BzzzzzZZZZzzzZZZZzzzZZZZ
“Yup. He’s coming up for air.”
I feel like I should really explain what catching up with your brain feels like. Everything so far has happened so fast, it’s not even fair to assume you’re able to keep up. Every few hours, I’m waking up in a new place, and before an explanation presents itself, I shit my pants and fall asleep. It’s like Senior Week ’05, but I don’t even have time to sob gently in the corner.
It is not like waking up from an extended nap. My eyes don’t open, though sometimes my vision is blurred, or like when I came to from smashing my head on the rock, eerily skewed.
It’s more like in a cartoon, when somebody has to get away in a hurry, and they take off in a cloud of dust, but their eyes stay behind for a few extra seconds before catching up with them. You know what I mean? Except instead of my eyes, its my brain. And, unlike a cartoon, you suffer. I felt everything. It sucked. The Devil’s Blood had turned my brain into a cartoon character.
Only this time, partnering up with the rape of my natural born cognitive reflexes was the image of Leif, coming at me with a power drill revved to full blast.
He let go of the trigger and dropped it to his side. We stared at each other for a moment, and he seemed to recognize my assumption that he was planning to stick that thing in my head.
“Hey, Max,” I heard the light British tune of Isabel’s voice say with a dose of exhausted sympathy. I almost felt bad for her, even though I was the one tied to a chair with a couple of unfashionable belts.
“Why am I tied to this chair?” I asked suddenly, as my mind managed to fathom that this was not something friend to do each other, especially when one of them has a power drill.
I looked to my right and realized we were back in the bar. Not that I had great memories of the place, but it was nice to come to somewhere I actually recognized for once.
Isabel was leaning on the bar itself, her head resting gingerly on her folded arms. She looked tired. Tired of death. The bandage on her neck wasn’t as bloody anymore. I came to close to mentioning this, then decided that it’d be too much like pissing in the corner and then complimenting her on the smell.
“What is the Devil’s Blood?” I asked, wanting that answer faster than I wanted to know about the chair and drill thing.
“Well,” Leif started,
“Leif, just… just go hack your meat. Go.”
Isabel pointed at the back room. She didn’t have to tell him twice. Not because she was asserting authority over him, but because I think he just honestly enjoyed it. We could hear him slashing away at whatever was dead back there as if it was a neverending gruesome murder.
Isabel walked around the bar and grabbed a chair from one of the tables, dragging it toward me and sitting down.
“Okay,” she stated. ”Let’s get you some answers.”
“The Devil’s Blood is the codename for the serum that’s chewing its way through your bodily functions. It was meant to be the government’s first foray into mind control, but it… had it’s problems. It’s bowel-emptying, foam-gathering problems. We have it because they wanted to try it on us first.”
“And Clyde–”
“Clyde wants it back, and he wants us back, and he’s a total stars and stripes, U.S. government asshole.”
“He also has a robot voice now.”
“Yeah, sure. Listen. This is all so far beyond reality we don’t expect you to not come out of this wanting both of us dead, and the only solace I can give you is that we honestly don’t have any other choice. Pumping you full of Devil’s Blood turns you into a human Swiss Army knife, and instead of both of us having to suffer through the side effects, we can stay focused on the task at hand, which is to avoid capture. At all costs. Only problem is, we’re not chemists, so this stuff’s also completely unpredictable.”
She pointed at her neck bandage.
“I wanted to say that the blood is much less noticeable,” I finally said.
“Thanks, I got it cleaned out.”
“You’re welcome.”
Is this flirting? I thought. It seems too weird to be flirting.
So that was it. I was just a tool in their tool box, being hurled at the enemy so they could escape without harm. ”What happens to me?”
“We have no idea. But just know that no matter what it is, you did your part to bring down a dark government secret that has no business existing.”
I was unwittingly part of a faction of rebels. This would be cool if I had a say in it whatsoever and could maintain any confidence in my ability to control myself physically.
“So… I’m a hero,” I said.
“You’re… our hero,” Isabel replied. ”At least, you could be.”
She cleaned off a few smudges of blood on my forehead gently with her thumb. ”It’s just about how much more your broken body can break.”
Boy, I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
Leif appeared from the back room, power drill in hand. He revved it a few times.
“No, no,” Isabel said, waving him off. ”Emergency surgery’s off. We’ll just wait for him to go under again.”
She turned to me. ”That’s why you’re tied up, love. We’re just trying to keep everybody’s necks tooth-free.”
I nodded. ”That makes sense, but what the hell do we do next?”
“We kind of need you to be able to kill some people,” Leif explained.
“I don’t want to kill people,” I replied, suddenly realizing just how securely I was tied to this chair.
Leif and Isabel exchanged a look like the parents of a 30-year-old man who just asked where babies come from. Leif turned back to me, taking point on this inquiry, just like a good father should.
“We kind of don’t need you to want to.”
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