Furnace 3 - Death Sentence (8 page)

BELONGING

I wasn’t aware of the blacksuits entering the room until the electrified wire had been looped around my neck. The charge wasn’t strong, like the tickle of a million insects scuttling down my spine, burrowing into my muscles, but I was on the floor before I even knew I was falling.

I couldn’t have fought back even if my life had been at stake. I just lay there, silent but for the hoarse whispers that rattled in my throat, watching the warden’s feet splash across the bloody rock and stop in front of me. He squatted, ducking his head down until it came into my line of sight.

‘Now that was impressive,’ he said, and I couldn’t see his grin so much as feel it. He gently pulled the dripping chains from my knuckles, unlocking the manacles and throwing them across the room. ‘Very impressive. Such bloodlust, such ferocity.’ He stood, and for a second I caught a glimpse of myself in the polished black leather of his shoe – my face too big, like a Halloween pumpkin carved with stitches, my eyes twin candles
whose silver light looked on the verge of sputtering out. Then the warden walked off and it was gone. ‘Get him up,’ he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Get him to his bed. He’s earned it.’

The loop of wire around my neck disappeared, strong hands beneath my armpits guiding me back to my feet. I barely remembered how to put one leg in front of the other, but the blacksuits weren’t going to let me fall.

‘That was good work,’ said the one to my left, his bass tones echoing round the chamber. ‘When we saw the water bubbling up from the hatch we didn’t think you were going to make it. That’s where most of them fail.’

‘But you punched through it like it was paper,’ said another. ‘And those rats never stood a chance.’

They chuckled, their laughter so deep I could feel it tremble across my skin like another electric charge. One kicked the limp corpse of a rat out of his way and I watched it slide through a pool of its own blood before folding itself around a rock. Bodies lay everywhere, their silver eyes now the colour of lead, claws and teeth still bared as though they hadn’t quite noticed they were dead. Wet stains bloomed across the walls and the floor like some strange subterranean fungus, looking almost black against the dark rock. The smell of decay already hung in the air, the metallic tang of blood mixed with the dying breaths of the rats, trapped forever in this tomb.

I couldn’t believe I was responsible for such carnage. It had started as self-defence, yes, but surely even the rats hadn’t deserved to be culled so brutally.

We reached a metal door almost completely concealed by a pillar of stone, the warden leading the way through it into a bright corridor beyond. I took one last look into the chamber, saw Ozzie still propped up on his stake, watching over his legions of twitching bodies like he was lord of the damned. Then the scene was lost behind the heavy door, my thoughts drowned out by the thunder of boots.

It was only then that the pain started to seep in. Inside the chamber the adrenaline and the nectar had kept me going, but now that the fight for my life was over my body seemed to just give up. It started as a cramp inside of me, as though every muscle was protesting about what I had put it through. In places that deep, burning agony became something sharper, and in my delirious state I pictured the wounds on my shoulder, in my back and across my stomach and chest hanging open like mouths, screaming.

I glanced down, watching a red rain fall from me as I was dragged along the corridor, the blood steaming as it hit the rock. I tried to draw attention to it, but the warden didn’t seem concerned.

‘You won’t die,’ he said, looking back at me without breaking his stride. ‘You can thank the nectar for that. Your body is, for want of a better word, superhuman. It would take something far more serious to terminate you now. Your wounds will heal in a couple of days, maybe even a few hours. And it will always be that way, just so long as you keep taking the nectar.’

He reached a junction, guarded by a blacksuit. The
giant grinned at me as he wrenched open a metal door and ushered us through.

‘Glad you made it,’ the guard said.

His words sparked the tiniest of memories, the ghost of something in my former life. I couldn’t quite picture it, but I knew it had something to do with playing a game, feeling like I was part of a team. I did my best to return his smile, and although my bruised face prevented my lips from parting I could feel the gleam in my eyes.

Thanks
, I tried to say, but only blood escaped my open lips.

The room ahead was darker than the corridor we’d just left, the substantial shadows sweeping from corner to corner as though trying to hide what lay ahead. But nothing could be concealed from my new eyes, and as they focused I made out a long, narrow dormitory lined with what must have been fifty or sixty beds. It could have been the infirmary except for the absence of screens around each patient. That and the fact that the hulking giants in these beds weren’t strapped down.

‘These are your quarters from now on,’ said the warden, his soft voice matching the quiet darkness of the room. ‘You will operate in shifts, but we’ll worry about that tomorrow. For now, you just need to rest up and let those wounds close.’

He nodded at the blacksuits who held me, and they eased me gently across the room before laying me down on an empty bed. I winced as the change of position caused the pain to flare up again, feeling the immaculate sheets turn warm and wet. Then somebody slid an IV
into my arm and the dusk of the room began to seep through my pores, collecting in my mind.

‘Sleep,’ said the warden, his voice the sound of a razor on a whetstone. ‘When you wake you’ll feel better than you ever have before.’ He turned and marched from the room, the blacksuits a dark cloud in his wake, but he stopped before reaching the door. ‘Because then you’ll truly be one of us.’

I don’t know how long I slept for. Devoid of dreams and nightmares the featureless abyss of time could have been crossed in one night or a hundred years. Even when the darkness parted and I found myself staring at the ceiling I wasn’t sure I had actually woken. My body felt completely numb, the absence of pain surely too miraculous to be real.

I lifted a hand, surprised to discover that I hadn’t been strapped down, pressing my swollen fingers against my chest, then my face. I could feel the touch, but that was all. There was no scream of ravaged flesh, no sting of stripped skin, no burning of strained muscles. It was as if my battle with the rats had never taken place.

Maybe it hadn’t. Even now the memory seemed vague and distant, like something I had watched in a film or dreamed many years ago. It didn’t seem possible that I had escaped a tunnel of ice-cold water by pounding my way through a metal hatch. It didn’t seem possible that I had taken on an entire nest of deformed, rabid creatures and won.

And surely it wasn’t possible that I had … had killed an innocent kid.

I clamped down on the thought before it could unfold, refusing to let the image of Ozzie’s face enter my head. I had done what I’d needed to do to survive, that’s all. Ozzie hadn’t been one of us, he’d been one of
them
, one of the weak. He had died so that the killer in me could live, so that I could be whole.

All blacksuits had to go through the same thing, I knew that now. I remembered Monty, way back in another life, when I was a different person. He’d been taken, his body ripped apart and put back together the same way mine had been. And he’d been brought back to the cells in general population, let loose on his cellmate Kevin. I’d never been able to figure out why, but it made sense now.

Because once you’d killed in cold blood there was no going back. It changed something inside you. It turned you from one of them into one of us, a blacksuit. That was the true test, I realised. Not the water, not the rats, but the taking of an innocent life.

It was an accident
, a part of me argued. But had it been? I’d known the rats were all dead. I’d known there was nothing more to fear. Something else had made me lash out – anger, yes, and hatred of what I had once been, what Ozzie still was. Somewhere in the darkest part of me I’d known exactly what I was doing.

I felt a sudden pang of guilt. Not over the death of Ozzie, but of Monty. He had shed his weaknesses and become a blacksuit, and I had killed him. If only I’d
known then what I knew now, known the truth about the warden and his prison, known what it could offer me, I never would have tried to escape.

I heard something stirring and looked across the room to see ten or so blacksuits rising from their beds. They moved as one, pulling back the sheets and getting to their feet, stretching their knotted muscles before donning suits and boots. In less than a minute they were dressed and filing from the room. One caught my eye as he passed and flashed me a silver wink.

‘You’re awake. Good,’ he said without stopping. ‘I’ll inform the warden.’

They vanished through the door, before returning seconds later. At least I thought that’s what had happened until I studied the men walking into the room and realised these blacksuits were a different bunch. Their suits were creased, their faces drawn, their hands dirty. None of them looked my way as they slouched to a set of beds further down the ward, pulled off their suits, collapsed onto the mattresses and hooked IV needles into their arms. With a shudder of exhaustion they all seemed to drift into sleep together.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. There were bandages across the areas where the worst injuries had been inflicted, but although each showed a halo of dried blood there was no other indication that I had been so much as scratched. Even the surgery wounds had lost their stitches, now nothing but faded scars beneath fresh skin.

The warden was right. I was superhuman. And it felt great.

My grin must have been visible from the far end of the room, because it’s the first thing the warden seemed to notice when he entered.

‘I told you you’d feel better after a good sleep,’ he said. I looked up, saw that he was carrying something over his shoulder.

‘How long was I out?’ I asked, my voice like treacle. I was relieved to find that I could form words again.

‘Only a night,’ he replied, ‘though it probably feels like a lifetime.’

I nodded as he reached the bed, careful not to look him in the eye. I had changed, become far stronger than I had ever been, but the warden was still the warden, and his eyes spoke of truths that I never wanted to discover. He stood before me, using his free hand to pull my eyelid back, studying something beneath.

‘You’ve recovered fully,’ he said. ‘No pain, no aches, am I right?’

I nodded again.

‘Then you’re ready for this. Stand up.’

I did as I was told, pushing myself off the bed. For an instant I thought the warden had shrunk, until I realised it was me who had grown taller – by at least half a metre. I had obviously been too exhausted to notice the previous night. The warden looked me up and down, then lifted the object from his shoulder and held it out like a gift.

My heart seemed to explode with joy, causing my
muscles to lock and my throat to tighten. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, what the warden was offering me.

‘This is yours,’ he said. ‘Wear it with pride, and know you were one of the first. Because when the world turns and the strong have their way, then you will be amongst us. Here, try it on. It will fit.’

And I knew it would. Because surely nothing in the world could fit me more perfectly than the white shirt and black suit draped across the warden’s arms. I choked on my thank you, but neither of us seemed to notice as I reached out and slotted an arm into my new uniform. The linen shirt was cool and soft, a new outer skin against my new inner one, and in my excitement I fumbled with the buttons. The warden cuffed my hands aside, straightening the jacket over my shoulders then doing up the shirt like a father dressing his child.

Seconds later I stood before him fully dressed while he knotted the tie around my neck. He patted it down against my shirt and took a step back, and I swear I could see my glowing pride reflected in his face as he looked me up and down once again.