"Knight." I use the tone I’ve used countless times when commanding younger men who were in a state of shock. “I'm not asking you to think right now. I'm not asking you to understand. I'm just asking you to move your hand and put your claw in this lock."
Because that’s what he is.
A young man.
His hair may be bone white, but when he roared Cosima's name in the medical wing, even through the feral snarl and the almost echoing quality of his unexpected voice, I heard it. That faint lilt at the end, the way the syllables rolled differently than they would from a Reinmichian tongue. Vrissian, buried under years of whatever hell made him mute. It isn't age or experience that whitened his hair.
And none of the numerous scars on his body are particularly old. The Y-shaped scar branching from both collarbones to his navel, the one that resembles an autopsy scar, is the oldest. Like scoring the rings on a tree, he’s in his late twenties at the most.
No wonder his mind broke.
I've pieced things together since encountering the "monster" from Cosima's nightmares. Plague wouldn't tell me much, naturally. But I know Knight and Wraith are from the same facility. I know Wraith escaped earlier—muchearlier—and grew up with a brother who loved him.
Knight had nothing.
He might be too far gone.
"Can you speak?" I ask softly, watching for any flicker of response. "Can you say her name again? Cosima?"
Nothing. His jaw doesn't move. He makes no sound except the soft, growling rasp of his labored breathing.
Whatever broke through in that medical wing, whatever desperate need allowed him to force out her name… it's gone now. Locked away again behind layers of damage I can't beginto comprehend. Because in spite of his monstrous appearance, Knight is still human.
The men that did this to him are the real monsters.
“Please,” I grit out, holding that empty gaze, willing him with everything I fucking have to save her. To save our mate.
And for a long time, maybe even a solid minute, nothing happens.
Then he turns his head down and away so I can’t see his face anymore, his knees drawing slightly closer to his chest, hunching in on himself. Fresh blood drips from his wounded face as his massive body quakes again and his metal arm shifts.
The movement is sluggish, uncoordinated. His metal gauntlet of a hand trembles as he extends it, curved claws glinting gold and red the torchlight. The servos in his augmented limb whine with the effort, sparking intermittently.
But he's moving.
"That's it," I encourage, watching those metal claws creep toward my shackle with agonizing slowness. "Just a little further. You can do this."
His breathing becomes more labored. The blood drips faster. Whatever cocktail of sedatives they pumped into his system is fighting his every movement, turning simple motor control into a herculean effort.
But he keeps reaching.
The claw inches closer.
"Just a bit more," I urge, my own muscles tensing with sympathetic effort. "Do it for her. For Cosima."
His claw touches the iron.
"Yes! Now just slide it into the keyhole. There's a mechanism inside that?—"
He doesn't listen.
Instead of carefully manipulating the lock, his metal claws close around the chain anchoring my shackle to the wall.
And hepulls.
The sound of stone cracking fills the cell. Dust rains down from the ceiling as the anchor point rips free from the wall with a screech of protesting metal. The shackle remains locked around my wrist, but the chain now dangles free, several feet of heavy iron links dragging on the dirt floor.
I stare at the destruction, then at Knight.
