Page 60 of His Favorite Color is Blood
“You know his password?” asked Grim, and he licked his lips, uncomfortable with the thought Misha could just as easily sneak into his own tablet.
Misha shook his head. “I tried ‘password,’ then ‘drowssap,’ then the same with zero instead of the ‘o.’ It worked. I had a few more guesses I could try, but otherwise, I wouldn’t try to crack it and would just go past the operating system altogether.”
Grim scowled, staring at Misha with a sense of inadequacy. It took him several seconds to figure out that “drowssap” was ‘“password” written backward. He had no idea how one overrode a system either, but then again, everyone had their strengths. This was Misha’s, even though Misha had so far gone out of his way to bury those skills along with the suffering they brought him.
Even in the gloves, he was quick on the keyboard, and Grim didn’t understand all that he was doing as he opened several windows in which he wrote in code, so all Grim could do was watch and wait.
Grim slowly pulled closer the empty wheelchair and sat in it, looking over Misha’s shoulder with his heart in his throat, as if this were a thrill ride. “Are you gonna look through his e-mails?”
Misha shook his head. “I won’t find anything there. I’m sneaking into their system and trying to find him. They might have a location for him. Or a video feed if he’s being kept somewhere. I know his codename was Denny.” The words sounded cool and detached, but sweat beaded on Misha’s face and neck. His fingers tapped the keyboard at a rising speed.
Grim exhaled loudly and squeezed his shoulder, hypnotized by the letters and signs rapidly changing in a black window on the screen. “It’s fine. I’m here with you. We can disappear if they somehow locate you.”
Misha’s only acknowledgement was a nod, and his face stayed tense as his eyes scanned line after line that appeared on the screen. When a new window popped up on the screen, Grim thought it was yet another one in which Misha was performing his digital mumbo-jumbo, but Misha froze, the skin of his arm burning Grim even through the glove. There was one sentence in the new window.
[Are you looking for something, Misha? 0]
Grim could physically sense blood dropping lower in his body, and it left his head light and weirdly hot. “Misha?” he whispered, staring at the window and all but smelling Misha’s fear.
“Don’t say anything you don’t want him to hear,” Misha hissed, already breathless as he put his hand over a camera built into the screen of the computer.
[I didn’t think we had any secrets between us. We’ve been through so much together, after all. 0, appeared in the next line.]
“He can hear us?” Grim rushed to his feet, frantically looking around for a place where Zero could have hidden a bug. How could they have known Misha would visit this place?
[Is this what you’re looking for? 0]
Another window popped up on the screen. This time, it was a video of a young guy, naked, curled up in an empty room. He still had all his limbs intact.
[Or have you come to reminisce? 0]
Yet another widow appeared next to what seemed like a live-feed of Dennis’s captivity. This one was handheld, and Misha screamed out loud, pushing away from the computer and letting go of the screen.
“Misha?” Grim steadied him, pulling Misha’s head against his chest, but his gaze turned to the video, and as he looked on, the film moved into a closeup of thighs that were fastened to two smooth boards with a whole array of leather straps, but they still twitched around a bare, soft cock.
Misha bared his teeth and reached out to turn off the computer screen.
[I wouldn’t do that, unless you want to see Denny hurt. 0]
[And you don’t, do you? 0]
Misha’s shoulders trembled, but he wrote back. [Don’t hurt him.]
“What is that?” muttered Grim as the camera in the video moved up the naked chest. His body already knew, but when Misha’s face, so much younger, came into view, he couldn’t even breathe anymore.
[Who is your friend? 0]
“No one,” Misha muttered.
[Same no one who helped you pass through the hospital in Charleston without a record? 0]
Grim smirked. “Everyone has a price,” he said, but his mouth tightened when the camera switched to a wider shot, and this time, there was a man in a white suit standing between Misha’s spread, strapped-up legs. A white rubber mask covered his head, making it look like old school bubblegum. And all at once, it hit Grim what was going to happen in the video. Then he spotted a glint of serrated metal. Before young Misha’s frightened cry tore through the air and stabbed Grim in the heart, he knew what Zero wanted them to witness.
This fucker was a maniac.
[Walking down memory lane … ah. 0]
[Not that you can walk down it, but you do have a wheelchair I see. 0]
