Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [46]
“Where’s Monica?” he demanded in a choked voice.
“Waiting at the furnace. We haven’t hurt her.”
Not yet.
“I’ve got a thirst, Paul. And you have to take the first few sips for me. My ancestors watched the lake grow increasingly more foul from the City’s contamination. Now I’m going to give the City its dead water back. I’m going to make them beg for the dead water in their veins.”
There was a chair, and beside it, a small table.
Paul’s eyes picked out a package of sterile swabs, loops of surgical tubing and a neat row of syringes. His stomach lurched, and he thought he was going to be sick.
He saw Monica, chained against a wall to the right of the furnace. Sked hovered nearby, hungrily watching the flames through the window in the iron door—a dog hoping for scraps. The two Cityweb men were studying some equipment, the one with the white sneakers rubbing sleep from his eyes, like a reluctant office worker on a Monday morning.
“We’re almost ready.”
Sturm forced Paul into the chair, and the Cityweb men locked him in tight, one belt across the legs, another across the chest. He could feel droplets of sweat gathering on his forehead.
“We’ll be injecting the water directly into your bloodstream,” White Sneakers explained. “Normally the user would drink it, but we think the results will be a little faster this way. Comfortable?”
He spoke like a dentist making small talk before drilling. For a moment it threw Paul off—he made it all sound so reasonable, so ordinary. But then he glanced at Monica, and their eyes met. He didn’t want to be seen like this, strapped to a chair, needles pricking his skin. And where was Sam now? Paul imagined him watching from the shadows with cold detachment.
Sturm lurched to the blast furnace and pulled on a pair of thick gloves. He pushed up a long lever to the left of the furnace door. Paul could see the flames subside behind the window and instantly felt the heat in the room abate. Sturm opened the thick iron door, seized a pair of tongs, and brought out a canister, glowing orange hot. He set it in a bucket on one of the long tables with a loud sigh of steam.
“Thirty seconds to cool,” said White Sneakers, looking at his watch.
“Flat out, please,” said Beer Belly, easing Paul’s arm down against the chair’s armrest. Just like taking blood.
“Time,” announced White Sneakers.
Sturm lifted the canister out of the bucket and twisted off the lid. There was a sharp hiss of inrushing air. White Sneakers poked a syringe inside and eased up the plunger to draw in the dead water.
Paul flinched as Beer Belly slapped at the inside of his elbow with two fingers. “Good muscle definition,” he said. “I used to do weight training. There we are; that’s the vein.” He wiped a cool, wet cotton pad over the skin. Paul snapped up his arm. It was completely automatic. He knew they would wrestle him down in the end.
“I need some help here,” said Beer Belly placidly. He and White Sneakers grabbed Paul’s forearm and started to force it down. It gave him satisfaction to resist—you flabby wimps—but he could feel his strength giving out, his muscles pulpy with fear.
“Let’s not waste time,” said Sturm. He darted to Monica. One clawlike hand flashed out and closed around Monica’s neck. Fury exploded through Paul, and he thrashed around in the chair, smacking Beer Belly in the face with his fist. He wanted to tear at Sturm’s insect limbs, gouge thumbs into the milky whites of his eyes.
“She can’t breathe!” called out Sturm.
With a groan of despair, Paul stopped struggling, lowered his arm, shut his eyes, tight.
“All right,” he whispered. All right, all right. Waiting for the pinprick, waiting for the dead water.
“David!”
Paul opened his eyes and wrenched his head around. Decks stood in the doorway, hands steadying a pistol