“Except this.”

“Don’t make a mistake you won’t walk away from. You need me, Kord,” Bill intoned, pulling hard on his ugly past and hammering it against Michael’s fear of making a mistake, a mistake that others could see and judge him a fool for. The anxiety was deep and ingrained, and the best way to manipulate the unpredictable man. “Peri will come home. What happens then is still open.” He hesitated, backing off a step. “Understand?”

Michael’s eyes dropped, and again in charge, Bill forced himself to his usual calm. From the corner, Jack exhaled. It had been chancy, but the altercation had bought him a few more days for Michael to stew before reaching his breaking point.

Satisfied, Bill leaned to look Allen eye to swollen eye, and the bound man jerked when Bill brushed a sweat-clumped strand of hair away. “You said she won’t come back? Allen, we both know Denier is good, but he will need at least two years to reverse-engineer it, and that’s assuming he can find the right equipment, which he won’t. In a week, she’ll be out of Evocane,” Bill said softly. “Slavering on the floor and in the throes of withdrawal. A day later, if she doesn’t die of dehydration or stroke, she’ll begin to hallucinate. Really bad hallucinations, nothing pleasant or nice, like unicorns and rainbows. Shortly after that, you’ll have to put her in a vulnerable, medically induced coma to keep her from trying to meet her maker from the thirty-fourth floor. I think she’ll choose the alternative and come . . . see . . . me.” He hesitated. “Our Peri is stubborn, not stupid.”

Bill straightened to his full height, pleased to see Michael’s anger soften at the reminder of what waited for an accelerated drafter caught without his Evocane. With repeated exposure, the painful withdrawal symptoms would turn into a death sentence. Allen said nothing, his breathing giving away his fear.

“Good morning, Allen,” Bill said conversationally, relishing that he was taller than anyone in the room apart from Michael. “Did you really think we didn’t know who you were all those years ago?” Turning to Jack, he inclined his head in invitation. “Save me the trouble of looking at the transcripts. What else has he told you?”

The rims of Jack’s ears were red. “Just what you already know. She’s aligned herself with WEFT in a bid for the labs to make Evocane. Headman is Steiner. No one there can draft or anchor. They think that’s where the corruption started.”

“That’s a laugh,” Michael said, sifting through the tray of drugs stacked atop the filthy Shop-Vac.

“Denier has full lab access,” Jack said, clearly not liking Michael shuffling about with the vials and syringes. “He’s not told me everything, but I’ve not forced it.”

Syringe in hand, Michael turned, apparently eager to fix that.

Irritation filled Bill. “I’m doing this,” he muttered as he took it away. “Back off.”

Allen’s jaw clenched, but he did little as Bill swabbed his inside elbow of his bound arm and injected it. A weird, thin-lipped, wild-eyed expression slipped over the captive man even as the drug took him, slowing his breathing and making his clenched hands ease.

“He’s been conditioned to keep his mouth shut against that,” Jack said flatly.

Michael jumped, startled when Bill’s hand flashed out, slapping Allen’s face with an unexpected crack. Shock crossed Allen, then hatred.

“That’s why I use it in tandem with a secondary method,” Bill said softly. “Michael, you’re like a dog under the table. Back off before you fuck this up, too. There are ways to get people to talk other than assassinating their team.”

Feet scuffing, Michael retreated.

“Now.” Bill swung the room’s only free chair around, straddling it so the back was between him and Allen. “What I really want to know—the reason you’re here instead of a ditch to be found by an early-morning jogger—is why was she at Everblue?”

Allen glanced at Jack before fixing on Bill with his unswollen eye. “I don’t know.”

Bill hit him again, this time using a fist. Allen’s head rocked back, and Bill reached out, yanking him forward before the chair could tip over, smacking him lightly to make sure he didn’t pass out. “Hey. Hey! Over here, Allen. Focus now.”

Allen twitched, shrugging to get Bill’s hand off him. He spat out blood; the ugly sound of it meeting the cement floor was oddly familiar. “Hitting me won’t make me talk,” he rasped.

Bill’s face was expressionless. “I’m not hitting you to make you talk. I’m hitting you because you thought I was stupid.” Thick fingers moving with a slow precision, Bill took a bottled water from the tray. “What was Peri doing at Everblue?” he said as he dropped a straw into it and held it to Allen. “Did she demand to be there? Is she wanting to come home?”

Allen looked up from the straw, still too far away. “You don’t think the half dozen of your hired men she left for dead are enough of a no?”

Bill held it so he could drink. “She’s angry with me. She’s expressing herself.”

Licking his lips, Allen drew back from the water. “Peri will die before returning to Opti.”

“Then it’s a good thing she can reset time to make a better decision.” It was closed and uncomfortable, and the silence grew. Bill set the water back on the tray. “Why was she there, Allen?”

Twitching impatiently, Michael stepped forward. Breath fast, he grabbed the expended syringe and used his weight to push Allen’s head back. Jack’s breath hissed in, but he didn’t move as Bill was forced to rise and his chair was knocked over.

“Michael,” Bill complained, willing to give Michael a little release as he leaned heavier into Allen, lips pulled into a grimace.

“Know what happens when you shove a needle into someone’s frontal cortex?” Michael said, angling the syringe to Allen’s nose. “You wiggle it around enough, and it mimics a lobotomy enough to pass inspection.”

“He knows he’s more useful alive, Michael,” Bill said. “Knock it off.”

“He doesn’t need an eye to be alive.” Michael shifted the angle of the needle. “How about it, Allen? You want to keep both of them?”

Swollen eye slitted in fear, Allen exclaimed, “Why do you care?”