Toys - James Patterson [17]
“And if you make it through the interrogation, you can guess what’s coming next,” McGill sneered. “A very slow death. It could take… years.”
That’s when McGill reared back and punched me hard in the face. The sudden pain made me feel like my skull had been split.
“That’ll have to do for now,” he growled. “There’s plenty more where that came from. Trust me on it. I can’t wait to break every bone in your body, skunk.”
They turned and stalked out of the room, leaving me rigid with horror, my face aching. I’d seen humans interrogated by Elite experts—reduced to lumps of screaming, gibbering flesh. But that was nothing compared to what McGill promised would come next: slow death, a fatal interrogation technique first used by humans during their brutal Terrorist Wars and later perfected by Elites.
I heard Jax Moore bark at some subordinate agents out in the hall: “No mistakes. Keep a close eye on him—he may be human, but he’s a slick, dangerous sonofabitch. Remember, he’s had augmentations. Probably why he was able to fool us for so long.”
My head was pounding with so many questions. I had to be an Elite—no human could do the things I could. “Augmentations” couldn’t possibly cover it. I mean if humans could be made to perform like top Elites… then why had it never happened before? Even the way my body was healing—didn’t that prove something? I was sore, incredibly sore, even in places I hadn’t known existed, but everything worked, including my adrenal glands—I felt like a river gone wild with spring rains.
But I shoved all that to the back of my brain. The only thing that mattered right now was getting out of here. But how could I? The Agency believed I was a traitor.
I tested the restraints. A metal-enforced jacket bound my upper body and held my arms tightly across my chest. Shackles pinned my wrists and ankles to the bed frame. They were too strong even for me… the world’s strongest human, right?
Right.
Chapter 23
THIS WAS THE finest hospital in the world—and long ago I had learned this axiom from my mother and father: greatest strength is also greatest weakness.
How could I work with that? There had to be a way out of this. But what was it? What could I do now?
Greatest strength is greatest weakness, I repeated over and over in my head.
Late that night, the highly sensitive cardio monitor near my bed let out a sudden bleep. The steady rhythmic line on the screen jumped along with the sound.
A second later it bleeped again, then started into a rapid-fire alarm pattern, while the line leaped in erratic peaks.
A guard stepped into the room—his face hard and wary. Not a shred of sympathy.
“What’s going on here?” he barked.
“My heart,” I gasped. “Racing like crazy. Won’t stop. Feels like it’s going to explode.”
The guard looked at the cardio monitor, then didn’t waste any time—he wheeled around and ordered his partner, “Get the doctors the hell in here! Do it. Now. He’s having a heart attack—a big one!”
That was one thing I had in my favor. They wanted me alive, not dead; they had questions that needed answering… about how I got to be me.
Greatest strength is greatest weakness. This was the most efficient hospital in the world—they weren’t going to let me die.
I revved my heart rate even higher than the 300 beats per minute I’d already reached. I was pushing 350 when the team of emergency medical personnel burst into the room.
I writhed and grimaced in fake agony, though I actually was in pain. “Can’t… breathe,” I moaned. “There’s an elephant on my chest. Help me! Please!”
Chapter 24
“WHAT THE HELL happened?” one of the doctors yelled at his staff. “You’ve been monitoring him from central control. The skunk was doing fine five minutes ago.”
“Don’t ask me—I never wasted any time learning medicine for skunks,” another doc said. “We’d better get him out of that jacket though. Take him to a trauma room. He’s up to three sixty!”
“Whoa, no you don’t,” one of the guards said and stepped in. “Our orders are not to let Hays Baker