Blackjack Wayward

Part Two

“Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light”





Chapter Nine

I hit him.

My muscles complained, like straining a rubber band too far, tendons close to tearing, but they complied just enough to raise my gauntleted right hand into his face. There was a metallic thud and I felt the impact as he recoiled, blurring away into the murky depths of my vision. Something came closer and struck me, another blur I couldn’t recognize. I knew it wasn’t Zundergrub because the doctor’s voice was muffled and distant; I might not have understood the specific words, but I could guess who he was cursing about. My dulled senses felt another blow, my body reflexively contorting against the force, but it barely registered as pain.

“Hey,” someone said, a loud, familiar voice. “That’s my boy. Just take it easy.”

Looking around, the source of that voice wasn’t easy to discern among the muddled shapes. Only one shape had any definition, the unmistakable bald head, the same facial hair and burning dark eyes, the long nose, now stained with crimson, the dirty lab coat. Somehow Zundergrub was clearer to me than the rest, though I didn’t know if that was his doing, or my seething hatred filling in the gaps subconsciously.

Getting up was impossible, a herculean task that sent my head spinning, as if I were sitting in one of those test pilot centrifuges at fifteen Gs, my eyes rolled in their sockets, spinning the world on its axis. I collapsed onto the gooey bed. What that was about, I didn’t even want to guess. Were we in some dream? Was that the goddess’ power? A woman rose over me, coming close enough that I could smell her aroma, lilac mixed with sweat and leather, but her face was a blurry mess, her hair like a flowered field waving in my face.

“He’s going to choke,” she said, close enough that I could understand her words clearly. Her companions were out range and their words were garbled mush. My ears wouldn’t cooperate; the canals felt stuffed full, which probably contributed to my shaky balance.

I thought about hitting her, but something pinned me; another figure behind her held my arms down.

“Sonofabitch, he’s strong,” the man joked, but he held me without much difficulty as the woman reached for my face, pulling something out of my nose, a tube that seemed to end at the back of my stomach. I felt it dragging through my insides, coming up my esophagus, sinuses, and finally out of my left nostril.

“Oh, my god, the mucus,” the woman said, and I felt someone wipe a damp rag across my face.

I tried speaking, but my mouth was obstructed, made worse a moment later when she stuck her fingers down my throat. I looked at her face, which was like an ambulating Van Gogh, wild and undefined, strained and full of colors, hoping to find amicability. Straining my eyes did little to define her.

“F*cking endotracheal tube,” she complained, and my clouded mind raced to find the definition of the word. “Endotracheal” could only mean I was intubated, a procedure used for people in a long-term condition where their lungs needed assistance. They basically wormed a plastic tube through your mouth and down your windpipe, just above where the lungs met the rest of your body, and pumped air through it. Suddenly, I realized I was short of air, and I flinched, trying to open up my airway.

“Hold him,” the woman said, and more figures came over, dwarfing out the light. “Listen,” she said, talking now directly to me, close enough that I could make out her features. She was pretty enough, but then her face shifted and it was Aryani looking at me with all her imperious beauty. “Stop moving. You’re making it impossible to take this thing out.”

She recoiled, and only then did I realize I was fighting off the blurred figures holding me back.

“Holy shit,” one said, and I looked back, seeing Elgar getting a better hold on my arm. He smiled at me, and I almost smiled back, thinking of how he must have hated touching a dirty Keshek like me. My treacherous vision flashed and the world became dim again. The strong arms holding me down were attached to a man, a villain. Killswitch? Boomhammer? I couldn’t remember where I knew him from, but something in the pit of my stomach blanched at his touch.

“You’ll choke to death, you stupid f*ck,” raged the woman.

“If he dies, you all die!” said Zundergrub from the distance.

Was he coming to save me? To ask for forgiveness for the horrors he had unleashed? My mind flashed to his the look on face back on Hashima, moments before gutting Apogee with Shivvers’ dagger, the glee he found in each cut. The absolute evil that possessed him allowed no forgiveness. No, if he was here, if this was real, then I was in danger.

“Come on, man,” the woman said, struggling with something stuck to my mouth, something obstructing my throat, making me gag and want to vomit. It was hard to focus. My mind kept trying to stuff images of the goddess’ chamber into the landscape. The figures around me kept losing definition, reforming into Drovani, Zann, even Gav, before shifting again, surrounding me with agitated lumps of clay moving in and out of my visual plane.

Not Zundergrub, though. Despite being at the edge of my working vision, partially obscured by the small throng of ever-changing figures surrounding me, his outline was static against the room’s sterile light. I saw him wipe the blood from his nose as he stood, and dread filtered through me like cold fire. In that moment, I realized that whatever was going on here, if I didn’t calm down, things were going to get uglier. I forced myself to calm down, though my lungs ached for air, for a single desperate breath. Once I settled down, the woman pulled the tube out of my mouth, taking care to guide it past my vocal chords. As the tube came free, I was overcome by a coughing fit, gagging on saliva, mucus, and vomit, feeling the horrible mixture race up my sinuses and out my nose. My body shook and the other figures released me, leaving me free to quiver on the invisible bed.

My throat was raw, coated with gag-inducing balls of hardened mucus that I couldn’t fully clear by coughing and or blowing out my nose. I spit them out, feeling their congealed consistency, salty and bulbous as they rolled over my tongue. Finally, I couldn’t hold it further and vomited, but nothing came out, just a tiny bit of bile that burned my throat and mouth.

“Help him out,” Zundergrub commanded, and one of the blurry figures grabbed my shoulders and sat me up on the bed. Their forms shifted as they approached, but I concentrated on keeping them in one fixed state. One grabbed at my legs, rolling them over a thick plastic lip at the edge of the invisible bed, a translucent protector to keep me from falling. Between the two of them, they lifted me so first my buttocks rested on the lip, then my feet touched the ground. But when I touched the floor, I felt nothing. I couldn’t even move my legs.

“He’s slip–” one of the two figures said as his grip on my goo-covered skin failed. The second man couldn’t hold me and I collapsed to the hard floor. Then again, I couldn’t feel the pain. My hands shot forward to stop my descent, but I crashed hard, helpless as a baby.

“Look at him,” Zundergrub spat, then giggled. “How far we have fallen.”

“Sorry, doctor,” someone said behind me. “I can’t hold onto him covered in that shit.”

Another figure laughed, moving behind me.

“Check it out,” it said. “He’s got some shit stuck up his ass.”

“That’s a rectal tube,” said a voice, the woman who had taken out the endotracheal tube, I thought.

“Clean him up,” Zundergrub said.

Someone pulled at me, tugging at the tube, which slid out easily if uncomfortably enough. The other guy grabbed another tube, this one dangling from the end of my pecker. The pain was tremendous, and I lost my grip on the situation as my mind grasped at where they could’ve put me that required artificial means of breathing, pissing, and shitting. The guy yanked the catheter, but it caught on along my urethra and stuck causing me to recoil in pain.

“Stop that,” the woman said.

“No,” Zundergrub said, overruling her. “Rip it from him,” he said, and his minion pulled at catheter, tearing it out of my body. The catheter had something at the tip that was larger than the tube, something that raced down my urethra, ripping at the internal walls. I screamed, knowing finally what passing a kidney stone must feel like at high velocity. The thing was out in an instant but the agonizing torment lingered with spasmic waves of pain causing me to convulse and free my bowels.

I howled in pain, but making any sound made my throat clench, and I dry heaved as my stomach convulsed. I gathered up my feet, clutching them as best I could as a powerful jet of cold water hit my body. I felt the full length of my skin tense up, as if unused to the chill. Every pore sparked a complaint at the cold, unyielding water, rolling across my flesh and washing away the gelatinous gunk that covered me.

“Hey,” the loud guy yelled. “Do that shit again, and I’m going to have a serious disagreement with you.”

“Oh, f*ck you,” someone replied, but I couldn’t even tell from where.

“I’m not kidding.” Loud guy again. “This guy is my friend. This is f*cking Crashdown. Hell, I named him. I thought of the name, okay? You hurt this guy again I’m going to peel your f*cking skin off.”

That could only mean one person, muddling my tenuous grasp between reality and madness even further.

“Razor?” I said, but the word was more like a hoary gasp than a functional form of communication.

“See? It’s my boy.”

The water continued, spraying over my body and face. I looked over at Zundergrub, but he was just watching me silently.

“Where am I?” I meant to say, but I couldn’t be sure my mouth was cooperating. It felt like trying to talk to someone while at a concert, or with the television too loud, except in reverse. My muffled ears couldn’t report on whether my attempts to talk were working or not. My internal sounds were more akin to a groan.

“That’s enough,” Zundergrub said, and the cold water stopped. I wiped my face, and the figure I had identified as Razor came over, helping me into a sitting position. My legs felt like deflated rubber, and I leaned hard on him.

“Can’t see shit?” he said.

I shook my head.

“I told you this place sucked,” he said.

We were just a few feet apart, but his face was still undefined, the details hard to fill.

“What place?” I said, blinking water from my eyes.

“Utopia, kid. Come’ere, let me help you up. Hey, can we get those things off his hands?”

Zundergrub stepped forward as Razor tried getting me to my feet in vain. “They will stay on. Leave him on the floor,” he said, walking toward us.

“Why don’t you go outside?” the doctor suggested to Razor.

“Outside? Why?” Razor said, from comforting to manic in a heartbeat.

“Malleus, Spectra, escort him down the hall.”

Two figures moved closer, and Razor slipped away, in an instant beyond the range of my vision.

“Zundergrub,” I said, but it only sounded like a croak. “If you’ve hurt her–”

“You will what?” he taunted. “You can’t even stand.”

He knelt next to me, grabbing my hair and pulling it back. “You should see yourself,” he said, laughing. Then he turned to one of his cronies. “Get the power dampeners ready, I want to leave this place at once.” The doctor released me and stepped back as someone came beside me, taking off the manacles. It was the woman who had taken the tube.

“What are you doing?” Zundergrub asked once the first one had come off, freeing my fingers.

“The power dampeners go around his wrists and neck,” she said. “I can’t put them on with those things on his hands.”

Zundergrub bristled but he watched the procedure unfold. The woman took off the second manacle and tried wrapping the dampener around my freed left arm. I felt the cold metal of the manacle go around my wrist, stopping short of clicking into place. The woman tried maneuvering the unyielding metal at different angles, but the cuff wouldn’t settle into its latch.

“These are too small,” she complained.

“Get the proper size, damn you!” Zundergrub said.

I started laughing then. It was fear, sure. Fear because I knew he was coming to kill me and I was helpless. Fear for Apogee as well, since he undoubtedly had her already, maybe even among the shadows that crowded the room. Worse still, I was desperately afraid that this was the real world. That Zundergrub wasn’t just alive, but that he was here, with me, in Utopia prison. I laughed harder because Shard World had felt real, the Lady’s Nightmare had felt real, Aryani had felt real. But despite all of that, the pirate ships and alien princesses, none of it had the stark, believable reality of Zundergrub breaking into the world’s most impregnable prison to kill me. It was concrete evidence, but it was also something comical about watching the doctor and his team fumbling around. His first mistake had been to include my old friend Razorman, but then again, how could they know that he was my friend? The funniest thing, though, was watching the rest of his team getting everything wrong, from dropping me on the floor to the failure with the manacles. My laughter was hoarse and spotty, tinged with tears and weeping.

“Pathetic,” Zundergrub spat. “To think I went to all this trouble for this. It’s hardly worth it.”

Someone spoke to him and he waved it off. I found it odd that I could see him as clearly as I could, and everyone else was so obscured like dimmed figures outside of the light.

I tried to stop crying, but my body seemed to be enjoying the racking anguish, the skipping of my muscles as they returned to functionality, though in my present condition, I would be long dead before I could defend myself.

That was it, wasn’t it? That was the trick. I wasn’t dead yet. He hadn’t walked up to me in my hibernation cell and just killed me. No, he’d woken me, torn me from whatever the hell Utopia was doing to me so he could gloat and monologue, and with every moment, I could feel my senses waking up, unused muscles coming back to life. I had to stall him.

“You killed Cool Hand, you destroyed Haha,” I said, whimpering with a renewed sense of purpose. “They were your friends.”

Zundergrub laughed. “I killed them, yes, and I’m only getting started. I’m going to end your world, Blackjack. I’m going to kill your beloved Apogee when I get my hands on her.”

His threats should have horrified me, but my heart jumped and raced upon hearing he hadn’t captured her yet. I wept unabashed, ashamed that I wouldn’t be there to help her against this monster.

“You know what’s interesting, Blackjack? My plans don’t involve you at all. In fact, this whole affair has slowed their progress considerably. I thought I would be content knowing you would be stuck down here, eventually to die of hunger when the power went out. You meant nothing to me. But my arm, this one,” he said, rolling back the sleeve, “the one you broke at Hashima serves as a reminder of you. The wound healed long ago, but every so often it will tickle. I didn’t understand it, how the villain must always gloat to the captured hero, monologue ad-infinatum about his plans and whatnot. I thought it wasteful. I thought myself above that, to be honest. Yet, as time went on, as my plan to end the world started coming into shape, it all felt empty. It felt incomplete. Mind you, the plan is well under way. Nothing can stop it now. But knowing you were down here, oblivious to it all, it just ate at me. It ruined my every waking moment. I couldn’t compromise with myself and no explanation would do. If the world ended and all came to ruin, it would mean nothing unless you knew, unless I got to see you like this, weeping for mercy. It’s strange. I consider myself an intelligent man. And I am, Blackjack, I am. I am possibly one of the most intelligent men on the planet. Yet I could not help myself. I couldn’t help myself. I had to come get you.”

He paused, studying me for a moment.

“I know, it’s insanity,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “I am aware of that. My grasp of reality fades and what’s humorous is that I’m fine with it. I don’t mind at all. I wonder if such self-awareness is normal, or if it is just my high intellect allowing me to see the fading patterns of my brain as I descend into madness.”

Zundergrub chuckled.

“You can thank me, though. It may not seem a kindness, but you will find it preferable to the phantom world Utopia created for you. What did you dream? I can’t imagine what your simple mind conjured. I could’ve left you gorging on your own fantasies, but at least this will be real. Oh, you will die a horrible death. I guarantee you that. But not yet. We will wait for when the moment is right, and yes, you will see your beloved Apogee again. I will grant you that. You will see her, long enough to rekindle the flame and long enough to watch her die. Then the world itself will die. Then we will die, you and I. Isn’t that apropos? The world will fall into flame and ruin, and have a chance at rebirth.”

He looked around, then closed his eyes with a sign of self-satisfaction.

“I feared the creeping madness was fooling me, driving me batty. Now I see how necessary this was. How satisfying ... perhaps more so than the grand affair.”

I shook my head, feeling a lot better every moment that passed, but still far too weak to do anything. Someone returned to the room and knelt beside me, struggling with my arm to slap on a wrist dampener. I had to delay it further, so I shifted my wrists, twisting them and making their grip on me almost impossible.

“Hurry,” Zundergrub said. “His faculties are returning quickly.”

“Damn, quit moving,” the other man said, fighting with me to close the dampener.

“No need to struggle, Blackjack. We are going to see your lovely Apogee shortly.

Then there was a loud crash outside, followed by a piercing scream.

“What is that?” Zundergrub said, moving toward the door as someone went flying by. “Dammit, hurry!” he said, closing the door.

“What’s going on?” asked the guy fighting to put the manacles on me.

Zundergrub knelt beside him, trying to pin my arm under his knee. “That fool Black Razor,” he said, using Razor’s other moniker.

“I told you not to bring him,” the second man said. I was close enough to him that I saw him turn away to respond to Zundergrub. He was close, and distracted.

I brought my knee up, slamming it hard against his coccyx, and heard a loud crack of bone followed by a howl of pain. He let go of my arm, reaching back to soothe his broken back, and I reached up, grabbing a handful of hair, pulling his head into the floor as hard as I could. He slammed forehead first into the hard floor, and I felt the frontal structure of his skull crumple back into the soft tissues of the brain, killing him instantly.

“Grab him,” shouted Zundergrub, moving away from me as others rushed to pin me.

One of his men fired raw plasma energy at me from his wrist launchers, but instead of burning me as the flaming gas rolled over my body, it felt good, warming my cold, aching muscles. Another of Zundergrub’s cronies grabbed one of my legs, but slipped on the goo. I kicked him in the balls and the fellow doubled over, clutching his damaged genitals. I only hoped that it had been the bastard who pulled my catheter out.

Madness swept over me like a wave in a tsunami. It was the rolling boulder that causes the avalanche that wipes the mountainside off the map. Memories flooded through my mind: fighting on Shard World, seeing an unconscious Apogee and thinking she’d died, the time I had fought Epic and broken him. It was unhinged lunacy bordering on hysteria, and nothing would stop me, nothing could slake my rage. I felt my teeth clench, almost to the point of collapsing upon themselves, and the thumping of my heart echoed through my body as the blood boiled across my veins. I wasn’t going to die like this, lying on the floor naked. I wasn’t going to let Zundergrub beat me. My wrecked body may not be a willing participant, but I was going to live. I was going to make it out of here to see another day, get my bearings, and come back at the doctor. All that mattered now was survival, and to achieve that, I was going to have to hurt someone.

I spun on the floor, the goo facilitating the maneuver, and slid toward the man I had kicked. Just then two others grabbed at me, but I was as slick as a greased pig, so I shrugged them off and grabbed the guy on the ground. He was in clear pain, but I reached for his face and dug my fingers into his eye sockets, pressing hard into his skull. The man screamed as my nails dug into his gelatinous eyes, like scooping an egg out of its shell. His hollering came to a quick end when I pressed his head back into the ground, collapsing his skull with an explosion of blood and brain spraying my face.

“Oh, my God,” said one of the two trying to grab me.

Guided by the sound, I hurled myself at his legs, grabbing one and biting the fleshy part of his calf. My teeth punctured the spandex costume and bit deep into his muscle; he rewarded my effort with a howling shriek. I felt the splash of blood in my mouth, and for a second, I couldn’t help but think that the salty, metal taste was the first genuine flavor my mouth had experienced since I had been put here. The man reached back at his damaged leg, kicking me with the other, but I slammed my forearm into the back of his knee, blowing out the joint and dropping the man beside me.

The woman was on my other side, the other figure trying to help me up, but she backed away and unleashed a torrent of electricity at me. The lashing power tore through my muscles, and I recoiled so powerfully that she swept me across the floor back toward Zundergrub. He dodged me as the girl fired again, the juice pouring through my quivering and shaking body, lancing up to my head and back down to die at my toes.

“We need more people,” Zundergrub shouted, running past me and out the door, calling for help.

In the brief respite the electricity girl gave me, among the smoky smell of burning and charred flesh, I could see Razor outside, doing battle with several figures, forcing Zundergrub to flee in a different direction down the hall.

The woman leaned forward, as if falling, held aloft by the torrent of power flowing from her outstretched arms, the voltaic energy rippling through her body, ready to be channeled at me. But her powers weren’t working as desired, and she knew this. Instead of just hurting me – which she was, of course – the electricity was waking my body, rousing my muscles from their slumber, and helping me shake off the rust that had seeped into my bones. I pressed down against the floor, using a railing affixed to the wall to help me stand.

“Oh, God,” she said, easing her cool stance, swallowing hard.

“Run,” I said, shambling away from the door, still using the railing, to give her a way out.

The girl nodded and walked past me, her eyes never moving from me. I just let her pass. Two others also chose that moment to come out from behind their hiding places, one of them falling to his knees as he struggled past the goo and water that dominated the center of the room. He looked up at me in fear, but I just smiled, happy that my faded vision was slowly returning, that my muscles were complying with my commands.

“Go on,” I told the fellow, and he got up and ran out.

Near me stood a rolling stand, like the ones they use to hang IV bags. It might work like a rolling walking stick. I reached for it and fell instantly, as another figure entered the room. The guy came in and drew an automatic pistol, spraying me with bullets. They were more than a nuisance, slapping into my bare skin, each as painful as a bee-sting. I lashed out for the man, but he backpedaled away, reloading and shooting. I looked down at the floor, at the growing pile of bullets around me as the man emptied magazine after magazine into me.

“F*cker,” I managed, scraping a handful of bullets and throwing them at the guy with all my strength.

It was like getting hit by a shotgun blast of 9mm bullets at close range. A dozen small pinpoints appeared over the shooter’s chest and legs, and though I couldn’t see the blood, I knew by the way his face drained of color that he was hemorrhaging. The guy faltered, his body shaking slightly as the scattershot of bullets pierced his body. He then doubled over, collapsing in a heap, and I could see the small blossoms of exit wounds stitched across his back.

“Stay down,” I threatened, crawling over to the rolling stand and using it to get back on my feet. It strained under my weight and kept wanting to roll away from me, but I got it under control. As I rolled toward the door, I noticed he was still, a few wisps of smoke rising from his bullet-riddled body.

“Razor!” I said, coming outside, but he was gone. A few bodies lay strewn about, like a child’s toys after a tantrum. Each of the corpses were torn to hell, with deep, puckered slashes crisscrossing the bodies. Severed limbs lay haphazardly around the narrow corridor, but not one of Razor’s victims lived. I shivered at the power contained in that loyal lunatic, but after taking a quick inventory of the bodies, I didn’t see Razor or Zundergrub.

Knowing I couldn’t be that lucky, I retreated back into the room and took stock. The first thing that occurred to me as I stood there was how cold it was. My nerves were finally processing data again, and the first burst of static came from my pelvis. My nakedness shocked me. Fighting naked was tough. I hadn’t noticed, partially, I think, because my body had become accustomed to being covered with goo. Regardless, I needed clothes. There was nothing in the room except the crèche I’d been plugged in to. It was mounted on a piece of metal, but looking closely at it, I could see slots that denoted drawers. There were no handles, probably controlled remotely, so I wedged my fingers in, bent the metal easily, and tugged. The drawer popped out, rolling along smooth ball bearings once free of the locking mechanism; inside was a white cotton robe.

Standing was easier, but still challenging, and I balanced on the crèche as I slid one arm, then the other through the sleeves, cinching the robe tight and tying the drawstrings. It was short for me but covered my genitals, which was good because I would need my legs free and clear. Looking out the open door of my prison, I never thought to wait for the authorities or climb back into my slimy bed. I walked out on shaky legs and never looked back.