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“Go ahead, if you really want to watch me get punished. Again.”
I gazed at her reddened, blurred looking jaw. “What happened to your face?” I asked. “It looks like someone punched you. Did he… Jesus, Jana, did hehityou?”
Another smothered, manic burst of laughter. “Hell, no,” she muttered. “As if he’d lower himself to actually touch me. I disgust him. If I needed to get hit, he would outsource the job.” She touched her jaw with gingerly fingertips, wincing. “I got my tooth last night, after you went out. This is what I get, for being a worthless piece of shit. It’s your future, too, so take a long look at what’s in store for you.”
“Tooth? What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered. “What tooth?”
“It’s a special ritual for the unluckiest and the least worthy of the Halliwell offspring,” she said. “It binds me to him forever. Silvano, his sadistic pet dentist, pulls out a molar. Then he implants a fake tooth, right into your raw, bleeding jawbone. No anesthesia. If you’re lucky, you don’t die of shock. Some have. Not that he cared.”
“No anesthetic?” I gaped at her, horrified. “But what was wrong with your tooth?”
“Nothing. But the new one has a poison gas capsule inside it, a tiny charge of explosives, and a miniature receiver. If Halliwell’s vitals stop, a signal gets sent out to all the teeth. They explode… and then we die.”
“But that’s… that’s nuts!”
“Don’t think you’re immune just because you’re the flavor of the week,” Jana warned. “He’ll get mad at you eventually. That’s when you get your tooth.”
“I would never let him do that to me!”
Jana’s face twisted. “Oh please. Don’t make me laugh. It hurts too much. You think you’ll have a choice? That’ll change, Cass. That’s what he always does. He keeps you whole for a while. Lets you think you can survive this, maybe even eventually escape. And bit by bit, he grinds you down until you don’t even remember who you were before. And then it’s too late. It was too late for me even before the tooth, but now…” She shook her head.
“But I’m just here for a little while,” I said. “I’m just doing this in exchange for medical treatment for my little sister. She has a rare disease, and she needs this experimental treatment only he can get for her. So I’m stuck here for the duration. At least while she’s being treated.”
“Oh, yes.” Jana’s voice sank to a hollow whisper. “Of course. The little sister. That’s an old classic. Come here.” She grabbed my shoulder and led me outside the Bridge to the alcove of the nearest snack bar. “We’re just barely out of camera or mic range right here, if you don’t move and you keep your voice way down,” she murmured. “So, about your sister. Don’t tell me, let me guess. DeLuca’s Syndrome? Tamiko’s? Varen’s Disease? Which one is it? Those are his favorites. The big trifecta.”
Something inside me went silent and ice cold. Thehell?Even some seasoned medical specialists had never heard of Varen’s Disease, it was so rare.
“Varen’s,” I admitted, reluctantly. “Really quick onset. Just a couple months ago. Halliwell heard about it. He told me he had a treatment, so he made a deal with me. Glow-worm, and my labor, in exchange for the cure. How did you know it was Varen’s?”
“It’s not,” Jana said.
“Of course it is! My mom had the same symptoms. Mom died of Varen’s two years ago. They say there could be a genetic predisposition. Maybe I’ll get it, too.”
“Shhh. It’s not Varen’s,” Jana whispered. “He told you he had experimental medical treatment that would save her, right? Tamiko’s, DeLuca’s Disease, Varen’s. He has a few others in his arsenal, but those are his favorites. They’re the most reliable, the most controllable. He creates dummy diseases. Then he infects people with them, and hey, presto, only he has the cure. Or the antidote, rather. And then he owns you.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not possible.”
“I wish it weren’t,” she said. “But the real Varen’s, Tamiko’s and DeLuca’s have no treatment options. No cure. You get them, and you die. So if she’s still alive… then it’s not Varen’s.”
“No.” My voice was muffled by my hand, pressed to my mouth. “Not possible.”
“He made your sister sick,” Jana said. “And he could make her well, too, if he wanted to. But he’ll never give you the cure, because you have that big, souped-up brain, just like his, and he wants it. He thinks you’re the mini-me he’s been waiting for. He’ll never let you go. So he’ll never let her go, either. Sorry, but it’s the truth.”
I couldn’t stop shaking my head. “Not possible.” My voice shook. “It has to be Varen’s. My mother died of it, too, so how could it?—”
“No, she didn’t. Halliwell murdered her. He murdered my mother, too. It was Tamiko’s, for my mom. I was fourteen. It took me another fourteen years to figure it out. I learned the truth when I was at the Coatesworth Facility, where all the pharmaceutical research is done. I was rising in the ranks, and I got a higher clearance, and I started poking around, and I found this file. It had all the details. How he developed this technique, using fake diseases to control people. How he killed my mother. He killed your mother, too. He’ll eventually kill your sister. He always does.”
“You’re lying,” I said, but the words were hollow. Her voice was flat, hushed, but it had the ring of truth. And it fit with everything I knew about Halliwell. Everything Mom had told me.
“He makes people sick, dangles the cure, and makes a devil’s bargain,” Jana whispered. “He gets complete control of people that way. He got my mother to sell me to him for the medicine. Then he let her die, so that I would be more ‘focused on my training.’ He’ll do that to you. He’ll decide your sister is a distraction, and bye-bye.” She winced and touched her face. “Oh, God, that hurts.”
“You need antibiotics,” I said.
She snorted. “Antibiotics are for pussies. Besides, he’s sick of me. He’d love it if my tooth went septic. He’d be happy for an excuse to let me die.”
I stared into her hollow eyes, and awareness sliced through me like a bolt of lightning. For that stinging instant, I saw right through the comforting bullshit I had been trying to feed myself. The fantasy that that there was a civilized, acceptable way out of this hellhole, with a healthy, rosy-cheeked Reggie at the end of it.
There wasn’t, and I knew it, with every cell of my body. I had been scammed. It was up to me to fix it now, and there was no time to waste.
