Prologue
Rohan
Fiveyears,threemonths,four weeks, and two days.
That’s how long it's been since I left. That’s how long it's been since I defected to FISA. That’s how long it's been since I last saw my father.
Five years, one month, two weeks, and three days ago, my mother was brutally killed by the assassin my father sent after her.
I keep these numbers in my head. I repeat them to myself over and over and over again as men clad in grey Obsidian Inc. uniforms use their considerable skill to turn my body into a wrecked and bloodied mess. Hits give rise to fast-healing bruises. Knives cut raw meat and spill oil-stained blood. Strong and practised hands snap finger bones like twigs under heavy boots.
It's been two weeks since I was attacked in the middle of the street for the second time by another of OI's Liquid Onyx survivors. This one was far more ruthless than Jack Roth had been.
We fought for a long time, minutes that stretched on and on, until we devolved into the creatures we are behind the masks of civility stapled on us by the same organisation that baited and starved the snarling monsters beneath. Under the flimsy façades, things like us are little more than feral dogs with cocaine rubbed across our gums, fully prepared to shred and rip our way to victory.
But as hard as we went at each other, my loss seemed inevitable from the start. The other Liquid Onyx survivor had every patch of skin covered, including a mask for their face, leaving me no opening for attack with my power.
I woke up in an OI cell, chained to the wall. They've kept me drugged and barely coherent since I arrived.
Every day, men dressed in grey come into my cell and embarrass themselves by asking me the same set of questions, in between bouts of incredibly tedious violence. In my more lucid moments, I verbally analyse and critique their clumsy attempts to torture information out of me.
I offer up suggestions for improvement, which seems to enrage them, causing their violence to become even more erratic and useless. This in turn satisfies me greatly.
It was my father who insisted on having me trained to withstand torture. So really, this situation is of his own making. He'll know that and hate it almost as much as I relish it.
He wanted me to be his heir, which meant sharing information with me he wouldn't have with anyone else. If I was taken by one of his enemies, they could attempt to pry my father's secrets out of my brain. This made him vulnerable, something my father abhors and does not tolerate with any semblance of grace.
His only response to fear is cold calculation. He doesn't know any other way to deal with it. Anything that threatens the ironclad control he has over his business and his life must be pinned down and dissected, then fixed with brutally applied solutions.
I was a potential weak point in his castle wall, and the only way to know how to successfully fortify that weakness was to test it for durability under fire.
One of my torturers gets a triumphant look on his face, a sure sign of impending moronic behaviour. He produces a crowbar from the black bag where he keeps his numerous, and oftentimes crude, torture devices.
"Acrowbar?" I rasp out at him, my mouth swollen and filled with a mixture of fresh and dried blood. "Really? Why don't you just dangle me over a balcony? At least then I'd get some fresh fucking air."
Every part of my body aches from wounds new and old. As a Liquid Onyx survivor, my pain threshold is high, but that doesn't mean I'm not pissed at being beaten as if I’m an animal in need of breaking.
In the end, that's all I am to my father. Another experiment, another creature in a cage, with limited use.
Why he thought he could get away with killing my mother and still keep me on his side, I don't know. I thought he understood her importance to me, but perhaps he assumed his own disinterest in my mother, a connection born of necessity rather than love, held true for me as well. If so, he was incorrect. My mother was the only bright spot in my entire shitty life, and I stayed as long as I did to be near her.
With my mother gone, leaving was an easy choice to make. Choosing to join FISA began as more of afuck youto my father than anything, even if he wasn't aware of it. I knew how much he would hate his son and heir becoming a FISA agent, turning traitor in the worst possible way, and that was enough to entice me into signing up with the British spy agency.
Plus, my mother grew up in England. She spent her whole life there until my father took her away, like some kind of evil wizard, to a tower, where she would remain until her attempted escape.
The genius with the crowbar doesn't appreciate my disparagement of his weapon choice and proceeds to take it out on my innocent kneecap, slamming his crowbar into it with a vicious glee that would have me rolling my eyes if they weren't so busy leaking moisture in response to the pain.
"You're lucky Mr. Stone wants to talk to you today; otherwise, that hit would have been for your face." My wannabe torturer grins at me wolfishly. "See if you have such a smart mouth with no teeth to talk with for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll come back and smash them up every time they grow back.”
Jesus. Christ.
"Okay." I make a point of sounding bored. "There are numerous problems I have with the crap you just shat out ofyourmouth. But since I barely expect you to know how to form words with more than two syllables, let's just get to the most important thing and say that your adult teeth don'tgrow back, you absolutecretin."
I'm saved from my idiot torturer’s wrath when the door opens, and my father sweeps into the room with an air of vaguely threatening purpose.
I look up at him with a fierce scowl of impudence. Swishing the liquid black around inside my mouth, I hock a spit of it in his direction. My father comes to an abrupt stop but doesn't react to the spitting in any meaningful way, which is a disappointment. He once backhanded me out of my chair when I accidentally spilt milk at the breakfast table. But then maybe he thinks I've already been smacked around enough by his useless “interrogators.”
I jerk my chin at the crowbar-wielding idiot. "What exactly is the interview process to become an OI torturer these days, Dad? Are you hiring any old psychopath who stumbles out of prison, or what?"
