But he wants to keep her talking, to get as much information as he can. He glances around at the windowless room. The subway tiles. The medical equipment. “Where are we?”
She is done with his questions. “Have you thought about what I asked you?” she says.
Archie has no idea what she’s talking about. “What?”
“What you want to send them.” This is delivered with thinly disguised irritation. “They’re worried about you, darling.” She runs her hand lightly along his arm to where his wrist is bound with a padded leather strap to the gurney. “You’re right-handed, yes?”
Archie has to think on his feet, while he is still lucid, before the pills kick in. “Why, Gretchen? You never sent anything from the other bodies.” Then it strikes him. Her victims. They were always killed within three days of their abductions. “It’s been four days,” he says. “They’re starting to think I’m dead. You want them to know I’m still alive.”
“I’ll let you choose. But we need to do it now.”
The terror is building in his body, but he knows he can’t agree to her terms. As soon as he does, he becomes a partner to it. “No.”
“I’ve removed dozens of spleens,” she mutters. “But only postmortem. Do you think you can remain still?”
He starts to fold in on himself. “Gretchen, don’t do this.”
“It’s moot, of course.” She picks up a syringe from the tray. “This is succinylcholine. It’s a paralyzing agent, used for surgery. You won’t be able to move at all. But you’ll remain conscious. You’ll feel everything.” She glances at him meaningfully. “I think that’s essential, don’t you? If you’re going to lose a part of your body, you should experience it happening. If you wake up and it’s gone, how do you know if you feel any different?”
He can’t stop it. He knows there is no reasoning with her. He can only protect the people he’s left behind. “Who are you going to send it to?” he asks her.
“I was thinking Debbie.”
Archie’s mind lurches, imagining Debbie’s face. “Send it to Henry,” he asks. “Please, Gretchen. Send it to Henry Sobol.”
Gretchen pauses with her preparations and smiles at him. “If I do, you’ll have to be good.”
“I’ll do what you want,” Archie says. “I’ll be good.”
“The problem with succinylcholine is that it will paralyze your diaphragm.” She holds up a plastic tube that leads to a machine behind her. “So first I’m going to have to intubate you.”
Before Archie can react, she inserts a curved steel blade into his mouth, depresses his tongue, and pushes the tube in behind it. The tube is large, filling his throat, and he gags violently and fights it. “Swallow,” she says as she presses her hand against his forehead, pinning his head hard against the gurney.
He can feel his fingers splay, every muscle tensed as he fights the tube. She leans in close, tenderly, her hand still on his forehead. “Swallow it,” she says again. “Fighting it will only make it worse.”
He closes his eyes and forces himself to overcome the gag reflex and swallow the tube as she slides it farther down his throat, deep into his body.
Then it is done. The air fills his lungs. It is calming, actually. It forces his breaths to equalize, his heart rate to slow. He opens his eyes and watches as she slides the hypo into his IV and adjusts the drip into his arm.
He feels suddenly, disturbingly calm. It is the resignation he had seen on the faces of death row inmates. He has no control, so there is no point in fighting any of it. The sensation bleeds out of his body until it is just deadweight. He tries to move his fingers, his head, his shoulders, but nothing responds. It’s a relief, really. He has fought so hard in his tiny career to order chaos, discourage violence, prevent crime. Now he can just let it happen.
She smiles at him, and he knows with that smile that he has been played. He has asked for and received a favor from his murderer. And more than that, he notes with dry detachment, he is grateful.