The Breaking

CHAPTER Five


The next two days passed in a blur. At least, Cole thought it was two days. Since he wasn’t let out of his cell once in that amount of time, he had to use the movements of the rest of the prison as his only gauge. Meals were served. Lights were shut off and turned back on again. Also, his psychotic cellmate only stopped pounding his face into pulp right before lunch and for a few hours after dinner.

Cole had taken to calling him Chop, simply because letters spelling the words PORK CHOP were tattooed onto his fingers just below the knuckles of each hand. And the only reason he got such good looks at those tattoos was because they were flying at him nonstop for what he guessed was two days. Chop never let up unless he needed to use the toilet, get something to drink, or eat some food off the trays that were slid into the cell by guards who were all too eager to move along. By the time day three rolled around, Cole wondered if he was simply being beaten to death as penance for what he was supposed to have done to those cops in Denver. Judging by the disgusted looks he was getting from the guards, he could very well have been getting off light.

“Step aside, a*shole,” Chop said. “I gotta take a piss.” He and Cole were both bloodied and battered from their near-constant brawling. Both men could handle themselves, but neither was about to concede. Even more important, Cole’s incision was healing thanks to his enhanced system and his willingness to let the rest of his body take a beating just to divert Chop’s fists from that spot. Even so, it was only a matter of time before Chop tore him wide open. Judging by the interest with which Waylon scribbled his notes, that might well have been what the man in the suit was hoping to see.

When Chop moved over to the toilet and tended to his business, Cole looked over at Lambert. So far the skinnier inmate had been content to remain on his bunk like a rodent seeking refuge in the narrowest crevice of a cave. The sound of a steady liquid stream hitting dented metal filled the cell, accompanied by a contented sigh from the man directing the flow. Cole rushed at Chop from behind and almost got an arm around the man’s thick neck before the inmate spun around to intercept him. His leaky penis was still hanging over the top of his sweats as Chop once again introduced his tattooed fist to Cole’s face.

“Took ya long enough to try that,” Chop mused before lunging forward to get a grip on Cole’s jumpsuit so he could toss him into the metal frame of the bunk bed.

Cole bounced off the bed and landed in a sideways stance. The plan had been to outlast the constant assault and defend himself until Chop was either called off or convinced that he’d met his match, and Paige’s training had been good enough to get him this far. Now, after days of spitting blood and sleeping with one eye open, he was starting to rethink that plan. The healing serum in his body was wearing thin, and the Nymar tendrils had faded into lines beneath his flesh that gave him occasional jolts of strength along with a constant ache running all the way down to his core.

If the spore was still inside him, Cole knew he could have thrown Chop through a wall or maybe even pulled the cell door from its hinges. With only the torn tendrils left behind, those were no longer options. He wasn’t Nymar. He was just sick and tired of being locked up and knocked around. The pain that cinched around his innards tightened, forcing a hardened scowl onto his face. When Chop punched him in the stomach, his fist thumped against a thick mess of scar tissue. Cole pulled away from the other man’s grip and delivered a quick blow to his ribs. His fist landed in the same spot he’d been hitting ever since the beatings first started, putting one of Paige’s lessons into action. If someone’s weakness couldn’t be found, make one.

Chop kept fighting, but Cole remained one step ahead. By the time he swept Chop’s legs out from under him to drop him straight to the floor, he could hear Lambert hollering joyously from the other cell.

“Put me through my paces?” Cole snarled as he straddled Chop’s chest and clamped a hand around his throat. “What’s that supposed to mean? Tell me!”

“You’re dead, you piece of shit,” Chop grunted as he struggled to pry Cole’s hand away from his neck. “If it ain’t me, it’ll be someone else that does it. You stop now and I’ll let you live long enough to suck my dick.”

After driving his knee into the tempting target still dangling from the front of Chop’s pants, Cole placed his hand flat on the prisoner’s face. As good as it was to be on the winning end for a change, it felt as if his organs were going to rupture like pieces of wet sausage being sliced by lengths of garrote wire.

“Get off him!” a guard shouted from outside the cell.

Lambert stood so his body was plastered against the bars and shouted, “Chop started it!”

“Both of you move to opposite sides of the cell!”

After finally managing to pry Cole’s hand away from his windpipe, Chop sank his teeth deeply into his wrist. The wet crunch was the last incentive Cole needed to do what he’d been trying to avoid for so long.

He’d done it once already, but that was back in Denver when he thought he might be under Nymar influence. Now, with the only Nymar in the vicinity having been turned into a pile of ashen skin flakes in a trash bag somewhere, Cole knew he was acting purely out of frustration, anger, and hunger.

“What the f*ck are you doin’?” Chop grunted as Cole dropped his face down to bite into his shoulder. Teeth shredded Chop’s flesh and burrowed down even farther in search of what lay beneath the filthy tattooed layers.

“He’s a biter!” one of the guards shouted. “Get this door open!”

The man who responded to that was the same one who’d ordered Lambert to step aside. Waylon’s profile was barely recognizable from the edge of Cole’s vision as he moved in behind the other guards and gazed into the cell over their shoulders. “Everybody move back,” he said. “Make sure there’s a video feed rolling on this and remove anyone not approved for G7 cases from the surveillance rooms. Now!”

Feet scrambled and bodies moved. That was all Cole could make out, since he wasn’t about to stop what he was doing. Chop struggled beneath him and pounded his fists against his ribs and shoulders. When he hit the side of Cole’s head, he only forced him to twist his face and rip off a sizable portion of skin. Chop screamed and grabbed hold of Cole’s hair, pulling him up and away from the coaster-sized hole within inches of his throat.

If he had fangs, the job would have been so much easier. The fact that he even thought that made Cole realize just how far he’d fallen. He was a Skinner. He had the scars and nightmares to prove it. Although the skills he’d been taught had served him well so far, it was the cinching pain inside that spurred him into drinking another human’s blood. What sickened him even more was the fact that allowing that blood to flow down his throat brought him more relief than he’d felt in recent memory. The tendrils wrapped around his innards relaxed. The pain subsided. The healing serum kicked in. He started to get dizzy with the joy of no longer feeling like all of his organs were being pinched between the coils of a spring. Even with the coppery taste of Chop’s blood coating the back of his throat, he couldn’t help but smile as the cell door was opened and the guards crawled inside. The wound on Chop’s neck glistened like a freshly cut piece of raw meat that had been plastered to his skin.

“Is he dead?” Waylon asked.

The guards grabbed Cole, shoved the sparking end of a stun gun into his side and cuffed him. “Could be. Want me to check?”

“No. Take him to Medical ASAP.”

Waylon stood just outside the cell as Cole was slammed up against the bars. He jotted on his clipboard and asked, “What made you do that?”

“Didn’t have a choice,” Cole wheezed. “He wouldn’t stop swinging at me when I asked him nicely to stop.”

“Hold him steady,” Waylon said to the other two guards. Once Cole was straightened up and both arms were secured behind his back, Waylon reached into a pocket to remove a bundle of cotton swabs wrapped in a plastic baggie. “I saw you drink his blood. What made you do that?”

When the swab was rubbed against his chin, Cole squirmed away but wasn’t quick enough to prevent the sample from being taken. Now that the pain had subsided, he felt like he could withstand whatever punishment was about to be heaped upon him. He stared defiantly at the guards and kept his mouth shut.

“You’re not a host to the vampire growth,” Waylon said. “Do those tendril fragments somehow give you an innate need to feed or was this just to make your discomfort subside? Do those tendrils help you in some way like they do for the Nymar? Your scars and blood samples mark you as a Skinner. Are you truly being turned or is this possibly a by-product of the Mud Flu?”

Rather than say anything that could possibly be of any help to anyone, Cole asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“Answer me first and things can go a lot smoother for you. Otherwise, you’ll be quarantined and I’ll just deduce the answers myself. If you fill in some of the blanks of my research, you’ll spare someone else the time and discomfort of being imprisoned.”

“Spare who?”

“Whoever is brought to us next,” Waylon replied. “Perhaps someone you know. Perhaps a stranger. Either way, you would have kept that person from going through the same ordeal you now face.” Squinting as if he was trying to get a closer look at whatever lay behind Cole’s eyes, Waylon added, “I can make it worth your while. You’re in a great deal of trouble with the law.”

“Isn’t that why I’m here? Aren’t you guys connected to the goddamn law?”

Once Chop was dragged from the cell and lifted to his feet, Cole was tossed back inside so his face skidded along the floor.

Waylon watched with the same amount of interest he might give to an ant farm. He handed a small digital recorder to the closest guard. “If he starts talking, record it with this.”

“What about him?” the guard asked as he nodded toward the cell across from Cole’s.

Fixing Lambert with a cold stare, Waylon replied, “He’s still under observation. Observe him. As for you,” he said to Cole, “you’re in our custody on a temporary basis. Whether you’re handed back to the authorities as a cop killer or allowed to slip through the cracks after you’re reported as having killed yourself while in custody is up to you.”

“That motherf*cker tore my f*cking throat out!” Chop roared.

Waylon, as well as the rest of the guards, locked everything back up to how it was supposed to be and left Cole with the cuffs around his wrists. The sound of the elevator doors opening mixed with the crackle of a stun gun. After that, Chop didn’t have anything else to say.

“Jesus,” Cole groaned once the hallway was clear. “This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.”

“The great James Morrison of the even greater Doors,” Lambert said. “Great music. Genius lyrics.”

“You listen to the Doors?”

“What? You think I’m just some token Mexican who only digs Santana?”

“Didn’t even know you were Mexican.”

“I’ve got true soul, man. All music flows through me.”

After Cole lowered himself onto his bunk and curled into an aching ball, he was serenaded by an off-key rendition of “L.A. Woman.” Without Chop in his cell to terrorize him, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the concert.