Page 63 of Red Rabbit
“Man, he sure changes his tune quickly,” Kaelin grumbled.
Her fingers moved methodically as her eyes scanned across a screen I didn’t understand but the tension was slowly easing from her face. She smirked at the screen then and shook her head.
“His security is shit,” she muttered.
“Imagine Graham,” Cooper said. “Not being able to break.”
He looked grimly at the camera and I saw the ghosts in his eyes.
The pain we all shared.
“He doesn’t know anything!” I roared, trying to be heard above Trav’s scream. There wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t hurt but I still struggled, even knowing it was futile. They were going down the line, questioning us and trying to pull out information. My fingers on my left hand were all broken and I was bleeding from several deep cuts on my chest. One of my eyes was almost swollen shut and I could taste blood on my tongue from when they decided I wasn’t being cooperative and used me as a punching bag.
Cooper was in a similar state but he had a crazed look in his eyes and his Joker smile was in place with blood dripping from his chin onto his cut up chest. He’d just laughed in their faces the entire time and was now watching the rest of us suffer.
“Don’t fucking tell them anything, Trav!” Cooper shouted. They were working on Trav’s fingernails and every scream felt like a knife to my own chest.
Trav screamed again.
“Graham, I’ve pulled up the specs. We’ll have to follow the map exactly.”
I blinked and pulled my eyes away from Cooper and the past to see her frowning at me.
“Unless you’re going to join this madhouse?”
“Could you really do it?” I asked quietly. Something flickered across her face.
“It is highly unethical—”
“But could you do it? Create a chip or some sort of tech that would keep someone from breaking under duress?”
“Graham—”
“Answer me,” I said sharply.
“Technically, yes,” she said, looking warily at me. “Are you going to let him take me again?” Her voice broke and I realized she was barely holding it all together. The computer work steadied her but I could still see the pain and frayed edges in her eyes. I ran a hand over my face.
“No—of course not,” I said.
What happened to us, to my brother—nothing could change that. What Cooper was proposing crossed so many lines and would cause more pain and suffering to accomplish.
Did the end justify the means? Did suffering for a good cause negate the path it took to get there? My lines were so blurred from combat and what I had to do to find Trav all those years ago, I wasn’t sure if I could ever consider myself a good person again. But I wouldn’t slide down whatever hole Cooper found himself in.
“No,” I said more firmly.
I looked at the map she pulled up and committed it to memory quickly. When I turned back to Kaelin she was looking down at her forearm and her mouth was set in a grim line.
“You’re going to need to take out the tracker.”
She looked up at me and held out her arm, her finger poised over a scarred bump on her skin. I took her wrist in my hand, careful to avoid the cuff marks which made my blood boil to look at.
When I pulled out my knife, she shuddered and closed her eyes, taking a big shaky breath. I could feel her tremble in my hands and I didn’t like the idea of cutting her, but I knew it couldn’t be avoided so I did it as quickly as I could. I made a cut and dug the tracker out then I dropped it on the ground and crushed it under my boot viciously.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
THE BREAKING
It is in the breaking, we become whole again.
