The Rising Sea

51

Joe stood in the center of another modern room. Bright lights came on, sending sharp pains through eyes now accustomed to the dark. He squinted.

“What is your name?” a voice asked via a hidden speaker.

Joe recognized the voice. It belonged to Gao, Han’s right-hand man. He studied the room. White plastic walls and reflective one-way mirrors on all sides of him.

“Please state your name or we will have to harm you.”

He was being recorded. From every angle. Cameras behind those one-way mirrors were taking three-dimensional measurements of him. Digitizing him. Enabling a likeness of him to be created to pair with Kurt’s. It was obvious. Oni had given him the key when he’d mentioned how Joe’s facsimile would die.

Joe didn’t feel like playing. Anything he gave them could be twisted and used. All the sounds of his voice could be digitally spliced and remixed to make new sentences. Even arguing with them or cursing them would give them something.

“Name!” Gao demanded.

Joe had to say something. He affected an exaggerated Texas accent for his reply. “Well, pilgrim, you can call me whatever you want. Just don’t call me late for dinner.”

Before the last word had left his mouth, an electrical shock fired through Joe’s body. It was excruciating and he crumpled to the floor.

“The next shock will go for twice as long,” Gao replied calmly. “Now stand up and tell us your name.”

Joe stayed down longer than he needed to. Han and his people were pressed for time. That’s what the guard had told them. This was Joe’s chance to make the delay worse.

Another shock was sent forth. Joe winced and twisted as the energy passed through him, causing his muscles to tighten and lock. He bit through part of his tongue in the process and felt a wave of relief when the pulsing stopped.

“Stand up and state your name,” Gao said.

Slowly, Joe got to his feet. He remained stooped over on purpose. Record this, he thought. Looking up, he gave them a twisted countenance. His face as screwed up as he could make it. To enhance the effect, he did his best I, Claudius imitation, faking a stutter and a facial tic.

He turned from camera to camera, giving them a good look. Gao must not have been watching directly because he simply asked his question one more time.

“State your name.”

“‘What’s in a name?’” Joe said, sounding as British as he possibly could. “‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet…’”

There was a pause and for a second Joe thought he might have gotten away with it, but the surging pain of the electric shock hit him again. This time, it was stronger and lasted longer.

Some part of his mind knew they couldn’t kill him if they hoped to use his replacement. But that meant little as he flopped around on the ground like a fish out of water.

It was a full twenty seconds of agony before the current was shut off. Joe’s body shook, his teeth hurt and one particular metal filling felt as if it had melted. His mind was an absolute blank.

“We have calibrated the current to cause maximum pain but no lasting damage,” Gao said. “We can do this all night. Now stand up, state your name and read the following paragraph.”

The projected image of a statement came on and Joe tried to focus. Pretending to surrender, he got to his hands and knees, thought up a new prank and wearily began to straighten. He wasn’t sure how long his body would hold out, but he would die before he would give them anything they could use.

With his hands on the rusted pipe and his feet on the wall, Kurt climbed down into the pit. He was ten feet below the rim when he encountered his first obstacle: one of the anchors that held the old pipe in place.

It was still attached to the wall, but loosely. Sixty years of erosion had seen to that. Working it back and forth with a controlled force, he soon broke it loose from the rock.

He slipped the chains around it and slid down farther. The next anchor was completely corroded and Kurt didn’t even have to strain to break it in half.

He continued down. The farther down he went, the more rusted the pipe became. With each move, flakes and dust fell like red snow. Every few feet, the chain caught in a crevice on the pipe.

Kurt was looking for a connector where two sections of the pipe had been joined. During his years salvaging wrecks (and sinking other ships on purpose), he’d learned that corrosion always set in first at the joints. Those were the weak points in any system. Microscopic gaps allowed water to pool and rust to bloom. Mechanical stress of movement caused metal fatigue and damage. Even on the oldest ships, hull plates rarely gave way, but rivets and hatches failed with regularity.

With the rainwater dripping down from above and the seawater rising and falling with the tide, Kurt would soon find a spot where corrosion had worked enough of its magic. The connection might even look healthy from the outside, but the metal itself would be eaten away internally like a rotten tree.

He was still searching for the weak spot when his feet hit the water. He dropped in, fought against the natural buoyancy of his wetsuit and descended into utter darkness.

The chain scraped along the pipe as he descended. When his thumb pushed through a rusted section, he knew he’d struck gold. Holding his breath and positioning the chain where he felt the corrosion had done the most damage, he pulled with a sudden jerk.

The back half of the pipe crumpled and he pulled again. More progress, but not enough. He began sliding the chain back and forth, using it like a saw. He could feel the jagged metal giving way: a chunk here, a section there.

Suddenly, the chain burst through and he was free and swimming.

He kicked upward, bobbed calmly to the surface and took a deep breath.

A circle of light could be seen up above. He’d come down forty feet. The climb would be a joy.

Han watched the farce in the recording booth without a hint of glee. Zavala was on the floor again, having endured several additional rounds of shock treatment. He’d used three additional accents and recited an Irish limerick before collapsing once more.

He now lay in a heap, breathing heavily but otherwise unmoving. Steam rose from his scalp.

“Enough,” Han said.

“But we don’t have a voiceprint yet,” Gao replied. “In fact, we don’t have anything, unless you want the robot to act out Romeo and Juliet or spout lines from American TV commercials.”

“He’s beaten you,” Han said. “Can’t you see that?”

Gao stared at his boss.

“He knows what you want,” Han explained, “and he’s willing to die rather than give it to you. He might even be goading you into killing him on purpose.”

“Okay,” Gao said. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Remove him from the equation,” Han said. “Finish the body panels and program Zavala’s robot to be mute unless addressed directly. Austin’s facsimile will do all the talking. It will be enough that Zavala is seen with him and caught on camera driving the getaway car.”

Gao looked frustrated, but he didn’t protest. “I can also upload a generic American voice just in case he has to say something.”

“Be quick about it,” Han said. “And tell my pilot we’re ready to leave.”

Joe lay on the floor, exhausted, drenched in sweat and waiting for the next round of torture to begin. Each session of electrical shock had been longer and more painful than the last, each wave of muscle spasms worse than the one before. He felt as if he’d done a triathlon and wrestled a bear afterward for good measure, all without moving from the spot.

This will probably be the next wave in fitness training. Get the body of an Adonis without doing any work. Joe laughed at the thought, but the laughter hurt his chest and he stopped as quickly as he could.

Taking deep breaths to slow his heart rate and trying to still the trembling in his legs, it was a while before he realized the next session was overdue. A minute of silence stretched to several and Joe remained where he was. No demands came over the speakers, no new threats and not so much as a static shock from the metal plates.

A sense of satisfaction crept in. They’d given up. He’d worn them down and survived. He’d won.

The door opened and a pair of Han’s men came in to get him. They lifted him by the arms and hauled him up to his feet.

“No fight left in this one,” the first of the men said.

Not at the moment, Joe thought. It was an effort even to stand.

They marched him out of the room and into the tunnel. A strange sound was echoing off the walls. Joe realized it was the helicopter lifting off outside. Han was leaving, putting his plan in motion, while Kurt and Nagano were still chained up and Joe himself could hardly walk. His thoughts of victory felt suddenly premature.

They marched him down the tunnel, rounded a slight curve and closed in on the air shaft. Only now did Joe realize how dimly lit the tunnel really was, especially after the brightness of the room he’d been tortured in. He could barely make out Kurt and Nagano, sitting by the wall. And then he realized there was only one figure present. Kurt was gone.