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The door dragged, clanged. They shoved him out and into another long corridor. Finally, a door opened, and he was shoved through it, so hard he tumbled to his knees, and then onto his face, without his arms to brace him. They dragged him through the room. His butt connected with a chair seat, so hard it jarred his spine all the way up to his skull. They fastened his bound hands. Then his feet, to each chair leg.
The hood was jerked off.
He sucked air into his starved lungs in wheezing gasps, blinking away tears from the influx of light.
He was in a large room. Several people were arrayed before him. Julian was there. The knife-wielding ghoul bitch from the videophone call. Another guy, too. Young, white, bland. All of them had a strange look in their eyes. Fascination. And focused, concentrated hatred.
Another guy stepped into the floodlight. Bruno struggled to bring him into focus. Big, tall, backlit by the powerful light. The man grasped Bruno’s chin between his thumb and forefinger. His face swirled together in Bruno’s vision. That smug smile, those glinting eyes.
“Bruno,” the man said. “Finally.”
Bruno convulsed. The guy grabbed his chin and yanked his face up into that helpless, supplicating child-awaiting-punishment posture.
The question building inside him for the past three days burst out. “Where’s Lily?” he yelled. “What have you done with her?”
The man gave his cheek a slap. “One thing at a time. Look at me.”
His eyes streamed from the light. Tears ran down into his nose, a wet, ticklish flood, creeping down. He had no way to wipe his face.
It felt so fucking familiar. He wanted to scream, thrash. He got a grip on it, and stared right back. “Yeah?” he said, belligerently.
“Do you know me?” the guy asked.
Yes. Yes.His gut knew, but his head still couldn’t nail it; the how, the when, the who. “No. Who the fuck are you, and what do you want?”
Another stinging slap.Whap.“Don’t play dumb,” the guy said. “I know you’re not stupid. Look again. And dig deep.”
Terror swelled. He did know this man. The memory was locked in his body, in muscle and bone. He felt small, confused. Wanting his mother. So angry. Couldn’t move. Struggling against restraints until the needle stung his arm and paralysis took him. And that face, so pleased with himself. That deep, horrible voice, setting his every hair on end—
“DeepWeave, sequence 4-2-9 commencing,” the guy said.
Bruno convulsed. His body jerked as if electricity juddered through it. The heavy chair rattled, shook. “Oh, shit. No.”
“Yes,” the guy said. “Yes, it’s coming to you now, right?”
Bruno wanted to deny it, but it was flooding back, in sickening waves. “The dreams. You’re that guy who talks in my dreams.”
“Do I?” The man’s eyes sparkled. “I’m delighted to know that the programming went so deep, even in the experimental stages of my research. Remarkable, considering how short a time I had to seed it.”
“Seed…what?” It took him a few tries to get his throat calm enough to choke the words out. “P-p-programming?”
The hand on his cheek petted him. He couldn’t stop shaking his head no, even though memory was flooding back. “You’re the guy Zia Rosa told me about. The one who kidnapped me from Mamma when I was seven. And then Tony leaned on Michael Ranieri to get me loose.”
The man’s face tightened. “I will always regret that,” he said. “I should never have given in to pressure. At the time, the Ranieris were a vital source of my research funding. But this is no longer the case.”
“But what the hell did you want with me?” he exploded.
“Oh, Bruno. You were my inspiration,” the guy said, patting him on the shoulder. “You sparked a new line of research that has yielded fantastic results. You are my shining star, Bruno. Mysine qua non.”
“What in the flying fuck are you talking about?”
Smack, the guy whapped him again, on the temple. “Don’t be vulgar,” the guy lectured. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t care what you like,” Bruno said.
The man pinched Bruno’s cheek until his thumbnail sliced into flesh, stinging. “You will learn to care,” he said. “It’s time you learned.”
Bruno sucked in a ragged breath at the pain. “Who are you?”
