happening, but we know the Nymar organism evolves quickly in response to the unique situations of its host. Since we’ve got you here and you resisted the drugs to put you back under again, we’ll run our experiments while you’re awake.”
“When did I refuse anesthesia?” Cole asked while he was stood up and strapped into the gurney. “Seriously! I’ll take whatever painkillers you’ve got.”
“Relax, Cole. This should only take another hour or two.” Once Waylon’s subject was completely tied down and surrounded by armed guards, he said, “Get the drills.”
A door opened at the back of the room and something was wheeled out. Cole spent the short amount of time preparing himself to stay awake and keep his fists clenched tightly enough to keep his palms secure. When he caught his first glimpse of the little handheld drills on the cart that was wheeled to his table, keeping his fists clenched wasn’t much of a concern. The motor of the first drill sounded like a smaller version of a hydraulic tool used to remove bolts from a car’s wheel.
“Someone get him a towel,” Waylon said.
Cole needed his hands to remain dirty until he got back to his cell. If that wasn’t allowed to happen and his palms were examined too carefully, all of the pain he’d suffered would count for squat.
When the tech stepped up to his side holding one of the prison’s threadbare towels, Waylon said, “Good, now stuff it in his mouth.”
As the tech pushed the towel in, he made sure he was still able to see Cole’s teeth. The drill gouged into his shoulder smoothly, but squealed when it hit bone. Agony shot through Cole’s entire body and he nearly bit all the way through the towel as he screamed into it. Waylon looked pleased as his subject thrashed against his restraints and the machines recorded every moment of Cole’s ordeal.
Chapter Eight
Eighteen hours later
Sixty-five miles northeast of Atoka, Oklahoma
Paige hadn’t been eager to make the call to Prophet regarding the Amriany, but it proved to be a gamble worth taking. Not only had the European hunters agreed to extract her within hours after she contacted them, but they’d flown into a private strip at Buffalo-Niagara International Airport and took off before the engines of their Gulfstream G200 had a chance to cool.
The inside of the jet looked like a smaller version of the waiting room Paige had haunted while waiting for the Amriany to arrive. It was sparsely furnished, smelled of stale cigarette smoke, and vibrated with the hum of engines. Three of the ten seats in the cabin were occupied. She sat near one of the windows, angling her chair so she could watch the other passengers. Two of them had worked with Cole, Rico, and Prophet in Denver. The third was a short man plagued by a constant twitch in his right eye. His olive-colored skin was deeply tanned and marred by scars of all shapes and sizes, some of which were deep enough to interrupt the flow of a short, curly beard. The largest scar ran along his left cheek and down his chin. If Cole had been there, Paige thought, he’d make a comment about how the bush on the scarred man’s face would have looked more natural between the Gypsy’s legs. She laughed quietly, reminding herself to call the Amriany by their proper name.
“What is so funny?” the man with the bush on his face asked.
Paige shook her head. “Nothing. Just trying to pop my ears. We took off so fast that I barely had a chance to grab onto something.”
“You said you were in a hurry.”
“Right, but I didn’t expect you guys to come so quickly.”
“If you could have waited, you should have said something,” the man said impatiently. “There is a lot to do and we don’t need to waste time picking up Americans who are too cheap to pay for a goddamn ticket.”
Before the man could get any more riled up, he was shoved back into his seat by a firm hand that slapped his shoulder several times. The woman attached to that hand kept her short brown hair beneath a leather skullcap. Her pointy nose dominated an otherwise fragile-looking face. “We’re still on schedule, Milosh,” she said. “Paige will prove to be worth the diversion.”
“She’d better,” Milosh scowled through his beard. From there, he pulled a long blade from a scabbard at his waist and began polishing the gleaming steel with a cloth that reeked of oils smelling