Snow looks at Stone like he’s a delinquent teenager, and she’s his exasperated headmistress. I don’t understand it. How she can look at Stone and see anything but a threat that needs to be put down immediately? What did Stone do to earn this woman’s trust? What lies did he use to manipulate her? What mask did he construct to trick FISA into letting him settle under their skin?
Stone doesn’t seem to care that Snow is annoyed with him. He sweeps another evaluating glance over me. His expression has rearranged itself into something bored and vaguely disdainful. It’s an expression exclusively seen on the faces of little rich boys. At heart, Stone might be a creature capable of OI-branded horror, but he is technically a billionaire’s son. From ages five to fourteen, Stone attended a number of elite boarding schools before entering the hallowed halls of Cambridge University. He graduated with his master’s in engineering and got his first doctorate at age nineteen. I don’t know how his father expected him to turn out anything but a disappointment after sending him to places like that.
Why bother to let Mia Solar experiment on him at all if he wasn’t going to be put to proper use afterwards?
Stone finally takes his eyes off me and turns his head to speak directly to Snow.
“You have nothing to offer him,” Stone says with complete conviction. “He’ll turn on you like an abused dog the first chance he gets.”
Snow’s mouth flattens out into a grim line. She looks suddenly resigned, and I wonder if that means I’m going to die today. If she can’t use me the way she wants to, then why waste time or energy trying to force it? I understand her position. She’s a government agent. For them, it’s all about short-term results. The long term is left to the big-time bullshit artists who work in Parliament.
No matter the ABC agency, their job is to do as they’re told as effectively and efficiently as possible. It isn’t Snow’s job to save things that might have been people once.
But maybe Snow is the compassionate sort. It seems unlikely. “Compassion” and “government” should really be considered an oxymoron when taken together.
I don’t have to wait long for Snow to make her decision. She gives Stone a noncommittal nod. Stone takes the hit without even a flinch.
He might be used to that. He might be used to biting back an instinctual reaction until the lie becomes the instinct. It takes years to fuck yourself up that deeply, to bend and break yourself enough times that the shattered bones set how you need them to beneath your skin.
Did Stone’s father help break some of those bones? Did he strap his son to a chair one day, like he did to me and my brother, and tell men in white coats and white masks to open him up? To open him up and see what they could see. Did he look at his son while they split his chest apart and pressed their indifferent violence into his heart? Or did he lookthroughhim, like he was made of glass? Like he was nothing and no one and useful, maybe.
It's possible I’m not giving Stone enough credit. Maybe he charred his own soul. Maybe he found a way to reform the smoky remains into something horrific and efficient and useful.
That’s all we are. All we have. Do or die. Fight or die. Fight and fight and fight till we break and break and break. Until we crack and scream and choke on what’s left. Until the only vestiges left behind are rock ground into dust, coal turned to ash, bones and skin and blood transformed into metal and murder.
Stone looks at me one last time. He’s vibrating now, his outline blurring. I can’t see him as clearly.
Our eyes lock a second time.
And then.
“Your dad’s a real twisted motherfucker,” I tell him with feeling. “I hope he dies messy.”
Wonder of all wonders, Stone smiles. Hesmiles. It’s ugly as fuck. I want to bite at it. I want to bite chunks out of that smile and spit them back out at his father’s feet. I want to tell Ian Stone, “I know where your son is,” and say, “He’s a traitor,”and ask,“How do you want him to die?”
Except. Except Stone Sr. wants his son back alive.Alive. I should have asked how alive he wanted him. Alive enough to talk? Alive enough to breathe by himself? Alive enough to feel regret? Regret that he left. Regret that he didn’t find a deeper hole to hide in.
“I bet you say that to all the boys with daddy issues,” Stone drawls, eyes like two dead suns. “Didn’t know they were teaching their child assassins how to sweet-talk these days.”
I half choke on what could be a genuine laugh.
“Stop trying to flirt with me, arsehole,” I reprimand. “It’s fucking unethical. Didn’t they teach you that in good-agent training? ‘No flirting with the murderers,’ they said, and you were like, ‘Fuck that shit, mate, I have atype.’”
Stone’s smile turns just shy of feral.
Snow sighs again, sounding a bit more exasperated than before.
“Agent Sathe,” she says with forced pleasantness, not looking at him. “Get the hell out.”
Stone obeys with an alarming lack of hesitation. He takes his eyes off me, nods respectfully at Snow, and walks away without a single backwards glance. His stride is easy. Relaxed. No one has ever deserved to be tripped up more.
Once he’s out of sight, Snow gives me a look I can’t read. I don’t feel much inclination to try, either. Whatever Snow does to me will happen regardless of how well I can read her face.
“Mr Roth,” Snow says, “there are things we need to discuss.” She frowns, sweeping her gaze over me again. “Later. For now, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in one of our holding cells.”
I can respect the fact she called it a cell. I’ve dealt with a lot of agents, and not many of them are that honest with themselves. Some people didn’t like theideaof putting a child in a cage. Oh, they still did it, obviously. That’s just the job sometimes. But they didn’t like to think of it that way. Until they saw what I’m capable of. Then those same people didn’t like theideaof putting a bullet in my head.
“Can I get some shit for my cage?” I ask, rattling my handcuffs against the bed railing just to be a dick. “Even budgies usually get a mirror to smash their heads against.”
