Broken Crescent (11 page)

He lost count of the times they interviewed him.

Sometimes he would disassemble the events of his life in his mind, string them together like pseudocode, and try to debug it.

Nate felt someone slap his face and he blinked his eyes into consciousness. He sat in the interview chamber, on the chair, without knowing how he got there.

The only one here this time was Scarface. The light came from only a single candelabrum. He was the one who had smacked him awake. In his hand he held the translation sphere.

“OBSERVEPERCEIVE OBJECTTHING OTHERS IDENTITYNATURE TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUME.”

“What?” Nate slurred.

That earned him another blow.

“OBSERVEPERCEIVE OBJECTTHING OTHERS IDENTITYNATURE TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUME.”

Scarface stared at Nate, and Nate realized that this was the first time he had seen the man maskless since he’d been brought here. The guy was seriously pissed.

“OBSERVEPERCEIVE OBJECTTHING OTHERS IDENTITYNATURE TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUME,” he repeated, adding, “TELLCOMMUNICATE IDENTITYNATURE OBJECTTHING OTHERS IDENTITYNATURE TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUME.”

“Holy Christ, we’ve been through this. You know everyone who saw me, spoke to me—the only people on this planet who know me are you and your masked friends.”

That earned a blow that knocked Nate clear off the chair. He fell to the stone floor with a choking gasp. Scarface stood over him, the candlelight picking out the lines carved in his face.

“TAKEREMOVESTEAL OTHERS OBJECTTHING IDENTITYNATURE TELLCOMMUNICATE YOUME.”

Nate rolled over and grabbed the neck of his robe and tore at it. “Do it. You want to cut me? Do it now!
Because I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!
”

Nate waited, certain that the end had come. But Scarface just stood there, looking at Nate, then at the sphere. After a few long moments, he turned away and called his goons to carry Nate back to the hole.

Nate lost consciousness before they got halfway back.

There was a lucid moment, in the darkness, when Nate realized what Scarface was trying to say.

TAKEREMOVESTEAL . . .

OBJECTTHING . . .

Someone must have taken Scarface’s little chest of Nate’s stuff.

Nate blinked the fuzz from his eyes and realized that the alien didn’t have a bucket this time.

“What?”

The alien, as always, didn’t speak or acknowledge Nate’s words. Instead, it walked into the cell. Instead of Scarface’s demon-masked acolytes, the torches out in the hall were borne by two more aliens.

Nate sat up, making his head swim.

“What the?”

The alien in the room with him was carrying something in lieu of a bucket—a rough burlap sack. It opened the bag as it approached, and Nate tried to scoot backward.

He held up his hands to ward the thing away. “Wait—”

His words were smothered as the bag came down over his head. He choked, mouth filled with the musty remnants of the bag’s prior contents.

He grappled with the thing, and he felt inhuman joints wrap around him and lift him off the floor. The thing was stronger than its spindly-bendy arms and legs made it look. Not that it took much to overpower Nate.

Other hands, with fingers too long and too many, gripped Nate’s wrists and ankles. Nate could feel rope binding him.

Nate tried to shout at the things, but every time he opened his mouth, he ended with a coughing fit. The last one was so violent, he passed out.

Fade in.

Alien hands supporting him under the armpits and by the ankles. He could hear a torch burn. He could feel his butt swinging over empty space. He smelled sewage, and heard footsteps walking through shallow water.

Fade out.

In.

Cold air. Damp, salty. Dripping. Still being carried.

Out.

The bag is gone, he can breathe easier. Footsteps echo in a vast space around him, though he cannot summon the energy to open his eyes.

The robe is gone. His skin is damp. He feels a gentle hand drying him. His eyes are open, but a gauze cloth covers his face. He’s forgotten what clean feels like.

“Who’s there?”

Nate had been drifting in and out of semiconscious-ness. He was weak, and his insides burned as if someone had scoured his body out with a wire brush. He blinked his eyes. The candlelight was too bright, making his eyes water.

While his eyes focused, Nate was able to harbor a slight hope that he was waking from a long hallucination. It didn’t last. The first thing he saw was the face of the woman tending him. She was the same dark Asiatic race as everyone else he had seen so far. Her hair was straight, long, and tied in a braid.

Nate’s initial guess at her age was early twenties, then he saw a streak of gray that wove in through her braid. When she leaned over him, Nate saw the wrinkles marking her eyes and mouth.

Then, abruptly, he felt her hand on his shoulder, and she rolled him on his side. Nate’s body moved as if he didn’t weigh any more than the bedding he lay on. He felt a damp cloth on his backside, and was too weak to move. All he could do was tremble in embarrassment.