Fantastic Metropolis

“We’re not going to play any games here, Davey. You’re going to tell me where Edward, Felix and Griffin are, or I’m going to tear your fingers off and smash them into powder. When I run out of fingers, I’ll switch to teeth.”

Curt looked at him in alarm. “Jesus, Adam—”

Adam whirled on him, something snapping inside. “Don’t, Curt, just don’t, OK? He tried to kill me tonight. He may already have killed my brothers. This is life or death, and there’s no room for sentiment or humanity. Get a hammer out of the toolbox, on that shelf.” Curt hesitated. “Do it!” Alan said, pointing at the toolbox.

Curt moved as if in a dream, opening the toolbox and pawing through it until he came up with a scarred hammer, one claw snapped off.

Davey shook his head. “You don’t scare me, Albert. Not for an instant. I have a large supply of fingers and teeth—all I need. And you—you’re like him. You’re a sentimentalist. Scared of yourself. Scared of me. Scared of everything. That’s why you ran away. That’s why you got rid of me. Scared.”

Alan dug in his pocket for the fingerbones and teeth he’d collected from the bedroom. He found the tip of a pinky with a curled-over nail as thick as an oyster’s shell, crusted with dirt and blood. “Give me the hammer, Curt,” he said.

Davey’s eyes followed him as he set the fingertip down on the tiles and raised the hammer. He brought it down just to one side of the finger, hard enough to break the tile. Curt jumped a little, and Alan held the hammer up again.

“Tell me or this time I won’t miss,” he said, looking Davey in the eye.

Davey shrugged in his bonds.

Alan swung the hammer again. It hit the fingertip with a jarring impact that vibrated up his arm and resonated through his hurt shoulder. He raised the hammer again. He’d expected the finger to crush into powder, but instead it fissured into three jagged pieces, like a piece of chert fracturing under a hammer-stone.

Davey’s eyes were squeezed down to slits now. “You’re the scared one. You can’t scare me,” he said, his voice choked with phlegm.

Alan sat on the irregular tile and propped his chin in his palm. “OK, Davey, you’re right. I’m scared. You’ve kidnapped our brothers, maybe even killed them. You’re terrorizing me. I can’t think, I can’t sleep. So tell me, Danny, why I shouldn’t just kill you again, and get rid of all that fear?”

“I know where the brothers are,” he said, instantly. “I know where there are more people like us. All the answers, Albert, every answer you’ve ever looked for. I’ve got them. And I won’t tell you any of them. But so long as I’m walking around and talking, you think that I might.”