"He can guess all he wants to."
"You're a dead man, Kendry."
"Sharon! I love you!"
"By the time I let him in here again—"
"Sharon, I'm sorry we didn't have time!"
We're looking for heaven.
Venom spurts into the wound, into and around the atoms. There is more pain. His atoms sting, swell, and throb. He can feel the venom, as hot and corrosive as acid, searing his atoms as it moves, seeps through the spaces where his limbs used to be. It is soaking into his space-body, inexorably heading for his brain. His atoms suddenly begin to vibrate in unison, producing low, booming chime sounds that steadily rise in pitch and volume until at last they are beyond hearing.
Then the venom fills his skull, soaking his brain, and he explodes soundlessly in a cloud of electric blue.
Chapter 23
______________________________
He erupted through a veil of electric blue consciousness to find himself lying on the ground on his back staring up at the night sky through lines of steel that were the bars forming the roof of his cage. His entire body was clenched in a seizure that was virtually epileptic; his hands flopped back and forth in front of his face and occasionally shot out to bang against the bars on either side of him; his knees knocked together, and the back of his head beat a syncopated tattoo against the ground. However, even in the midst of the neurological storm that was raging through his body, Veil noticed that his vision and thoughts seemed remarkably clear. It was as though he had somehow been anesthetized against the physical and mental agony he had been experiencing. He was still thirsty beyond any degree he could have previously imagined, but this need for water no longer crowded everything else out of his mind; he felt like some flesh-and-blood tuning fork vibrating, aglow, with raw energy and ready to fly apart.
And his right shoulder still hurt.
The needle pain he had felt had been just that, Veil thought—a needle. Somebody had given him a hot shot of a drug powerful enough to make him feel as if he could literally burst out of his cage, even as he flayed his skin and broke his bones in the process.
Then the seizure passed. Veil lay still for a few moments, sucking the cool night air into his wracked, dry lungs and staring at the stars. Finally he let his right hand drop to his side, and his fingers touched something soft. He rolled over in the cramped space and got up on his knees. Beside him were a large canteen, a neatly folded jumpsuit dyed in a camouflage pattern, and a leather pouch fastened at the top with a drawstring that was a thin leather thong.
The door to his cage was propped open with a stick.
With shaking hands, Veil struggled frantically to unscrew the top of the canteen. He finally managed to get the cap off, then straightened up so fast that he banged his head on the bars above him. He rolled over on his left side, lifted the canteen, and let the cool water pour into his mouth and splash over his face. Although he knew better, he swallowed the water in great, heaving gulps, and could not stop until his belly was painfully bloated and he vomited. There was plenty of water left, though, and he forced himself to wait for a minute or two, then lifted the canteen to his lips and drank more sparingly. When he felt his belly beginning to swell, he took the canteen away from his mouth. He shook it to reassure himself that there was still water left, then—despite the conviction that he could drink water steadily for a week without being sated—screwed the cap back on. The drug— which Veil assumed was some kind of super-amphetamine and which had probably been developed at the Army complex— and the water had carried him past his most immediate physical crisis.
He considered the possibility that Parker's gut abhorrence of torture had finally gotten the best of the colonel, and the stimulant, clothes, and water were merely Parker's invitation to him to go out into the night to be shot by some Mamba with a Sniperscope. He decided that it was unlikely; if Parker hail wanted to back down from his challenge to Veil's life, there would then be no sense in killing him. There were other means of interrogation, principally chemical. In any case, Veil thought, the question of who was responsible for his sudden deliverance, and why it was being offered, was resoundingly irrelevant. He was definitely not going to hang around any longer to brood over it. He picked up the clothes, pouch, and canteen, and crawled through the narrow steel aperture to freedom.
Feeling as if he would take off and fly away if he did not concentrate on staying grounded, Veil ran low and hard through the moon-shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, streaking across the dirt practice field used by the Mambas to the riverbank. He set the articles he was carrying down in the tall, thick grass, then rolled down the steep incline of the bank into the river. This time he was prepared for the gelid punch of the water, and the agony of sudden, icy cold branding burned flesh was bittersweet; it hurt in every fiber of his being, but the torment was also a ringing affirmation that he was still alive, and free.
He could also drink all of this water he wanted to— something he proceeded to do while he anchored himself against the swift-moving current by grabbing hold of naked roots that jutted from the dirt bank.
Still not completely sated but comfortable, Veil pulled himself out of the water and crawled up the bank. He dried himself off with clumps of grass, then dressed in the jumpsuit, which proved to be lightweight but warm. He felt lightheaded now but still bursting with energy which he knew was false, artificially induced by the powerful drug. Already he had begun to think ahead, trying to plan; he knew he must eventually "crash" as the price to be paid for this energy, and possibly crash very hard. He had to find a safe place to land.
Kneeling on the ground, he loosened the top of the leather pouch and spilled its contents out on the grass. There were at least two dozen sinewy strips of beef jerky coated with a flexible, transparent gel that Veil assumed was a high-concentrate protein and vitamin supplement. There was a tube of an antibiotic, anesthetic skin cream; several packets of coarse-textured brown tablets that were unlabeled and individually wrapped in cellophane; and his .38—loaded.
He stripped off the jumpsuit, smeared salve from the tube on his burned face and body. The sunburn pain began to go away almost immediately as the cream dissolved into his skin. He dressed again, put his revolver in a shoulder pocket of the jumpsuit, then replaced the other items in the bag and drew the drawstring tight. After refilling his canteen he began walking inland, keeping low in the tall grass along the riverbank. Although he knew he was leaving a trail that could be easily followed by almost anyone, his most immediate concern was the danger of being spotted through a Sniper-scope or infrared binoculars; it would certainly not be long before he was missed.
He had an ally in the camp, Veil thought—perhaps. He would take nothing for granted any longer in this strange place, these mountains and this valley, haunted by one man's bizarre obsession. Since, to Parker, it was evident that Veil would die before he told the "truth," it had occurred to Veil that the officer had decided to use him as fodder in a Mamba training exercise.
But a loaded .38 made him rather dangerous fodder. Mambas might be able to snatch many things out of the air, but they didn't catch bullets.
Whatever the reason for his freedom, Veil thought, the fact of the matter was that he was free. Now he had to decide what to do with that freedom. He had no idea of how far the compound extended inland, and his only purpose now was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the main installation while he waited to see what the side effects of the drug would be. Then he would have to avoid capture while he tried to figure out a way of getting back to the main Institute complex, assuming that was what he wanted to do, and he was not at all certain that it was. Somehow managing to get out of the Army compound and back to the hospice or Institute was an escape, but not a solution. He would be left back where he had started. After his thirsty conversations with Parker, Veil was convinced that the Army compound was where the answers to his questions lay. The trick was not to die from an overdose of action.