33. Chapter Thirty-Three Cam #3
"Now that's what I call a great idea, sweetheart."
Grabbing Beaver by his shoulders, I cut off his ties and hauled him onto the kitchen table.
He squirmed and kicked, but he was no match for me on his best day, and this was very far from his best day.
With a grunt, I flipped him over, pinning him face-down.
Rose was there in a flash, grabbing new zip ties and fixing his arms to the table legs before linking a few ties together and doing the same to his ankles.
He looked like a turtle, all splayed out, his face pressed against the wood where we'd been eating grilled cheese six hours ago.
"Hold still, buddy," I said. "Trust me, you don't want us to slip."
Lakey was practically bouncing, a wicked smile on her lips. "I've always wanted to play doctor," she giggled, reaching for one of her knives.
But something made me pause. If the remote was an activator, then theoretically we didn't need to cut the chip out.
We just needed to disable it. Sever the antenna wire and the signal dies.
Still, figuring out the mechanics would be useful for Rose.
Either way, I caught Lakey's wrist before she could start carving.
"Hold up, sugar," I said. "I've got an idea. What if I can disable the tracker without cracking his skull wide open? Might be cleaner."
Her bottom lip jutted out. "But where's the fun in that?"
I pulled her close, my mouth against her ear. "Tell you what. If this doesn't work, you get first dibs on the cutting. Deal?"
She sighed dramatically, but I could see the smile fighting through. "Fine. But you better make it quick. You said I could do it and I'm not happy that you lied."
"I didn't lie, I just... you're a bit impulsive, babe. We need to actually try to not kill him." She huffed and crossed her arms, pinning me with a stare. Yeah, I was gonna pay for that later.
Examining the back of his head, I found it. A small wire, thin, barely visible, hidden in his hairline. Same as Rose's. I pinched it between my fingers and tugged. It didn't give. Just stretched the skin and made him scream through the sock.
"Sooo... we can cut his head open, right?" Lakey said. She grabbed another dirty sock off the floor and shoved it deeper into his mouth. He gagged around it, his eyes watering.
Pretty sure I wiped baby juice off on that sock.
I took a deep breath. Steadied my hand. Pressed the tip of the curved blade to Beaver's skull.
His muffled screams were still pretty loud as I made the first incision.
Blood welled up, warm and sticky against my fingers.
The cut had to be careful, precise, just deep enough to expose the wire without going into the bone.
This wasn't a kill. This was information gathering. Practice for Rose.
"Ugh, babe. You said I could do it." Lakes pouted before leaning forward, putting her fingers into the cut and tugging on his scalp as I sliced.
I held the blade up, "Yes, babe, but as I already said... I'm kind of worried you're just going to kill him and then we won't know if we can disable it without causing death. So, when I'm done, then you can play Nurse Ratchet, okay?"
"Fine. But if you don't let me play after, I'm going to be very, VERY upset."
Shaking my head, I sliced up, letting Lakey pull his skin off his scalp by his hair and lay it flat against his head. He was thrashing on the table, making it hard to cut with any precision. Didn't help that I was using a butterfly knife and not a scalpel, but semantics, really.
A knife is a knife is a knife.
"Jesus, keep him still," I said. Lakey had stopped helping to watch the blood drip down his neck, splashing on the table and onto the floor.
Her fingers reached out, going into the wound and playing around in it.
The squelching was loud, accentuated by his muffled screaming.
Surprisingly, he hadn't passed out yet, but it made it so much better that he hadn't.
"Oh, hush," she said. "I'm doing what I can." But she came around behind me, crawled up onto the table, and sat on his back. She weighed basically nothing, but at least it was more productive than sticking her fingers in his head.
As I peeled back the flap of skin further, my breath caught. There it was. A tiny chip, drilled right into the base of his skull. A mess of wires running downward toward his neck, way more complicated than I'd expected. One wire stood out, thicker than the rest, with a tiny red blinker beside it.
"Shit," I muttered. "You watching that phone?"
"Why? You got something? I can't see from up here. Your fat head is blocking my view."
I nodded, reaching for the wire cutters. "Let's find out."
Deep breath. I positioned the cutters around the wire at its base. One snip. Clean. For a second, nothing happened. Then Lakey's laugh filled the room.
"It worked!" she squealed, practically dancing on Beaver's back, which couldn't have been comfortable for him, but I doubt she gave a shit. "His little blinking dot just went dark. You did it, Cam!"
I let out a long breath. "How about that." I wiped the blood off my hands. "Guess I've got a future in neurosurgery after all."
I pushed my fingers into Beaver's neck, checking for a pulse.
Still there. Weak but steady. It worked.
The wire was severed, the tracker was dead, and our practice patient was still breathing.
Much easier than I'd anticipated. Certainly easier than the manual made it out to be, but maybe that was intentional.
Maybe they wanted people to think it was impossible so they wouldn't try.
Wouldn't be the first time Chimera used fear as a deterrent.
I looked at Rose, standing against the far wall, her arms wrapped around herself, watching everything with wide eyes that held no horror. Just concentration. She was studying what I'd done. Memorizing it. Filing it away the same way I filed things away.
I sighed, wiping my hands on Beaver's shirt. Now to decide what the fuck to do with our patient.
But first, I looked at Lakey. She was still sitting on Beaver's back, legs dangling off the table, phone in one hand, her other hand absently tracing patterns in the blood pooling on the wood. She caught me looking and raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Nothing." I shook my head. "Just thinking that if this is what our family looks like, we're never getting invited to a neighborhood barbecue."
She snorted. "Good. I hate small talk."