Gagged, Sanjay half-articulated a series of syllables that, with little difficulty, were understood as “Let me go.” There were other, more garbled and less-familiar sounds that neither man wanted to contemplate. They knew Sanjay, what his power did to others and to him. That he kept lunging at them, trying to get into physical contact, was sickeningly obvious. Danilo had never actually ever seen Sanjay in anything remotely similar to this. Sanjay had, over the years, developed a tolerance, and considering he only had to touch another for a few seconds to incapacitate them, that tolerance was all that was needed.
When he attacked Matt—Vagabond—he must have been in contact for several minutes, and considering the state Matt was in, it must have been like lip-locking an atom-smasher.
Still, to Danilo, there was something about addiction that made him want to beat the affected into the ground. And now, having recovered from the initial shock, he was now deadly grave. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to see this. He wanted Benji to take care of this and he wanted to not be bothered. He brought up his hand, slowly clenching it into a fist. “You think you can take me on?” It would so easy. Danilo would summon his power, his muscles would shine, and Sanjay would be airborne. It would take all of a nanosecond.
But if that very serious threat made an impact in the mind of the third man, there was no comprehension of it. Sanjay jabbered a garbled mixed of syllables that finally bunched together in a god-awful howl. Drool was running down his chin.
The two other men flanked him. The idea, Benji earlier explained, was for Danilo, stronger, faster, more agile, to immobilize Sanjay, and for Benji to get the tube down the man’s throat. Once they got the ball-gag out, of course. One step at a time…
The first part went fairly well: Danilo, an expert in several martial arts, after a few aborted attempts, got Sanjay into a full nelson hold, though it was not easy. Maddened, oblivious to pain, Sanjay, his arms flapping ridiculously in the air, heaved and flailed, a tornado of seizing body parts that made holding on to him like holding on to a writhing eel. It was clear he was trying to kick out. In the back of his mind, he had to marvel at anyone who could be so bound up and at the same to so impossible to hold down. He disliked situations when they were not like the controlled environment of his classes.
Benji quickly got the gag out of Sanjay’s mouth, which, not surprisingly, was followed by a gale of shrieks. It was pathetic to see. Sanjay, usually so Buddha-like in his remote tranquilty, had that skin torn away to reveal the maddened underflesh exposed, raw and raving. Benji knew a little of that.
And that momentary contemplation, that very human trait to want to reach out into the darkness to another, for solace and to be solaced, proved, as it often does, costly.
If there was a god, a divine entity, that played a hand in giving mortals more-than-mortal power, then he or she was a total bitch.
Sanjay is called “Paine” for a very good reason. For he brought one thing and one thing only to the battlefield: To be touched by him is to know the purest agony. Every nerve catches fire and burns to the ground, so fast your scream is caught in your throat, your mind is wiped brilliantly clean to see the very face of God and all the secrets behind it.
That was how Paine put it, but then, he always did take the poetics of the thing a little too far.
To put it simply, you cannot touch Paine without all the pain receptors in your brain going off at once. And Paine cannot touch you without all the pleasure centers in his brain going off at once. In a horrible irony, he cannot help but to enjoy, sometimes obscenely so, hurting people, or anything. Worse, he cannot turn his power “off.”
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