Between a Bear and a Hard Place(45)

“Hmm? Such strength... look at you,” he was beginning to sweat profusely, like the effort of speaking was almost exhausting. “Have you been dead?”

Rogue shook his head, not quite understanding the question. “How could I be dead? I’m right here.”

“Hmm.” The little man let out a laugh that turned into a cackle that turned into a syrupy, raspy cough. As he shook with each cough, the scarf on his neck rattled and blew outward. “Strong, but such a limited mind. So... predictable.” The last part of the man’s speaking trailed off into another cough. It wasn’t for a few seconds that Rogue realized his lips were sealed as he rattled with a coughing fit. “Have you felt... death?”

Suddenly, it all made sense. Rogue nodded. “My clan,” he said. “Taken by you. You took them from me, you ripped the heart out of my chest.”

The man’s soft face relaxed into a Vaseline-smeared smirk. Everything about him was fuzzy, slightly out of focus, from the watery eyes to the shimmer of saliva-slick on his lips.

“That’s as close to death as I’ve come,” Rogue said. There was only a tiny shake in his voice that he managed to hide well enough with a forceful swallow. “You?”

That greasy smile broadened. “I’ve seen... enough. Take a sample when he’s back in the,” he paused for another round of closed-mouth coughing. “Back in the cell.”

Gasmask grasped the bear’s shoulder, squeezing hard and turning him.

“Oh, Eighty-Three?”

Gasmask froze and turned. “Sir?”

“When you’re finished, send Ninety-Four up here. My cover is beginning to stick to my neck.”

The not-robot offered a curt nod, and then turned again, shoving Rogue through the door, which slammed shut behind him. Rogue turned to Gasmask. “Eighty-Three? You’re a number?”

“It’s always bothered me a little. Doesn’t seem to bother the others.”

“That doesn’t really answer anything,” Rogue said, feeling suddenly heavy and fatigued. “What are you? Who was he?”

“I told you once,” Gasmask said, with a strange amount of joviality, considering. He was more verbose than he had been. Perhaps he was starting to relax? If he was, Rogue thought, that’d be at least one thing he had going for him. “It’s a good question.”

“What is?”

“What I am. What we are.”

Rogue sensed a shrug, though it was too smooth to be sure. “How can you not know what you are? Don’t you have a memory? Parents?”

“He is the parent. Was? Time’s strange when you can’t die.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The soulless, black, goggle-clad face turned toward Rogue. “We’ve arrived. Talking with prisoners is forbidden. Or at least, I think it is. None of the others have much of an interest in talking with anyone about anything, so I’m not entirely sure a rule was ever established.”

They had somehow already arrived back at the holding cell where Rogue was supposed to be “sampled” whatever that meant. King had sat up, but had apparently either gone to sleep or passed out again. Down the way was another scream.

“What’s all that screaming?” Rogue asked, stepping back into place to be shackled again. Eighty-Three didn’t bother with the restraints.

“Those other two you were with. They’ve been drugged to keep them from breaking things. They were a great deal more angry than were you two.”

That time, the passivity in Gasmask’s voice was almost comical, even though the answer made Rogue’s blood boil.

A flash of insight struck the big bear. Maybe he could activate this thing’s emotion sensors or whatever it had. “You know what they’re doing to them, right? They’re experimenting on them. They’re experimenting on us. That blood sample you’re about to—OW!”

That clicking noise, the one Rogue thought might be laughter, came again. “Sorry,” Eighty-three said. “Very busy.”

“Are you an ant?”

Gasmask tilted his head to the side. “Explain?”

“An ant. You know, little creature, builds a nest in the dirt? One leader, a bunch of drones that wander around in some kind of hive-mind thing?” His thoughts turned back to one of his many Star Trek binges. It struck him that he might have wandered into a Borg ship, if he didn’t know any better.

“Hum. Similar, I think. Eckert needs the sample. Stay quiet and I won’t have to have you tranquilized like the others.”

And with that, he was gone.

Eckert, Rogue thought, clenching his jaws and his fists at the same time. I thought he was dead.