Liam smiled hard, the cut in his lip tearing wider. “Maybe. But you’ll never be anything but gutter scum to the rest of the country. A waste of sodding space on the dole.”
Murphy’s pale face flushed bright red before he grabbed the rebar sticking out of Liam’s leg and yanked it out. Liam yelled through the pain of the metal ripping free of his leg. Swearing loudly, trousers growing damp from the blood pouring out of the hole there, Liam barely had time to register the pain before the rebar slammed into the side of his head and everything went dark.
* * *
Consciousness returned in pieces,a slow drag out of the buffer of blackness that kept the agony at bay. Becoming aware of the damage done to his body made Liam want to vomit, but he rode out the nausea until his stomach settled. The pain in his head and the vertigo that accompanied it remained, as did the throbbing agony in his left thigh.
Hunched over in the chair he was still cuffed to, Liam carefully cracked open his eyes, trying to keep his breathing even. His head ached, almost as much as his leg. The wound where the rebar had impaled him had been crudely stapled shut while he was unconscious to try to stop the bleeding. His clothes were stiff and crusted with dried blood, as was the skin of his face. The hit to the head had broken skin, maybe fractured his skull.
At some point while he was out of it, he’d pissed his trousers. The stench of urine would’ve made his nose twitch if it weren’t so swollen. His entire face felt hot and stiff with bruises coming up.
Stringing his thoughts together took effort, but Liam tried. He’d had enough concussions in his life to know this was a bad one, but the situation he was in made it worse. Liam let his head hang, listening to the sounds around him as he tried to get his bearings. No one had caught on that he was conscious yet. He’d take that peace for as long as it was granted to him.
“Is he awake?”
The voice asking the question wasn’t Murphy’s. Liam closed his eyes, letting his body remain loose when someone curled their hand over his forehead to lift his head. Pain cut through his skull at the forceful touch, and it took everything in him to not react.
“Doesn’t look like it,” someone else replied.
They let his head go, and Liam let it fall forward, wishing he could scream at the fiery agony ripping down his face and neck. A loose electrode from the Faraday cage had slid down the side of his face, the sting of the feedback making his skin itch. Murphy losing his temper might have nearly split Liam’s skull in two, but it had also dislodged some of the embedded electrodes, and they hadn’t been reconnected. Considering the throbbing, swollen agony on that side of his skull, Liam could guess why.
It wasn’t enough to make the Faraday cage dysfunctional in any way. The collar fastened around his neck had bioware needles jammed into his spine. The only way to pull them out safely was to deactivate the Faraday cage. Which wasn’t happening any time soon while he was bound to a chair and didn’t know which way was up due to a concussion.
Bloody hell.
The curse drifted through Liam’s mind as he struggled to formulate a plan to get free that wouldn’t leave him bleeding out on the floor.
“We’re movin’. Get him ready for transport,” a woman ordered. “Is he awake?”
“Still unconscious. The last drug round seems to have held up,” one of the men replied.
“Considerin’ we gave him enough to knock out three of our guys, it should have,” the other man said.
Liam would’ve rolled his eyes if they were open. Metahuman metabolism was faster than a normal human’s, which meant they burned through drugs at a far quicker pace. The ignorance of the people holding him captive would hopefully work in his favor.
“Then drag him to the van we’re using to transport the EMPs, for fuck’s sake. Murphy wants us gone. Those bloody UMG bastards have hit another one of our stash houses and it won’t be long before they find us here,” the woman snapped.
That information made Liam’s heart skip a beat. If the Reborn IRA was worried about losing locations to the UMG, then maybe he was still in London. If he was, it wouldn’t do him any good if he couldn’t get free before they left the megacity.
Right. Time to get off my arse.
Liam stayed deadweight and kept his eyes shut, trying to keep the pain from showing up on his face. Hands undid the cuffs on his ankles and legs, but he didn’t try to fight. Not yet. Liam let his arms hang loose as he slumped forward. Another pair of hands hooked under his arms, hauling him off the chair. A second pair grabbed his knees, helping to lift his body.
Liam had to work to keep his jaw loose when he wanted to grind his teeth against the pain from being moved. The tearing heat in his left thigh made him want to scream as the people carrying him to wherever the van was parked weren’t gentle. They treated him like a thing rather than a wounded person, and Liam had to allow himself to be jostled, sinking into his training to get through it.
When he was unceremoniously dropped to the cold, hard floor bed of the van, Liam nearly bit through his tongue to keep from screaming, struggling to not show how much everything hurt. Skin and muscle pulled against the crude staple job on either side of his thigh, fresh blood trickling down his leg. He wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost so far, but he knew it was enough to be a problem down the road.
If only I had some of Kyle’s healing ability.
But he didn’t, so he’d have to make do with what hedidhave—something within reach that could maybe disrupt the Faraday cage. If the Reborn IRA was transporting EMPs in the same van as he was, then the weapons had to be the miniaturized versions. Which meant if Liam could get to just one, he might get free.
The floor bed of the van vibrated as several people walked around him. Liam tuned out the conversation happening around him, head aching from the loud voices. Someone grabbed his wrists and cuffed them together in front of him, the metal biting into skin. At least this time they didn’t bind his feet together.
“Here. Use this batch to dose him again when we get to our destination,” the woman from before said.
“Ye sure we should nae dose him now? What if he wakes up?” a man asked.
“Then put a bullet in his knee so he can’t run off. Look, he’s completely out of it.”
