Rohan grins at Damon, baring teeth that look perfectly straight and pearly white. They show his wealth more than anything else. Always look at the teeth to know if someone is wealthy enough for you not to feel guilty about pickpocketing them.
I learnt that during a mission from a couple of street kids. They had the weirdest code of ethics. It was like someone had rewrittenOliver Twistto be PC appropriate.
“I wasn’t raised,” Rohan tells us, bluntly acerbic. “I was built.” There’s something chilling about it, the merciless truth veiled behind fake sarcasm. He looks right at me, speaking slowly and with purpose. “Very, very efficiently.”
He says it like it’s a warning, which is nice of him. Clumsily kind, almost, as if that’s the side of himself he needs to conceal, when most other people spend their lives trying to hide their darkness.
“I won’t let him hurt you,” I promise Jack.
He darts his gaze over to land on me. It settles like the intense heat in a foreign country, oppressive and cloying.
I meet his eyes, letting him see whatever it is he needs to see in me.
Jack watches me for a few achingly slow seconds, then gives an imperceptible dip of his chin. Acceptance, however reluctant. He must see something in me that allows him to have some measure of faith in my word. I’m not sure what or why. Maybe it’s my mother’s truth, living in me too, carving out divots and filling them in.
Jack strips off his black jacket, revealing only a thin black vest underneath, and lowers himself to the floor on his stomach. I go to kneel down beside him. Rohan takes a similar position on his other side.
Damon goes into the kitchen without being asked and positions himself near the window, where he has a clear line of sight to the front of the house. I’m grateful for it. OI might show up at any point, and it would be good to have some warning if that happens.
Rohan leans forward, knife in hand, and puts the other hand on the back of Jack’s head to keep him steady. His touch is surprisingly gentle for all his talk earlier.
Jack turns his head and looks up at me, mint-green eyes so pale and unique. There’s no fear in them. There isn’t much of anything in those eyes now. I know the blankness probably means he’s feeling a lot rather than nothing at all. But I don’t know what would make it easier for him.
Rohan gets the tip of his knife into place.
“Right,” he says, tone measured and careful. “Hold as still as you can, Roth; I’d hate to accidentally paralyse you.”
I give Rohan a fierce scowl and berate him. “Rohan, what did I say about bullying guests?”
Rohan matches my scowl with one of his own, like I’ve offended his sensibilities by requesting he find some manners.
“I said I’d hate to accidentally paralyse him. That was me being reassuring. How is it bullying someone to reassure them you don’t want to accidentally paralyse them?”
“It was your tone.” I barely resist the urge to smack him around the head. “You were being a prat. Just cut out the chip minus the bitchiness, please.”
Rohan lets out a prolonged sigh, but he doesn’t argue.
What follows is a highly unpleasant act of ad hoc surgery.
I’ll give Rohan one thing: he is proficient, and despite his earlier taunting, he seems to put a concentrated effort into making the process as painless and quick as he can.
It takes around five minutes for Rohan to cut into Jack’s back and remove what appears to be a plain metal chip. It’s the same size as one you might find inside your phone.
The tricky part is detaching the chip from Jack’s spinal cord. It seems Rohan wasn’t joking when he said he could paralyse him if he moved at the wrong time. I can’t be sure, but from how capably Rohan does it, I’d bet this isn’t his first time.
I maintain eye contact with Jack throughout the whole thing. He doesn’t squirm or make a sound, not even once. It’s almost unnerving how physically, or perhaps mentally, removed he is from what’s happening.
When he’s done, Rohan leans back and drops the metal chip into the bowl of water I brought out earlier.
“The water will kill it,” he says when I look at him questioningly.
His hands are wet with black liquid, like they’re covered in oil. Liquid Onyx survivors have black blood, I knew that. But seeing it up close is so different. Jack looks like he’s a robot who’s getting a part changed, not a human being who’s getting a torture device removed from his spine.
“Grab the medkit for me,” I say to Rohan.
He complies, snatching up the first aid kit and thrusting it towards me. I can tell he still isn’t very happy about any of this, but I’m no longer sure if I understand exactly why. It seems odd to me that Rohan could genuinely think Jack’s life isn’t worth fighting for, especially after he ran away from OI with FISA’s help too.
His entire attitude, the way he looks at Jack with something that is too spiked and angry to be empathy but bears similar hallmarks, it makes me think there are things I don’t know, some crucial information I’m missing.
