The air felt fresh and clean on his naked body. Sorbacov didn’t give him clothes because he said he didn’t have use for clothes unless he wanted him to have them. He didn’t even notice he was shivering. He never minded the cold outside. The fresh air felt too much like freedom. He looked over the parts strewn on the table. The parts were completely different. He straightened, his heartbeat quickening. Something new. Something for his mind to work on.
Gedeon sat down on the cold slab, not even wincing. He didn’t look around to see if Sorbacov or anyone else was in the gardens as he normally would have done. At seven, he knew better. Czar would have given him a lecture for that, and if Reaper was watching him, that would be reported back, but he doubted if any of the others could have gotten out in time to watch his back. It was rare. Sorbacov kept a pretty tight watch on them all now, especially Player. He didn’t want to lose his prize bomb builder.
Gedeon surveyed the parts, automatically sorting through them in his mind. He laid them out swiftly, moving them almost without touching them, his hands a blur, fingers directing them where he needed them to go. There was satisfaction in watching them do his bidding, watching them come together.
A shadow fell across him, and he felt the brush of leather on his back, drawing him out of the tunnel, the place so deep no one could usually reach him. He wanted to scream at Sorbacov, and he turned quickly, a scowl of pure annoyance on his face. He needed to build the bomb. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real; he had to figure it out. Why couldn’t Sorbacov understand that?
Sorbacov yanked him off the bench, his face that mask of sheer brutal glee, the one all the children feared the most. That was the one he wore when he wanted to show his friends his absolute rule over everyone. He flung Player into the grass on his hands and knees and began to whip him mercilessly with the flogger, hard, brutal strokes, driving him forward, all the while laughing as Gedeon crawled like a wounded animal until he bumped into legs. A fist caught his hair and yanked his head up. He found himself staring into mean, ugly eyes.
Meet my friend, Gedeon. Open your mouth wide. He’s rather big. But then, you’re going to be taking good care of me, and he’ll have to keep you from screaming while you do it.
Harsh laughter rang in his ears for what seemed an eternity. He remembered pain. Terrible pain. So much of it. Then he was on the ground, unable to move. Curled in the fetal position. The flogger hitting him over and over until he got up and crawled back onto the bench, bleeding, unable to sit, so he knelt up at Sorbacov’s insistence. Tears ran down his face, his throat swollen until he couldn’t breathe, and his hands shaking so hard he couldn’t pick up the cup of water.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the White Rabbit. The animal was life-sized. As big as Sorbacov. Just standing right beside him, in a three-piece suit, pocket watch in hand, frowning down at it. Why wouldn’t they all go away? He needed them gone. He wasn’t going to make it this time if they didn’t. He couldn’t take another round with Sorbacov and his friends. He just couldn’t, no matter what Czar said. He wasn’t that strong. Nothing was worth it.
He tried rocking back and forth, looking at his bomb parts, ignoring the White Rabbit. Ignoring Sorbacov. Ignoring everyone. Tick-tock. The watch kept ticking. Did Sorbacov think he could concentrate when he hurt so bad? When he couldn’t breathe? He made an effort to focus on the parts and began to put them together.
Sweat poured off his body, making his palms and fingers slippery. The White Rabbit took a sudden leap, and Sorbacov was there in the shadows instead . . . Behind him was something else. Something shadowy. Sinister. Another man. His breath caught in his throat and he began to fight. Not again. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.
Zyah shifted to her knees, rising above Player, calling to him softly, tears pouring down her face. Sharing his nightmares was pure hell. She didn’t want to see those vignettes of his childhood. At the same time, she wondered how he could be the man he was—the kind, gentle one who had gone into a bath shop to get her lotion so he could massage her feet for her—after what he’d suffered as a child.
“Honey, open your eyes. Right now, open your eyes and look at me.”
She could see the bench now, the one that little naked boy with all that wild hair sat at. He had already gone from a boy to a man. His back was to her, but she would know that broad back with those scars and that Torpedo Ink tattoo anywhere. That was her man. That was Player sitting at that bench.
The rabbit had morphed into a man right in front of her. At first Zyah thought she was looking at the devil. A handsome man wearing a suit, with a graying neatly trimmed beard and mustache to match his thick head of gray-streaked black hair. It was the black eyebrows and piercing eyes as he stared at the pieces of bomb material laid out on the table in front of Player that made her think of the devil. The man didn’t speak, but he held a pocket watch in his palm. It was gold, a vintage Russian pocket watch, quite unique.
She could see his features, although they were in the shadows. Murky. Player had told her that was because he was dead. He still gave her the creeps. He was so evil, she could almost believe that he could return to life.
A frisson of fear slid down Zyah’s spine. It wasn’t the first time she’d observed this scenario in Player’s mind, and it wasn’t the first time she felt as if someone else were actually in the room watching them. She looked around carefully. Every corner. The ceiling. Looking into the shadows. She remembered the way Player, as a child, that first time when he was creating the illusion of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland characters for the other children, had looked so alertly and suspiciously around the basement, as if he knew something or someone was watching them.
Something was in the room with them, and she wanted Player one hundred percent aware, because whatever was staring out of the darkness seemed malevolent.
Player. Look at me, now. I need you. Open your eyes and see me. No one else. Not your past. Not the bomb. Not Sorbacov or the White Rabbit. Someone is in the room with us. Look at me and then look around. They can’t know we can communicate like this. Honey, please wake up. She poured herself into him. Into his mind, flooding him with her.
There was a brief moment while her heart pounded and whatever seemed to be in the room with them stared at them like some bloated spider waiting for the moment it could pounce.
I’m with you, baby. He sounded rough, but he didn’t suddenly open his eyes and look wildly around. He lifted a hand to her face, shaping her bone structure, as if reading her by Braille. He lifted his face to hers, brushing a kiss on her lips and then wrapping his arms around her tightly, his head on her shoulder.
Zyah felt his heart pounding, the aftermath of the nightmare. She felt his breath catch, but he didn’t make a sound.
The drawing. Your grandfather’s drawing. I’m going to lie down, and I want you to sit back slowly against the headboard with me. Look at the picture. Just glance at it.
Zyah didn’t want him to let her go. First the White Rabbit had been standing in front of the picture, and then Sorbacov had been directly in front of it, where the White Rabbit had been. She felt his arms slide away from her, although one hand stayed in contact with her as he slowly started to sit up. She moved with him to the headboard, so they both faced the drawing her grandfather had made so lovingly for her grandmother.