He was lying. No question about that—whoever these people were, they weren’t that hooked in, no. They weren’t police or the sort of people who could just tap CCTV at will, or even the store cameras, most likely. If they had that kind of juice, they wouldn’t be doing this whole cloak-and-dagger thing.
The man eyed Noah very closely, and his eyes crinkled when he saw Noah’s suspicion. “Good. You’re not a damned fool at least.”
“And you don’t work here.”
“Clever boy. Meet me on the street in five minutes.”
It was cold outside, and dark compared to the store’s bright-yellow-and-chrome magnificence. It was only just noon, but the rain clouds were so low Noah could have reached up and touched them. The man materialized beside Noah and said, “Walk with me. You must not tell me your name, you have no name yet, but my name is Dr. Pound.”
Noah did not believe that. Maybe Chaudhry, maybe Singh, maybe a lot of things, but the man’s accent did not flow from places where the last name of Pound was common.
They had left Oxford Street and now skirted Cavendish Square, one of many small, contained, melancholy parks in London. The rain started up and the umbrellas bloomed, and for a while conversation was impossible.
Then up Harley Street to one of the doors in one of the segments in the endless line of indistinguishable four-story townhomes.
There was no lift, so Noah followed Dr. Pound up quite a number of steps to a brown, varnished wood door with no number or nameplate. Dr. Pound came out with the key, flourishing it and grinning as though this in itself was quite an accomplishment. Dr. Pound was missing two teeth together, the right canine and the one behind it. Something about the gumline spoke of a cause more traumatic than mere dentistry.
“After you,” Dr. Pound said.
Noah heard a Pfft! sound and felt a sting on the back of his neck. Then he decided it was time to lie down on the rug, time to lie down right there and then. He was conscious of the doctor’s hand grabbing the back of his shirt and softening the facedown landing.
No time passed—well, none that Noah was aware of—before he woke. He was sitting in a chair. Not a comfortable chair, a very sturdily built chair that looked as if it had been bolted together out of 4 × 4 beams. Wide Velcro straps held Noah’s legs to the legs of the chair, and his arms to the arms of the chair, and his back to the back of the chair.
It wouldn’t have held the Incredible Hulk, but after a few experimental muscle flexes Noah decided that it would do a pretty good job of keeping him pinned down.
Both of his hands were encased in black gloves, and the gloves extruded a tangle of wires. Red, blue, green, white, black. Thin little wires that tumbled messily toward a panel that had simply been placed on the floor. It wasn’t exactly elegant.
A cable ran from the panel to a Mac on a small card table.
Two moderately large TV monitors were directly ahead at eye level. They showed nothing but a creepy sort of logo, like a mechanical insect, and the word BZRK.
All of this had been recently moved into place. Sofa, easy chairs, and tables had been shoved aside. A rug had been rolled up. Noah was certain that this apartment had been temporarily appropriated. The owners no doubt off somewhere warmer and drier than London, entirely unaware of what was happening at home.
“What the hell?” Noah said. His voice wasn’t slurred. In fact he felt perfectly alert. He’d gone from unconscious to conscious in record time, and he wondered if it had anything to do with the head band he was wearing. Wires seemed to be coming from it as well. They tickled the back of his neck.
Dr. Pound appeared. “Awake then?”
“What the fuck?” Noah said, feeling this called for something a bit stronger than a mere “hell.”
“Sorry to have to render you unconscious, but I had to check you out at the nano level. Don’t worry, you appear to be clean,” Dr. Pound waved a dismissive hand. The hand was holding a lit cigar that trailed putrid smoke. He also appeared to have one of the sherbet pips in his mouth. It was pink.
“From here on, this will only take fifteen minutes,” Pound said.
“Get me out of here,” Noah said. But not like he thought it would happen. Not even like he really, really wanted it. Because he had volunteered to take some sort of test. And his brother had done it, hadn’t he?
Unless this was all some sort of elaborate trick. He tested the Velcro strap around his right bicep. Yes, it was still there, and no, he was not the Hulk.
“You will play a video game,” Dr. Pound said. “Two games, actually. One game on the left screen is controlled by your right hand. The one on the right by your left hand.”
“Games.”
“Games,” Dr. Pound agreed. “But you don’t play for points. Points are an abstraction. On the other hand, pain is real.”
As he said this he let the hand holding the cigar drift down until, as if unaware, the cigar’s hot glowing tip was near Noah’s arm.
“And fear of bodily injury, say the loss of a limb, is also very real.”
Noah stared at his captor, looking for evidence in his liquid brown eyes that he was joking, exaggerating, fooling, or anything other than speaking the truth.
“Do you know the poet Ezra Pound?” Dr. Pound asked.
“What are you doing down there?” Noah asked, wishing his voice was not quite so obviously shaky.
Dr. Pound had wheeled a cart into place beside Noah’s right leg. It wasn’t tall, just maybe eighteen inches high, and it looked like it might be an emergency generator. Except that someone had attached a chain saw to it.