-something Ford Mustang to hotwire it, but I didn’t have much choice. I’d try to make sure it made it back into Gonzo’s possession, but I needed to borrow it, for now.

I had no idea where I was, but I drove on mostly back roads for an hour, sitting as low as I could in the seat so people didn’t see my tits. They’re small enough I can flatten them with an elastic bandage when I’m a boy, but shirtless, I was obviously a girl.

With no clock or radio in the car, I still had no idea of the time, only that it was a dark, cloudy night, and I was in the middle of fucking
nowhere
, in a stolen car, naked.

When a sign pointed to a city, I turned the other way. Eventually, I came upon a farm that looked like it would serve my purposes, and I drove down the road until I found a pull-off, parked the Mustang, and hiked back to the farm.

The barn was a good two hundred yards from the house, and I made it inside with no dogs barking, thank goodness.

I found a fleece jacket hanging on a hook in the barn, and grabbed it and went back outside. I debated between stealing their truck or making my way back to the Mustang, and hiked back to the Mustang. I doubted Gonzo had reported it stolen, and with the jacket, I could ride into town.