Ethan and Val looked at each other. This was the moment. If Val said no, the pressure would continue.
If he said yes… Val walked to the door and blocked the view. “Tell the lieutenant the customer’s stubborn.
Still resisting. We’re working on him. Need more time.”
“Watch yourself, Val!” the sergeant spat. “Time is money. If he’s not cracked by morning, they’ll add time to your sentence too.
For dragging your feet.” The slot slammed shut. Val stood there a moment with his forehead against the cold steel.
Then he slowly turned back to Ethan. The script had been broken. But Victor Lane, former cop and current inmate, wasn’t ready to surrender yet.
He was angry. Angry at Doran, at himself, and especially at this little man who had forced him to see clearly. “You’re right, four-eyes,” he said quietly.
“Doran wants to burn us.” He stepped toward Ethan. Val’s face twisted into something ugly.
It was pride dying hard. “But you got one thing wrong.
You think that means I’m going to protect you?” Val grabbed Ethan’s right hand. His fingers, hard as vise grips, closed around the wrist.
“I can’t not work you over,” he whispered, looking into Ethan’s suddenly widened eyes. “If I don’t touch you, they’ll know we made a deal, and they’ll kill us right now.” “What are you doing?” Ethan’s voice cracked.
Logic had glitched. “Creating cover,” Val breathed. “For both of us.
You need to scream, hacker. Scream loud enough that Doran can hear it in his office.” And he started bending fingers.
The same fingers that, minutes earlier, had erased people from databases. Crack. The sound was dry and brief.
Like a pencil snapping under a boot. The scream caught in Ethan’s throat and came out as a strangled gasp. The pain didn’t arrive immediately.
First came surprise. The strange, impossible angle of his right index finger. Then, one second later, his nervous system exploded in a white flash that burned the edges off the world.
Ethan dropped to his knees. Val still held his hand. “You’ll write!” Val roared so loudly the lightbulb trembled.
“You’ll write, you hear me?” He jerked the broken finger. “Ah—!” Ethan screamed.
For real this time. The raw animal sound of a man whose body had been taken away from him. Val bent close to Ethan’s ear.
His face was twisted with strain. Sweat poured down it. “Louder,” he whispered, barely moving his lips.
“Louder, professor. The guard’s listening outside.”
Ethan gulped air. Black circles swam before his eyes. Val wrapped his hand around the second finger. The middle one.
“No,” Ethan rasped, trying to pull away. Useless. His hand was locked in a vise.
“Yes,” Val breathed. “If I don’t mark you up now… Doran will know I’ve gone soft.
Then we’re both dead. Take it. This is the price of entry.”
Crack. The second finger bent backward at a wrong angle. Ethan howled and dropped his forehead to the filthy concrete, scraping at it with his left hand.
The pain was blinding, nauseating. It pulsed with every heartbeat, radiating all the way to his shoulder. Val flung the hand aside like a rag.
“That’s enough,” he said loudly, wiping his hands on his pants. “Let him think. If he doesn’t sign in an hour, we break the other hand too.”
He walked back to the table, breathing hard. Sat down and buried his face in his hands. His whole body shook.
Breaking fingers in a fight was one thing. Breaking the fingers of a man who had just opened your eyes to your own death was another. Val felt like an executioner swinging the blade while knowing he’d be next on the block.
In the corner, curled into himself, Corkscrew watched Ethan with horror and a kind of sick admiration. Even he, a sadist, would not have gone that coldly practical for the sake of cover.
Ethan lay on the floor cradling his ruined hand. Through tears he saw the fingers already swelling, turning blue, jutting at wrong angles. The tool is broken.
The thought came cold and detached. A defense mechanism. Dissociation.
Right hand. His working hand. The hand that typed three hundred words a minute.
The hand that entered passwords, moved millions, directed lives. Now it was just meat with busted bones. “You,” Ethan croaked, trying to sit up.
His glasses had slid sideways, one arm snapped off. “You could’ve just hit me.” Val turned his heavy, dark face toward him.
“Bruises fade, hacker. A fracture is evidence. Doran sees the X-ray, he relaxes.
He thinks I’m doing my job. Gives us time.” “Time?” Ethan gave a short, hysterical laugh.
The pain came in waves, making thought difficult, but clarity still pushed through. “You took away my ability to type. How exactly do you think I’m supposed to enter anything if we make a deal?”
“Then you say it out loud,” Val muttered. “Or peck it in with your left hand. Point is, we’re alive.
For now.” Suddenly Silent Mike jumped down from the top bunk. The big man walked over to Ethan.
In his hands was a wet rag and a strip torn from a bedsheet. Without a word he crouched beside him and took the injured hand. His movements were unexpectedly gentle. “Hold still,” Mike rumbled…
