Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [68]
He fell to his knees, gagging, his eyes popping out—fighting the impulse to fill his deprived lungs. His only comfort was the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to keep it up much longer. Soon, he would black out and lose control over his reflexes—and, bizarre as it seemed, he would drown.
Darkness closed around him. His face went numb, and the pain, mercifully, grew more distant.
The captain was almost gone when he came to the strange and wonderful realization that the cascade had stopped. The water wasn’t flowing out of him anymore. And without thinking about it, he had already drawn his first ragged breath.
Unfortunately, it was followed by a violent, water-clearing cough, and then several more. But in time, he got it under control. Only then did he look up at Brakmaktin, who was standing before him with cold fury still burning in his eyes.
Chapter Sixteen
NIKOLAS COULD BARELY bring himself to watch the torture Picard was forced to endure. He wished he could help the captain, or at least end his torment. Unfortunately, Nikolas’s efforts wouldn’t amount to anything. Brakmaktin had shown him over and over again how hopeless it was to try to stop him.
Still, he meant to try. And he would have, except a thought stopped him—Brakmaktin’s thought.
The alien hadn’t sent it. It was just floating there on the surface of his consciousness, where Nikolas’s link allowed him to pick it up. If it could be believed, it explained a lot.
Brakmaktin couldn’t feel anymore—not pain or joy or even satisfaction. He had evolved beyond feelings, and it was driving him insane.
That’s why he was torturing the captain. Not out of hatred or a need for revenge, but because he wanted to feel something. And the only way he could accomplish that was by skimming the mind of someone who could feel.
None of which did the captain any good.
“Perhaps you believe you have proven something,” the Nuyyad said. “But there is only one way for me to see for certain how tough you are inside.”
As before, Picard could only guess what Brakmaktin meant—until his uniform vanished, and he felt a burning sensation in his forearms. Looking down at them, he saw that the skin there was splitting, pulling apart, exposing the wet, red layer of muscle underneath. It hurt worse than anything he could ever have imagined, hurt as if his arms were being slit with a hot knife.
He bellowed in pain—he couldn’t help it.
But the Nuyyad was unmoved. He just stood there, glowering at the captain with his unholy silver eyes, and continued to peel his adversary as if he were a ripe fruit.
Horrified, Picard watched as his skin continued to recede, revealing more and more of what was inside—not just muscle, but blood vessels and bone. He couldn’t move his hands anymore, because the skin was coming away from them too, starting at his wrists and moving toward his fingertips.
What next? the captain thought, light-headed with shock.
Then he felt his face begin to burn and he knew. Brakmaktin had sliced open the skin from Picard’s forehead down to his chin, and was starting to pull it away from bone and blood vessels.
The captain set his teeth and endured the Nuyyad’s torment. But it was terrible to think he hadn’t a face any longer. At least I cannot see myself.
But suddenly, perversely, he could. There was an image in his mind of the skin being stripped to the edges of his hairline and then being pulled even further, taking his scalp along with it.
The worst parts were his eyes. Deprived of the lids that shaped and protected them, they stared back at him with unrelenting intensity, piling dread on top of dread.
Help us, they seemed to say. We cannot stand it any longer.
The captain no longer had a mouth, so he couldn’t scream. All he could do was howl like an animal.
But the torture didn’t stop. Picard felt his chest turn into a blaze of agony as Brakmaktin peeled away the flesh there as well, revealing the captain’s chest cavity with its rib cage and its stubbornly beating heart.
Next came his feet. Then