Free Hell and Gone by Duane Swierczynski Page A

Hardie yanked the door shut a final time, then staggered backward until his back collided with the other end of the cage. No one was more surprised than Hardie. He’d made it this far. Could he actually make it out of here? Somehow?
    Adrenaline had carried him this far, but he felt like he’d used up his last reserves.
    No matter.
    All he had to do now was push the up button, figure out his next move once he was back in that waiting room. Maybe he could find a way out. Maybe he could even catch up with Mann. Snap her neck and ask her if she’d still like to meet his wife and son.
    A face appeared in the grille. Bearded Aussie guy.
    “WARDEN!” he shouted. “DON’T DO THIS! PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. WE DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO—”
    “Fuck you,” Hardie muttered, then stabbed the up button with an index finger. A second later the bearded guy sighed, unclipped something from his belt, jammed it against the outside of the metal cage, then squeezed it.
     
    ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ-POP
    And then:
    white
    hot
    crazy
    Nothing
     
    A disjointed moment later, Hardie was being dragged out of the cage, drooling and twitching. Slowly he pieced together what had happened. A Taser. They must have jammed a Taser against the metal cage, pulled the trigger, and the electricity that sailed through the cage must have shocked him unconscious.
    Now rough hands were dragging him along the cold concrete floor. Any minute now the beatings were likely to commence. Hardie knew it. He’d tried. Lost. Welcome to your new life sentence, dumb ass. You should have stayed upstairs. Starved yourself to death. Would have been the classy, stoic move. Better than being thrown into a secret prison cell for the rest of your life.
    But instead of a punch—
    The bearded Aussie cautiously touched his face. “Can you see me, mate? Are you okay?”
    Hardie nodded. At least, he thought he nodded. All he knew, his head may have bobbled around as though it were attached to his body with a coiled spring.
    “The hell were you trying to do?” Bearded Guy said. “Didn’t they tell you about the elevator? How it’s a one-way trip?
    Hardie shook his head again, incoherently.
    “Jesus…look, if you were to have gone back up and made your way outside, you would have triggered the death mechanism. They didn’t tell you about the death mechanism? Anyway, listen to me now. If you had gone up, you would have…well, you would killed everybody in here. Everybody. Including me.”
    The other three guards glared down at him, a mixture of disappointment and checked fury on their faces. All like, How dare he almost trip the death mechanism?
    Finally Hardie’s lips stopped trembling enough for him to attempt a few words in the English language. “Would have…tripped the…death what? ”
    “The death mechanism, mate. They didn’t tell you about it?”
    Death mechanism. The words apparently carried some kind of meaning, but Hardie didn’t understand.
    Utter exhaustion washed over him. Hardie could tell his body was trembling, but he didn’t actually feel it until a few moments later, as the guards stooped over to pick him up from the cement floor. His vision went woozy, and the muscles in his neck stiffened, as if to choke him into unconsciousness in a desperate attempt at self-preservation. No. He had to stay awake, soak up every detail.
    What was this place?
    Where was it?
    Why was he here?
    He had no idea.
    The guards guided his stumbling ass through a confusing series of rooms. One looked like a cafeteria. The next was a laundry room furnished with—strangely—refrigerators. Then somebody’s spartan bedroom, followed by a room that looked like a primitive security-department control booth, then another bedroom, then a third bedroom, which was apparently his, because they eased him onto a creaky bed there and told him to rest a while. There was a lot of work ahead of them.
    Hardie had no intention of sleeping. Just wanted to ease back for a few seconds, take a