Chapter 21

21.
                                                                     
         “You’d best hope that those don’t crawl over and strangle you in your sleep,” Brown said glumly, staring at the stumps that were now his wrists. A metal covering of sorts had been fashioned and now covered where his hands had been. Experimentally he clanged them lightly together, causing an off key ringing noise to reverberate throughout the small room.
         Across the room, sitting on the bed, his forearms resting on his knees, hands clasped together, Valreck stared at the other man, his face unreadable. Brown was slumped in the corner, his dark clothing nearly blending into with the layered shadows in the back of the room, his back wedged into the corner, his knees drawn up loosely to his chest. His arms were resting on his knees and over his eyes stared out over his legs. Brown’s face was still mottled with bruises and the old marks of dried blood was very apparent, as well as nearly two days worth of dirt and grime. He looked tired, although when he stared back at Valreck over his knees, there was more defiance in that gaze than fear, or capitulation.
         “We considered that, actually,” Valreck said, trying to sound conversational. There can be a resolution to this. We just need them to see things our way. It can be done. “The appendages were burned, and the ashes scattered as far away as possible.” The metal stubs shone faintly in what little light there was, and Valreck had to suppress a shudder at the sight. He hadn’t thought they’d be able to do it without killing him, but Maleth told them how to telekinetically keep pressure on the blood vessels until they had clotted sufficiently and sealed themselves. The man had screamed the entire time, and Valreck had wanted to become sick more than once during the procedure. Stains of dried splashes of blood still lingered on the walls. Feeling on edge, Valreck found himself forming coherent images out of the abstract figures. One reminded him of a broken face, turned away so the features couldn’t been seen, contorted in endless sobbing. He found he couldn’t stop looking at it. For some reason, it kept reminding him of someone he had once known. He didn’t know why.
         Brown sniffed, shrugging half heartedly at the news. “Hey, easy come, easy go.” He absent mindedly went to scratch, but stopped before he could complete the motion. Glancing again at the metal tip on his arm, he frowned and said, “They’ll grow back, you know.”
         Maleth had performed the cutting, her blank eyed proxy never flinching once, even as the man had thrashed and shouted, even when blood soaked her clothes, marked her face, not even blinking when a sliver of bone had flown free and scraped a thin red line across her cheek, just under her eye. Afterwards, when it was over, she had merely smiled at Valreck and left. There had been blood on her teeth. Valreck didn’t know how it had gotten there.
         “Perhaps,” Valreck replied, raising his eyebrows, trying not to be surprised at the man’s nonchalance. “But we can always remove them again. Among other things.” The threat wasn’t all bluff. His neck was still stiff from where the man had tried to choke him. Even now, he kept expecting the man to launch himself across the room, bludgeoning him into oblivion. He hadn’t thought the Time Patrol could look so . . . ordinary. Yet he had been thrown off a two story building, and survived. His hands had been severed, and he had survived. Not only lived, but recovered, and far more quickly than anyone had a right to do. Sometimes the utterly fantastic hides behind the mundane. That is what makes it so startling.
         Brown only shrugged again, his face betraying nothing. There hardly seemed to even be any anger there. “I should have expected that, I guess. I assume this means I’m officially your prisoner, or do you folks like mutilating people purely for kicks?”
         “You’ve tried to escape, several times already. This is merely to dissuade you.” Valreck felt like he was trying to cajole the man to stay. Next thing he knew he would be taking the man on a tour and showing him the sights and scenery. He had to regain control of the conversation swiftly, or risk it turning into two men making vague threats at each other without much benefit, or even worse, a banal discussion about nothing at all.
         Brown gave a cold laugh. “Buddy, I’m not here by choice. That makes me a prisoner. Escaping is my prerogative. It’s almost expected of me, I would be remiss if I didn’t perform my duty and try.” His eyes narrowed. “Besides, one of these times I might just succeed. Then, where will you be?”
         “I do not think that would be in your best interests.”
         “And getting my hands removed was?” His laugh was jagged, almost making Valreck wince. “Best interests have been a foreign country for me since I set foot in this place. You and your friends have seen to that.”
         “None of this would be necessary if you would simply cooperate with us . . .” Valreck said, doing his best to avoid sounding exasperated. This verbal feinting was tiring, trying to say what you wanted without saying anything at all. He wished he had thought to record this conversation somehow, he kept getting the sense he was missing something important. It was an uncomfortable sensation, yet one he was slowly getting used to. Events have not been under my control for a long time now, regardless of what we were once told. Why should the present pretend to be any different?
         “How many of you are there?” Brown asked, steamrolling over Valreck’s inquiry and acting like he hadn’t said anything. He shifted, grimacing as he tried to find a comfortable position. “So far there’s you , the short fellow who thought I could fly, the woman who should have just asked me to put a new window in, and the mute lady who wants to be amateur surgeon.” His face registered puzzlement for a second and then he tapped his head, smiling grimly at Valreck. “And, oh yes, I don’t believe I forgot about him . . .” his eyes became hard things, almost glinting in the darkness, “that bastard who killed all of my men. Regardless of how I get out of here, he’s mine. I want him to know that.” Smiling more pleasantly, he crossed his arms at the wrists and draped them over his legs. “I count five, then. Am I close?”
         Valreck only stared dispassionately at him. Brown returned the gaze with equal intensity, almost daring Valreck to step closer, to attack him again, with the veiled promise that somehow, this time, it would be different. Finally, he said, his voice steady, he said, “You’ve used the word men a few times already. That implies troops . . . soldiers.” He scraped off a stray bit of dirt on his fingernail before looking up at Brown. “You’re from the Time Patrol, aren’t you?”
         Brown only smiled, tapped his metallic stubs together to make the sound of a broken bell. “Never heard of them. They some kind of police, or something? Sure is a goofy name, though. What would be the point in patrolling Time, hm?”
         “Indeed,” Valreck agreed slowly, never taking his eyes off the other man. The darkness and his lack of movement made it hard to read him, to gauge his emotions, his state of mind. He wasn’t so much a blank slate as a window frosted over, the outlines apparent but blurred, shapes and colors bleeding into each other without any strong delineations. Valreck had sent tentative probes into his mind, but he might as well have been finding warmth in the emptiness of space itself. It was just a void, a negative image erased in reverse. Nothing there. Nothing at all. “One might think they would be far better at . . . effecting change, perhaps through force, perhaps through . . . other means.”
         “You give your fairy tales a lot of ambition. Why would they want to do that? That’s the job of the madmen of the world. I can’t see them being affiliated with those types, or any , for that matter.”
         “No affiliation does not imply the lack of an agenda. Perhaps their perspective, broad as it is, would give them a better chance of knowing how things should be run, and their position might allow them to . . . ensure events proceed the way they wish.”
         “That so?” Brown asked, sliding his boots along the floor, trying to adjust his posture against the wall. “This Time Patrol still isn’t ringing any bells . . . but that talk of change sure reminds me of someone I knew.” There was a muted danger to his tone. “He didn’t end up so well, if you know what I mean. Ambition sometimes is a bit overrated. Sometimes people learn that lesson. Sometimes . . . the learning isn’t so pleasant.” His voice never slid out of the deadened drone it was caught in. It might as well have been static, filling the spaces the silence left behind.
         Mandras. Valreck felt a chill run through him. But does he know? What happened to him, and the rest of them? It wouldn’t do to question him directly. “Yes, sometimes ambition can . . . blind you. That’s true. And when that happens, I know, you can’t convince someone to abandon the path they’re on . . . all you can do, in the end . . . is walk away.” The words were far truer than he wished to admit. But he wanted this man to see.
         “I can understand that,” Brown replied, nodding in agreement. “It’s very smart. And I can see . . . how sometimes you might be nervous because even after you’ve walked away the . . . let’s say the stink of ambition still covers you, even though it’s not yours and . . . it could make you uneasy, right? Agitated? Prone to lashing out, shall we say? At total strangers? For no reason at all?” The man’s grin was utterly insincere but streaked with a kind of menace that made Valreck wonder who was trapped with who.
         “We have our reasons for doing what we do,” Valreck said sharply.
         “I’m sure you folks do . . .” Brown said easily, rolling his shoulders into a casual shrug. “I mean, whatever it is you’ve done, it must be worth this . . . aggression-“
         ”Why is the Time Patrol here?” Valreck nearly shouted, rising up from the bed. “What have we done to attract your attention?”
         “You’d have to ask this Time Patrol,” Brown said evenly. “I really couldn’t tell you-“
         ”Please, spare me the illusion,” Valreck snapped in contempt. “I am not some child that can be dazzled with fantasy stories and myths . . . I know of the Time Patrol, I know what you are capable of. We know how you heal . It is not a common thing, no?”
         “A quirk of birth,” Brown said dismissively, resting his arms in his lap. “Some of us are just born lucky, I suppose.”
         “But not six men,” Valreck countered, secretly pleased to see the man blink, his mask of calm momentarily disappearing. He must have assumed they had just guessed at his regenerative ability, or stumbled upon it by happy accident. “Yes, six of you . . . five were killed but they were healing, returning to life.” He let a pause settle between him and his next sentence. “They were.”
         “Were?” Brown asked quietly, carefully.
         “If you were counting on them to rescue you, I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Valreck stated with secret glee. Then, with a shrug, he added, “Not that you couldn’t recover from that as well, I’m sure.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced along the edge of the bed, his boots scuffing on the old wood floor. The meager sunlight peeking through the shuttered window gave a sickly cast to his shadow, stretching it painfully. “We wish to deal with the Time Patrol, with you.”
         “And what would you like from them?” The question was tired, dragged bleeding from a man too beaten to care.
         “Immunity . . .” Valreck responded. “And information.” He stepped over to the wall, facing it, running his hand along the wood, feeling the aged grain, the rot laying in wait inside the cells, inside all cells. “Simple things, certainly not worth this protracted bickering. We wish to be left alone, that is all.” He glanced sideways at the man. “The Time Patrol can accept that, I’m sure. Don’t you think?”
         “Sure,” Brown said warily. “I don’t see why not. I see no reason why they wouldn’t consider it . . .”
         “Yes-“
         ”. . . right after they finish mining the stars for cheese and inserting little chips in our heads,” Brown finished, shaking his head. “Really, pal, you should have slept through storytime as a kid, there is such a thing as paying too much attention-urk!”
         Without warning an invisible hand lifted him off the floor by the throat. His face turned an odd shade of red as his legs flailed, seeking purchase on the empty air, his back scraping against the wall as he slid straight up.
         Valreck stalked forward with three quick, angry strides. “I can see the logic in your denials, even if I cannot see any rational reason behind them,” he spat, watching with grim amusement as Brown struggled against the unseen force, his wrists prodding uselessly at his throat, his face contorting as his throat fought to deliver air to the rest of his body. Valreck was sorely tempted to simply let him hang there until he suffocated, let him heal, and then do it all over again. But that would be as equally fruitless as this verbal jousting. “And I can understand that as a prisoner, bold mockery is your only remaining defense, but . . . this is pointless, and you must know this.” It occurred to him that the man might not be listening. Valreck had no wish to repeat himself and so let the grip on the man’s throat ease, although he kept him suspended in the air. “Fighting does neither of us any good, when a compromise is a far more workable solution. Did you think that we wanted to do what we did to your soldiers? Do you realize that, if necessary, we will do it again? And again, and again?” He stopped and regarded the man, who was staring down at him silently, his gaze just balancing on the edge of an impetuous glare. Are all soldiers so stubborn? he wondered. Or did we have the sheer misfortune of capturing the most obstinate of their ranks?
         Sighing, he rubbed his face, pacing away from the man. “Whether you wish to admit it or not, the last few months have no doubt been trying . . . both for you and for us. I suspect we have several experiences in common . . . I don’t think we will become friends but I see no need for us to become enemies either. It is a position and a animosity that will ultimately benefit no one.” Letting his arms drop to his sides, he faced Brown, his expression somber. “I wish to speak with the Time Patrol, that’s all I ask. Merely for you to drop this facade, so we can have a discussion between two rational people about a mutual situation, and hopefully resolve it to the satisfaction of both.” He bowed his head, letting his thoughts meander for a moment. “I do not think that is a hard thing.” Stepping back, he put his hand out to the man, palm facing up. “The matter, I’m afraid, is entirely in your hands.”
         Brown wet chapped lips, his face creasing in both thought and discomfort. For the first time Valreck noticed how pale the man was, and wondered how fast he truly was healing. He wanted to make sure the man could understand the gravity of this situation, but not grind him down so much that he couldn’t make any decisions. It was a fine line to walk and Valreck had no idea if he was even on the right path. He was desperately afraid that all of his hastily erected plans might be concealing a giant hole that might spell the end to them all, the depths swallowing them before they had any chance to correct or reverse their descent, however deserved it might be.
         Above him, the man coughed, causing Valreck to look up at him, expectant. “You want my answer?” the man asked, his face quite serious.
         Valreck stared at him, said nothing.
         The man watched him for another few seconds, then smiled thinly. “If you want my answer, read it from my mind.”
         Valreck felt his heart sink. He knows. In one sentence the man had confirmed once more that he was indeed Time Patrol but had also reminded them of the essential implacability of their position. He was restrained against harming them, but there was nothing they could do to the man that would affect him. His body and mind were both off limits, the former endlessly restored, the latter perfectly shielded. It was a stalemate of the worst kind, the type where the opposing player simply refused to put any pieces on the board.
         “Go ahead,” Brown taunted. “You’re a telepath, I know you are. You’ll find everything you want to know . . .” he tapped his head, “right in here. Step right in, I won’t stop you.” Valreck looked away, his face impassive, remaining silent. “Is telepath even the right word? It feels so inadequate. Perhaps . . . mindbender would be a more appropriate term, hm?”
         Valreck didn’t flinch at the way the man spat the word out him, a dart meant to wound. The word had ceased to hold any offense for him a long time ago. In his first year of instruction, everyone in his class had been referred to by that term for several months, to the point where he had started to forget his own name. Their message was simple: this is what you will be called out there. Best to get used to it now.
         Outwardly unperturbed, Valreck looked up at Brown, said quietly, “Very well, I see we won’t be getting any further with this for now.” I had hoped it would not come to this. He began to turn away, but halfway through the motion he stopped, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “Ah yes,” he said, holding up a finger, “before I forget.” He lowered Brown so that they were eye level. His feet almost touched the floor, but that wasn’t the point. “You are not our only prisoner.”
         Brown’s eyes narrowed fractionally, but he said nothing.
         Valreck folded his hands together, smiled mirthlessly at Brown. “There was a young girl with you. We have her as well. She appears to have the same healing abilities as you . . .”
         “You bastard,” Brown hissed, his boots kicked at the floor, causing a peculiar scratching noise. “You-“
         ”. . . but we are not quite sure. I would hate to have a reason to test that. Don’t make us resort to these primitive tactics . . . there are other ways.”
         “-bastards,” Brown snarled. “You don’t need her. Leave her the hell alone, she’s not one of us-“
         ”One of who?” Valreck asked, cocking his head to the side, as if he hadn’t heard properly. “I didn’t quite catch that. What us isn’t she part of?”
         Brown fell abruptly silent, his mouth forming a thin line. His eyes rippled with an anger that was almost palpable, a fire that if unleashed, could possibly consume them all. Valreck had no intention of releasing it, however. A fire only became a danger when you were unable to contain it.
         He waited a moment, to see if the man might hazard any kind of answer, even a thinly veiled mockery. When nothing else was forthcoming, he nodded to the man, said, “I trust we’ll continue this discussion later, then.”
         Then he let the man go, without warning, sending him tumbling heavily to the floor. His legs weren’t ready to support his weight and he stumbled, fell onto his rear, slid backwards and landed roughly on his back, cracking the back of his head against the corner in the process. Brown yelled, face twisted in pain, his hand instinctively going to his head, only to succeed in striking himself in the face.
         Valreck watched him struggle, debated prolonging the spectacle, then decided against and instead turned on his heel to leave.
         At the door he paused, spared a second to look back at the man. He had managed to attain a sitting position, however clumsily without hands, and was resting with his head bowed, his chest heaving as he struggled to catch his breath. His stark surroundings made him look very alone. Valreck stared at him for another long second, before going out the door and closing it behind him, taking care to ensure it was locked.
         Once outside, he leaned against the wall, letting his pulse finally begin to creep up to where it should have been the entire time. Gods, the man was cold. Curious, he held his hand out, wasn’t surprised to see it trembling slightly. Such a fine line, he thought, doing his best to calm the churning sensation in his stomach, the tightness in his chest, the sensation that every action he took only sped them further to their doom. I’m doing the right thing, I know I am. But he didn’t know for sure. And more than anything, Valreck wished to know.
         A small cough to his left alerted him, caused to him look over there. What he saw didn’t give him anymore cause for comfort.
         “Rathas,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level, “what is it?” He must be checking in. That’s all. Yet he was here in person, which was rarely a good sign.
         “I think,” the little man said, entwining and folding his hands together, appearing far more unnerved than Valreck could ever remember seeing him, “I think the cavalry has arrived, as they say.” A shaky laugh accompanied the statement, a sentiment that refused to touch the rest of his face. “Yes, I think that’s what happened.”
         And then Rathas told him.
         “What?” asked Valreck.