Red-Shirt sighed and put his hands on his hips, peering at me. “If he isn’t going to talk, we’re going to have to use the other one.” That frightened me, the thought of them doing this to anyone else, especially one of my teammates.
“It would be a shame to kill him,” Freckles said. He began running his fingers over my bloody body, through my hair, down my neck and chest, lower still to my crotch. Freckles gently ran his fingers over my soft penis, petting me like he’d pet an animal, trying to coax it out of hiding. His hand moved down to my balls, which he cupped and squeezed, hard.
I winced against the pain.
“Oh, you like that, sweetheart?” he asked me. I responded by spitting bloody saliva in his face. He laughed and let me go long enough to slap me. His nails were long and dug into my skin.
“That’s right,” he said, smiling. “I like a little fight in them.”
He wrapped his fingers around my neck and applied pressure, cutting off the air to my lungs, making me gasp and wheeze.
Just then the door opened and someone walked in. Freckles, Red-Shirt, and the doctor all looked over to whoever it was, Freckles still with his hand around my throat.
“What the hell is this?” the other voice in the room said. Freckles dropped his hand.
“What’s it look like? We’re getting the information you wanted out of this guy,” Red-Shirt said.
“I didn’t mean torture! God, this is insane. You have no idea what you’ve done,” the other voice said, sounding slightly panicked and very frustrated. “This isn’t the way we treat people. This is in the past, and these barbaric means are never to resurface.”
“Listen, you hired us for a job,” Red-Shirt said, sounding hostile. “This is how we work. We always get information, but this guy is a little tougher to crack.”
“I don’t treat people like this,” the other man said. “I thought you’d use drugs, some kind of truth serum or something; that’s why Dr. Keeri is here. She already shot him up with Pentrox; we thought he’d readily talk afterward.”
“You’re not treating him like this; we are,” from Red-Shirt again. “And the drugs didn’t help. This little bird still doesn’t want to sing.”
“It’s the same thing! If I’ve hired you, there’s blood on my hands as well!”
My eyes were foggy still from unshed tears and dried blood clumping my eyelashes. I blinked hard a few times, trying to focus on the other voice in the room.
His slightly blurry face was vaguely familiar, like someone I’d seen before but never up close. He was handsome, very handsome, wearing a modest, tailored suit and a lighter-colored tie. He was older than me and had bright, kind eyes, even if his expression was one of composed horror.
Suddenly it hit me. I was looking at Roscora Deleviv.
“You fucker,” I coughed out. “I can’t believe Bruno thought you might actually be a good man. Good for this fucking city. An honest politician. What a joke, right?”
Freckles reacted quicker than I thought he could, by reeling back and punching me across the face. I felt the bones beneath the skin on my nose shift again. I kept coughing and gasping as tears streamed out of the corners of my eyes.
Footsteps sounded somewhere near us, but I couldn’t see from where because my head was throbbing.
“Hit him again,” a quiet, cruel voice sounded. I would know that voice anywhere. I’d know that voice in my dreams, awake or asleep. I heard that voice ringing in my ears every time I lined up a shot; I heard that voice every night before bed when I’d touch myself.
“Carver, wait,” Deleviv said pleadingly, which immediately shot my eyes wide open, clearer than they had been seconds ago. How did Deleviv know Carver’s name? Why wasn’t Carver shooting them?
He was standing next to Freckles, gun pressed up against his temple, just as fierce and deadly as every other time I’d seen him. Freckles held his ground close to me, trying his best not to be afraid with a gun pointed at his face.
“Hit him again,” Carver repeated, nudging the barrel of his gun against Freckles once more. It was a blatant threat, one I was afraid that Freckles would try to call Carver on, and I’d end up with bits of scattered brain all over myself.
Still, I couldn’t understand why Carver wasn’t shooting him in the head. Shooting him and Red-Shirt and Deleviv and then untying me. He was here to rescue me, right? Corp had found out my location from one of the GPS tracker chips implanted in my skin and sent the team, whoever wasn’t in custody still, to save me. What other possibilities could there be?
“Carver?” I said, barely able to speak through the pain and shock. His eyes flickered to mine for the briefest of moments, then focused back on Freckles and the gun in his hand.
“You,” Deleviv said, pointing to Freckles. “Leave the room, please.”
Surprisingly, Freckles complied. Carver lowered his gun and turned to Deleviv. A look passed between them, a look that two people who had just met didn’t give one another. My heart began racing faster than before.
“I told you that he wasn’t part of this,” Carver said. Deleviv glanced at me and then back at Carver, actually having the nerve to look apologetic not only to Carver, but also toward me. The worst parts of him were his kind eyes, like he actually meant the bullshit he said about not treating people this way.
“Carver, I’m sorry,” Deleviv said, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t have another choice. We couldn’t get anyone else; they were all arrested or too well protected. We have no idea where the smaller girl is and everyone else has been arrested. He was our only option.”
“He was never an option,” Carver snapped at him. The man was smart enough to stay silent. He must have known Carver, known his temper, and known how he was. Carver rarely lost his cool, but when he did, it was best to sit back and let it happen.
“I didn’t know he was that important,” Deleviv said, moving closer to Carver and putting his hands on Carver’s biceps.
I froze, all the blood left in my face draining out. I couldn’t look away, even though I feared what I was about to see. I was witnessing some intimate moment between lovers that should’ve taken place in someone’s bedroom somewhere far away from here, somewhere far away from me.
Then Deleviv leaned forward and pressed his lips against Carver’s. And Carver let him.
That was the worst pain of all.
I’d have preferred to go through hours, days, weeks of physical torture, rather than endure the pain of watching someone else kiss him, touch him, and have Carver let them.
Deleviv’s hands were tight on Carver’s biceps as he stood almost pressing his entire body against him. His eyes were closed, and he was kissing Carver like Carver really meant something to him. The thought made me sick to my stomach.
I felt empty and broken and completely full to the brim with pain and aching. He was letting this other man touch him right in front of me, letting this other man hold him, look at him, try to calm him.
Wouldn’t that just be it, though? Carver had said it wasn’t because I was a man; he’d said it was because I was me, and apparently he’d meant every fucking syllable. I finally understood what he meant when he said I couldn’t have him; Roscora Deleviv already had Carver in every way that I never would.
All those years, deep down, I’d thought Carver might have some semblance of a heart. Something beating in his chest that kept him alive and the blood flowing through his veins. But if witnessing this had taught me nothing else, it was that I was a fucking idiot, unable to see Carver for who he really was through my rose-colored glasses. He’d had me under his spell since the first time I’d laid eyes on him, years ago, and here I’d been my whole life thinking that my worst vice was drug abuse, when really it had always been Carver. Carver making me weak, Carver making me stupid, Carver making me feel things that I knew would completely destroy me in the end. And hadn’t they just.
And God damn him, because I still felt that ache in my chest, that small flex of need every time he was around. I still loved him, and it was eating me up inside.
Unable to help myself, I let out a sharp bark of laughter. Carver pulled away from Deleviv, and all three of the others in the room fixed their eyes on me.
“Of course. Of-fucking-course,” I said, dropping my head and closing my eyes. I rolled my shoulders, trying to feel if anything else was broken.
“Jones,” Carver said softly.
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Just don’t.” For a change, Carver actually listened.
I glared at him, forcing my gaze to stay focused on his eyes, wanting him to know that I meant every word I was about to say to him.
“The way you look made me stupid. The way you feel made me even stupider.” I chuckled quietly in my hysteria. “I’ve been compromised, Captain. I can’t perform my job anymore to the extent you need me to. You’d better put me down.”
Red-Shirt glanced over at Deleviv.
“If you touch him, I’ll break every bone in your body,” Carver said quietly to Red-Shirt without looking at him.
Then I really started laughing, letting my chin fall to my chest. “You’re such a selfish son of a bitch, Carver. If you had any decency at all, you’d put a bullet through my skull or that laser machete through my heart and end my misery. There isn’t anything left.”
He didn’t say a word, didn’t move a muscle, which pissed me off. I glared up at him again, unable to hide the pain on my face.
“I really do hope one day someone hurts you this badly.” He knew I didn’t mean the physical pain my body was in.
He took a confident step toward me and reached out. He ran his fingers through my hair and then down to cup my bloodied cheek in his palm.
“They already are,” Carver whispered.
I tore my head away from him, staring at the far wall.
Deleviv chose then to reach out and put his hand on Carver’s shoulder. Every time he touched Carver, I flinched.
“We can’t let him go, Carver; you know that. He’s seen my face. He knows too much,” Deleviv told him, saying it gently and calmly. Again, he had the nerve to sound regretful and sympathetic. In any other scenario, I might’ve actually believed Deleviv to be a good man, an honest man. I knew what this world did to people, twisting them inside out, making them hate themselves for the things they had to do to survive. I didn’t want to believe that he truly did regret some of the things he’d done, and I didn’t want to believe that he was a good-hearted person who was trying the only ways he knew how to make a difference in this dying city. But most of all I didn’t want to believe that Carver loved this person who was a better man than I was.
Carver turned to Deleviv. They shared a look I couldn’t see, but it left Deleviv with an exhausted expression. Leaving behind me, Deleviv, the quiet doctor, and Red-Shirt, Carver turned and stalked out of the room without another word.
Deleviv sighed and faced me. “I know nothing I can say will change this. I know that. But please know that I am sorry, and if only by a fraction, you’ve played a part in a bigger plan. A plan that will make this city a better place.”
“What makes you think I give a shit about the city?” I asked him.
The adrenaline was starting to wear off and the pain was setting in. The deep, light-headed pain that made me feel sick to my stomach and ache almost everywhere. I’d lost a lot of blood and been beaten for hours, and on top of that I was positive my nose was broken again, as well as my ribs. My body was covered in cuts and scrapes that would leave deep, visible scars, and I’d been stabbed twice in my thigh.
“How can you not care about the city?” he asked me, sounding astounded. “It’s every citizen’s job to care what happens to this city. I want the best for the people here, to get the children off the streets and give them somewhere warm to sleep and somewhere to feed them. I want the crime and political corruption to be abolished, and I want those in charge to pay for their crimes. I want the city to have the fair, just government it deserves, and I want people to go to sleep at night feeling safe. How can you not care when you watch this city die slowly, day by day, right before your eyes?”
“The only time I’ve ever truly felt anything was when Carver touched me,” I told him. The light mist in my head was growing thicker and thicker; I was about to pass out from blood loss or die from a broken heart; I couldn’t be sure which.
Deleviv stayed silent even though I knew he was standing there, looming over me. He and Red-Shirt began talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. My vision was turning black and my head kept falling forward even when I tried to lift it. Every part of me felt twice as heavy as I knew it was. I was so tired, so exhausted, and trying to keep my eyes open wasn’t worth it anymore. There wasn’t anything I wanted to see.
A sharp pain touched the back of my neck, and soon that familiar blackness took over, and I fell into it headfirst.
Chapter Nine
When I awoke, the first thing I noticed was that every part of my body ached. The second was that I was no longer tied to the chair as I had been. I was lying on some kind of mat on a cold floor, but it was still a step up from the chair. The mat on the floor was paper-thin and falling apart as though it had been around for centuries. It was stained and covered in my dried blood, and smelled like sweat and old cloth. I was lying on my stomach, cheek pressed against one end of the deflated padding, legs hanging off the other end. I looked around me, trying to gauge if I could move.
My body was in such pain, I thought even the slightest shift in my ribs would break me in half. I tried rolling my shoulders, but the movement alone sent shooting pain right up my neck and down my sides. I groaned.
“Ah, you’re awake.” A familiar voice sounded from somewhere in the dark room. Deleviv. I peered out past thick, iron bars that seemed to house me on one side along with three tall walls of metal and concrete.
Mostly everything in the room was black except for a small, dim light that barely cast a glow over him and reflected against the bars on my cell. He was sitting in a chair, looking exhausted and older than he was, leaning back and smoking a cigarette.
“We gave you a tranquilizer,” he told me. “And I’m sorry if you’re waking up with a headache.”