“Line, Viper,” I tell him.
But Viper isn’t listening. He tilts Daryl’s head up, lining up the blow that’s sure to take his eye, and more than likely leave our guest with an ocular lobotomy.
But we still don’t have the information we need.
“So fucking pretty,” Viper coos, lost in his own world. I know it’s not Daryl he’s thinking about, not Daryl he’s imagining kneeling before him, ready to accept his gift of pain.
“Viper!” I raise my voice to a shout, glaring at him. “LINE!”
This time, he listens.
Viper’s face goes dark, a muscle in his cheek twitching.
“Line.” He repeats it in a cold voice. His fingers clench and unclench around his weapon. His face pivots to look at me, lip curling in a sneer. “You and yourfucking lines, Doc.”
He’s angry, but at least this time he stops. Dropping his hold on Daryl, Viper turns and chucks the scalpel at the wall before stalking away with a roar of rage.
I sigh, unfurling myself from my examination chair.
Kneeling on the ground, knees inches from the drain in the floor, Daryl sobs uncontrollably. I make my way over to the table, where Viper has all his tools laid out, and I pull on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
“Sorry about him,” I tell Daryl, snapping the gloves into place. I bend down to pick the scalpel off the ground and take it back to the table to spray it down with ethanol.
You have to keep a sterile torture room. That’s just common sense.
We’re not animals.
I keep the weapon with me, held at my side, as I advance toward Daryl.
“See, my brother isn’t quite right in the head,” I explain. Emphasizing my point, Viper chooses that moment to slam his fist against the wall, shattering a tile. Daryl winces, hard enough to shake the chains holding him. I click my tongue but continue. “He doesn’t know where to draw the line, you know? Sometimes he doesn’t notice when he goes too far.”
Another fist to the wall, another broken tile.
“He’ll be fine in a minute, don’t worry,” I assure our guest. “He just needs to blow off some steam.”
Daryl’s sobs are lessening, his breathing calming. That’s good. We need him in a state where he can talk to us, answer questions.
“I know where the line is,” I assure him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Like we’re buddies. Friends. “I’m just here to make sure he does, too. You understand that, right?”
Daryl nods like my lie makes perfect sense, like he’s not about to have another hole bored in his fucking skull.
I crouch down next to him, so we’re face to face, and give his shoulder a squeeze. We’re just friends, having a friendly chat.
“We just want some answers. We want to understand what’s going on, and then this?” I gesture around at the room, at Viper, at our tools. I look pointedly at the gouge marks in Daryl’s legs, at the knife still sticking out from between his ribs. It quivers and jerks with every sobbing breath Daryl takes. “This can all stop. You can make it stop. It’s just that easy.”
“I don’t know what you want,” Daryl blubbers, voice and body shaking with the force of it. And these tears, these are real. “If I knew anything,anything, I’d tell you, but I don’t?—”
“Now that’s not the truth. I thought we were getting somewhere.” I start to beckon Viper over.
“Wait, wait. Just… What do you want to know?” Daryl asks.
There we go. It’s starting to dawn on him that he’s not getting out of this situation alive. That there’s only a slow, drawn out and painful future, or a quick nothingness.
I straighten, coming to my feet.
“It’s funny. You’ve been on our payroll for, what now? Two years?” I ask, striding over to where I keep my bag. I pull out a few papers, staring down at them. “And in all that time, we’ve never had a problem with you, have we?”
I think Daryl has started crying again.
