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“Oh, God,” she whispered. “You have a head injury. Do you have a concussion? Are you nauseous? Let me look at your pupils.”
He batted her hand away. She tried not to feel hurt. After all, he was in pain, injured, addled. “Bruno?” she asked. “What is this?”
His lips were flattened, as if something was hurting him. His face looked so different, with that stark mask. Unrecognizable.
“Cut it out,” he said. “I know. So don’t do this.”
Her practical side kicked in. Screw this. They could have this conversation later, after Bruno had gotten a shot of pain-killers and a CT scan. “Well, hell. I don’t know what you’ve found, but there’s some stuff I found.” She got to her feet, yanked his hand. “Let me show you.”
* * *
Bruno got up,but the world swirled, swung, and he found himself draped over Lily’s shoulder, and she was scrambling to keep her feet beneath herself.
He wrenched away, at the cost of bouncing into the wall. Touching her hurt him. Just looking at her hurt him. Those searching eyes. She was saying something. He couldn’t understand. Sound cut in and out of his head. Something about kids, machines. Babies.
He couldn’t take it in, any more than on her previous visits. She’d been here several times. An angel of mercy at first, and then she morphed, turned seductive and whorish, laughing at what a fool he’d been. Those visits had been interspersed with visits from Rudy, a bloody knife in his hands. And Mamma, wearing her death wounds.
Then his vision would clear, and he would see the room, the floorboards. Feel the bonds cutting into his body.
This new dream-Lily was using a new strategy. She looked more vulnerable, face white, hair tangled. Eyes full of love. She was going for realism, this time. Drawing him in, making him want to protect her…
You are my champion.
And whammo, she’d put it to him. Straight to the tender parts.
He wanted her to go away. Either she was a bad dream, or she was a bad reality. But she was such a beautiful bad dream. She could tempt him to stay in the dream world forever. Except that he’d be crazy.
He was probably already well into crazy already, though. He stared at Lily, wondering why she didn’t dissolve into smoke, like the others. This dream-Lily was stubborn, like the real one he thought he’d known. She tugged his arm. Wanted him to follow her somewhere.
The memory floated up like a bubble, perfectly formed in every detail. The video footage King had shown him.I love you. Just you. Only you.
The phrase King had taunted him with.You are my champion.
He remembered how that phrase had functioned on him, when she’d said it to him, in the diner. Like a switch flipping on, lighting him up like a torch. He’d have done anything for her. He would have died for her. Still would. He stared at her moving lips, her earnest eyes. Strange, that he was hip to the facts, and still felt all the same feelings. He was still tempted to give in to the fiction, though it made no goddamn sense at all to perpetuate it, now that her boss had spilled the beans.
But she was a dream. And dreams didn’t have to make sense.
All he wanted was to go back to that fantasy world where Lily was everything she’d said she was. Where he really had saved her, where she really did love him. Where Lily really did open the door, run to him and cut his bonds. But any minute, he’d wake up, face flat to the floor.
You are my champion. She’d used that phrase to reel him in, bend her to his will. Twice. There was no other way King could have known about those exact words. No one had overheard those conversations. The first one in the diner, at four in the morning, at a secluded booth. Even less so the second one, at the cabin, in bed, just himself and Lily.
Those were the facts. He knew what he knew. Even if he hated it.
Lily dragged him down the corridor. He wondered if he should be resisting her, just on principle. But why bother? It was all a dream. He might as well go where she took him. See what trash his subconscious mind was littered with. He’d be back on that floor soon enough.
Her voice was shaking with emotion. So convincing. He trotted along behind her. His head hurt. Would a hallucination be so detailed? Cold hands? Pain? She stopped in front of a door, dragged out a bundle of keys. He almost laughed. What a discordant note in the fantasy. How did his dream Lily get a hold of those keys? A kung fu duel with one of King’s operatives? One of the bad guys had a hole in his handbag?
He should have head-butted her the second she cut him loose, and run like hell, dream or no dream. It was the dignified thing to do, on any plane of reality. She opened the door, and her words registered. “…like your video game dream. And it’s killing some of them!”
The reference to his video game dream jolted him. He looked into the room. Saw the kids on the beds. Goggles, headphones, machines—
Memory thundered over him. He knew that room. Desperation. He thudded to his knees, braced himself against the door, retching.
Lily’s hand, on his arm. “…so sorry! I didn’t think. About your memories, of how it would affect you. God, I’m sorry, I didn’t think—”
“Don’t think.” He wrenched free, and staggered in, ignoring her anxious voice. Stared down at the first cot. A boy, black, gangly, stringy and muscular. Hooked up just as Bruno had been, for hours of torture.
He yanked the headphones off the boy, jerked the goggles off, tore off the sensors. There was an IV drip. He untapped it, plucked out the needle, left it dangling, dripping its poison out onto the floor. He jerked loose the restraints, and smacked the boy’s face. “Hey! You! Wake up!”
