Page 12 of Inextricably Tied

Flint does nothing to hide his distaste. Agony isn’t put off in the slightest. “Big, aren’t you?”

Something about that twists in Harbinger’s stomach – but they have to stay on track. “The connection: you feel it, too.”

Agony turns to her again, giving an experimental pluck on their bond. Harbinger stops it, like grabbing a vibrating wire. Phantom sensation travels up her arms, as if she did grab…something.

Intrigue blooms in Agony’s expression. “I’d love to know how that works.”

“I touched part of you. In the other room.”

Black flames on Agony’s head flare higher. He shoots Tamneth a vicious look. “They like to cut off little pieces of me as keepsakes. Isn’t that right?”

Tamneth doesn’t answer. Agony returns his attention to Harbinger. “They’ve been poking and prodding me for weeks. Didn’t even take me to dinner first. Horrible manners.”

“Seems to be a habit with them,” Flint says coolly. Agony beams up at him.

“Bet you’d never treat me like that. You’re a real gentleman, aren’t you?”

Harbinger cuts in. “What do you know about Raymond Reid?”

Agony stretches as much as he can, draping back against the chair, as comfortable as a cat in the sun. “Only what they tell me. He’s been taking girls. Killing them. Vicious stuff. He wasn’t so tough during my time with him.”

“How do you mean?”

Agony splays his fingers, as if it’s obvious. “Night terror. I tormented his sleep. Chasing the fear, the pain…” That tongue slips out again. He clicks it to the roof of his mouth with a pop. “That’s what I like. I don’t know what went on outside of his dreams.”

Harbinger scowls. “So you have no recollection of what he did during waking hours?”

“Not unless it showed up in his sleep. And, if we’re being honest…” Agony leans forward against the restraints. “Killing girls would have been a fantasy for him, not a nightmare. I never got a look at any of that.”

Tamneth scoffs behind them. But Harbinger saw something when she touched Agony, growing clearer the second before she pulled herself out. A vision taking shape on the horizon. If she could spend more time there, now that the connection’s already forged…

“Harbin.”

Flint keeps an eye on the gears turning in her head. She tilts her helmet toward the door. When Tamneth tries to follow them, Harbinger holds up a gloved hand, tempted to land it across his face. “You? Stay.”

She and Flint find a sitting area down another hallway, empty save for a fake potted plant and a couple of chairs. She turns to him with purpose.

“I have an idea.”

Flint sighs. “I already hate it.”

Harbinger pushes up to stand in one of the seats, close enough for Flint to hear her. “The connection is there,” she confirms. She can’t dwell on it. Put it down. “It’s not like touching another person, but it’s not nothing, either.”

She made the decision to go through with this, but Flint’s guilt lingers regardless. She waves it away. “It’s not your fault. I’m…it is what it is.” Nausea begins to swell if she thinks about it too deeply — so she doesn’t. “But I don’t like the thought of the OID having possession of something that’s attached to me.”

Flint’s eyes narrow. He knows where she’s headed. “What do you mean?”

“You heard what Agony said. They’ve been experimenting on him for weeks; they’re sure as hell not gonna stop when we walk out of here with middle fingers high. I don’t want to find out what the connection feels like when they torture him…or worse.”

Deep inside herself, she reaches toward a jagged hole in her chest, overgrown and vacant where a connection had once been.

She can’t do that again.

And Flint can’t disagree with her, but this solution stares them down like the muzzle of a gun.

“We have to take him,” Harbinger finishes.

“Are you —” Flint scoffs a breath, looking around for some support, but there’s nothing but ringing telephones and whirring copy machines. Flint leans back toward her. “You want to take him, and do what?”