The Truth Collector (17 page)

Then Malcolm was being dragged away from that sliver of paradise. He never took his eyes off it. Not when Cog dragged him up to a tank. Not when he forced him up the little ladder and shoved him inside.

Not until the warm fluid touched his face and shut his eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

It was the humming that woke him.

Sleep – or whatever empty period in Malcolm's mind that just ended – had been dreamless. Now someone dragged him back into the light. A man in nice clothes. A hideous man, without a hint of empathy in the way he grabbed him and pulled him to the ground. He paced around him, cackling.

“Malcolm,” a voice next to him said.

Another man sat there huddled on the dirt.

“Paul?”

The man nodded, caught himself just before the slack in his neck sent him face-first into the ground. Warm liquid covered them both. Malcolm pulled some of it from his arm, watched it stretch and finally break off a foot from his skin.

“What happened?” Paul said. His eyes fluttered open and closed.

“Sucked some of the goodness right out of you,” said the man in the fancy clothes. Fielder. That was his name. At least th
at used to be his nam
e. He was just Cog now. Cog the demon-marked. “I told you it wouldn't hurt.”

Malcolm's mouth opened. “I… feel like I slept for a long time.”

Cog laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not. Time's funny down here.”

The cobwebs in Malcolm's mind began to scatter. He strained his brain, gave it a little gas and prayed it would start, and found himself on the verge of remembering something important. He'd seen something shiny. Something golden and beautiful and…

Tears formed in his eyes, warm and salty.
Nora
. She was still close – just a corridor away – but Cog was closer.

Paul's body jerked to life when the girl's tears washed down his cheeks. Cog bent down and offered him a clean towel. “We only take a little at a time,” he said, patting him on the head. “You'll both feel better soon.”

A towel landed on Malcolm's lap. He wrapped it around himself. The shivering stopped, but the warm fluid still clung to his body hair. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to wash it off. His attention followed wherever his eyes took him. They floated around the room, caught up in a waking dream. There were human fish tanks, and behind them, a green patch thriving in all the brown. The ground sloped downward there in an explosion of trees and colors. And there was something behind all the vegetation…

His breath caught when he spotted it.

A golden pond.

It seemed to soak up all the light in this strange place. Its surface was placid, but Malcolm could feel the water beneath it churning, staring back at him.

Pulsing with life.

“Almost full,” Cog said. He pulled them up and started dragging them toward the lookout tower. “I told you that right before you went in. But it's no surprise you don't remember. Short term amnesia's… part of the process.”

“Do the children know?” said Paul.

Cog shoved them to the ground at the base of the tower. “Master and mistress care about these kids. They really do. We put them to sleep before they go in. When they wake up they're in their beds and
whoosh
– it's all over. Just like a dream!” He cackled. “They
only go in awake when they're acting up – for punishment.”

“Why?” Paul said.

Malcolm bit his lip. His eyes wandered past the tanks, followed the pipes sticking out of them to that precious pond. He already knew why.
Life for life
.

Cog climbed to the top of the tower before he replied. “I'll let master and mistress share that if they want.” He buried his head in his dress shirt and spoke through the fabric. “It's not my place to say.”

“But you want to say,” said Paul, looking up at him.

Cog laughed. “I want my hair back. I want a different face. I want a million dollars. Want want want.” Then he fell silent. Paul asked a few more questions, but Cog ignored them. He turned his back to them and watched the boys playing across the giant park. “Night owls,” he said, either to himself or someone Malcolm couldn't see. “We made the boys the night owls. The tanks have to run, baby, run. Around the clock… err… I'm confusing myself.”

Malcolm pounded on one of the ladders leading up the tower. “You're killing them. Can't you see that? You're killing the daughter of the woman you loved.”

Cog spat off the tower and nearly hit them with a glob of saliva. “She isn't my daughter. And we aren't killing them. They get to go home. Master and mistress take them up –”

“Once they're done with them? Once you sucked the life out of them and turned them into zombies?”

Cog shrugged. “We don't kill them. And it's time for you to shut up. I'd never harm the children, but I wouldn't think twice about killing you.”

Paul grabbed Malcolm's shoulder and pulled him close. “Did you see it?”

“What?”

Paul smiled. “The pond. The golden pond. I remember it now – how the light hit it before everything went blank.”

Malcolm nodded. “If there's a way out of here that pond will play a part.”

“How do we get to it, though?” Paul pointed up. “He's all over us.”

Malcolm looked around the massive chamber. Children playing on the boys' side. Silence and empty space where the girls had been. Toys and dolls lay strewn everywhere, but not a single one contained an answer.

“That's good,” Cog called down from the tower. “You two just entertain yourselves until master and mistress get back. We'll let them figure out what to do with you.” He started singing on the platform. Bits and pieces of songs. Changing pitches and tempos on the fly.

“What do we do?” Paul said. “How do you kill someone who's already dead?”

“You don't,” Malcolm said. “At least I don't think you do.” His eyes found the golden pond again. It was close – maybe thirty seconds away in an all-out sprint. But that was an eternity with Cog watching from his post.

Paul looked over at it too. “I don't think he likes the water.”

“He didn't seem to have a problem with it when he threw us in the river,” Malcolm said.

“No,” said Paul. “I don't think he likes
that
water. He had this look on his face before he put me in. I don't know… it's kind of fuzzy. But it's one of the last things I remember before he closed the lid. He was looking over at that pond like he was afraid of it. Like he wouldn't get any closer.”

Malcolm nodded, glancing up at the tower then back to the pond. “That water is...”

“Magical?”

“Sure. Why not? That makes as much sense as everything else in this place. All I know is I can't stop staring at it.”

Paul hunched forward to get a better look. “Yeah, man. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

“Whatever he's taking from the children – whatever he took from
us
– is what's filling that pond. Cog can't stand being around it. But he fills it up for his precious master and mistress anyway.”

Paul toweled off his hair, fully alert now. “Son of a bitch. If we can't get what we want, they shouldn't get what they want either.”

Malcolm's heart pounded with what he said next. “I think I know a way we can make that happen.”

Paul leaned closer. “What do you mean?”

“We make him choose. One of us goes for the pond and the other goes for the girls' rooms where we came in.”

“Okay… and?”

“He has to pick what's most important to him. Whatever he picks makes him look like an idiot when his masters come home.”

“Assuming they come home.”

Malcolm nodded. “Yeah. I don't see what other choice we have.”

“What do we do when – if – we get to one of those places?”

“Grab Nora and her friend. Maybe she'll know another way out. If she doesn't, bring her back in here and go for the doors she was talking about before.”

Paul shrugged. “Leave our lives in the hands of a five-year-old. Yeah, sure. Why not?” Then his face broke out into a huge smile. His eyes were still a little hazy, covered in a layer of confusion from the tank he hadn't shaken off, but the man Malcolm came down here with was back. He reached out a hand. “It's been a hell of a run, man. Whatever happens.”

Malcolm took Paul's hand and shook it. He even smiled. “Agreed. You remember where the door is?”

Paul nodded. “I'm looking at it right now.”

“Run like hell and don't look back. No matter what you hear. On my count.” They unwrapped their towels and left them heaped on the ground. Then they stood side by side with one hand on the base of the tower. Their bodies tightened, prepared to uncoil like sprinters off the blocks.

“One.”

Deep breath.

“Two.”

Hold it.

“
Three
.”

The ground rushed by as Malcolm sent his legs into motion. Paul ran next to him, arms pumping, sucking air into empty lungs. He broke away and made for the far side of the girls' playground. Then it was just Malcolm thumping across that empty patch of dirt.

A scream broke the silence.

Malcolm pushed his body faster. He fixed his eyes on the row of gleaming tanks and the golden specks between them. The tortured servant screamed again. This time he didn't stop. The screaming grew louder as the ground vibrated, coughing up a cloud of dust. Malcolm kept sprinting. He didn't look back. Those were the same tremors Cog made earlier when he'd jumped from the tower.

He was on the ground now, and moving fast.

The tanks rose up in front of him, but every time he stretched out his arms he couldn't quite reach them. The sparkling glass teased him, a mirage in this strange desert of packed dirt.

The harder he ran the slower time went.

Lungs burning. Eyes tear-soaked and sticky from the tank fluid. Sweat and hope falling off his gaunt frame with every step. Yet faster and faster he pushed in this fool's sprint.

“
No!
”

The air from that scream tickled Malcolm's neck. Dirt clumps sprayed up and struck the back of his legs. From behind him a lame leg shuffled across the ground while a good one thudded.

Shuffle. Thud. Shuffle thud shuffle
.

Then the fabric on his jumpsuit was being stretched, and he could hear the man's nostrils flaring like a racehorse halfway around the track. The mark on his cheek shined in the corner of Malcolm's eye, burned the back of his neck.

“No,” Cog said again, his voice hardly rising above a whisper. His breath caught in his throat.

Then the pounding feet stopped.

Malcolm looked over his shoulder and found him in midair. His hands were out, his head forward, his face set in a demented smile. Malcolm veered to the left, using his arms like rudders to steady himself in a struggle against momentum.

His feet skidded across the dirt and left him somewhere beside the tanks. Somehow he'd left Cog in a heap right in front of them. But that heap was gathering itself quickly, spitting out dirt and curses as it propped up onto its elbows.

Malcolm turned away. His eyes settled on the patch of vegetation surrounded by all the brown. There. His feet carried him down the slope, half running, half falling. Golden flecks appeared as he ran closer, rippling in the light.

The pond. That beautiful pond.

His arms pumped so fast they nearly pulled his shoulders out of their sockets. Down the incline he went, until dirt turned into grass and the wraith behind him filled the chamber with its terrible scream.

A hand reached out. It jerked the back of his jumpsuit and twisted him sideways. Malcolm kept moving, dipped his shoulder until the jumpsuit fell away. He turned forward in his t-shirt and underwear, and this time he jumped through a rosebush before that hand could grab him again. Thorns raked his sides and left a hundred cuts, but Malcolm's eyes were elsewhere.

They were on the golden pond.

He jumped in as soon as he reached the edge.

It sucked the pain and despair right out of him. The terrible room faded, and then it was only him and that liquid. He floated in its warm embrace, closing his eyes and tucking his hands behind his head.

Something screamed behind him. But it died off when Malcolm laughed at it. He opened his eyes into tiny slits and looked at the hazy figure standing on the pond's edge. The man there was just a shell – a bogeyman under a child's bed. All of the fangs and horror evaporated under the golden light.

Malcolm laughed for a long time as he luxuriated in the pond. It wasn't water that surrounded him, but a thicker liquid with a consistency like honey. His skin didn't stick to it as much as
absorb
it, soaking up its warmth. He dipped his head under and bobbed back to the surface.

Forever seemed like a long time, but not so long in this pond. Malcolm could stay here until time forgot him – float while generations came and went and continents rearranged themselves…

The girl made him open his eyes.

She was crying again, sending salt tears down his face and diluting the golden liquid. But these tears felt different somehow. Happy? Maybe Paul was collecting Nora and her friend from their beds, about to take them back into the playroom.