Chapter 4 #2
"We wait for him to sleep. Then we move."
I nodded and settled in. Stakeouts in the Bronx. Drug houses. Waiting. This wasn't different, just another wait in another bad place.
The lights went out after ninety minutes.
I activated thermal imaging, watching his heat signature sprawl across a pallet in the corner while my auditory implants isolated his breathing, deep and rhythmic snores, genuine sleep.
I waited anyway, letting my implants run continuous biometric analysis: heart rate steady at sixty beats per minute, sleep depth flagged as Stage 3, the deepest non-REM phase.
He wouldn't wake easily. I scanned the streets, tracking and cataloging heat signatures of late-night pedestrians, then locked onto a guard patrol two blocks over.
Their chatter came through in real-time as they moved away from us toward the market district. No threat.
"Now," Binwee said.
We moved, slipped across the street in silence. The door wasn't locked, I'd been right, and it creaked, but no sound came from inside.
The interior was worse: one room, ten feet square, choked with garbage and filth.
The smell was worse than piled trash during summer in New York.
Zarlak lay on his pallet, snoring. Binwee moved left while I took right in a textbook approach, silent and controlled.
Restraints ready. Binwee held the cloth soaked in something that would keep him under for hours.
We moved in perfect sync until Zarlak's eyes snapped open.
For a split second, he saw us, saw me in my Ulkommenian disguise, saw Binwee's blue face, and his mouth opened to scream.
Binwee's cloth covered his face before any sound escaped.
He struggled, but she was stronger than she looked.
I was already securing his wrists while whispering "Shhh, go to sleep" in my Ulkommenian voice.
He fought for maybe ten seconds before the chemical took effect, his body going limp, his breathing settling into forced unconsciousness.
We worked fast: secured his ankles, gagged him, checked the restraints twice.
Then I looked down at him, at this creature who'd treated Enslak like an animal, who'd hosed him down and fed him slop and never shown him one second of kindness.
I hit him, not hard enough for real damage but hard enough to feel it, hard enough to satisfy something dark coiling in my chest. His head snapped sideways and blood trickled from his nose. I hit him again.
"Niki." Binwee's voice came quiet, not a reprimand, just a reminder. I stopped, breathed, forced the rage back down.
"I'm good," I said. "I'm good."
Binwee nodded. "I'll return to the kitchens. You should rest. Tomorrow, you become him. Head to the cells just as the pit fights commence." She glanced at Zarlak, then back at me. "You'll be alright?"
"I've spent nights in worse places." Not many, but a few. "Go. If anyone notices you're gone, this falls apart."
Binwee hesitated, her large eyes catching the dim light filtering through gaps in the walls.
Then she nodded, sharp and decisive, and slipped into the night, leaving me alone with a silence that felt thick and oppressive.
Just me and an unconscious rat-man and the distant sounds of Merisalle's streets: shouts, laughter, the occasional scream that could've been pleasure or pain or both.
I checked Zarlak's restraints again, still secure, breathing steady, the sedative doing its job.
He'd be out for hours. The shack smelled like sweat and fear and something else I couldn't place.
Probably better that way. I found a relatively clean spot against the far wall, positioned where I could watch both the door and my prisoner, and settled in with my weapon in my lap.
Safety off, finger alongside the trigger guard. Old habits.
Hours crawled by, and I counted them through the shifting noises outside, the gradual quieting as even Merisalle's night trade wound down, then the slow build toward morning.
Somewhere out there, Enslak sat alone in his cell, not knowing tomorrow would be different. Not knowing someone was finally coming.
I ran through the plan again, every step, every contingency.
The cuddwisg would handle my appearance, but I'd need to nail Zarlak's mannerisms, that casual cruelty in his posture.
I'd watched him enough to have a sense of it.
The voice modulator was calibrated to Negita vocal patterns, the guttural undertones and rasp, but I wasn't worried about matching Zarlak specifically.
He communicated mostly in grunts and gestures.
Guards barely spoke to him and he returned the favor, which worked in my favor.
Less talking meant fewer chances to screw up.
A grunt here, a dismissive wave there. Let them fill in the gaps.
Collar removal would be the tricky part: one shot to get it right, or the collar triggers and Enslak dies before we make it ten feet. My fingers went through the motions, working on air, building muscle memory.
Zarlak stirred once, maybe three hours before dawn. I tensed, weapon rising, but he just shifted in his bonds and settled back into chemical sleep. I didn't hit him again, though I wanted to.
As the first hints of pre-dawn light seeped through the walls, I stood and stretched, working the stiffness from my muscles. Time to prepare. Time to become the monster who'd kept another monster in chains. I looked down at Zarlak one last time.
"Thanks for the face," I said quietly. "Try not to choke on that gag."
Then I activated the cuddwisg and watched my hands shift and change, skin taking on his mottled pattern while proportions adjusted. The sensation felt deeply wrong, like wearing someone else's bones.
I found a dirty piece of tin propped against the floor and took in my reflection. I looked like a rat man. It made my skin crawl, but I swallowed down the revulsion.
I had a job to do.