The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [116]
The prisoner screamed. “Get out! Get out of my head!”
Grace let go of his thread. The prisoner slumped over, sobbing and shaking. Snot ran from his nose.
“So that was what Duratek was doing at the facility in Denver,” Grace said, feeling cold and sick. “They were creating a gate. First they found a way to send messages through, then objects. That was how you communicated with the Scirathi, how you got them guns. Now Duratek has finally figured out the last step. They've learned how to send people through the gate. People like you, Agent Hudson.”
The prisoner rolled back and forth on the ground, speaking shrilly. She knew the hole she had left in his mind would soon drive him mad.
“The first ones . . . they died. They were ripped to shreds the moment they stepped through the gate. But the scientists kept working, and after that others made it through, and they sent a few reports from the other side, reports about the languages and cultures and geography. Only something went wrong in the process of translocation. The scientists called it cellular disruption. All I know is their bodies . . . they dissolved into sludge in a few days. All the same, I volunteered when I had the chance, along with Meeks and Stocker. We were the first to make it through and survive.” A shudder coursed through him. “Only Meeks caught something a while back—a disease the meds couldn't stop. He died last week. And your men killed Stocker. I'm the only one left. I'm the only one. . . .”
Grace staggered, and she might have fallen except for Samatha's steadying hand. “Only more are coming. I saw it. They think they can break the gate wide open now.”
The prisoner's shaking eased, and his lips twisted into a smile. “That's right, Dr. Beckett. We made it through, and we lived. That means the scientists have finally gotten the calibration of the gate right. All they need now is more of whatever fluid it is that powers it, and I hear soon they'll have it by the gallon.”
“Yes,” Grace said, sifting through the information she had ripped from his mind. “Fairy blood. They're trying to synthesize it in their labs. And they're close. But what's their plan once they have it?”
The prisoner looked up, his eyes full of hate. “No more answers for you, Dr. Beckett.”
He clenched down hard on his jaw. Even as Grace heard the sharp sound of porcelain breaking, she knew what he had done. His eyes rolled up into his head, and his body went limp.
“Dammit, no!” Grace flung herself down beside him.
“What is it, Your Majesty?” Aldeth said.
She pried open his mouth. “He had a false tooth. He broke it when he bit down.”
Samatha nodded. “Often a spy is given poison to use if he is caught by his enemies.”
His breathing was growing shallow, and his thread grew dim. The poison had already spread through him. His heart rate was slowing. It would be a quick death, and painless.
Not if I can help it.
Grace studied the poison flowing through his veins. As if her mind were a microscope, she looked closer, until she could see its molecular structure like a series of colored spheres. It was simpler than she would have thought. A flick of a thought, and the structure was altered. Like a chain reaction, the change spread through his blood.
Hudson screamed, a bubbling sound of agony. His body went rigid as convulsions wracked him. His back arched, the cords of his neck standing out. Purple blotches mottled his skin, and yellow foam boiled out of his mouth.
His screaming phased into words. “Help me! Oh, God, it burns!”
For a moment sympathy pricked Grace's heart. She was a doctor, or at least she had been once. However, she was more than a doctor now. She was a witch, a queen, a woman. And this man had set the bombs that destroyed Calavere's towers.
“Please!” he raved. “Please help me!”
She bent over him, touching his hot forehead with a gentle hand. “No,” she murmured.
He was beyond words now, thrashing on the floor. His tongue, black and swollen, jutted from his mouth. It took several long minutes. Then one last scream ripped itself from him, followed by