Diamond Eyes Read Online Free Page B

smell this particular variety. It’s supposed to be like citrus.’
    ‘That figures.’ Van Danik shook his head and unclipped the luggage fasteners with ease. ‘You must have missed your calling as a —’
    ‘Wait!’ Zhou said. A woman’s scream drifted softly on the breeze — muffled, but not entirely, by distance. ‘Did you hear that?’
    He looked again for the odd little man, but saw neither him nor any other residents.
    Van Danik turned his ear to the approaching rumble of a diesel engine. ‘Sure, I told you we hadn’t lost them.’
    ‘Not
them.
I heard a scream.’
    ‘It’s a nuthouse, Zan. It’s a wonder the walls haven’t been screamed down a hundred years ago.’
    ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Zhou shivered. A scream from his past echoed inside his head, igniting pain and throbbing across the old scars where his ears had once been. ‘This was terror.’

THREE
     
    C onvulsing on her side, Mira stuttered on the floor in pain. Unable to scream again. The jolt of electricity reverberated down her spine, not yet dissipated out through her limbs. Her chest burned and her head throbbed, but she listened to the three voices, focusing as hard as she could manage in an effort to figure out what response she could give to make them leave her alone. Begging hadn’t helped.
    ‘You said you weren’t going to use it!’ Ben said, sounding angry.
    ‘No, I didn’t,’ Neville argued. ‘I said it’s not as bad as it sounds, and it’s not.’
    ‘It only looks that way. Give her a sec to catch her breath,’ Taser woman said. She crouched to stroke Mira’s hair. ‘Being blind, her senses are heightened so it takes a little while for her to figure out that she’s only copped a tingle.’
    ‘A tingle?’ Ben said, as if shocked himself. ‘Be serious. She’s convulsing!’
    ‘I am serious, kiddo. What you’re seeing right there is a momentary loss of muscle control. Sure it disorients her. It’s meant to. But all that thrashing about isn’t agony. It’s just spasms; involuntary. Loss of control is scary enough to make her yelp, obviously, and that’s just as good. It’s a warning of how bad it could get if she gives us cause to up the ampage.’
    Mira shivered, still unable to unclench her jaw or uncurl her fists.
    ‘It’s rare to need it more than once per patient,’ Neville added. ‘But if she tries to attack, don’t hesitate. Switch it to max and grip hard. The charge isn’t high enough to cause any permanent damage, so long as you never use two gloves at once.’
    ‘I can’t do that!’ Ben protested.
    ‘Sure you can. It’s only a junior stinger, and look for yourself — it’s set to minimum. But even if it wasn’t, a hard sting is still plenty kinder than a traditional Taser. And cheaper than seds.’
    ‘No, I mean I couldn’t use that and still expect her to trust me.’
    ‘Trust?’ Neville laughed. ‘Benny, mate, trust is a luxury we can’t afford here.’
    ‘It can result in your injury as well as theirs,’ agreed the Taser woman. ‘The tantrums here can go nuclear. It’s not their fault or yours. You’ll just have to get used to it.’
    ‘Yeah, don’t take it personally,’ Neville said.
    ‘I’m not,’ Ben insisted. ‘It’s just overkill. She wasn’t attacking me. She wasn’t even hurting herself. She was just... terrified, I think, of someone — or
something
that happened to her — or someone else maybe, somewhere else.’
    ‘Yeah. That’s always the way it starts.’ Neville chuckled and coughed, his breath reeking of stale rum-scented cigars.
    ‘The soldiers,’ Mira sobbed, trying to explain. She heard the Taser woman lean closer and cringed.
    ‘Wait!’ Ben pleaded.
    Mira felt a hand brush her arm — Ben’s, she guessed, from the size and roughness of his skin.
Did he just block the Taser?
    ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘If she needs it, I’ll do it. I just want to let her catch her breath first and give her time to say what she has to,