“Does Jenny know what happened to you?”
“Nobody knows.” Hayden had been the only one I’d planned on eventually telling.
“How are your bruises?”
“Better. Are you going to speak with Eliot again?”
“Yes, once I’m done here.”
I held his gaze. “You’ll have backup, right?”
“No need. I’m meeting him in a public place.”
“Don’t underestimate him.”
“I won’t, and I won’t mention you. Last thing I need is for him to get suspicious. Are you done absorbing sugar?”
“Yes.”
We climbed to the second floor, and Hayden knocked on one of the doors. The man who greeted us was short and stocky, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
“Damn, I forgot how tall you are,” he told Hayden, gesturing for us to come inside. His apartment was clean yet smelled of weed.
“Hal, this is Jonah.”
He shook my hand. “Nice to meet you, man. I heard about your bionic leg.”
“I didnotcall it a bionic leg.”
“I don’t want you to try anything dangerous,” I said, maybe a bit too firmly. “Hayden said this was just about gathering information.”
“Sure sure, don’t worry. Strictly for information. But if you want me to take your leg off, I can—”
“Hal…”
He laughed, making me worry he was as high as a kite. He waved for me to follow him. “Let’s have you drop your pants so I can see the goods.”
“It’s on his calf,” Hayden said as we followed Hal to the back of the apartment. “Pants stay on.”
The room he led us to had electronic devices scattered all over.
“Sit over there.”
I sat on the chair in the middle of the room and rested my leg on a stool. Hal pressed on my calf and said, “Yeah, I feel the little bugger. Does it hurt?”
“A bit when you press on it, but not usually.”
“Be careful,” Hayden said, leaning against the doorframe. “I need him in one piece.”
Hal rolled his eyes. “Your pretty boyfriend is in good hands.”
“He’s not my… just get on with it.”
Hal wheeled over a monitor and grabbed what seemed like a transducer probe, different from the one that Samuel had used in my house. Hal pressed the cold probe against my calf and moved it up and down. When the monitor’s black screen began to show gray shapes, Hayden came closer to watch.
“That’s a sneaky little bugger,” Hal said, although I couldn’t make much sense of what I was seeing. “Whoever put it there was careful—there are a lot of tissues and blood vessels they could’ve hit. How long have you been walking with this?”
I hesitated sharing too much with this stranger, but I’d already agreed to this examination. “I’ve had this model for about four years. The one before that was bigger and made it hard to walk fast. I’d sometimes get cramps that made it impossible to walk for a day or two, but I couldn't go to the hospital, so I waited it out.”
