Timeline: Three days later
Rating: Pg-13 for violence
Chapter 9
Mercy
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." - Matthew 5:7
"You mean he's still alive?" Amanda asked with seemingly mild curiosity. One of her eyebrows raised slightly, but she managed to repress her true emotion quite well, coming across as mildly curious rather than seething. They were discussing the fate of Adam, a victim Mark suspected she'd seemed especially affected by.
"Yes," Mark said. "John isn't going to let him go. His test is over. Even if Adam does cut his foot off, the door has been locked now because he didn't do it within the time limit."
Mark paused.
"Adam is still waiting on Dr. Gordon. He's going to die down there. Does John still seem noble and caring now? Or do you finally see that he's an insane murderer?"
Amanda didn't respond. She looked at Mark without emotion. Her face reminded him of a mannequin or doll. A void replaced the usual vitality in her eyes.
"John has his reasons. I may not understand them completely, but he knows what he's doing. I have to trust him if I am to follow him. What he does is not murder, it's rehabilitation. It's-"
On and on she rambled, repeating the words Mark recognized as John's exact ramblings. She spoke like someone under hypnosis and with the accuracy of a tape recorder. He held up his hand as if to stop her in her tracks, but she just kept talking.
"Amanda," he said at last, interrupting her. "I get it. You can stop now."
"Do you finally see now?" she said, breaking out of her monotone and sounding a little eager.
"I understand that you've been brainwashed by a madman," Mark said. Amanda scowled.
"John's coming soon. You might want to stop talking like that."
"He knows exactly how I feel. And I always say whatever the hell I want to," Mark said, shrugging and smirking.
Amanda repressed the urge to smile at his mischievous expression, so much like a rebellious bad boy, but lost the urge when John entered the room.
"Yes, Mark, we can always count on you to be honest and clear about your thoughts," he said.
"What are we doing tonight?" Amanda asked, her eyes shifting over to Mark as though she was really asking, Why did we need him here?
"Mark helped me bring our next test subject earlier. Everything is already set up. I want you to watch," he said, implying both of them but specifically staring at Amanda as he spoke. She nodded. She didn't particularly like that he didn't ask her to help with this test, but she said nothing. She merely followed. John led them through a narrow corridor and opened the door to a small room that could have been a closet. There was a glass window that revealed a slightly disoriented man stumbling around in a dim lit room. Amanda sat next to the window and watched as the man lifted up the tape recorder and pressed pay.
"Hello, Thomas," the tape began. Thomas groaned and looked away.
"I want to play a game. You're no stranger to games, are you? You play games all the time, whether it's getting intoxicated and gambling your money away, or playing games with others feelings, you know how to put it all on the table and walk away empty and apathetic until you can play again. Whether gambling is truly an addiction that runs in your family like a genetic disease, or if it is just something you are drawn to because it gives you excitement in your otherwise mundane life, is not of significance. You have proven nothing really matters to you, but now you will realize the value of one thing today. Tonight you will gamble for the ultimate prize…your life.
You must strap this collar on your neck before you will be able to make your choice. Once you have, three chains will simultaneously fall in front of you, just within reach. You must grab one and yank it down to release the key to your freedom.
The left chain will cause you a considerable amount of pain, irreversible damage, but you will live, however deformed that may be.
Another chain will give you the chance to walk away unharmed in anyway.
However, the other chain will lead to certain death.
Will you bet it all for a chance to walk away unscathed? Or will you fold, follow the safe route, taking comfort in the fact that you will survive, albeit deformed for the rest of your life?
The choice is yours."
Amanda shuddered as the tape ended. She'd seen the gallows in the warehouse, handcrafted in a beautiful dark shade of pine. She had known it would someday be used to rehabilitate someone. Yet somehow seeing it in use felt strange to her.
He has a chance, she thought. Of course he does; they all do. She quickly corrected herself. But he had a very easy chance. All he had to do was pull the left chain if he wanted to live. But he was a gambling addict. Would he be able to pass up the greatest gamble he'd ever been faced with? The gamble for his life.
She stared in anticipation, whereas Mark, right beside her, looked on with tired, weary eyes, already knowing what the outcome would be. He glanced over and saw the uncertainty in Amanda's face. It was still hard for him to accept how she could be so naive as to not know how this would surely end. Did she have no concept of human behavior?
"He's not going to pick the left chain," Mark whispered in her ear like a secret, even though John had left the room and was far out of hearing range. The sound of his whisper sent a shiver through her, distracting her momentarily from the game she was otherwise absorbed in.
"You don't know that," she said, matching his whisper with her own, and as usual, objecting to Mark's every statement with fierceness.
"Oh, but I do. You witness enough of these games, and you'll know how they're going to play out," he said, keeping his voice low and strangely arousing considering the situation they were in and the subject of discussion.
"That would be cheating," Amanda hissed back, annoyed with his arguing and distractions, and how he was making her feel when she was trying to concentrate. She continued watching Thomas, mentally urging him to pick the left chain.
"I don't make the rules," Mark said as Thomas made his choice. Without further hesitation, he pulled on the right chain, and felt the floor go out from underneath him. The collar around his neck tightened, and he was certain he'd choke to death in seconds. He tried to scream but couldn't. The collar blocked any sound he tried to emit. He swung back and forth, and yanked on his collar, which consequently tugged on the chain.
Much to Amanda's surprise, one of the rusty chain links broke, and he fell to the floor underneath.
"What the hell?" Amanda said in disbelief. She jolted backward, stunned by what happened. Mark remained where he was, unaffected and calm.
"Did that chain just break?" Amanda said. She looked at Mark as if to confirm what she had just witnessed wasn't the product of her imagination."Does that mean Thomas made the right choice? Or does that mean...Did the trap screwed up?" Amanda wondered out loud.
She saw Thomas stumbling around, in shock, but sporting a big grin. She couldn't hear him very well, but he shouted "I beat that motherfucker! I won!" and laughed. He looked around, and tried to find a way out. Moments later, she spotted the brown slithering reptile crawling towards him. Amanda wasn't familiar with the different breeds of snake, but she was certain it was nothing she'd ever seen before. Not a common garden snake by any means. Thomas stepped on it, and it stuck him so fast he felt the pain shooting through his leg before he could even glance down. As he collapsed onto the floor, he fell on another snake that struck him in the chest.
Amanda recoiled in horror at the pitiful sight of the arrogant jerk transformed into a humble, vulnerable human being.
Only that transformation came too late.
Amanda looked away, unable to continue watching Thomas's suffering. Mark stopped looking at the game and watched Amanda's own agony.
"Do you see now, Amanda? Do you understand that it's not about rehabilitation? Thomas thought he'd survived. Now why would John design the trap that way? Why give him a moment of hope, to think he'd survived, and then take it all away? Why submit him to a prolonged torture instead of just making his death quick?"
Amanda started crying. Thomas's screams overwhelmed the sound of her muffled sobs. Finally the sound died along with him, but every minute of his loud agony seemed like hours. As the silence returned, Amanda answered Mark's question, once again repeating John's words like a religious fanatic's mantra, a preacher's scriptures.
"I have to trust him if I am to follow him. What he does is not murder, it's rehabilitation."
"He doesn't show any mercy to his victims. He's a sadistic man," Mark huffed. He stood up. "I've done what John asked me to. If he needs something else, he'll have to wait till tomorrow. I'm leaving. If you were smart, you'd leave too, forever, before he hurts you or kills you or...worse."
Amanda calmed down enough to ask, "What could be worse?"
Mark looked at Amanda, his heart full of disgust at her misplaced loyalty, but also an immense amount of pity. She looked so pathetic, torn between her fragmented sense of morality and compassion, and her devotion to an insane madman who just happened to help her change her life for the better. But Mark knew John could just as easily destroy what he had created.
"What could be worse?" Amanda asked again. Mark broke eye contact from her for a moment and looked over at the corpse not fifteen feet away from them. He glanced back at Amanda as if the answer should be obvious.
"You could end up becoming just like him."
Amanda tried not to think that what she was doing was a result of Mark's words. Mercy. It was a concept she'd tried to avoid since her rebirth. Was there a place for it in this new life? Had she been shown mercy in her previous life, with an abusive father and absent mother, violent ex-boyfriends, and harsh drug dealers who'd taken advantage of her when she'd needed a little longer to pay up? No. Why should she expect this new life to be filled with mercy? Mercy was a foreign concept, something to be dreamed about but never obtained.
Yet her compassion lingered. Although rarely the recipient of mercy, she still had a soul that begged for her to sometimes take pity on another for their suffering. There was no way to fully extinguish that from her heart.
So tonight she tiptoed through the dark hallways, occasionally stopping when the sound of her own breathing or footsteps would startle her. She felt certain that someone was watching her, yet whenever she redirected her flashlight and looked for the presence of someone, she always discovered that she was alone.
She opened the door to the bathroom. She crept in and crouched next to Adam. She didn't want to check his pulse for fear that if he was alive, he might wake up and attack her, so she slipped her finger under his nose to see if he was still breathing. To her chagrin, she felt him exhale, and she couldn't just back out now.
Her hands clinched the plastic wrap and stretched it tight before pulling it against Adam's face. She increased her pressure as Adam began to fight back. There was a slight struggle, but he was too weak from lack of nourishment and disorientation to put up a worthy fight. And perhaps, Amanda later realized, a lack of desire to live. At some point, he must have just given up and been waiting for his death sentence to finally end.
She sobbed when it was over. His lack of screaming and struggle didn't lessen the horror at what she had done. She had become a murderer. Again. But he would have died anyway, even if she had not interfered and shortened his period of suffering.
Did I do the right thing?
Amanda knew she had to return soon before John became suspicious of her absence, but for just a few moments, she laid on the disgusting floor in a semi-disoriented state, tired from the struggle and longing for the answer to her nagging question. An answer she suspected she might never find.