Fear that man

what would he do next?
        Then the chaos and the noises came, and he was moving…
        When he came out, a package he had been holding under his arm was gone. He had not had time to examine it. He did not know what he had done with it. Or what it had been.
        Then the chaos and the noises came, and he was moving…
        
        Breadloaf rubbed his fists in his eyes, pulled open a desk drawer and fumbled in it for anti-snooze tablets. He found a bottle, popped two pills in his mouth, swallowed without benefit of water. Recapping the bottle, he withdrew a second container of tiny nerve pills. He was in the process of swallowing one of these when the door flew open, crashing into its slot with a sharp, ear-shattering crash. There was a man standing there, eyes like vacant, unseeing marbles, his hands flung outward like the hands of a stage magician. The tips of his fingers glowed and vibrated with some hideous power that was immediately a thing to be called evil.
        And from the fingernails came darts.
        Needles of sleep.
        They bit into Breadloaf, spreading their red warmth, pulling him down into a Shieldless darkness that forced but denied him to scream…
        When Sam was in control of his body again, the first thing that struck his attention was the man slumped in the chair-seemingly unconscious-behind the desk. His every muscle was taut beneath the surface relaxation, as if the death penalty had been the only alternative to unconsciousness. Secondly, there was the screen. It was to the right of him, and for a moment it had been in a low-key color series of magenta and black. Abruptly, it spewed forth oranges and whites and creams that splashed across the room and grabbed his eyes.
        He walked to the screen, stared at it. An indescribable chill swept up and down his spine. It was as if the colors were alive and wanted out.
        “What do you want? Who are you?”
        The voice startled him, and he leaped, his heart pounding. But it had not been the colors; it had been the man, Sam walked to the massive desk. “My name is Sam. I was-”
        “What do you want? Why did you do this to me?”
        “Do what?”
        “I can’t move, damn you!”
        Sam hesitated, looked about the room, sensing a ghost scene of what must have transpired. “I paralyzed you?”
        Breadloaf’s thin lips moved, and his eyes revolved like ball bearings in well-oiled grooves. Yet the rest of his body was carved from wood, stiff and immovable. “You and the darts beneath your fingernails. What the hell kind of man are you!”
        Sam lifted his hands and looked at them. The nails were discolored as if fine bits of flesh had puffed into ashes beneath them, leaving blackened pits. He rubbed one, but the color was definitely not on the surface.
        “What kind of man are you!” Breadloaf roared this time, panic flushing every word, every word cored with fear.
        “I don’t know,” Sam said finally. “Is there some way I can help you?”
        Breadloaf was breathing heavily. “Yes! Go get help!”
        “I can’t do that,” Sam said. He stood on the carpet, shuffling one foot over the other, feeling somewhat the hypocrite.
        “Why? Why can’t you?”
        “It won’t let me.”
        “It?”
        Briefly, he recounted his story-the jelly-mass, the hypnotic commands. When he finished, the other man’s eyes were wide-too wide to contain anything but horror. “The Prisoner!” he croaked.
        “What?”
        “The Prisoner of the Shield. You’re under its direction!”
        Sam turned instinctively toward the portal of wavering colors. “Then they are alive!”
        Breadloaf was laughing, and Sam could not get him to stop. It was not the laughter of him and Hurkos and Gnossos in the Inferno. This was laughter at the inevitability of some unknown tragedy. He could sense that, but he could not stop the other man. Neither could he leave to get help. His feet would carry him toward the doorway but not through it. There was a mental block that kept him within the room. His memory began to clear slightly, and he could remember what else he had done in this building. He had planted some sort of bomb in the machinery below. And it must be the machinery that kept this… this Shield going.
        “A thousand years,” Breadloaf shouted between whoops of laughter. “For a thousand years it tried the same things over and over, and