Zundergrub stepped forward as Razor tried getting me to my feet in vain. “They will stay on. Leave him on the floor,” he said, walking toward us.
“Why don’t you go outside?” the doctor suggested to Razor.
“Outside? Why?” Razor said, from comforting to manic in a heartbeat.
“Malleus, Spectra, escort him down the hall.”
Two figures moved closer, and Razor slipped away, in an instant beyond the range of my vision.
“Zundergrub,” I said, but it only sounded like a croak. “If you’ve hurt her–”
“You will what?” he taunted. “You can’t even stand.”
He knelt next to me, grabbing my hair and pulling it back. “You should see yourself,” he said, laughing. Then he turned to one of his cronies. “Get the power dampeners ready, I want to leave this place at once.” The doctor released me and stepped back as someone came beside me, taking off the manacles. It was the woman who had taken the tube.
“What are you doing?” Zundergrub asked once the first one had come off, freeing my fingers.
“The power dampeners go around his wrists and neck,” she said. “I can’t put them on with those things on his hands.”
Zundergrub bristled but he watched the procedure unfold. The woman took off the second manacle and tried wrapping the dampener around my freed left arm. I felt the cold metal of the manacle go around my wrist, stopping short of clicking into place. The woman tried maneuvering the unyielding metal at different angles, but the cuff wouldn’t settle into its latch.
“These are too small,” she complained.
“Get the proper size, damn you!” Zundergrub said.
I started laughing then. It was fear, sure. Fear because I knew he was coming to kill me and I was helpless. Fear for Apogee as well, since he undoubtedly had her already, maybe even among the shadows that crowded the room. Worse still, I was desperately afraid that this was the real world. That Zundergrub wasn’t just alive, but that he was here, with me, in Utopia prison. I laughed harder because Shard World had felt real, the Lady’s Nightmare had felt real, Aryani had felt real. But despite all of that, the pirate ships and alien princesses, none of it had the stark, believable reality of Zundergrub breaking into the world’s most impregnable prison to kill me. It was concrete evidence, but it was also something comical about watching the doctor and his team fumbling around. His first mistake had been to include my old friend Razorman, but then again, how could they know that he was my friend? The funniest thing, though, was watching the rest of his team getting everything wrong, from dropping me on the floor to the failure with the manacles. My laughter was hoarse and spotty, tinged with tears and weeping.
“Pathetic,” Zundergrub spat. “To think I went to all this trouble for this. It’s hardly worth it.”
Someone spoke to him and he waved it off. I found it odd that I could see him as clearly as I could, and everyone else was so obscured like dimmed figures outside of the light.
I tried to stop crying, but my body seemed to be enjoying the racking anguish, the skipping of my muscles as they returned to functionality, though in my present condition, I would be long dead before I could defend myself.
That was it, wasn’t it? That was the trick. I wasn’t dead yet. He hadn’t walked up to me in my hibernation cell and just killed me. No, he’d woken me, torn me from whatever the hell Utopia was doing to me so he could gloat and monologue, and with every moment, I could feel my senses waking up, unused muscles coming back to life. I had to stall him.
“You killed Cool Hand, you destroyed Haha,” I said, whimpering with a renewed sense of purpose. “They were your friends.”
Zundergrub laughed. “I killed them, yes, and I’m only getting started. I’m going to end your world, Blackjack. I’m going to kill your beloved Apogee when I get my hands on her.”
His threats should have horrified me, but my heart jumped and raced upon hearing he hadn’t captured her yet. I wept unabashed, ashamed that I wouldn’t be there to help her against this monster.
“You know what’s interesting, Blackjack? My plans don’t involve you at all. In fact, this whole affair has slowed their progress considerably. I thought I would be content knowing you would be stuck down here, eventually to die of hunger when the power went out. You meant nothing