I’m disgusted with myself.
He moves to my stomach, where the electrodes produced the most intense sensations. The cleaning solution stings slightly against skin that’s still oversensitive, and I hiss between my teeth. He pauses, his hand hovering above my abdomen.
“You don’t have to be so gentle,” I say. “I’m not going to break.”
“Tissue damage requires appropriate recovery time.”
Clinical. Always clinical. As if he wouldn’t have called a medic if efficiency were truly his priority.
He reaches across my body to adjust the headrest. The motion brings his arm close to my face, and as he leans forward his sleeve rides up, exposing several centimeters of his inner wrist.
I see the scar.
It’s not subtle. It’s raised and irregular, the kind of scarring that comes from a wound that was opened more than once. The tissue has healed badly.
The scar isn’t an accident. It’s too deliberate.
He notices me looking. His arm freezes in place, the sleeve still raised. I watch his face and see the micro-expression that flickers across his features before he can suppress it.
Shame. The Monster feels shame.
He pulls his arm back and adjusts his sleeve, but the motion is too quick. The mask has slipped.
“The Kennel,” I say.
The word falls between us like a stone dropped into still water. He goes completely motionless.
“I don’t know what that is,” I continue, watching his face. “But you mentioned it once. You said you recognized my father’s methods from your training.”
He doesn’t respond.
“Did they do that to you?” I nod toward his covered wrist. “The people who trained you?”
Nothing.
“Or did you do it to yourself?”
His eyes snap to mine. The blankness is gone, replaced by something I can’t immediately identify.
“Why would you think that?” His voice is controlled, but there’s a tremor underneath it.
“Because I would,” I say. “If I’d been trained the way I’m guessing you were trained, I would have needed to know if I could still feel anything. If there was still a person inside all that conditioning.”
Silence.
“I’m guessing you cut yourself to see if it hurt. And it did. And that was either the best thing you’d ever felt or the worst, and maybe you couldn’t tell the difference anymore.”
His pulse is visible in his throat.
I have found something. I have reached through the armor and touched the creature that lives inside it.
“The Kennel,” he says finally, “was a training facility. It no longer exists.”
“But you still do.”
“That is... subject to interpretation.”
The admission costs him something. I can see it in the way his jaw tightens.
