Furnace 3 - Death Sentence by Alexander Gordon Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

creature let itself drop limply to the floor, its arms twitching uselessly in a pool of its own blood.
    Two of the blacksuits ran to check on their fallen comrades, the shaking of heads as they pressed fingers to necks making it obvious that they wouldn’t ever be getting up. It was only then that they seemed to notice me, the nearest of the guards striding over.
    ‘Leave him.’The words came from the far side of the room, spat out like wormwood. I looked round to seethe warden approach, all trace of a smile now scrubbed from his leather face. He loomed over me, and I could feel his eyes bathing me like an icy shower. I cowered before him, shrinking as far into myself as I could while the gooseflesh erupted on my skin.
    ‘What a disappointment,’ he grunted before turning his attention to Gary. Or the thing that had once been Gary. ‘Patch up Number 195. Take him to general population tonight, let him sate his bloodlust on his old cellmate. And when he comes back down, make sure he’s secure.’
    He crouched, and grabbed my chin with smooth fingers.
    ‘I thought you’d left your old life behind,’ he hissed, his eyes black holes that led into the abyss of his soul. ‘If you remember his name then I take it you remember yours. Well, I guess we’ll have to try a little harder to destroy that pathetic mind of yours.’ He used his other hand to ram his finger repeatedly against my temple before dropping me to the floor and standing. ‘Take this maggot back to the screening room. Lock him in there for two days and double his feed.’
    The warden stormed from the room, looking back only once as he reached the main door of the infirmary, screaming at the blacksuits. ‘And get this mess cleaned up!’

ARMS
    My head was a war zone, memories of an old life that I had almost forgotten battling with the fantasies of power that had threatened to consume me. I fought to make sense of things but the confusion was too great, a seething mass of images and thoughts that threatened to drive me insane.
    ‘My name is Alex,’ I told myself as one blacksuit retrieved my gurney and another lifted me onto it. Even as the words spewed from my lips they made no sense, sounding to my ears like a foreign language, but I knew that I had to keep saying them.‘My name is Alex. My name is Alex. My name is –’
    A gloved hand clamped down on my mouth, so hard that I struggled to breathe. I flailed against it as the guards wheeled me back across the infirmary, but the grip was too powerful.
    ‘One more word from you and we’ll be seeing just how long you last against a shotgun,’ said one of the suits, ducking beneath the plastic strips that led out towards surgery.‘You’ve got some nasty little memoriesthat just won’t go away. Well, they’d better do soon or you’ll end up in there.’
    He gestured towards a steel door at the end of the corridor and I remembered a room full of bodies, and a raging fire. I ignored his warning, tried to speak, but he pressed his hand down until I felt my teeth cut through the back of my lips.
    ‘That’s what happens to the ones who can’t forget,’ the blacksuit continued through his shark’s grin. ‘We burn them along with the other trash.’
    I could still feel the sting of flames on my flesh, the memory of pain enough to make me keep my mouth shut. We swung right at the junction, rattling along the uneven floor until we reached another door. It opened into the same room I’d been locked in before, the one with the screen, and although I panicked at the thought of having my eyes pinned open again I was powerless to stop the suits as they strapped me into the chair.
    ‘If you have to keep one thing in that head of yours then let it be this,’ growled the giant man as he lifted my eyelid. ‘You’re either one of us, or one of them . And believe me, you don’t want to make the wrong decision.’
    He stood to one side to let a wheezer in, and I felt the sting of the needle once again.