The strip of fluorescent ceiling light threw off throbbing coronas. One of them formed a queasy, technicolour halo around the head of the figure that stood over him. Luke blinked to try and steady his vision. What he saw wasn’t an improvement.
‘Taking a little stroll, Hadley E-1031?’
The boot nudged beneath his chin. Luke’s gaze followed the leg up to a barrel chest, a bull neck, a square head crowned with writhing light.
Luke’s very own angel of pain: Kessler.
‘Feeling peckish, were we?’ Kessler continued, looking around the shelves in the food store. ‘Are we not feeding you to your satisfaction here in Millmoor, E-1031? Disappointed you’re not eating roast swan with your betters at Kyneston?’
The tip of his baton thrust deep into the soft space beneath Luke’s ribs. Work in Zone D had been layering muscle onto Luke’s abdomen, but it was inadequate defence against Kessler’s jabs. The baton angled up, probing – the man’s grasp of anatomy was as good as Mum’s – and thrust again, and Luke’s body jackknifed as he curled onto his side and coughed up the lumpy remains of breakfast.
Luke moaned, and wiped sticky strings from his mouth with the cuff of his boilersuit. Even that small movement made his head yammer with hurt. He remembered Mum crouching over Dad on the driveway. What had she yelled out? Something about blunt force. He closed his eyes.
‘I hope you’ve not been stealing anything, E-1031,’ Kessler continued. ‘Because Millmoor doesn’t approve of stealing. Years on your days, that can be. I’ll check, shall I?’
Rough hands pawed at Luke’s limbs, patting down the overalls, tugging at pockets. Just when he thought it was over, the guard pincered Luke’s chin between finger and thumb, forcing his mouth open.
‘I like to do a thorough job,’ Kessler said, thrusting the index and middle fingers of his other hand into Luke’s mouth. Luke gagged, and as saliva welled in his mouth he tasted soap and sharp antiseptic. Were Kessler’s hands the only clean thing in Millmoor?
Kessler pulled out his fingers and wiped them down the front of Luke’s boilersuit.
‘Looks like you’ve been a good boy, E-1031. But it was careless of you to trip and fall while moving around the Machine Park. That can be dangerous in a place like this.’
‘Trip?’ Luke croaked, anger welling up as nausea ebbed. ‘You hit me, you bastard.’ He coughed, hoping for a bit of bile to take away the taste of Kessler in his mouth.
‘You tripped,’ repeated Kessler. ‘Clearly you need a little lesson on being more careful in future.’
The baton reared up, light flaring along its length.
It can kill, Luke remembered, in an instant. Blunt force trauma can kill, if the brain swells.
But the blow struck lower. Luke heard something – several things – crack, and gasped. He inhaled knives. Saw needles.
Blacked out.
When he came to, the antiseptic smell was still there. But on opening his eyes, Kessler was nowhere to be seen. Luke had been dumped in a chair in the corner of what looked like a medical waiting room.
The core of his body was one jagged mass of pain, as if all his organs had been taken out and replaced by broken glass. He leaned forward unsteadily and threw up again on the floor. There wasn’t much of it this time, and it was pinkish. Spotted with red. It was hard to breathe.
‘How did this happen?’
A voice nearby. Low. Angry.
A shape squatted down at Luke’s side and a palm reached up to his forehead. Luke cringed away, but there was nowhere to go.
The touch was cool, the hand gentle, and Luke let his head sag forward against it with a sob of relief.
‘I’m Doctor Jackson, and I want you to try and stand,’ the voice said. ‘Don’t think about it hurting, and maybe it won’t. Come with me.’
And unbelievably, Luke found that he could. Leaning on the medic’s white-coated arm, moving as if someone had just added a nought onto his age, he shuffled down the corridor. The doctor led him into a small room and directed him to lean against a gurney.
‘I’m going to take a look at you. I’ll be as careful as I can. May I?’
He gestured towards the buttons on Luke’s overalls, and Luke nodded. He studied the man, to distract himself from the agony that was surely coming. The medic had a short-sided haircut and a neat beard. His face was tanned, and laughter lines at the corner of his eyes stood out pale against his skin. ‘Jackson J-3646’ was embroidered in blue on the breast pocket of his coat. He looked almost too young to be a doctor.
He must have started his days straight after uni, Luke decided. Abi had told him that wasn’t unheard of among medical graduates with more ambition than scruples. You’d be thrown in at the deep end in the slavetowns and acquire loads of experience, with nobody minding too much about any mistakes.
But this guy knew what he was doing. His hands lightly pulled up Luke’s T-shirt, carefully lifted his hair for a look at his skull. With each press of fingers Luke anticipated a detonation of agony, but all that came was a dull throbbing.