It took six tries for Cillian to make Sean scream, four more molars getting tossed on the ground in front of Alexei as more blood stained Sean’s throat to the point it looked like it had been slit. His hands clutched the arms of the chair so hard he’d bent a couple of fingernails. Alexei watched with his heart in his throat as Cillian crushed the sixth tooth in Sean’s mouth, grinding the metal head of the pliers against his tender gums and the bone beneath. Sean finally let out a garbled scream, body arching against Cillian’s hold and the ties binding him to the chair as more blood dripped overhislips.
Cillian removed the bloody pliers from Sean’s mouth and pushed his head forward with a rough hand. Sean went weakly, sitting hunched over in the chair as blood poured from his mouth in a macabre waterfall to the floor. As Alexei watched, Sean spit out bits of broken teeth, breathing loudly through his nose. Tears mingled with the blood, but there wasn’t any shame in crying. Not in a situation like this. Alexei hoped Sean understood that he wouldn’t blame him for anyofthis.
“I did promise ta take it out o’ ye in payment if he made a sound,” Cillian said with a lazy shrug as he approachedAlexei.
“Ya tebya ub’yu,” Alexei promised, meaning the words with every fiber of hisbeing.
“That sounded like a threat. yer in no position tamakeone.”
Cillian returned to the work table, dropping the bloody pliers next to a screwdriver. He picked up a claw hammer and gave it a few experimental swings before sauntering back over to where they weretiedup.
“Are ye payin' attentionnow, Sean?” Cillian asked, the smile on his face almost cheerful in a sadistic sortofway.
Sean managed to sit up again, face a bloody mess, bottom lip torn wide from Cillian’s careless hands. His brown eyes were dull from pain, lashes wet and clumped from tears. Cool metal smacked lightly against Alexei’s cheek and Sean’s eyeswidened.
“Since ye made a sound, ye get ta choose. What does he lose first?Aneye?”
The expression on Sean’s facetwisted, his breathing coming quick and fast through his torn-up mouth. The hammer touched Alexei on the side of his face, near his one good eye. Sean shook his head, heaving for a second or two, sounding as if he was going to get sick, before he got himself undercontrol.
The claws of the hammer scraped across Alexei’s bruised face to knock against his swollen lips. “Hismouth?”
Alexei never took his eyes off Sean as the hammer dropped down to graze against his ribs and the painful bruises blackening historso. “Ribs?”
“Is okay,” Alexei said, willing Sean not to look away. “Yaobishayu.”
No matter what happened, Alexei would never blame Sean for the actions of another. This wasn’t Sean’s fault for being forced to decide what happened next, what pain Alexei got to endure—because he could endure it. He would survive it. They’d live through this long enough to be rescued. Alexei had clung to that thought over the past however many hours Cillian had worked him over, and he held on tight to it still as the hammerhead ground down warningly on his leftkneecap.
Sean stared at Alexei with grief in his eyes, a depth of heartbreak in them that made Alexei’s heart lurch in hischest.
When Sean nodded, Alexei wanted to kiss the agonizing look offhisface.
“I hope yer enjoyin’ how Sean is hurtin’ ye,” Cillian said to Alexei as he drew backhisarm.
“Fuck you,” Alexei spit out right before Cillian smashed the hammer down ontohisknee.
Alexei screamed, the sound torn from his mouth like a war cry as Cillian brought the hammer down again. Pain rolled through his body in excruciating waves that eventually, thankfully, pulled him under into a blackness so deep it felt like ablessing.
11
The WorldTakesAway
Annabelle presseda cup of synthcaf into Kyle’s left hand and an adreno pill in the other. Her damp red hair was neatly tied back, hazel eyes dark with worry as she said, “Anynews?”
The MDF’s command operations center was a quiet in the early morning hours before shift-change. The supervising officers had stopped trying to tactfully tell him to go away and get some shuteye after the fifth time. He wasn’t leaving, and the director hadn’t orderedhimgone.
So Kylestayed.
“Not yet,” he replied. He chased the adreno pill with a gulp of synthcaf. Lack of sleep wasn’t an issue for him at themoment.
Kyle didn’t take his eyes off the holoscreens hovering above the central work table with its embedded computer. Analysts and hackers were working nonstop to identify the location of Declan, Cillian, and any of their affiliates within the last twenty-four hours, and kept coming up short. What they had so far were a few dozen screenshots of some of Declan’s known affiliates culled from CCTV and security feeds, an abandoned SUV located around midnight in a poverty-ridden neighborhood of D.C., and a single image of a man they couldn’t identify through facial recognition because of the nanotech strips in use that blurred outhisface.
But his body type was a match for Cillian Halloran, and Kyle was desperate for any update on thatbastard.
Annabelle crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against the terminal Kyle had claimed as his own. “You think they’ve left thecountry?”
“Idon’tknow.”
Kyle hoped that wasn’t the case. It would make things harder if Cillian had. There were ways to move people across international borders undetected, and both Declan and Cillian were prosatthat.
