Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

‘Kill me,’ he gasped. He meant it; he’d never wanted anything more in the world. A mind was not meant to feel this much. Only death would silence the chorus. ‘Holy God, kill me—’

‘Oh, no, Robin Swift. You don’t get off that easily. We don’t want you dead; that defies the point.’ Sterling pulled a watch out of his pocket, examined it, and then cocked his ear towards the door as if listening for something. Seconds later, Robin heard Victoire scream. ‘Can’t say the same for her.’

Robin gathered his legs beneath him and launched himself at Sterling’s waist. Sterling stepped to the side. Robin crashed to the ground, his cheek slamming painfully against stone. His wrists pulled against the cuffs, and his arms once again exploded into pain that did not stop until he curled in on himself, gasping, pouring every ounce of his focus into keeping still.

‘Here’s how it works.’ Sterling dangled the watch chain over Robin’s eyes. ‘Tell me everything you know about the Hermes Society, and all of this stops. I’ll remove the cuffs, and I’ll set your friend free. Everything will be all right.’

Robin glared at him, panting.

‘Tell me, and this stops,’ said Sterling once more.

The Old Library was gone. Ramy was dead. Anthony, Cathy, Vimal, and Ilse – all likely dead. They’ve killed the rest, Letty had said. What else was there to give up?

There’s Griffin, spoke a voice. There are those who were in the envelope, there are countless others you don’t know about. And that was the point – he didn’t know who was still out there or what they were doing, and he could not risk revealing anything that put them in danger. He’d made that mistake once before; he could not fail Hermes again.

‘Tell me or we’ll shoot the girl.’ Sterling dangled his pocket watch over Robin’s face. ‘In one minute, at half past the hour, they’re going to put a bullet in her skull. Unless I tell them to stop.’

‘You’re lying,’ Robin gasped.

‘I am not. Fifty seconds.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘We only need one of you alive, and she’s more stubborn to work with.’ Sterling shook the watch again. ‘Forty seconds.’

It was a bluff. It had to be a bluff; they couldn’t possibly have timed things so precisely. And they ought to want them both alive – two sources of information were better than one, weren’t they?

‘Twenty seconds.’

He thought frantically for a passable lie, anything to make the time stop. ‘There are other schools,’ he breathed, ‘there are contacts at other schools, stop—’

‘Ah.’ Sterling put away the pocket watch. ‘Time’s up.’

Down the hall, Victoire screamed. Robin heard a gunshot. The scream broke off.

‘Thank heavens,’ said Sterling. ‘What a screech.’

Robin threw himself at Sterling’s legs. This time it worked; he’d caught Sterling by surprise. They crashed to the floor, Robin above Sterling, cuffed hands above his head. He brought his fists down onto Sterling’s forehead, his shoulders, anywhere he could reach.

‘Agony,’ Sterling gasped. ‘Agōnia.’

The pain in Robin’s wrists redoubled. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. Sterling struggled out from beneath him. He toppled sideways, choking. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Sterling stood over him for a moment, breathing hard. Then he drew his boot back and aimed a vicious kick at Robin’s sternum.

Pain; white-hot, blinding pain. Robin could perceive nothing else. He didn’t have the breath to scream. He had no bodily control at all, no dignity; his eyes were blank, his mouth slack, leaking drool onto the floor.

‘Good Lord.’ Sterling adjusted his necktie as he straightened up. ‘Richard was right. Animals, the lot of you.’

Then Robin was alone again. Sterling did not say when he would return, or what would happen to Robin next. There was only the vast expanse of time and the black grief that engulfed it. He wept until he was hollow. He screamed until it hurt to breathe.

Sometimes the waves of pain subsided ever so slightly and he thought he could organize his thoughts, take stock of his situation, ponder his next move. What came next? Was victory on the table any longer, or was there only survival? But Ramy and Victoire permeated everything. Every time he saw the slightest glimpse of the future, he remembered they would not be in it, and then the tears flowed again, and the suffocating boot of grief came down again on his chest.

He considered dying. It would not be so hard; he needed only to strike his head against stone with enough effort or figure out some way to strangle himself with his cuffs. The pain of it did not frighten him. His whole body felt numb; it seemed impossible that he might feel anything ever again except the overwhelming sense of drowning – and perhaps, he thought, death was the only way to break the surface.