He felt a prick, in his neck. He slapped it. Hoping it was a mosquito or even a shit-craving horse fly. The prick became a sting and it spread fast, expanding like a brush fire, so he kept slapping at it. By the time his arm came back down, he couldn’t feel his arm anymore. He moved to get up but nothing moved except inside his brain—his body refused to listen to his brain. He hoped this was a nightmare. Of course it wasn’t. He couldn’t feel the bed under him. He floated, but not in a comforting way. It was as if he were being held over a deep and gaping crevice. He wanted to scream but his mouth wouldn’t move. Then his thoughts were fading, as if far away, as if he were hearing them from some faraway walkie-talkie himself, all tinny, and thinner, and then his thoughts were miles away like storm clouds on the horizon and he wondered if this was what dying was like. But there was no light. He didn’t see himself outside his body.

All just went still, and dark, like a switch had been flipped. Into nothingness. And then even the oblivion was no more.

31.

The darkness returned, from beyond oblivion. It had a coarse texture, and it itched, and it carried the odor of saliva. A burlap hood was roped around Lett’s neck. Through the black fabric Lett felt a chill he knew from foxholes and trench huts and bunkers. This absence of warmth was uniform, lacking any breeze, as if he were now underground. His eyes sensed a pale light beaming from above. His cramped butt confirmed that he was sitting on a concrete floor with his back against a wall, leaning on one shoulder so as not to squash his arms, which were in handcuffs behind him. He knew this place. All the concrete was painted gray, he recalled. But the air here was now stale, from sweat and blood and a sour reek like urine.

He was in a cell, probably in the same corridor where they first brought him when he arrived. No windows. Ventilation was controlled through a square grate up high. Doors were like submarine hatches with a wheel handle on the outside. Before, the other rooms in his corridor were empty. Now Lett doubted that very much. That smell came not only from him.

So be it. He expected nothing less from them.

A sharp spasm of fear and guilt seized his brain, pressing at his eyeballs like thumbs. He realized, yet again, that he was putting people at risk with his defiance. Kanani. Jock. Possibly even Selfer, and that made him sadder than it should have.

The air thickened under the hood. Lett bit at the coarse fabric and tugged on it, to adjust the airflow.