Page 64 of Client from Hell

On schedule, I took the handful of pills meant to mitigate pain and treat the cancer I no longer battled to make certain they detected the correct drugs if they did a blood test. As the CDC’s file included my last tests, which showed some improvement of my cancer but did not include its eradication, if they did any scans for the cancer, they would believe my virus worked to cure me.

My job was to pretend the drugs worked as well as expected for someone in the final stages of cancer and being experimented on in a last-ditch effort. The wait annoyed me, especially as the first two or three hours after taking the drugs went by in a blur.

The Devil had warned me, but I still disliked the clinging drug-induced haze, especially when aware I invited myself to a kidnapping and some time in a lab. As we didn’t know how aggressive our prey was about checking the CDC’s files on me, or if they had someone closer to the top, we would go in unaware of when they’d hit, although judging from Lucifer’s behavior, he considered it to be a guarantee.

Four hours after my location was added to the CDC’s file on me, trouble came calling. As my medical file said the drugs would keep me out for five hours, I stuck to our plan, playing as close to dead as I could. My virus loathed the idea of enemies prowling around our space, but I ignored the presence of at least two people in the rustic home ideal for escaping the city.

Keeping still sucked, especially when my kidnappers took the time and effort to check my blood pressure and pulse to make sure they wouldn’t kill me moving me. My virus wanted me to bitchslap the sin right out of the two men, who spoke in low tones, recorded my vitals, and played the part of meticulous researchers rather well. The bastards poked me with several needles, and a few minutes after one of them, the lights went out.

In good news, I woke up.

In bad news, I woke up in a cage with my hands manacled over my head. They’d used some sort of padding to keep the metal from cutting into my wrists, although I learned the position did my shoulders and back zero favors. My virus came to a single conclusion: only the brutal deaths of our prey would do.

I wore the same clothes I’d been kidnapped in, although I spotted new blood stains. On a closer investigation, I determined someone had taken a scalpel to my arm, using a marker to track the size of the incisions. I could only assume they tested my rate of healing.

One of them still bled, leaving a scabbing trail of blood down my arm to my side. Removing the mess without magic would be a bitch, especially as it caked to the little hairs on my arms. I glared at the evidence I’d participated in some form of test or another. After taking a full inventory of my new cuts, bruises, and marks, I expanded my investigation to my nearby surroundings. Several cages similar to mine, barely large enough to fit a bound human, took up one wall. The rest of the room reminded me of an ER, although I held zero delusions.

From surgical table to medical implements, the operators had everything needed to take apart a body, and judging from the state of the person they worked on, they didn’t need their subjects alive.

To my relief, I spotted no other captives in the room, although that didn’t bode well for me. Lucifer had believed they wanted me alive, but the non-intact state of their other subject concerned me. What did they hope to learn from the corpse they dissected? The dissection process involved a great deal less blood than I had anticipated, to the point I assumed they’d drained the corpse before taking a scalpel to him.

As I had no idea what to call the bastards chopping apart their other test subject, I decided they counted as fucking assholes. While I had no problems with willing donors giving their bodies to science, I suspected the man on the table hadn’t been willing.

If he had been willing, he was no better than the animal abusing assholes I wanted to wipe off the face of the Earth.

Willing participants didn’t need to be kept in cages, and the presence of multiple cages gave me all of the information I needed to decide I would show no mercy to those in the room with me.

They were so absorbed in their dissection they didn’t notice me observing them, so I turned my attention to the manacles securing my hands over my head and doing a damned good job of making sure my shoulders would hurt for hours or days to come. Once freed, I would recruit Jonas for basic treatment. If he couldn’t make me forget the persistent discomfort, nothing could. I shifted my weight, wincing as my knees and ankles protested the movement.

Whatever they’d drugged me with, it had done a good job of keeping me down and out.

The next time I volunteered to be bait, I would set some important restrictions. First, I would establish a timeline for rescue. If it would prevent me from being the next poor bastard to be chopped up on a surgical table, I would play the best damsel-in-distress to ever be distressed. I would even toss in a few good screams for good measure, and once rescue came, I would swoon for the benefit of my rescuer—or rescuers.

Pride mattered little when it came to dodging dissection.

Second, I would establish a requirement to minimize any loss of my blood. Judging from the amount caked to my arm and side, the fucking assholes who’d kidnapped me hadn’t cared about something like blood loss.

Diana and Darian would not be happy if they needed to serve as my personal blood bank again.

Third, I would demand more than a tracker embedded in my arm. Fortunately, while I had a lot of cuts decorating me, they hadn’t gotten close to where Lucifer had implanted the device. Under the guise of scratching my nose, I poked and prodded at the spot, which ached and had a slight bump.

Assumptions could create me trouble later, but for the sake of my sanity, I would cling to my belief the tracker was still in place.

The men cutting up the poor bastard on the table didn’t notice my movements. I eyed the manacles, which seemed to be secured with a bolt and a wing nut.

What sort of fucking morons left a prisoner manacled with a bolt using a wing nut of all things? I checked my bare feet, pleased to see they had not bothered to bind them with anything. My shoulders would hate me for a while, but I wiggled until most of my weight rested on the manacles, brought my knees up to my chest, twisted until my toes could get into proximity of the wing nut, and went to work loosening it.

In the future, I would practice manipulating things with my toes, but in addition to inflicting their stupidity upon me, my captors had gone the lazy route, only tightening the wing nut enough to keep me from forcing the manacles open without dealing with the bolt first.

I hated idiots. I hated them, and I would get the satisfaction of escorting them straight to hell. Once I got them to hell, I would beat the stupidity right out of them, making certain their seeds would forever remember why they would not indulge in stupidity or laziness in their next life.

It took a few minutes, but I wiggled the manacles open enough to free my right hand, after which it took less than five seconds and a single good spin of the nut to free my left.

Excellent. I left the wing nuts in place, eased my arms down so my motions wouldn’t draw unwanted attention, and focused on my next challenge, which involved breaking free of the actual cage.

Had I been in charge of their operations, I wouldn’t have used a basic catch mechanism on a cage intended to hold anything smarter than a single-celled organism hostage. I lost a solid minute staring at the latch in disbelief.

Right. I dealt with exceptionally stupid people—people who dissected their victims and left a variety of tools for the job in reach of their hostage.