The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Read online

  Oh, thank you, Dr. Kessler, sir,” she gushed.

  “It will take a while,” he said. “You should bring a cushion for your knees.”

  “Yes, sir. I want to do whatever you say.”

  “I know you do. Relax for me, Keiko. Feel yourself give in to my will. Close your eyes and let it wash over you, let it compound through pathway amplification. I am Amelix and Amelix is me. I’m older and more experienced, better educated, and higher ranked. You already obey me completely, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Completely.”

  “And so when I tell you to close your eyes and relax even deeper, you automatically comply with that order, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. Her head briefly lolled to one side and then rolled back again, tilting her chin slightly upward.

  “That was a gift of your reconditioning process, wasn’t it, that you always obey your superiors? It’s easy for you to obey me and just sink deeper and deeper down, isn’t that right? Reconditioning tore away the barriers and made it easy to let me in, didn’t it? So easy to just open up to me, because I am Amelix and Amelix is me, and you love and trust and obey Amelix with all that you are, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir.” Her voice was a reedy whisper. “So easy. With all that I am.”

  “That’s even true when I order you, like I’m doing now, to relax deeper and deeper and deeper, more fully down inside yourself than you have ever been before. You want to open your mind to me like a beautiful flower, waiting for me to pollinate it. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, sir. Like a flower. Waiting for you. To pollinate.”

  2

  Evans Household, the Zone

  Kym tiptoed from the sink to the cabinet, carefully wiping a plate with a ragged towel and slipping it quietly into place. Mikk was in a bad mood this afternoon, having just been nearly murdered. Kym was in a bad mood, herself. She had watched her husband be nearly murdered, but she’d ended up disappointed as usual. All the bastard had gotten was a cut across his forehead.

  She washed another plate, slowly dried it and put it away, as carefully and quietly ,making as little noise as possible. The little apartment vibrated with a familiar tainted energy and she knew what it meant: He wanted an excuse to get angry.

  That Mr. B guy had been due with more product over a week ago, and in the last few days Mikk had cheated a lot of people. Some were now coming back angry and ending up like the body she’d had to dispose of today. Shit like that kept Mikk pissed off, and Kym had taken beatings twice already this week. The first time she’d just gotten some hard slaps and been slammed into a wall. The one yesterday had been a real beat-down, though, leaving throbbing bruises all over her face and stomach. Now he was stalking around the apartment and watching everything she did, waiting to pounce on the slightest mistake.

  She tried to steady herself, but the impending violence was making her legs shake. Her fate was out of her hands.

  I won’t survive another week if Mr. B. doesn’t show up.

  Mikk didn’t care about Kym’s life or anyone else’s, even his own. He had hired her at the protein refinery and then coerced her into marrying him. His proposal had been: “You’re gonna marry me and sign over your checks. If you don’t wanna do it, find a new job.” Now everything was in his name. If she tried to leave she’d be jobless, homeless, and broke, which in the Zone meant she’d soon be dead. It took constant, dizzying effort to convince herself that life like this was somehow better than no life at all.

  Her vision went black around the edges from a combination of stress and exhaustion. She grabbed the countertop to steady herself, forgetting the knife in her right hand. Her left hand clenched around the blade, which sliced into her index and middle fingers. Her sharp inhalation and the clatter of the knife into the sink were sudden and loud.

  Oh, no.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, throwing shit around?” Mikk was now centimeters from the back of her head, his breath hot on her scalp.

  “Nothin’, sir. I just…I just dropped it. That’s all.”

  “That’s all? You know what I gotta do to buy all the shit in this place? You know what I go through? Then you go throwing it around like it’s free, and you tell me it’s nothing.”

  “Nothin’s broken,” she said, picking up the knife and running it under the water again. The fresh cuts on her hand burned and stung, but she ignored them; it was best to avoid giving him anything else to criticize. “Just dropped somethin’ in the sink. Sorry it bothered you.” She quickly wiped the knife dry and slipped it into the drawer, out of his sight and hopefully forgotten. Though it had from time to time crossed her mind to attack him, she always thought better of it. Mikk was physically huge and he enjoyed causing pain. Nothing good would come from introducing a weapon into the mix.

  “I’m supposed to be happy that you didn’t break shit this time?”

  “Accidents happen. Just let it go, please, sir?”

  “Accidents happen? You giving me a lesson, now? You think you gotta tell me accidents happen, because maybe I’m too stupid to figure that out?”

  She turned, facing him, and backed up a step, instinctively raising her palms between them.

  “What the hell is this? You can’t even wash dishes without cutting yourself all up?”

  She risked a glance at the hand. A trail of blood ran down her palm from the cut on her index finger.

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You’re sorry.” Mikk said. “First you insult me, telling me ‘accidents happen,’ like you’re gonna wise me up, and then you’re too stupid to even wash dishes.” He slapped her, not angrily, not even particularly hard.

  He was warming up.

  There was always a pattern. His rage built in stages, and she had to watch them develop, knowing what was coming. That was almost worse than the beating itself. It started out light, with Mikk making little excuses to criticize or insult her. Then he’d react to whatever she said, or, if she tried not to say anything, he’d respond to her lack of response. Whatever she did, or didn’t do, made him angrier than he’d been a moment before. Step by step, it built from words to slaps to harder hits, shoves, and worse, like it was all written into a script. Watching it happen to her, Kym felt detached and dizzy, even before she started to feel the blows, like she was seeing it happen in a puppet show instead of experiencing it herself.

  Another slap followed the first, then a shove against the wall and a few more, then punches to her midsection, and after she collapsed, to her back and head. Kym felt completely disconnected, like just another puppet in show after show.

  The fists stopped raining down as he started kicking.

  This was going to be a bad one.

  (?)

  Consciousness returned slowly. Was this Hades, the underworld?

  Centurion Septimus Furius rolled slightly to one side. His hands were tied apart!

  Crucifixion!

  His last memory of Roman life was the beating he had taken, the decimation. Had he survived it, only to be crucified like some seditious insurgent enemy of Rome?

  Gods, please, no.

  Death did not frighten Furius. It had been his career, after all, bringing death. It had become familiar, like a companion, even. But this! Nothing horrified him like the thought of such shame, such public disrespect of one who had devoted his life to honor and discipline. To die in this way was so much worse than death itself. Always he had supported Rome and obeyed his orders; he deserved better than this disgrace, to be slowly tortured and left to rot as an example.

  But why tied here, not nailed?

  The rope was yellow. The room was called a loading dock. He knew these things, but he had not yet opened his eyes.

  Furius was not being crucified. His head rolled to one side as he relaxed.

  Inside his mind were memories of Rome, of his death, and even hazy images after that, full of mist and light, but there were other memories, too, now, of a different life, one that h
e could not have imagined. He was still Centurion Septimus Furius, but he also remembered being tied here, and pissed on here, which were not things Furius had actually experienced as himself.

  He opened his eyes and struggled to bring his vision into focus. A ceiling. Gray. Most settings for his newly acquired memories were gray.

  He now lay cruciform on a square wooden shape just large enough to support his weight from shoulders to hips—a shipping pallet, he realized was the term for it. His hands were indeed bound with yellow rope at the corners level with his neck, leaving his head tipped awkwardly backwards over the edge of the pallet unless he fought to hold it up. His bare feet were lashed together, cold against the concrete floor.

  A short distance away three men sat working at a table, packaging a white powder into plastic bags and wrapping them with tape. This building was a small warehouse, and he was on the side where trucks came to be loaded.

  Trucks. Furius pondered the machines that moved on their own, without power of man or beast. How strange.

  These memories, of oddities like trucks and plastic and tape, were those of another man, who had called himself Mr. B. The name had been a rather ineffective attempt at becoming known for selling base, a form of cocaine, a drug similar to the one those men were packaging. These men had called him Mr. Bitch.

  It had been more than two thousand years since Furius had suffered that decimation beating and died. Now he’d been brought back, in what felt like no time. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened or how, but the new memories indicated that it had occurred after administration of one of these drugs. The men here had called it Pink Shit, and when they’d injected it into Mr. B, they’d permanently removed that personality from this body. Furius was fairly certain it was Pink Shit they were packaging now. They had taken B’s dose from that same pile.

  He would have to kill these three men, and soon. Surely Dis, the god of the underworld, had not allowed Furius back again to be kept in this dungeon.

  The wooden shipping pallet to which he was tied was quite old. B had not seen much wood in his lifetime. It was apparent that wood was rare here, and had been for a long time. He tugged at the ropes. They were made of plastic, a material softer and with more give than proper Roman ropes, but his arms and legs were held quite securely, nonetheless.

  He tried to retrieve the hazy memory of the decimation and his subsequent brief and strange journey through mist. He faintly recalled a metallic taste in his mouth. Perhaps it had been the coin his legion brothers had placed there to pay Charon the ferryman, though he couldn’t remember actually meeting Charon or crossing the River Styx, or even what had subsequently happened to that coin. The other memories, the memories that could not possibly be his, were apparently interfering with his recollection.

  So, then, Pink Shit had brought him here. They called it that because tiny germs floating around in water produced white powder but also turned the liquid pink. B had worked in this business, and now through him Furius understood that these people had germs to produce all kinds of things, including drugs. Still, the Pink Shit germ was something new. They hadn’t intended this one, and now they were trying to figure out what it did, what it was. Furius knew. The gods had made Pink Shit, to bring him here.

  The men had guns, the concept of which Furius found fascinating. They enabled a shooter to kill from a distance like an archer, but more accurately; one did not have to lob shots in an arc. They were loud, though, guns. B’s memories showed that this building was owned by Alfred, who controlled perhaps five or six such henchmen besides these. With no idea where the others were, Furius had to be sure he didn’t alert them. He would have to kill these three without using guns, and without allowing them to fire theirs in defense.

  He remained still, closing his eyes while he thought about his predicament. There was no sense in keeping them open and risking that one of the men would notice.

  Why had the gods brought him here? What purpose did they have in bringing a lone centurion to this place?

  According to B’s memories there were no Roman legions anywhere around here for him to join. What use was Furius in a place like this, where Feds and Unnamed Executives, twice the size of ordinary men and armed with guns more powerful than any Mr. B had ever touched, worked in legion-sized armies? What use was any Roman soldier alone, without his legion?

  Yet perhaps his isolation didn’t have to be permanent. Maybe Pink Shit could bring others, as it had brought Furius. The bags the men were packaging were kilos, and each kilo had enough for thousands of doses: multiple legions of soldiers. Alone he was worthless, but with an army like that he could conquer this place for Rome. Even now, even here, his mission was the same as it had ever been: He had to conquer these foreign nations and bring them under Roman rule. He would form new Roman legions in this place!

  Furius let his eyes open again, just a bit, taking in the table at the other end of the room and the door next to it. He strained against the ropes with his hands, slowly so as not to draw eyes with jerky motion. While the edges of the pallet were thick wood, the slats he lay upon were thinner, though still solid. With enough force Furius might have been able to pop the nails out, but enough force was unlikely, tied as he was.

  His feet were bound tightly together at the bottom of the pallet, but the plastic cord didn’t bite like real rope would have. It was a bit stretchier, too. Furius bent his knees, testing the flex and grip of the bindings. There was enough play for him to be able to slide one foot along his other ankle. Working slowly but diligently, he was able to increase the amount of slide there until he could rotate the whole foot at the ankle. Pointing his toes all the way down and pushing off against the other leg, he slowly dragged the bottom of the foot along his ankle. The rope dug deep into his flesh all around, numbing his feet and misting up his eyes, but he felt it stretch just slightly. Eventually he got his toe under one of the loops of rope and, gritting his teeth, pulled it down and over the other foot’s toes, creating slack. By pushing his feet against each other he was able to work the slack into the other coils, and eventually he was able to pull his right foot free. The tensionless rope dropped loose around his left ankle, and his cold feet coursed with blood again. He waited for the thousand-needles feeling to subside, taking the opportunity to calm his mind for battle.

  He pushed off the ground with his legs, rolling over his shoulder and grabbing the pallet with his hands. Lifting it as he stood, he charged at the men and swung the entire pallet over his head and down in front of him, ducking as the pallet slid down his shoulders and the ropes bit severely into his wrists. It crashed onto the two closest henchmen, the ones seated with their backs to him, slamming their faces against the table. He had hoped the pallet would shatter or at least pull apart, but it didn’t. One man went limp and the other sputtered in the powder. This body was too weak to lift and use the entire pallet as a weapon again. His bowed head was turned to the side, and he saw the third man rising from his chair to snatch a gun from the table. Furius squatted but straightened his back so the pallet slid down behind him, and as the bottom edge hit the floor he pushed off, slamming into the guy’s face with both feet. The gun clattered to the floor but did not fire.

  Furius dragged the heavy wooden frame and, raising his elbow, pulled its edge up under the dazed henchman’s neck. Grunting with effort, Furius jerked his own body downward until there was a crunching sound. These were clearly ordinary men rather than the enhanced ones called Feds and Unnamed; this neck had broken as easily as any other he’d encountered in his career.

  When B had been dosed with Pink Shit the effect had rendered him unconscious almost instantly, but the sputtering henchman who had inhaled it in the attack was still awake. He stood, wiping powder away from his eyes.

  Furius dove for the gun, bringing the pallet with him, and, careful to avoid touching what Mr. B’s memories said was the trigger that made the weapon erupt, snatched it up. He pointed it at the last conscious henchman, the one with powder all o
ver his face, who raised his hands. Holding the man at gunpoint with one hand, Furius squatted to wedge a chair leg against the pallet slat to which he was tied. Finding the right angle for leverage, he popped the slat off its nails and slid the rope off its end, repeating the process at the other corner.

  Going through pockets, he found several strange coins he knew were casino chips, and a knife that sprang open when he touched a button. There was also a rig for injecting drugs, complete with a syringe and rubber tube, which he kept but couldn’t imagine ever using, given Mr. B’s recent memory of the activity. Over one chair hung a long black coat, which he put on.

  There was one kilo of Pink Shit packaged up already and no time to waste wrapping up another one. Furius could come back to get the rest of it, as well as the apparatus for making unlimited quantities of it, as soon as he’d created a few thousand more Roman soldiers. He tucked two guns behind his belt and carried the third in his right hand, stuffing the kilo, knife, and rig into the coat’s big pockets. He took a handful of powder in his left hand, to throw into faces and blind his enemies if he needed to fight. Thusly prepared, he flicked the gun toward the door. “You first,” he said, momentarily taken aback by the sound of his new voice and this strange language. “If we’re quiet, we both get out alive.” The man nodded, but staggered as he opened the door and stepped outside.

  After leaving the building the two marched for a few blocks, with Furius making increasingly graphic threats to keep the man focused. Eventually, the drug took over and his human shield collapsed. Furius left him where he lay and ran off into the night.

  Back Street Off 46th Street, the Zone

  Mikk Evans still hadn’t cooled from the encounter with Kym, which was a good thing now that he was out on the street making his real money. This sort of work, dealing and keeping his girls in line, required an edge like he was feeling now.