Six Mad Kings, Chapter 4. by DarkBeta
Fear had a smell. Of course it did. But this reek, this soup of despair had to be the drug's illusion. Just like the five drumlike echoes of his own heart that seemed to vary in rhythm. To hear the heartbeats of the rest of Team 7 was physically impossible. Therefore Nathan was not hearing one rhythm slow and stutter.
Yet he seemed able to match the heartsongs to his team-mates.
Close to him the slight irregularities of age overlaid a strong clear rhythm (at least Josiah paid some attention to a healthy diet, alcohol aside), with the stressed acceleration due to anger instead of fear. On his other side a double rhythm, the sinus rates tending toward a common average as the young man calmed and the older man worried. Buck had no right to such health, with the food he ate and only one form of regular exercise. Beyond them another, birdlike in its swiftness -- and Nathan was helpless if Vin had another of his idiosyncratic drug reactions now.
So he did not hear them. And he had not heard the sudden alteration as Chris crashed that last time against the cuffs that held him. The rhythm dropping from urgent to lackadaisical. Breath now, breath a man might be able to pick out when they were held in close quarters. Breath was not impossible. And he could hear one, and two and three, and a swift shallow panting from the fourth . . . . No smoker's rasp. None.
"Vin. Vin, tell Chris to wake up."
"Do I have to? He ain't hurtin' right now."
That long pause before the reply spoke of depressed consciousness. How soon before Vin followed Larabee into a disassociative state? How many hours for each of them to reach the same level?
"He stopped breathing!"
Of course Vin responded to Chris's need, or Chris to Vin's. This time words were enough to reach the leader who was straying ahead of them. No guarantee for the next time.
Josiah deserved to know what to expect. Nathan explained, holding to the trained calm of the emergency room.
He had nothing more to say. Nothing to hear, since he knew the heartsongs were a delusion. Just gasps and metallic shrieks as Chris continued to fight the cuffs that held him. And breathing. Five others and himself, breathing in the fading dark.
This once his color made no difference at all. Not to his team-mates, with Standish absent. (The Southerner was too polite or careful to say anything, but Nathan could feel the distance between them.) And not, aside from the usual slurs, to their captors. His death had no more dread than the others.
Vin, buried alive. Buck, burning like Larabee's wife and son. Would he hear the heartsongs stop? Smith was a monster.
Brace implied there was some treatment for the drug's effects. Depressants would counter some part of the nervous hyperactivity. Perhaps some of the new psychotropic treatments. Not an area he'd researched, but Josiah might have some ideas.
Footsteps. Slow, careful footsteps, after the reverberation of chains abandoned on the floor. Josiah's thoughtful voice.
"How did our brother loose his bonds?"
"Broke his hand and pulled it through the cuff." Buck said. "Didn't you hear the bones go?"
Nathan pulled at his own cuffs futilely. He needed to immobilize that hand. The phalanges were tricky to set. Larrabee could suffer a permanent impairment of his dexterity. Bad enough in the left hand, since he shot with both, but damage to the right would end his law enforcement career.
The door opened, that Driscoll Smith and his thugs had gone out of. Looked like the gang had floodlights set up in the corridor for some reason. The glare was far too bright for ordinary fluorescents. Nathan couldn't see any details of the black silhouette, but posture suggested the man was armed. Larabee's future might not be a concern.
Chris stalked the gunman like a great cat. Nathan held his breath. The gunman groped at the wall as if he couldn't see, in spite of the flood of light. He had to be drunk or drugged, ignoring Larabee's approach like that.
Nathan expected the quick attack to be deadly. Had Chris actually pulled his blow? He put the man down instead.
"Where are they?"
Simple words. Weighted with more emotion than short words should hold. Nathan shook his head in disbelief. That wasn't Ezra. It couldn't be.
The heartsongs sang in sevenfold harmony.