In her own bathroom in her small, crummy apartment in Richmond, Cheyenne overturned the plastic bag from CVS and dumped its contents out on the counter beside the sink. Hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, cotton swabs, gauze, medical tape, latex gloves, surgical scissors—or as close to surgical scissors as one could get from a CVS—and a pair of expensive, sharpened tweezers. The needle and surgical suture were an extra precaution.
I’ve never sewn anything in my life. Never tried to pull a tracking device out of my shoulder, either, but that doesn’t sound nearly as hard.
The halfling sucked in a sharp breath when she pulled the t-shirt up and over her head, then opened up all the packages and got everything ready. “As ready as I ever will be, I guess.”
Once she had it all laid out, she climbed onto the right side of the bathroom counter and let her bare feet fall into the sink. She poured a little hydrogen peroxide into the two deep holes and let it do its thing while she pulled on a pair of gloves. She dipped her shoulder to let everything drip back out again and stuck the tweezers into the rubbing alcohol.
“Here goes nothing. It can’t be as bad as getting shot in the hip.” She brought the tweezers up to her shoulder with her left hand—not her dominant hand—and leaned away from the mirror enough to see what she was doing. Mostly.
It felt like Sha’gron’s fingers were digging around in there all over again, only this time, the person digging around in Cheyenne’s arm had no idea what she was looking for. She went through two dozen cotton swabs trying to get all the blood out of the way before she finally gave up on the tweezers and tried the surgical scissors instead. Those clattered into the sink fifteen seconds later, and Cheyenne growled at her reflection in the mirror.
“Not as bad as getting shot in the hip.” She gritted her teeth and waited for the flare of pain to diminish. It didn’t. “I can’t do this by myself.”
Hissing out a long breath, she climbed down off the counter and got to work, patching herself up instead, pouring in a little more hydrogen peroxide and taping gauze over the two freshly bleeding holes in her shoulder. She stepped back and surveyed what could have been a murder scene in and around her bathroom sink.
“Maybe I should’ve let mom call that doctor who does house calls. Not that the guy would know what he was looking for, either. And not that I know anyone who—” The image of Mattie Bergmann throwing a fit when her most advanced student came to her with drugstore surgical supplies and a request to dig a tracking device out of her shoulder made Cheyenne burst into laughter. “No more office hours after that, I think. She might be willing to give me an A on every assignment and pass me through her class if I agreed not to see her ever again.”
Another round of laughter took her, and she doubled over the counter, gripping the edge of it with both hands.
When she finally stopped, she took two deep breaths and looked into the mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed and glistening, her cheeks flushed, but for the most part, she looked fine. “Okay. I’ll figure it out.”
She left everything where it was on the bathroom counter and stepped out into the tiny living room of her tiny apartment.
“Okay, then.” The half-drow rubbed her hands together and headed for her desk. “Let’s see what the rest of the dark web’s been up to while I was out taking down Skaxens and goblins and totally blowing my cover.”
It took her under five minutes to turn on her computer, run the VPN, and log back into the dark web. Then she was back on the Borderlands forum under Third Quarter Projections—the name made her laugh again—to check the new topic she’d posted yesterday. It was a little harder to find, seeing as there were at least a dozen more topics posted after hers, but she didn’t bother reading them. She found hers and clicked on it.
There were only two comments in the thread, one she’d left herself about offering odd jobs in exchange for information and a second below it. Cheyenne sat back in her computer chair and dropped her hands into her lap. “Seriously?”
The other comment was from gu@rdi@n104.
gu@rdi@n104: Bold move, @ShyHand71. Maybe I can help. I’ll be waiting.
The timestamp was three minutes after she’d opened the topic. “Yeah, you’ve been waiting all damn day, haven’t—”
A private message popped up in the corner of her screen, and she snorted.
gu@rdi@n104: Took you long enough. With a new topic like that, I thought you’d be hovering over your laptop, waiting for someone to send you something.
“He thinks I do any of this on a laptop. Cute.”
Cheyenne rolled her chair closer to the desk and typed a response.
ShyHand71: I thought I told you I had a life and stuff.
gu@rdi@n104: Oh, that’s right. Asking about an orc named Durg doesn’t have anything to do with your life.
ShyHand71: Very funny. I appreciate the interest and you trying to hold my hand, but I’m not new to forums. Don’t need any special treatment, either. If you have information for me, let’s talk. Otherwise, maybe don’t scare other users away by commenting as an admin on my thread.
gu@rdi@n104: Ooh. She gets serious. Okay. I have information.
ShyHand71: Let’s hear it.
gu@rdi@n104: Sure. After we talk about what you can give me in trade.
Cheyenne rolled her eyes. “It’s never about helping a magical out, is it? Somebody always needs something out of the deal.” Puffing out a sigh through loose lips, she typed another response.
ShyHand71: Ground rules: 1-no sexual favors. 2-no crime. 3-I’m not paying you.
gu@rdi@n104: Funny. Was that supposed to be insulting?
The halfling smirked. “At least he’s got a sense of humor about it still.”
ShyHand71: Then what did you have in mind?
gu@rdi@n104:
