InsaneJournal

Current mood:

accomplished

The Gambler - Part Seven
This is the last part of the third story (first part, second part, third part, fourth part, fifth part, sixth part) that began with The Games (six parts) and continued with The Network (one part), and The Players (seven parts)

The story may be regarded as fanfic set in poisontaster's Keptverse. There are at least two more sections to go: "The Pieces" and "End Game" (I have a couple of ideas for stand-alone stories, too).

Part Seven

Richard’s head was heavy against his shoulder, and he was almost completely relaxed, his breathing even. It seemed that after a while, staying tense was too much of a fight for him. Gerard’s back was cramping up and his butt hurt, and this wasn’t getting him anywhere.

It was possible to open the door of the holding cell from the inside: but Gerard called George to let him out, and they went downstairs, leaving Richard locked in, and Gerard told them. He supposed he would also have to tell Dana, Benton, and Ray: but even after half an hour holding Richard, he had no better thought of how to tell his kids what had happened but simply to break the news as swiftly as he could.

Adam was the only one whose face did not change at all, though probably no one but Gerard noticed George's reaction. Giles turned away, taking off his glasses, fidgeting with them, his head bent. Willow went absolutely white – so white Gerard thought she was going to faint, but she stood still.

"Decimation has been on the books for years as a penalty, but this is the first time to my knowledge that Commerce has ordered it. The first time for this large a group - we would have heard about this if it had happened before. I didn't know Commerce was going to order it: no one could have known." Gerard rubbed his face with the back of his hand. "I don't know when they'll carry it out. It will take some time physically to arrange the disposal of the bodies. I would guess not before Wednesday."

"Three days minimum, assuming they work a twelve-hour day," Adam said. "Unless you have processing facilities ready set up, and they don't, it takes time to kill that many people and dispose of the bodies."

Willow swallowed. She said, in a strained, polite voice, "Excuse me," and went past Gerard out of the room: into the downstairs bathroom. The bolt slammed shut. They could all hear the violent retching noise that followed.

Giles looked at Adam. Gerard ignored them both, went to the kitchen, picked up what he wanted, and came back. George, Adam, and Giles were standing in a semi-circle round the bathroom door, looking at each other.

"We tried knocking," Giles said, as Gerard brushed past him.

"How do you plan on getting her to open the door?" George asked, with genuine interest.

"I’ll get Dana," Adam said.

Gerard ignored them. He set down what he was carrying, put his right hand on the door below the knob, just where the bolt was on the other side, and his left hand on the doorknob itself. Turn the knob sharply and literally lift the door by the friction of the painted wood against his hand: the bolt on the other side fell off its hook, and the door opened. Gerard would not normally have made so clear to his kids that there wasn't a door in his house that could be bolted against him, but right now he didn’t care.

He picked up bottle and loaf and was inside. He bolted the door again: it would take them more than five minutes to figure out the trick of opening it. There was a shelf for oddments inside: he put bottle and loaf down again before he dropped them or put them down somewhere fouled.

Willow was collapsed over the toilet pedestal, head down. She was alive; her soughing breath was loud in the quiet room. The air smelled sour.

Gerard picked her up and put her down against the far wall: she wasn't limp, but she didn't struggle. There was everything back to yesterday's breakfast in the toilet, but no sign of any blood or shit in the vomit, and as far as Gerard could tell, it smelled normal. Gerard put the lid down and flushed: the smell didn't go away, but it started getting better.

Willow was staring at him, her face fouled and tearful. Gerard unrolled toilet paper, wetted it at the sink, crouched down, and wiped the worst of the mess off her face. He put the paper down the toilet, flushed again, and filled the toothglass at the sink. "Can you get up, bambina?" He picked her up on the question, lifted the glass to her mouth. "Don't swallow, just swill it round and spit." He lifted the toilet lid again to let her spit where it could be flushed. "Okay. Again." He put her down against the far wall: she was beginning to feel like a human being in his hands, not a haeftling.

This time he wetted the handtowel, and let her mop her own face with it. He tore a piece off the loaf, a mouthful. "Eat that. Chew, swallow. Go on, it's just bread."

The handtowel got dumped in the bin the cleaners had put in after Dana started working there: Gerard never normally looked in it.

"I'm sorry," Willow said, raw with pain, through a second mouthful of bread.

"Shut up," Gerard said. "Chew, swallow. Good." He wiped off the rim of the toothglass and poured a short finger of brandy into it. "Drink this. You got nothing to be sorry about, Willow. Drink it." He held it to her mouth, tilted the cup, and she gulped the mouthful as if it were water, which she might have been expecting, and she gasped and choked as the burn hit. "Okay." He handed her another piece of bread, larger. "Eat that, bambina, it's an order."

He sat down on the pedestal, leaning forward, and watched Willow. She had colour back in her face and her breathing sounded normal: it was temporary but she was good to listen to him.

"We all did that, you know."

Willow stared at him. The piece of bread was in her hand, against her mouth: her jaws still moved.

"I passed that report on to Commerce. I knew they'd take action, I didn't know it was going to be like this, but I knew when I did it that some slaves were going to die and a lot more were going to suffer. I decided to do that. Not you. You did what I told you to do. No, I'm not going to tell you it was not your fault, Willow, because – " Because you wouldn't believe me " – but I am telling you: we all did it. Adam and you, and George, and me – and even Dana, for making our medical details convincing. You're the only one who threw up. The rest of us, we've all had times when – all you can do is unload your stomach – but we're all a lot older than you are. It doesn't say anything bad or good about you, it just says your stomach's not hardened to this."

"Two... thousand..." Willow said it jerkily, around the bread. "How can you...?"

"Time," Gerard said. "It's been years since I threw up like that." He smiled, though it was hardly funny. "Kid, it's decades."

"Tell me about your first time," Willow said.

"What?" Gerard heard himself snap the word into three syllables, like a whip: but Willow didn't flinch. She pushed the last of the bread into her mouth.

"What made you throw up like I did?"

Gerard poured another short finger of brandy. "Let me tell you what's going to happen when you get this down you." He handed Willow the toothglass. "You're going to drink this. You're going to have one more piece of bread. You're going to lie down upstairs, and if you’re not out cold in ten minutes Dana’s going to give you a sedative. Got it?"

"I'll drink it if you tell me about your first time," Willow said. She didn't sound too steady: the burn of booze on an emptied stomach gave the recipient a floating feeling.

"Drink it," Gerard said, and watched her raise the glass to her mouth. "My first time? Jesus Christ. I can't tell a kid like you a story like that."

"I k-killed two thousand people," Willow said. "I'm not a kid... anymore."

"I was twenty," Gerard said. "I was about to head off for my first tour of duty. There was one kid, he'd borrowed his father's bodyslave. We were all real drunk. One of my friends, big kid, same age as me but tall and pretty damn strong, he got the bodyslave down and he started whaling away on his ass with his hands. He kept saying he was going to make it good, he knew how. The bodyslave was howling, but you could tell – I could tell – he was making it sound like he was hurting, but it wasn't nothing." Gerard folded his hands across his knees. "Then my pal got mad, because we could all tell the howling was just acting, we were all laughing. And he unshipped his belt and he got me to kneel on the man's shoulders and he went to work on the man's back. And pretty soon the noise wasn't acting, not at all." Gerard stopped. He looked at Willow. "I don't know if you're old enough to hear this, Will, but you ever feel something, really strong, really want something, and know you're a complete piece of shit for wanting it? That was me, right then. And I got up off the guy and went to the bathroom and I threw up everything back to breakfast. I haven't thrown up like that since. You get casehardened. It's not good, it's not bad, it's just something that happens. Okay, Will, eat one more mouthful of bread and we're getting out of here."

"I don't think I can get up," Willow said.

"Yeah," Gerard said. He took away the toothglass and put it up on the shelf beside the bottle. "Eat the bread, kid. Bite down, chew, swallow. Good. Gonna tell you one more thing, Will, because you're going to be out like a light by the time you get upstairs: you don’t have to do this again. I promise. When you wake up you're gonna have a square meal or three and you're going home, and you're not going to do any work for a week, and you don’t have to do this again. Got it?"

The bread seemed to have been swallowed. Willow's head was lolling back, and she was swaying. Gerard stood up and lifted Willow to her feet, putting his arm round her to hold her against him, and opening the door. Willow was barely conscious enough to be walked to the stairs: Gerard ignored both men hovering and got her there. Upstairs was trickier: she kept falling over. Gerard dumped her on the bed, propped up pillows behind her, dropped a blanket over her, watched her literally fall sleep as he stood up, and left the room, coming face to face with Giles, who had his glasses off.

“Good, you can sit with her,” Gerard said. “Call me and Dana when she wakes up, got it?”

“Did you just get Willow drunk?”

“Yeah,” Gerard nodded. “If you got a better fix, you can do it when she wakes up. I told her she could go home, I told her she was off work for a week, I told her she never had to do anything like this again. You can take her home once she’s woken up, isn’t throwing up, and she’s had something to eat. Stay with her until I call you in.”

Giles opened his mouth. Gerard shook his head. “Put your glasses back on, we’re not going to have a fight over this. Did Adam get Dana?”

“Yes, she’s downstairs…” Giles did put his glasses on, settling them on his nose, looking at Gerard. “Shouldn’t you have waited for her?”

Gerard shook his head again. He thought of saying Next time I’ll do it better. He didn’t say it. “Anything you need, call,” and went downstairs.

He told Dana. Her face went white, too, but she didn’t throw up. After a while, she asked how much alcohol he’d given Willow, and went upstairs to check on her: when she came back, she and Adam went back to the clinic on the other side of the house.

Gerard sat down and looked at George. “I’m not going to say this again,” he said. “If you hadn’t got that report edited, it could have been every site at that company decimated, not just one.”

George didn’t answer. He had a number of files open. “We still need to get these done.”

“Yeah. Can you run the numbers using Willow’s algorithms?”

“I can try,” George said, after a moment. “You think we can’t use Willow again.”

“Maybe not.” Gerard said. “If we can’t, if she’s permanently cracked, she goes with the next foreign delivery. Her and Giles, we can’t keep him without her.”

George nodded. After a moment, not looking at Gerard, he said “I suppose the principle that two hundred thousand is a bigger number than two thousand ought to help.”

“But it doesn’t,” Gerard said.

George’s face was dry and focussed, and his voice had lost all affect: he sounded as if he wanted to kill someone. “No. It doesn’t.” After a moment, he did look at Gerard. “And whatever it was you were doing to Richard, earlier… did that help?”

Gerard shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for that. He still had to tell Ray and Benton.

When an e-mail arrived from Devlin-McGregor, at first Gerard assumed it must be arrangements about the killing – or thanks or complaint, if Commerce had told them where the report of their “situation” came from. He read it twice before he understood it wasn’t.

“Someone else wants to buy Richard?”

“What?” George looked up.

“I just had an offer,” Gerard said. “From a pharmaceutical company. To buy the contract of the slave I’m holding for a Final destination.” Gerard looked at the figure in the e-mail. “It’s higher than the offer I got from Doctor Nicholls last week.”

“Well,” George said. He looked back at the files, briefly, and then at Gerard. “Another rescue attempt?”

Gerard shrugged. “Probably. Doctor Kimble seems to have been a popular kind of guy.”

“Why not just let them have him?”

There was a pause. George went on looking at Gerard, eyebrows raised. Gerard shrugged again. “If I get rid of him, I just have to begin again with some other guy. I’d probably have the same kind of problems with any convict. Richard’ll learn.”

“He hasn’t yet, then.”

“He will,” Gerard said. He was reasonably confident about this: Richard was stubborn, but he couldn’t hold out forever.

In the hall, they heard Benton and Ray coming in. Gerard felt a cold weight settling on him. Time to go.


end of “The Gambler”

The next section begins once I’m finished writing for Yuletide. *tears hair* Send good thoughts!

Update: the next section is posted now. The Pieces: Willow