The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister, Landon Wark [10 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

of shape. And where Sasha was headed, in amongst the flaking primer paint of decaying walls there were... similar things going on. Business in the front, party in the back, as they said in the West.

Sasha rubbed his thick, scarred knuckles, a Pavlovian response made them ache whenever he saw the line of guards at the windowless rooms. From the memories of being a few rungs lower on the ladder he supposed.

He sighed and placed his coffee on the floor a metre from the door. From within he could hear soft wheezing. Down the hall there was the unmistakable loud packing sound of something hard hitting the soft parts of a human body. Or maybe an inhuman body for all he could say. The talk that was coming in was... odd to say the least. Having survived several economic downturns throughout his life, Sasha had some experience with malcontented lunatics, and usually the worse the turn the worse their mental states. But things had been worse in the past. Things were not bad enough to justify the reports coming in from his subordinates.

"How is he?" He nodded to the man standing outside the room.

The man, square and muscular and not the type to spook easily, looked more than a little rattled. "Listen."

Sasha placed his ear closer to the door. The wheezing sound was ragged, but strong. A few of the capillaries in the lungs of the room's inhabitants had likely burst. He would likely be about ready to tell them something. Whether or not that something was accurate was a matter of investigation.

Sasha stretched the muscles in his neck. Years of experience had taught him that, no matter their zeal for the art, the men (and one or two women) he had learned under had been mistaken. The bloody back rooms could yield a haystack of information, but finding the needle required the same amount of work as just skipping the violence in the first place. Better to have good men, with good ears, out in the field.

But lately few of his paid informants, men who had given him plenty on other subversive elements, were reporting back. And those who were were telling him to fuck off.

Like the man in the room.

"And so we return to the old methods," Sasha muttered, popping his knuckles and unscrewing the wedding ring from his left hand.

The room was barren, save for a single chair in the middle. Four bulbs, one in each corner provided light regardless of what body might get in the way. Another of Sasha's innovations. The stereotypical bare bulb in the middle of the room provided dramatic shadowy corners, but made it difficult to work with precision. The change in the wiring had been time consuming, but worth it. Illuminated by the lights was the body of a man, arms bound to the chair.

His body stripped. Bruises about the sizes of fists dotted his doughy torso. His gaunt, hungry face was stained with haematoma. Blood oozed from his nose and from a cut above his eye, barely visible on his hanging head. The flesh around the wounds engorged and red. Some of it cast off into streaks on the floor, one even making it as far as the wall where towels hung from a rack.

Some institutions were careful not to leave evidence of what went on in places like this, but here they had leeway. The government had aluminum and oil and cared little for toothless sanctions from a greedy world.

The two men who had been interrogating him backed off as the door opened and Sasha entered. His foot came to a stop at the perimeter of a circle of coins that littered the floor. He looked to one of the interrogators with an arched eyebrow. The man shrugged, wiping blood from his knuckles with a towel.

"You want to see?" the interrogator asked.

"Please."

The interrogator grasped the man's short, blond hair, pulling his head back.

"Show him."

Like a robot that had been given a command, the man whispered... something that Sasha could not make out. There was the tinkling of metal on the bare concrete floor and a coin, identical to the ones that littered the room rolled over, settling a few centimetres from Sasha's wing tip left shoe.

His eyebrows raised and for a moment the world seemed to shudder. The words in the directives he had been getting from dozens of his superiors were suddenly very clear in his mind.

Regardless of what you see or experience, you are to get the names of the leaders.

"I can understand now," he said to the man in the chair, "why you suddenly don't want my benevolence."

The man rolled his head backward on an unsupportive neck. His one good eye glared at Sasha with a kind of exhausted defiance. The two of them had never met, but he made it a point to know where his payouts were going and likely could have picked each informant out of a crowd.

The man wheezed. He was trying to say something, likely a slurred, half concocted insult. One of the interrogators stepped up to him. The man struggled briefly, but when a towel was placed under his mouth and the command was given to spit he did so. A dark red slick stained the cloth. Then the other interrogator stepped in with a small plastic cup of water. The man slurped at it greedily, spit once more then took a full swallow.

"Tell me what is happening out there." Sasha motioned toward the door.

There were always manifestos just below the surface of the malcontents, itching to see the light of day. Motivations were always easy to find. They were impossible to contain.

"New world is coming," the man wheezed. "Where wealth is meaningless."

"Because you are going to give pocket change to everyone?" Sasha motioned to the floor.

The man laughed a sad, gasping