The interrogator approached. Kowalski was hanging high enough so that his nipples were at eye level with the interrogator.
“Let me ask once more for the record,” he said.
“Sure,” Kowalski said.
“Where’s Lucia Black?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes!”
The interrogator moved in with the knife. Predictably, he immediately started trying to spread Kowalski’s legs. Going for the anal cavity. The interrogator gestured to the guards. “Grab a leg, each of you.”
This was going to hurt.
Not the anal cavity.
His mouth.
Specifically, pushing the tooth out of his gumline again.
It was going to really hurt.
The interrogator had been right. Kowalski had been spinning him a line of bullshit, ever since the stuff about the banquet room, after Lucia Black had announced she’d reprogrammed Proximity.
Sadly, that last part was true.
Vanessa had been turned into a walking, talking killing machine.
But what Kowalski hadn’t mentioned was that he’d grabbed Lucia before she could run away.
Vanessa had bolted, yes. She had driven away and inadvertently killed seventeen people. Many of them American tourists. It was not pretty. Kowalski wasn’t going to lie to himself.
He couldn’t imagine the horrors taking place in her mind.
She was still shell-shocked over the adulterers she’d slaughtered.
But instead of searching for Vanessa, Kowalski had attacked the problem at the root. He took Lucia Black and applied his signature move: arm around her neck until she was unconscious.
She woke up an hour later, strapped to a dentist’s chair.
A chair belonging to Kowalski’s Mexican dentist friend, who was just gearing up for a long tequila-fueled night.
Kowalski told him not to worry. He’d take it from here.
First he kissed Lucia. Deeply.
He wanted to get those Proximity-eating nanites into his own system.
Then he settled in for some real work.
Lucia resisted for a while. But by the time Kowalski was finished with the drill, she was not only ready to deactivate the nanites in Vanessa’s bloodstream and tell Kowalski how to repro-gram Proximity from her handheld, but perfectly willing to reveal the formula for Coke as well as the eleven herbs and spices in Kentucky Fried Chicken.
She spilled everything.
Even how her brother used to finger her in secret when they were kids.
Kowalski thanked her, then smothered her with a wet towel. Figured that was doing her a favor. Later, he’d cut off her head, tell them it was her. Vanessa. Their mysterious blonde, now a redhead.
The real Vanessa did call the hotel near dawn, crying and ready to end it all, even though she didn’t have a gun. Kowalski was glad she didn’t remember the grenade launcher in the trunk of the Taurus.
After Kowalski assured her she was safe, and unable to kill anyone else, they met up again. They talked. They made plans. They used Lucia’s handheld device to do a little reprogramming of their own. They figured out a way to end this, for good.
For good, at least for now.
Make them suffer a little in return.
They visited Kowalski’s dentist again, who by this point had mostly sobered up.
“You want me to do what?” he asked.
He was intoxicated enough to do it anyway.
Kowalski finally worked the tooth free, then spat it out.
The interrogator smirked. “Come on now. I haven’t even touched your face.”
Kowalski smiled. Revealing the small trigger mechanism he’d had implanted in his gum. A tiny LED in the middle of the trigger pulsed red.
Blink blink
Blink blink
The trigger would tell Proximity to reprogram the nanites in his bloodstream.
But not to kill at ten feet. Kowalski and Vanessa had discussed that, and decided it wasn’t enough. So they used Lucia’s handheld device to reprogram the distance to, oh, say, quarter of a mile. In all directions.
I’m going to let myself be captured, Kowalski had told her. And then, when Ym sure all of the rats are in one place, and I know what they know … they’re dead. Every last one of them.
The interrogator stared at Kowalski’s mouth, dumbstruck, but at the last moment he seemed to get it. Not everything, of course. Just the idea that yes, Kowalski had indeed outthought them every step of the way. And yes, they were all about to die. Every last one of them.
Kowalski depressed the trigger with his tongue.
“Good-bye,” he said.
The guards dropped first, followed by the interrogator. They were all screaming. Kowalski counted to nine in his mind, and then …
Yeah.
Twin sprays of red.
Then a third.
Kowalski swung his body back and forth until he had enough momentum to hurl himself up and slip the chain from the hook.
He landed on his feet.
First thing he did was walk to a corner and take the most satisfying leak of his life.
Then he checked out the rest of the facility.
There was one guy still alive. He represented the freaky 1 percent who remained uninfected by Proximity.
That was okay.
Kowalski gutted him with the interrogator’s Pampered Chef knife. It really was pretty fucking sharp.
Everyone else was dead.
Fortunately, his brother-in-law wasn’t among them. They must have shipped him off to a different secret prison facility. Or maybe he was already in the field. Wouldn’t surprise him. CI-6 loved to rush things.
Kowalski kept a loose count as he walked through the facility. He was into the low fifties before he stopped. A lot of dead bodies. More than he thought he’d ever see.
And all of them redheads now.
The rest was routine. A burning of the last twelve hours of surveillance video. A gathering of research files. Some borrowed clothes. Weapons. Key cards. Water. Food. The interrogator’s little knife.
Kowalski left the facility. He pushed the trigger in his gum, turning off the killer nanite effect. There was no need anymore.
It was still early morning in Pennsylvania mountain country. The air was bitter cold. Not even the sun was enough to warm you up. A rainstorm had passed through recently, so Kowalski’s borrowed boots sunk into the chilly mud a bit with every step. It felt nice to stretch his muscles like this again. Too much time in planes, in cars, on rooftops. He liked that he had a walk ahead of him.
Kowalski walked and enjoyed the cool air and thought about Vanessa. Thought about how they parted ways.
For good.
I’m not like you, she’d told him. I’m no monster. You can do this. I can’t. I mean, I did for a while. But not anymore.
I want my life back.
That’s when Kowalski kissed her, deeply, giving her what he’d stolen from Lucia. A kiss from the monster Prince Charming.
You’ve got your life back, he said.
Don’t try to find me, she said.
I won’t, he said.
After a few hours of wandering he sat down by the side of a road and opened an oatmeal bar he’d taken from the snackroom.
Yes, even secret government prisons had snackrooms.
Kowalski enjoyed a brown sugar and cinnamon oatmeal bar. It was the first real food he’d eaten in a long while. But a chunk of oat got caught between a tooth and the trigger mechanism. He tried pushing it out with his tongue; nothing doing.