beginning to bruise, the skin fading from red to a sick, mottled purple.
My eyes are growing accustomed to the darkness beyond the pool of light. The room we’re in is small, the surfaces dull metal and clean, white ceramic. There are banks of equipment lined up along the wall to my right: water basins, blank tab screens, shelves stacked with bottles and medical instruments. There’s a small storage area leading off the main room, its shelves groaning with even more equipment.
The table I was lying on isn’t a table, but a hospital bed, minus the mattress. There are restraints hanging off it, wrist and ankle cuffs, soft fabric hanging open. Dark brown stains run over the edge of the table. Blood
My blood.
Movement, at the far side of the room. I finally spot the owner of the voice. He’s older than me, in his forties at least. He has thick black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His right hand grips a battered cane, the metal worn down in places and the rubber foot cracked and peeling. His scrubs are white, and, except for the dots of dried blood on the front, they’re impossibly clean. He wears dark pants underneath them; they hang loose on his left leg, as if it doesn’t fill them properly.
He limps over, the cane hitting the floor with a soft thud at every step. He crouches down in front of me, his bad leg folding under him. Before I can move, his hand darts out, grabbing my right knee in a pincer grip, his thumb digging into the stitches.
I snap my head back and scream. It rips around the room, turning it into a horrific echo chamber.
“Take your medicine,” he says.
He lets go of my leg. I scrabble at the bottle cap, hating myself for it. The tablets are blue, chalky and bitter in my mouth, accenting my raging thirst.
The man glances at my bare leg with a grimace. Before I can do anything, he produces a pair of surgical scissors, and calmly snips the stiff ends of the stitches off. The cool metal of the blade just touches my skin.
“There,” he says. “Perfect.”
He lifts his other hand. He’s holding a thin, black, rectangular box, with a single raised button in the centre. No – not holding. It’s taped to his hand. What …
“At the back of the knee,” he says, tracing the stitches with the tip of his finger, “is a gap in the muscles called the popliteal fossa .”
“I don’t—”
“An object of up to half an inch in diameter can be inserted in the popliteal fossa , without interfering with the normal movement of the leg.”
His eyes find mine. “There is a device in each of your popliteal fossae . Each device carries a small but extremely powerful explosive charge. If the devices detonate, there will be significant damage to surrounding tissue: bone, muscle, blood vessels, nerves. Assuming you survived the resultant blood loss, you would almost certainly lose both your legs below the knee.”
I can’t move. I can’t look away from the box taped to his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “The trigger mechanism takes quite an effort to push. I won’t hit it by accident. But if you try and attack me, or do anything other than exactly what I tell you, I will push it. And when I do, it’ll make that little squeeze of mine feel like a flu shot.”
He stands, then limps over to one of the machines in the corner. “And the operation went perfectly. As I said, the devices will not inhibit your normal running motion in the slightest. There’ll be some pain, but it might even be manageable – if you keep taking your medicine.”
The sob comes out before I can stop it. He’s lying. He has to be. I’m staring at my knees, as if I can make the stitches melt away.
“And just in case you’re thinking about running to the hospital to have another doctor remove the devices, don’t bother,” he says. “I’m the only one who could do it without setting them off.”
My lips are forming words, and I have to will myself to turn them into sounds, pushing them past my shredded
My eyes are growing accustomed to the darkness beyond the pool of light. The room we’re in is small, the surfaces dull metal and clean, white ceramic. There are banks of equipment lined up along the wall to my right: water basins, blank tab screens, shelves stacked with bottles and medical instruments. There’s a small storage area leading off the main room, its shelves groaning with even more equipment.
The table I was lying on isn’t a table, but a hospital bed, minus the mattress. There are restraints hanging off it, wrist and ankle cuffs, soft fabric hanging open. Dark brown stains run over the edge of the table. Blood
My blood.
Movement, at the far side of the room. I finally spot the owner of the voice. He’s older than me, in his forties at least. He has thick black hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His right hand grips a battered cane, the metal worn down in places and the rubber foot cracked and peeling. His scrubs are white, and, except for the dots of dried blood on the front, they’re impossibly clean. He wears dark pants underneath them; they hang loose on his left leg, as if it doesn’t fill them properly.
He limps over, the cane hitting the floor with a soft thud at every step. He crouches down in front of me, his bad leg folding under him. Before I can move, his hand darts out, grabbing my right knee in a pincer grip, his thumb digging into the stitches.
I snap my head back and scream. It rips around the room, turning it into a horrific echo chamber.
“Take your medicine,” he says.
He lets go of my leg. I scrabble at the bottle cap, hating myself for it. The tablets are blue, chalky and bitter in my mouth, accenting my raging thirst.
The man glances at my bare leg with a grimace. Before I can do anything, he produces a pair of surgical scissors, and calmly snips the stiff ends of the stitches off. The cool metal of the blade just touches my skin.
“There,” he says. “Perfect.”
He lifts his other hand. He’s holding a thin, black, rectangular box, with a single raised button in the centre. No – not holding. It’s taped to his hand. What …
“At the back of the knee,” he says, tracing the stitches with the tip of his finger, “is a gap in the muscles called the popliteal fossa .”
“I don’t—”
“An object of up to half an inch in diameter can be inserted in the popliteal fossa , without interfering with the normal movement of the leg.”
His eyes find mine. “There is a device in each of your popliteal fossae . Each device carries a small but extremely powerful explosive charge. If the devices detonate, there will be significant damage to surrounding tissue: bone, muscle, blood vessels, nerves. Assuming you survived the resultant blood loss, you would almost certainly lose both your legs below the knee.”
I can’t move. I can’t look away from the box taped to his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “The trigger mechanism takes quite an effort to push. I won’t hit it by accident. But if you try and attack me, or do anything other than exactly what I tell you, I will push it. And when I do, it’ll make that little squeeze of mine feel like a flu shot.”
He stands, then limps over to one of the machines in the corner. “And the operation went perfectly. As I said, the devices will not inhibit your normal running motion in the slightest. There’ll be some pain, but it might even be manageable – if you keep taking your medicine.”
The sob comes out before I can stop it. He’s lying. He has to be. I’m staring at my knees, as if I can make the stitches melt away.
“And just in case you’re thinking about running to the hospital to have another doctor remove the devices, don’t bother,” he says. “I’m the only one who could do it without setting them off.”
My lips are forming words, and I have to will myself to turn them into sounds, pushing them past my shredded
Similar Books
