Daemon

drawings with as few lines as possible. He approached the set of double doors at the far end of the hall, and – as he expected – they opened noiselessly to admit him.
    They revealed a colder, empty room with a dark granite floor, harsh lighting, and a lofty ceiling not visible from where he stood. Two men in white orderly coats and comfortable shoes stood in the center of the room. They were muscular, one black, one Asian. Their hair cropped close. No jewelry. They didn’t have an unfriendly look in their eyes, but neither were they extending leis in welcome. They both nodded from twenty feet away. The black guy, the bigger of the two, spoke first. ‘Mr Taylor.’
    Mosely stood in the doorway. He wasn’t about to leave its relative safety. ‘I don’t know what you want Taylor for, but I ain’t him.’
    ‘We know you’re not Taylor.’
    ‘Then why you callin’ me Taylor?’
    ‘Because
sack of shit
would be derogatory.’
    Mosely digested this first hint of trouble. He glanced around. ‘Where’s the white guy?’
    ‘What white guy?’
    ‘Oh, don’t give me that shit, brother. There’s always a white guy. Ain’t no brother gonna go through all this trouble just to get some nigga jumpin’ through hoops.’
    They stared impassively. The big one spoke again. ‘If you’retrying to ingratiate yourself with a racial or class-based dialect – save your breath.’
    Not good
. Mosely shifted uneasily. He glanced behind him. Somehow another set of blond wood doors had closed ten feet behind him. He hadn’t heard a thing. Didn’t even feel the air move. He immediately got onto the balls of his feet, casting about for danger.
    ‘Mr Taylor, please step forward.’
    ‘Fuck you! Tell me why I’m here.’
    ‘Would you prefer to be in prison?’
    ‘Right about now, I’d say “hell yeah.”’
    They both chuckled.
    Definitely not good
.
    ‘Look, if it’s any consolation, we’ve been through this, too.’
    ‘Yeah? What’s “this” precisely?’
    ‘Just step into the room, please.’
    ‘I want some answers, goddamnit. I’m not moving until I find out just who the fuck is behind this and why they brought me here!’ His voice echoed into the room.
    ‘We have no desire to harm you.’
    ‘Then pack your no-neck ass up the way you came and get the cracker-in-chief out here. Now!’
    The two men exchanged looks and sighed. Then they marched with purpose toward his position in the doorway.
    Mosely pulled off his tie. No good wearing a noose to a brawl. He wrapped the silk fabric around his right fist. In a few moments he was dancing, fists ready in the doorway. ‘Come on, Knick and Knack! You want a piece a this? Come get some!’
    The two men stopped walking. They seemed disarmingly nonchalant. There was a subtle look in the big one’s eye. A gentle nod to a target past Mosely. Oldest trick in the book. But still …
    Mosely cast a quick glance behind him. The doors were gone, and now there were half a dozen burly men of severalraces standing right behind him. One extended a silver stick into Mosely’s side. There was an electric
pop
, and Mosely dropped like a sack of bone meal. He remembered nothing more.
    He awoke spread-eagled on a table in the center of a larger room. His suit had been replaced by lighter clothing, and his limbs felt constrained. He tried to turn his head to look, but even his head was clamped tight, with some sort of vise pressed in on his temples.
    He reflexively struggled against his bonds. After a few moments thrashing, he concluded they might as well have been welded to the side of the
Queen Mary
. They weren’t going anywhere. He also felt the sting of something in his right arm – like an intravenous needle.
    Beyond the valley of not good
.
    He cleared his throat. ‘All right. We got off on the wrong foot. I see that now.’
    Medical experiments
.
    He had always been a courageous man – mostly because he didn’t particularly care whether he lived or died – but there was something about the sterile, impersonal cruelty of this place that reached in, grabbed him by the brain stem, and wouldn’t let go. A primordial terror welled up inside him.
    ‘Hey! If you’re gonna torture me, then the least you can do is talk about it first.’
    A bizarre sound stopped him cold. It seemed to be emanating from around his head and sounded like a jackhammer as heard through thirty feet of rock. It was hammering impossibly fast. Then slow. Then it actually made chirping noises