Chapter 50
Wraith couldn’t move.
Kael sat beside her, still trying—unsuccessfully—to get his hair to lie flat again.
There was a groan from the far side of the room.
Kael placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezed, and stood.
The groaning increased. The cursing began.
Whiny bastard.
Couldn’t give her five minutes to grieve in peace.
She patted the spot where Spirit had been.
Whispered:
“Soar with the Eagles, Spirit. You’ve earned it.”
Kael hadn’t been gentle when he tied Chadwick Merriweather Junior to a chair. He hadn’t been as rough as he could have been, but it wasn’t gentle.
The man whined the entire time.
Crying, he would have dealt with. Begging, he would have understood.
But whining?
Maybe he could get a message to Shade. Let him torment Chad for a decade or two. He’d enjoy it.
And the man deserved it.
He walked over to the wall and chose a couple of particularly nasty-looking instruments. Strolled back to Chad. Whistling.
Chad paled. Swallowed. Still managed to raise his chin in a semblance of defiance.
“Let’s talk about your… experiment there with the Void rocks and the tortured, living, human!”
He was yelling and he didn’t care. Chad cringed away.
“You won’t find the answers you’re looking for, Major,” he whispered.
“What makes you say that?”
Chad swallowed, “Because I can’t give them to you.”
Kael lifted a long, jagged medical saw. Studied it. It was still crusted with dried blood and Void knew what else.
Glanced back at Chad, “Are you sure about that?”
The smell of urine wafted up.
Kael rolled his eyes. Considered his options.
“Helios?”
He turned to Wraith.
“A word?”
Wraith was still sitting where he’d left her. In the circle where the Anchor was not.
Her finger was tapping again.
Tap. Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap.
He still hadn’t figured out what it was. If it meant anything at all.
“Hey, what’s up?” He sat down next to her. The tapping continued in the silence.
He pointed at her finger, “You never told me what that means.”
She looked down as if surprised. The tapping stopped.
“Morse code.”
He frowned, “Never heard of it.”
“It’s a little outdated.”
She shifted her shoulders and neck, which crunched in response.
Kael wanted to tell her it would be okay. But grief doesn’t work like that.
“When did you disable the Tether?”
The question was utterly emotionless. She could have been asking what he ate for breakfast. And he wasn’t getting any kind of emotional hint from their… bond? Connection?
Stop stalling.
“Perdition.”
Wraith looked at him, surprised. “When?”
“After Shade left us, before Hound picked us up.”
She nodded. Back to neutral calm. Bad sign.
“Why?”
For so many reasons.
Because she’d trusted him. Because she hated him. Because holding her while the Silk wore off was the most human he’d felt in years.
Because the sound of his name on her lips had short circuited his brain. Because he didn’t want her to die if Shade decided to kill him.
“I don’t know.”
“And you chose not to tell me,” her voice was grave. “I suppose I understand why.”
He’d tried to tell her. Many times.
“I didn’t know how to.”
She turned to him. Met his gaze.
“And you needed your asset.”
He didn’t deny it. Just looked down.
And hated himself for it.
“Were you going to tell me?”
She deserved honesty. Had earned it so many times over. And this was the hardest answer.
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t say anything. Just stared out into the distance.
Behind them, Chad had started whining again.
“If you’ll excuse me?”
She didn’t answer, but he stood anyway. He had some self-loathing to work out on one of the scumbags of the universe.
Wraith was numb. It had been that kind of decade.
Tap. Tap-pause. Tap. Tap-pause. Tap.
She looked at her finger. Stilled it.
Knew what had to be done.
Kael cracked the next bone in Chad’s finger. He screamed. It was getting tiresome.
All he wanted was to go back in time and change what he’d done.
He was going to have to settle for the site’s data access codes. But Chad was proving surprisingly reluctant to co-operate.
He heard Wraith’s footsteps.
“Want a turn?” he asked her dully.
She shook her head. Looked at Chad. And shot him twice in the stomach with his HushTec pistol.
The man howled as Kael surged to his feet. “What the fuck, Wraith? Is vengeance so important to you that you can’t wait?”
She shifted her gaze to him without moving her head. The woman he’d pulled out of prison was in those eyes.
“This wasn’t vengeance. It was just necessary. If he doesn’t move around too much, it should be about twenty or thirty minutes before he bleeds out and triggers the facility shutdown.”
Kael stared at her. Speechless.
“You can try to stop the bleeding if you like. Or leave. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m out. Goodbye, Major.”
She turned and left without looking back. Chad was still screaming.
He had to move. But his legs wouldn’t obey.
He just stood there, useless.
Fuck.