Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
Ward's body tensed in anticipation of pain that didn't come.
The Doctor withdrew the syringe and stepped back. He seemed almost disappointed now that the act was done.
Still, Ward felt nothing. It must have been a ruse to scare him into talking. There had been no poison in the syringe at all.
Yet the two men continued to watch him silently.
It began somewhere behind his ribcage. A pleasant, prickly nugget of warmth, that grew warmer as it radiated outwards.
The Scowerers had once stolen a silver hipflask from a man during a lurk, later sharing the contents in the basement of an abandoned building. The mouthful Ward had swallowed had given him a similar feeling. Except that warmth had dissipated, leaving him with a sense of giddy satisfaction. This one grew. And grew.
It reached his heart, and he felt his blood begin to pulse in his ears and rush up and down his neck. The warmth reached his lungs. Heat funnelled up his throat and his breath plumed in the cold air. He saw a trickle of blood weep from the puncture in the crook of his elbow. His stomach flipped lazily over like an egg, and a wave of nausea washed over him, leaving his skin cold with sweat. He began to shake uncontrollably. His teeth chattered. The sound was absurdly loud in the otherwise silent chamber.
He tried to clear his mind, to breathe long and slow, but his heart was thumping harder and harder, his nerve endings singing and his arms and legs prickling weirdly. The knot of heat at his core had become uncomfortable. He imagined a hot coal in there, his lungs pumping air over it like a bellows, making it glow in time with his breathing. Another pump, and a flame flared on the surface of the coal.
Tamerlane and the Doctor watched on.
I won't scream, he told himself. I won't give them that.
Then the first pinpoint of true agony lit deep inside him, seeming to catch in the tinder of his bones. An involuntary sound like the cry of an animal escaped his lips. The terrible hot pinpoint was spiralling outwards now, winnowing like a bird, and his nerves cried out as it touched them. His fingernails found the worn ruts in the chair arms, and his neck strained against the leather collar until he could barely breathe. Sweat poured down his body like boiling water. His skin began to burn. His clothes seemed to be on fire.
There came a point where his ability to control the pain with his mind, to rationalise it, gave way, and he did scream then. Sheets of agony washed over him, and the room spun. Urine streamed down his leg. He could no longer see the room, or Tamerlane, or the Doctor. There was only shadow and flame.
The pain rose to some unimaginable apex, and something in his mind broke. Then there was nothing at all.
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I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Other things I enjoy: hara-kiri, and the comedy of Rebel Wilson.
