Six Mad Kings, Chapter 1. by DarkBeta
"Six mad kings and you, locked in a cell -- that's a sestina." Sestina Sestina by Adam Lefevre
(The Seven are Magnificent but not mine. Also not mine is Mog's fanfiction universe with the Seven as ATF agents in modern Denver. I have used a vague version of this, without permission or authenticity.)
The motif was familiar, Josiah thought. The victorious king and his soldiers, striding rampant in an Egyptian frieze or a Babylonian bas-relief, painted on the walls of a Roman monument or an Aztec temple. And beneath their tread captives, naked and bound, meant for slavery or sacrifice.
Driscoll Smith had provided himself with the attributes of modern royalty: a silk suit and Italian shoes, gold rings on manicured hands, designer sunglasses and deftly layered hair. Semiautomatics made his guards the equivalent of an army. For wretched, huddled, hopeless captives, he had Josiah and his brethren.
Five of his brothers, anyhow. Driscoll had gloated over how easy they were to take.
Chris Larabee, carjacked Friday evening as he left the office. Vin Tanner, snatched Saturday morning from the dark streets of Purgatorio as he ran. Buck Wilmington and J.D. Dunne, forced at gunpoint into a nondescript van Saturday afternoon, as they came out of the market a few blocks from their apartment. Nathan, kidnapped at midnight from the badly lit hospital parking lot as he started home from a training shift. Josiah himself, clubbed and grabbed Sunday morning after serving breakfast at the shelter.
"In the midst of life, we are in death."
Once again safety was proved to be an illusion. Like the others he had been stripped to underclothes, cuffed hand and foot, and chained to a stanchion set in the concrete floor.
Behind the boasting Smith stood a sleek quiet man. Josiah had been refining Driscoll Smith's profile for eight months. The dealer had the rage for this scenario, but not the subtlety. He had to have hired the expertise he needed.
The stranger filled a syringe from a vial stored in a vacuum flask. Josiah lay still as he approached, and then tried in a sudden convulsion to head-butt him. The man only stepped back, until Smith's guards had subdued their prisoner again. He crouched down to swab a patch of skin. Josiah smelt disinfectant. The technician injected a faintly brown fluid.
"You'll feel it soon. Brainwashing in a bottle," Driscoll Smith gloated. "Tell him, Brace."
"Courage. God has not forsaken you," the quiet man whispered, and stood up.
"The formula attacks the sensory filters in the brain," he lectured dryly. "In half an hour you'll see and hear like a twenty-year-old again. In four hours you'll be vomiting at the stench of your own body. In eight hours you'll be deafened by the sound of a heart beating."
"You'll do anything to make it stop. Anything I tell you," Driscoll interrupted.
He turned to face Chris.
"I'll watch him take you. No, the boy first, in front of you. And then use that strength of his to beat one of the others. Maybe his medical friend? You'll finish him off, though. Just like the rest."
God was absent here, no matter what the stranger said. Josiah found that he could still be surprised by human evil. Driscoll Smith put on a ruminative expression.
"What's left? You're going to use the welder's torch on your old friend, shovel a grave for the new one, and all you'll need are boots for the kid."
Already Josiah's hearing seemed more acute. He heard JD's breath catch, and Buck's quiet order not to listen to the bastard. Chris didn't react. He watched Smith and the guards with an unblinking predator's gaze, just as he had since Josiah's arrival. He hadn't spoken once. Maybe he couldn't.
"Once the black's gutted, what do you want to do with the old freak?"
Brace leaned forward and whispered. Smith giggled. He'd been indulging in his own product. Not a good idea. Soon one of his competitors would take him out. Josiah tried to find some comfort in that.
"Get out the tool kit for some home improvement. Hammer . . . and nails . . . and the saw . . . ."
Another guard entered the echoing cellar. Smith looked at him eagerly.
"We haven't found the agent yet, sir. Though it won't be too long now. Even if he doesn't go home, he'll show up at the office."
"Can't find him . . . !"
Smith raised his fist. The guard flinched. The sleek blond, Brace, whispered some more. Smith brought his hand back down and looked at it as if it had surprised him. Then he giggled again.
"Oh, well. Can't start the party until all the guests arrive."
He ambled toward the exit. His cohort followed. Brace was the last one out of the room. He hit a switch by the door. Overhead the flickering fluorescent light went off. Josiah blinked at the darkness.
"Thank God," Buck said. "See, kid? You can open your eyes now. I told you things was going to get better."
"Hurts, Buck. It really hurts."
"I know. I know, JD. Just hang in there. You let old Buck worry about getting out of this."
"Okay . . . ."
"Nathan?" Josiah asked.
"The drug's progress is predictable, aside from an allowance for body weight."
"S'why the kid's worse off than me," Buck interpolated.
"You'll notice an increased acuity of hearing first. It heightens the startle reflex for a while. Seems like everything's too loud and too sudden." the EMT reported. "Eyesight will follow, culminating in severe photophobia within about three hours. Increased tactile sensitivity . . . ."
"Too bad Ezra ain't here," JD whispered. "Think I could finally beat him at cards."
"Don't wish him here. Wish him . . . anywhere else," Vin managed.
His voice was slow and childlike.
"Last thing we need is that Southern bastard hanging around to make a fuss," Nathan said gruffly.
A grunt and a heavy thud of impact echoed through the cellar. Josiah jerked against his cuffs.
"What . . . ?"
"Don't know what you think you're doing, Chris . . . ." Buck started.
The sound repeated, and then once again. The third time Josiah heard a muffled snap, and then silence.
"Ah, hell, Chris . . . !"
Nathan pulled at his cuffs. Josiah heard them rattle.
"Vin. Vin, tell Chris to wake up."
A long moment passed before the sharpshooter answered.
"Do I have to? He ain't hurtin' right now."
"He stopped breathing!"
Slowly Vin rolled his head to the other side. Josiah caught a hint of the motion. His eyes were adapting to the dark . . . or responding to that devil's brew.
"Guess you wouldn't want to leave the shindig first, cowboy. Ya gonna come back to us this time?"
Josiah heard a gasp of renewed breath. Was it really so loud?
"After the first eight hours . . . ."
"Hurts," JD said again.
Nathan swallowed.
". . . the pain is more or less continuous. Abrupt changes in the exterior sensory environment may bring about fugue states . . . ."
"For a little bit . . . ya only feel one thing. Or see, or hear it," Vin breathed. "Kind of a relief."
"Or else everything hits you at once," Buck said. "Goes through your head like a buzzsaw."
"That Brace, he told me . . . whispered, like . . . told me there was some kind of antidote . . . ."
Nathan's words should have been barely audible. Vin's were even quieter.
"Less . . . Let's not talk. For a bit."
So far Josiah felt only an unrelenting alertness. The stench of blood and fear, the grit on the unswept floor, and the dragging cold of the unheated building; they were impossible to forget or ignore. He wasn't even sure if that came from the drug, or from his own awareness of death.
He did not trouble the Lord with prayers for freedom or survival, or even for deserved judgment on the men who did this thing. What would he care if this body still breathed, once will and conscience were gone? Once the drug was injected he was already dead. Destroyed, alongside men he would have died to save.
Driscoll Smith had sent hunters after a seventh man. What if Ezra Standish was bound as they were, watching as the other six went before him into madness? Any of them would be hurt beyond enduring to see six friends destroyed. But Standish valued nothing about himself but his mind and his judgment.
Josiah could hope for the survival of his soul, all their souls. Perhaps even a reunion. Standish would see only their entire destruction. And at the end he would face it alone.
For that reason Josiah's only prayer was that Standish would be difficult, unpredictable and unfathomable one last crucial time. Let the armies of the conqueror lack a trophy.