Page 48 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)
And no guarantee that Jake could get him out in the end. The fucking Dixon committee could always say no. Then Jake would do his best to burn Freak Camp to the ground and get Toby the hell out anyway. “Is there any way, any way at all, that I can speed it up?”
“Unless you need a specific monster to complete a time-sensitive hunt, or have a previous bait permit—neither of which I can influence, you would have to go back to Headquarters—no.” She smiled at him.
“Don’t worry. You’re Jake Hawthorne . I’m sure the committee is already working to grant your request as soon as possible. ”
Jake didn’t know if that would be good enough.
As he stepped outside, the disappointment hit him hard as a body blow.
He leaned against the wall, fighting the urge to run around the perimeter to find a place where he could climb and hurdle the wall.
All he needed was a minute with Toby, a minute to look at him, to make sure he was okay, to tell him Jake would get him out of there one way or another soon enough.
Jake would infiltrate the camp any way he had to if those old puckered assholes dared reject his application.
He had nothing left to lose. If it came down to it, he wouldn’t hesitate to grab Toby, shoot his way out of FREACS, and deal with the shitstorm after that.
But Toby deserved better than a life on the run with Jake and the Eldorado, crap motels, and credit card fraud, so Jake had to try to do this the legit way, through the fucking bowels of government.
And that meant keeping his head on straight.
He couldn’t do anything to jeopardize his permit, especially since he was damn lucky Matthew hadn’t put a black mark on his record the last time he’d lashed out inside the camp.
He felt nauseated, thinking how he could have ended all his chances, all of Toby’s hopes for survival, that day. He had to be better. He had to wait it out. And he hoped Toby wouldn’t blame him too much for how long it took.
He pushed away from the wall and looked back at Reception. Nothing of the camp interior was visible from the outside, but he couldn’t turn himself away. Hang on, Toby . Hang on. I swear on my mom’s pyre I’m coming for you.
Jake turned back to his car.
***
T he next day, halfway through dinner, Victor came to the mess hall, nodded to Karl and Lonny, and scanned the monster heads.
“I’m here for Pretty Freak. Director wants him, says he’s to be released to go to Administration this time every Wednesday for the foreseeable future.”
Tobias heard him but didn’t register the words. That happened sometimes, when something was too awful even for a worst day. It didn’t help how his brain just decided something wasn’t true even when it was. That would get him killed someday.
Karl scoffed. “Think the boss man’s finally fucking something?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Lonny snapped. “You want to get your back whipped like Gomez?”
“Take it easy,” Victor said. “He wasn’t here that day.”
“Yeah, well, I was, and I don’t want to see that again. Or have it be me. So watch your mouth, Horwitz.”
“Where’s the freak?”
Lonny jerked his head to where Tobias sat, head bowed, frozen. “Over there.”
Victor turned. “Hey, freak!” he called.
The monsters in the room glanced up, eyes wide. Then they saw where Victor was looking and dropped their gazes.
Slowly, the same dull terror he felt before interrogations lining his throat, Tobias stood up and walked to Victor.
He expected a leash, a blow, a threat, something , but Victor just looked at him like he was a piece of shit he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. “Let’s go, freak. We don’t want to keep the Director waiting.”
The walk to the Director’s office in Administration was silent, tense. Tobias had a strange feeling, like they were walking toward the same thing together—not guard and monster, but two creatures going somewhere they didn’t want to go.
Victor knocked twice on the Director’s door and pushed open the door when he heard, “Come in.”
This time the Director was leaning against his desk, a watch in hand. He smiled when he met Victor’s eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Todd. Right on time.”
“Of course, sir,” Victor said.
“You’re destined for great things, Mr. Todd,” the Director said. “You may go now.”
Victor nodded once. He paused an instant with his eyes on Tobias, mouth pressed into something difficult to define—not pity, but at least acknowledgment that he did not want to be in Tobias’s place. Then he was gone, down the hall.
The Director got up from his perch on the desk and moved to a door Tobias hadn’t seen before on the far side of the bookshelves. “89UI, come with me.”
Tobias followed the Director into the interrogation room.
Bare concrete floor, harsh bright lights, and bolts set into the walls at various heights for securing monsters.
There were three or four battered chairs, a small table covered in a white sheet, a water tap and a hose by the wall closest to the door, and a drain in the middle of the floor.
Two cameras were fixed in opposite corners, and a hook dangled from the ceiling.
The Director nodded at a chair in the corner. “Strip and put on that pair of underwear. I have no desire to view your genitalia, but skin is a necessity.”
Tobias went slowly to the chair, and stripped. He carefully folded everything he had removed, wiggled into the tight white shorts, and then turned around.
“In my opinion,” the Director said, “there is only one reason to keep a monster around, and that is if he’s dependable and obedient. That is my goal here, what we are going to work on every week—to see if I can make you into a dependable monster. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Director smiled. “I don’t really think you do. Not yet. Come here.”
Tobias walked to where the Director indicated, beneath the hook.
The Director took a pair of wide, leather-padded cuffs off the table and snapped them over Tobias’s wrists in front of him.
Tobias’s breath caught, but before he could react, the Director had stepped on a stool and jerked Tobias’s arms up until he could slide the chain between the cuffs around the hook.
When he stepped back, kicking the stool away, Tobias was trapped, stretched to his full height with his arms extended. He had to stay on his toes or his weight would fall on his shoulders.
The Director looked him once over, then moved to pull the small table into Tobias’s line of sight.
Unlike some of the hunters and guards in Tobias’s experience, he added no drama as he removed and folded the sheet, unveiling the interrogation tools.
Knives, shafts, whips, crushers—not the widest variety Tobias had ever seen, but every tool gleamed, polished and clean, in the unforgiving light of the interrogation room.
A knock came at the door, and Tobias jerked involuntarily, the motion swinging him slightly and pulling on his arms. He was already feeling the ache.
“Come in!” the Director called.
The door swung open, and Crusher walked in. The first thing he saw was Tobias, and Tobias could see the crazy flickering in his eyes. When the guard licked his lips, Tobias couldn’t stop himself from making a small sound.
“Good evening, Mr. Sloan.” The Director stepped closer to Tobias and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Mr. Sloan has so kindly volunteered to help me. He wants you to be a good, obedient monster as well, don’t you, Mr. Sloan?”
The guard scowled. “Call me Crusher.”
Momentarily distracted from tracing the scars on Tobias’s back and his hip, the Director looked up. “No,” he said. His nails dug into the bruises he’d left on Tobias’s hip the day before, and Tobias gasped and jerked against the chains.
Crusher made an involuntary noise, and Tobias—so close he could count the wrinkles across the Director’s forehead—saw the brief flash of a smile before the Director’s hand reached the raw nail marks on his inner thigh and clamped down.
Tobias writhed harder, and Crusher gasped like he did when Tobias knew he was about to be on his knees.
But he wasn’t, because it was the Director that had tied him up today, the Director who was hurting him now.
“Is that a problem, Mr. Sloan, with me using your proper name, giving you the respect you are entitled as a real human being and a guard at FREACS? Or do you want to leave and wallow with the other monsters?”
Crusher didn’t answer for a second. Tobias could hear him breathing, and it almost matched his own for raggedness, panic. Then the Director’s hand jerked, Tobias choked, and Crusher took a desperate breath. “No,” he said.
The Director’s voice snapped like a whip. “Show me some respect! No, what ?”
“No, sir .”
The Director pulled out another noise from Tobias, and then he gentled his voice. “You want to be useful, don’t you? To help me make this little piece of shit an obedient, useful monster, don’t you, Mr. Sloan?”
“Yes,” Crusher gasped. “God, yes. Fuck, yeah, let me—”
The Director slid his fingers beneath Tobias’s collar and pulled him closer, pushed him away, made him sway. “Use proper words, Mr. Sloan.”
Crusher took a shuddering breath. “Yes, sir, I want that. Director Dixon, sir.”
The Director smiled again, so that only Tobias could see it, and walked to the table with his instruments. He handed an electric prod to Crusher. “When I tell you to, Mr. Sloan,” he said, and then picked up a riding crop before turning to Tobias.
“Let’s see what you know,” the Director said, swinging the riding crop casually in his hand. He brought it up and rested it on Tobias’s neck below the collar. “I have one question for you, 89UI6703. What are you?”
Tobias had been called a thousand things, had been told he was so many dirty things, but he had tried to forget them, tried to block them from his mind. Now, between the crop and the electric prod, he dragged out the names and curses. Eventually he found it easier to remember them.