With a grunt, she ripped the gauze and the rest of the medical tape off in one swift jerk and tossed it onto the floor. She reached for the tray, brought the entire thing onto her lap, and picked up the plastic spork that came with it.
Yeah, I’m not touching that pseudo-meat slop.
The mashed potatoes weren’t bad if one enjoyed thick and sticky without any flavor, and the mashed peas tasted like freezer burn with a hint of green. She’d managed to slide a mouthful of almost-apple Jell-O down her throat before the door swung open. A man walked in this time, not in white scrubs like the orderly or in anything doctor-ish. He had graying hair and wore military fatigues, the bland colors crisply detailed, and black combat boots that thumped on the linoleum.
Cheyenne stab-scooped another wobbling sporkful of Jell-O and raised it to her mouth. I’ve seen that mustache before.
“Well, would you get a load of this!” The man clasped his hands behind his back, and his beady eyes surveyed the drow halfling from the tip of her black-dyed head to the points of her toes beneath the thin sheet. Cheyenne was aware the doctor hadn’t unlocked the cuffs around her ankles. “Now we know what you look like.”
The drow halfling stuck the next bite of Jell-O in her mouth and didn’t bother pretending to chew it before swallowing. “I’m always myself.”
“Oh, sure. That’s more than most people can say. I’m trying to figure out if that applies to the outside as much as the inside.” Mustache strolled to the foot of the bed and raised his eyebrows. His gaze fell on the raw, red flesh above the halfling’s exposed hip, which Cheyenne didn’t bother to hide under the hospital gown. He glanced at the discarded bandage on the floor.
“How’s the grub?”
Cheyenne dug the spork into the gelatinous green mountain and shoved the next bite into her mouth. “Sucks.”
“Yes, it does. You up for a little chat, halfling?”
The chains locking her ankles to the metal railing at the foot of the bed clinked when she rolled her foot to the side. “Well, I’ve got a deep-tissue massage scheduled in half an hour, but I guess I can spare a few minutes.”
Mustache licked his lips, and the corner of his mouth twitched. “I’ll keep it short and sweet.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cheyenne scooped the last two bites of Jell-O into her mouth, then swallowed the jiggly mass and gave another grunt of pain when she leaned to return the plastic tray to the cart. Another two gulps killed the rest of the water, and once she’d set that down, she folded her hands in her lap and blinked at Mustache. “Where am I?”
“I don’t answer questions, halfling. I ask them.” The man rolled his shoulders, his hands still clasped behind his back. “You know, if I wasn’t standing here looking at you, I’d say you were nothing more than a fart in the wind.”
Cheyenne nodded at the tray on the cart. “I think you smell the meat slop.”
“We ran you through multiple recognition programs to locate a DNA match. Twice. Would it surprise you to hear nothing came up?”
“That’s a bummer.”
The man sniffed and dipped his head. “Who are you?”
They stared at each other for a moment. This guy must be pretty desperate if he’s laying this much on the table. Cheyenne offered him a little shrug. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“Tempting.” Mustache lifted his chin, his eyebrows doing a weird little dance as he blinked. Seemed he couldn’t decide whether to frown or try another expression. “I guess I can’t expect you to remember much of anything from the last time we spoke. Well, I spoke at you. You flashed in and out of different skins and tried hard to be coherent. Let’s start with my name. To you and everyone else in this facility, my name is Sir. I’ll ask one more time before I bring Dr. Minkert back in with a sedative and a more outdated pair of dampening cuffs. Not so cutting-edge. A lot more painful. Who are you?”
Cheyenne narrowed her eyes. I wouldn’t put it past them to have some kind of advanced lie-detector test running in the background. Maybe whatever’s being picked up by those monitors.
“Blakely.”
“There. That wasn’t so hard. I assume you have a last name, Blakely.”
And a first. This guy only gets the middle. “Probably.”
Sir blinked and nodded once in concession. “I get it. Tit for tat. Let’s move on, then.”
Exposed to the air, Cheyenne’s hip itched, and she wanted to tear off her hospital gown and take her spork to the raw wound. She clenched the bundled sheet in her lap instead. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Hmm. I’m ready to find out what the hell you were doing in the middle of my sting operation, on your own, with no backup, and no obvious training beyond raw magic and an ability to do serious damage.”
“I thought it was obvious.” Cheyenne wrinkled her nose and sniffed while trying to keep a level head.
“Enlighten me, Blakely.”
“I took down as many of those orcs and goblins as your guys did. And yes, that was on purpose.” Cheyenne pressed her lips together and held Sir’s beady-eyed gaze. They don’t know how much I don’t know. I have a chance to pull more information from the guy before he starts making threats.
“Okay. I can appreciate a tight-lipped policy. We run things the same way here.” Sir stepped to the foot of the bed and lifted his chin. “This is what I can give you. That group of blacklisted and black-market magicals was at that get-together to organize a raid on one of the reservations. It was to tear down the security measures there to bring more blacklisted and black-market magicals through to this side. That wasn’t something we could let slip under the radar. One
