“What is it?” Hardie asked.
Yankee looked at him. “He said…good-bye?”
Whiskey nodded. “Oui,” she said. “Au revoir.”
* * *
Next came the hissing from every air vent in the facility.
To Hardie, it was precisely like that moment in a nightmare when you realize that everything is not going to be all right.
That you are falling toward an unforgiving piece of concrete and you are not going to be rescued.
Your body is going to hit the ground and your blood will explode out of your useless body.
There is nothing you can do about it. There is no one to save you.
Hardie and his fellow inmates—because surely they were all inmates now—scrambled out of the room. No thoughts of fighting now; it was time for flight.
And the gas—visible as a fine, foglike mist—followed them.
Hardie nearly tripped over his cane on the way out of the room. He grabbed it, figuring if things got really bad, maybe he could shock himself unconscious to avoid the choking and vomiting and dying.
Stop it. Keep your head. There’s an escape out of this prison, right, Batman? You’ve just got to come up with it right now. In the next two seconds.
Or you and everyone in this room will DIE.
(No pressure.)
The other inmates began to drop—that is, the ones who weren’t already knocked unconscious. Hardie felt something tug at the back of his jacket. Eve. Pulling him toward her.
Hardie would have asked Eve what she was doing, but he didn’t dare open his mouth. Instead he stumbled behind her, leg-cane, leg-cane, trying to keep up, feeling like an asshole because she had to practically drag him along the row of cells. There was retching and coughing all around them. Hardie stumbled. Eve slipped her hands under his arms, pulled him back to his feet. He could hear her grunting. He screamed at his legs to work, already. Then they were moving again, across the cement floor. The gas was spreading. Hardie’s brain went woozy. Where was she leading him?
When Hardie heard the squeaky creaking of the door, he finally got it. The showers.
He felt the patter of hard water drops against his suit jacket, Eve’s hands over his back, his chest. Hardie did the same, brushing her back, her shoulders, her breasts, feeling strange for touching her, even in this situation.
You couldn’t consider this adultery—not in a secret prison where you were desperately trying not to die…could you?
Kendra, I can explain everything.
Hardie’s head felt dizzy, as if someone were choking him and cutting off the supply of blood to his brain. He started to panic and stopped brushing Eve and started clutching at his chest, then pounding his breastbone, as if he could simply will his heart to continue to pump despite what the poison gas was telling it to do. He dropped to his knees, facing the drain, and some part of his brain that was still firing neurons—
(Find the way out yet, Batman?)
—thought it almost funny, staring into a drain as you are circling it…
And then it happened.
He thought of the way out.
Fuck you, Batman, Boy Wonder, and the rest of Gotham City, because I finally figured it out.
The drain.
THE MOTHERFUCKING DRAIN!
Hardie put his lips against her ear. “Help me.” But Eve didn’t understand until he guided her hands over to the drain.
The drain, which led to the steel room containing Prisoner Zero.
The grunting moron, who, Hardie now realized, was the mysterious Prisonmaster.
They wormed through the passageway in silence. They didn’t dare breathe, not until they put enough distance between themselves and the poison. When they reached the steel anteroom where Hardie had been trapped (weeks? months ago?), Eve had to help up him to his feet. Hardie was proud, though. He’d managed to hang on to his cane.
“So you’re thinking that Zero is the Prisonmaster,” Eve said.
“There’s no poison gas back here,” Hardie said. “The Prisonmaster has to be someone who’s nearby at all times, who can gauge situations as they evolve. Who better than the guy right next door? Who conveniently doesn’t speak or move? Who has the guards take care of his every need?”
“Can’t argue with your thinking. But…he’s missing limbs, for Christ’s sake. He does nothing but grunt.”
“Ten bucks he’s got a phone under that mask and can speak just fine.”
They both stared at the steel door.
“Are you ready?” Hardie asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“We’re going to have to force this open somehow.”
“Well, I didn’t think this would be easy.”
Eve was stunned, then, to have the door slide open at first pull. Fluorescent lights now provided erratic bursts of illumination. Both Eve and Hardie could see the interior of the chamber in little half-second microbursts. They could see that Prisoner Zero was waiting for them.
Even though he was blind, his head was twisted to the right, and he seemed to be staring right at them.
* * *
“How are ya, pal?” Hardie said.
Zero, face still hidden by the mask, merely lay there on his rusty bed. Staring at them. Immobile.
“Sure, keep playing the mute now.”
Zero said nothing.
“You know the way out of here,” Eve said.
“Do you really think he’s going to tell us that?” Hardie asked.
“We’re going to make him tell us.”
“Guh-huh-huh-huh-huh.”
“Okay, that’s it, take off his mask,” Hardie said to Eve, and then to the prone form of Prisoner Zero: “You try anything, I will light you up.”
Eve reached around and unfastened the straps behind Prisoner Zero’s head. There was no lock. When the metal mask came loose it made a wet, peeling sound, then revealed a ghastly yet boyish face. Impossibly pale skin. Eyes sealed shut under a waxlike mass of scars.
“Oh, God,” Eve said.
Zero’s mouth opened slightly, revealed rotted teeth, lips curled into a parody of a smile.
“Guh-huh-HUH. Guh-huh-HOOOO.”
“Quit the act,” Hardie said, trying not to shudder. The man was an absolute mess. “I know you can speak. Pretending is not going to help you.”
“Guh-huh-huhhhhhhh…”
“Okay, asshole,” Hardie said, but actually only managed to speak the first syllable (maybe) before something hot and vicious jumped up through the soles of his feet and made impact in the general vicinity of his testicles.
Hardie smelled burned hair and was already on the floor when he realized that someone was speaking to them. He rolled over and saw a beefy form hanging from the support beams overhead—a prisoner in a metal mask.
Horsehead.
25
Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on.
—Instructions to participants in the July 1961 Milgram experiment
HORSEHEAD TOLD THEM, in perfect English:
“Prisoner Zero is not faking. He lost the ability to speak a few years ago. The words are all in his head, but they get lost on the way to his mouth. Not sure why. Could be the number of electric shocks he’s received. Or something else altogether.”
Hardie realized that the metal floor was electrified in here, just like the floors of the cells. Wired for punishment. Nonlethal, of course. Nothing in this facility could actually kill you. Just make you wish you were dead.