King interrupts my stare off with Kitty by padding into the bathroom and parking himself next to me, panting rambunctiously. He leans his body against my leg. I reach down to give King’s ear a scratch. King woofs quietly at me, possibly picking up on the sombre air inside the bathroom. King is usually quite good at that, being able to tell when there’s tension and knowing it means he shouldn’t draw attention to himself.
I break the silence between Kitty and me when his scary, two-blinks-a-minute staring is getting a little much.
“Right then, King. This is Kitty. Say hi.” I give a little demonstrative wave.
King barks excitedly at Kitty, who doesn’t flinch or move in response. He keeps his attention on me, not sparing a glance for King.
Kitty is really big. He takes up a significant portion of the bathroom floor with his long torso and legs. He looks imposing as hell down there, which really shouldn’t be possible while cuffed to a toilet. I’m starting to become more jealous than unnerved.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say suddenly, not sure why or where the urge to reassure him came from. He’s not exactly a civilian in need of comfort.
Kitty, for his part, looks at me like I just said the stupidest thing he’s ever heard in his entire life. Finally, emotion. He is a real boy after all. Huzzah. I’m too relieved by that to care about any possible offensive take on his reaction.
“Alright,” I correct myself. “I might hurt you. But only if you get all pissy again and start stabbing people with things. I don’t know who taught you it was okay to do that, but they were clearly working through some stuff at the time.”
Kitty doesn’t bother to respond. He just keeps on looking at me. I get the odd feeling he’s waiting for something, and thesomethinghe’s waiting for has nothing to do with me. Not for the first time, I wonder if Kitty came to Danger City alone.
If Kitty has backup, that could be a serious problem. Possibly an imminent one if they really do have some way of tracking him here. I didn’t spot anyone following us from Chaos Street, but that doesn’t mean much in the long term.
Kitty’s head suddenly twitches to the side, and his gaze shoots to the doorway. I’m confused and mildly alarmed by the out-of-nowhere movement until I hear the rumblings of action coming from the living room a couple of seconds later. There’s the sound of someone yelling incoherently and what might be the coffee table breaking.
I smile sweetly at Kitty.
“I’m gonna go deal with that.” I jerk my head toward the hallway. “You keep chilling out in here. Maybe think about coming up with a convincing lie to tell me about who you are and why you’re in my city. Impress me with your dynamic deceptions. Get creative. Put on a good enough show, and I might even uncuff you.”
I get another flicker of human from Kitty. He looks at me like he doesn’t understand what game I’m trying to play with him. I recognise the expression. Since there’s no way for me to convince him I’m not trying to trick him into anything, I leave him to his sensational brooding and turn to leave the bathroom.
“Watch him, King,” I say to the tongue-lolling corgi at my feet. “Make sure he doesn’t break his hand and slip out of the cuffs like a person truly committed to regaining their freedom would.”
King barks up at me and then resumes his enthusiastic breathing in Kitty’ direction. Let Sir Stare-a-Lot deal with that for a while.
When I return to living room, I’m greeted with a scene it takes my brain a moment to fully compute.
Rohan has woken up, and in truly dramatic fashion, he seems to have attempted some kind of escape. It hasn’t gone very well. He’s on the floor between the coffee table and the fireplace, with Damon practically sitting on top of his back. I think he must still be drugged up some because otherwise there’s no chance Damon would be able to keep him down and in place like he is now.
I was right about the coffee table. They must have rolled over it or something because there’s a large crack running through the glass surface.
Damon looks up at me when I come in. He’s panting a little from exertion.
“Bloody Liquid Onyx survivors,” Damon complains to me through laboured breaths. “I hate fighting ’em. It’s like wrestling a massive, pissed-off tiger who wants to eat me, every time.”
Since Damon did once actually wrestle a hungry tiger when we were out on a mission, because he’s a ridiculous human being who makes terrible life choices, he can say that with a decent amount of authority.
Rohan goes ahead and proves just how strong he is by quite literally standing up and throwing Damon off his back at the same time. Damon goes tumbling to the carpet with a yelp of shock I wish I could have recorded to play back for Rex later.
I watch as Rohan straightens and rolls his shoulders, loosening them up a little. He looks impossibly slight in comparison to Damon, but he threw the larger man off like he weighed nothing at all. If Damon’s assessment is right, then Rohan is almost certainly a superhuman.
Rohan walks towards me, his body swaying, his footsteps unsteady. His eyes are still somewhat glazed, making me think I was right in guessing the drug he was injected with hasn’t entirely left his system.
I take out my weapon but don’t aim it at Rohan, hoping the sight of it will be enough to deter him from attacking me. I’m not really interested in putting Rohan on his arse again if I don’t have to.
Rohan does stop in his tracks when he clocks my tranq gun. He blinks slowly at me, like an owl coming down from a high, his head titling to the left in contemplation. He’s not totally with it, but there’s enough awareness there for me to feel confident he understands what’s going on around him.
His body has shifted into a more defensive stance. He’s readying for a fight I cannot be bothered to have, quite frankly.
Damon gets up from the floor and circles around the cracked coffee table, slow and careful so as not to spook Rohan.
Rohan spares him a quick glance, but his gaze comes back to settle on me, having clearly designated me as the bigger threat for the moment.
