Furnace 5 - Execution Read Online Free Page A

as if my pain was her pain. It had been so long since anybody had looked at me like that, with kindness, that it confounded me.
    ‘Your name is Sawyer, isn’t it?’ the woman asked.
    Sawyer didn’t sound right. I delved into the chaos inside my head, pulling something loose from the nectar.
    ‘Alex,’ I whispered, coughing. The word felt alien, sitting uncomfortably on my tongue.
    The woman took something from her pocket, a small canteen. She unscrewed the cap and held it to my lips, letting a trickle into my mouth. I swallowed, the sensation blissful.
    ‘My name is Colonel Alice Panettierre,’ she said as she replaced the cap on the canteen and sat down. ‘I’m in the army, as you can probably guess, but I’m also a doctor. I’m here to help you.’
    Her voice was warm, soothing, almost hypnotic.
    ‘You’re lucky to be alive, Alex. The Air Force hadorders to destroy that tower and everything in it. Everything. It was only when we saw you screaming at us – screaming words at us – from the spire that we issued a capture order. We were lucky to get you before the building collapsed.’
    I tugged at my binds again, tired of hearing her speak. I had a job to do. I had to find Furnace and kill him, and she was just another obstacle in my way. Another expendable obstacle. She rested a hand on my arm, wrapped tight, and shook her head.
    ‘Don’t struggle,’ she said. ‘This is shipping wire. It’s the stuff that holds up transporter crates when they’re being hauled off the boats. It can withstand tension of over a hundred tonnes, and we’ve wrapped you pretty tight. But it’s there for your own safety. Those poor limbs of yours, they’re pretty dangerous weapons. We tied you up so you wouldn’t accidentally hurt yourself.’ I tried again to move and she looked at me like a mother looks at a naughty child. ‘Although if you keep struggling like that then I can’t guarantee it.’
    She stood, walking around the bed to one of the machines and staring at the read-out.
    ‘Your health is good,’ she reported. ‘Which is incredible, really, when you think about it. You had a massive hole in your chest, another through your stomach, and an X-ray showed no fewer than fourteen bullets in your body. Every single one of your major organs has taken a pummelling, and yet they’re all still functioning. In fact, they’re operating at a higher level than anything we’ve ever seen.’
    She turned back to me, sitting on the edge of my bed with her hands in her lap.
    ‘I guess what we’d like you to do for us is explain how that’s possible.’
    It took me a while to dredge up the right words, the simple sentence seemingly the most difficult thing I’d ever had to string together.
    ‘I’m just lucky, I guess.’
    Panettierre smiled with her eyes, but I could sense something else there. A flicker of impatience, maybe.
    ‘It’s good to know you’ve still got your sense of humour,’ she said after a moment. ‘God knows we all need one, especially at the moment.’ She leant forward, putting her hand against my brow. Her skin was cool, her touch calming. ‘We’ve spoken to your friends; they’ve told us quite a bit already.’
    ‘Friends?’ I asked, searching for memories. But they were lost beneath the nectar like photographs submerged in tar.
    ‘Zee Hatcher,’ she explained. ‘And the girl, Lucy Wells. They were the ones who found us, who told us about the tower. We picked up another one, too, Simon Rojo-Flores. They all told us the same story, and I’m wondering whether you will too.’
    ‘Furnace,’ I said, spitting the word out like a mouthful of rancid meat. ‘This is all his doing.’
    ‘Alfred Furnace?’ the woman replied. ‘The man the prison was named after, right?’ I nodded again, watching her cross the room. She checked a machine as she spoke. ‘Well, this is what we’re finding hard to take in. Becausethere is no Alfred Furnace, not in any of our records. Sure, there’s the