Free Mirrors by Ted Dekker Page A

only pushed Austin deeper into fear. The man wanted him out of the way. Fisher wasn’t going to kill his body, he was going to kill his mind, which was worse.
    “Nothing? So be it,” Fisher said. He removed a vial and syringe from his lab coat pocket. Uncapped the syringe and carefully drew a clear liquid into it. Tapped the side to remove the air bubbles.
    “Please…”
    Fisher looked at him. “Please? Please what?”
    “Please don’t do this.”
    “No sedation?”
    His mind didn’t seem to be processing his choices properly. He knew that he was already giving himself over to fear, but he couldn’t stop it.
    “No,” he said.
    The man nodded lightly. “An excellent choice.” The edge of his mouth nudged into a faint smile as he capped the syringe.
    “Let’s help you find perfect peace, shall we?”
    Fisher walked behind his wheelchair and rolled him toward the corner, where a dental chair waited. No, not a dental chair. This one had circular head restraint with bolts above it.
    Austin saw the contraption and knew immediately what Fisher intended. He was going to secure his head in that device and surgically fix his brain. Permanently.
    Terror unlike Austin had ever felt swept down his body in sudden, unrelenting waves. His arms were fastened to the chair, but that didn’t stop the tremor in his hands.
    “You’re going to lobotomize me?” His voice was high and it cracked.
    “Far too rudimentary,” Fisher said, wheeling him. “We’ll use an advanced procedure—a single small-gauge needle through your right nostril up into the brain. The chemicals I inject will kill the appropriate matter. Clean.”
    Austin’s mind stuttered as his grip on his own awareness began to dissolve. The tremor spread up his arms and consumed his entire body. Swallowed him whole.
    A high-pitched ringing screamed in his ears as Fisher’s voice faded to a muffled drone. His chest heaved uncontrollably, sucked at the thick air in long draws. He was going to die.
    In the sliver of the space between two breaths, the world around him slowed as his mind collapsed. Austin saw himself as though he stood outside himself. The room. Fisher. Jacob. The pulsing of his heart hung in the air like the sound of a distant drum that came from nowhere and everywhere at once.
    He blinked.
    Unbidden, a swell of rage rose from somewhere deep inside and shook him. He screamed, ragged and full-throated. Every fiber in his body strained, stretched taut to the breaking point.
    Driven by a primal instinct to survive, Austin violently threw his head back, then pitched his weight up and backward with only one thought in mind.
    No.
    No, he would not die.
    No, he could not die.
    There was no calculation in his movement, only raw impulse, but that basic drive to live followed a logic of its own, previously unknown to Austin.
    The momentum carried Austin up off the seat and over. The ceiling came into view, then Fisher’s body.
    The movement was so sudden, so forceful, so unexpected that it caught Fisher flatfooted. Before he could move, Austin’s knee slammed into his face, crushing his nose with a loud crack.
    With a grunt, Fisher dropped to the ground.
    Austin’s trajectory carried him over, then stalled. He crashed to the tile floor, facedown, arms still strapped to the wheelchair, which was now above him.
    He gasped in pain. He was on his knees with the wheelchair on his back and Fisher was behind him, momentarily stunned, but the large man would quickly recover and crush him.
    Then kill him.
    Austin jerked one leg under his torso and shoved up. He staggered to his feet. But he could hear Fisher’s heavy breathing, wheezing, another grunt. The man was getting up!
    Blinded by rage, Austin whirled, taking the wheelchair with him. He roared, as if by the sound of his voice alone, great strength would flood his body.
    He was halfway through his turn when he saw Fisher, just pushing up from the floor, blood streaming from his broken nose. The man’s hand