“Y-Y-You’re gonna k-kill me anyway!” Alfie cried, clutching his ribs.
“On your knees,” I snarled.
“You killed my brother, you cunt!”
“Last chance,” I said softly, cramming more menace into a whisper than a shout.
“There’s somethin’ wrong with you, bitch!”
“You have no idea,” I agreed.
“Fuckin’ eyes of a psycho!”
“You should talk. Knees. Now.”
Trembling, casting furtive, wild-eyed glances at me, he clambered awkwardly, groaning loudly, to his hands and knees then sat back on his heels, gasping as he placed his hands behind his head. I’d kicked him a little harder than I’d realized. His glasses were broken, askew on his nose, beanie drooping. The glasses were thick with heavy black frames. Thin silver wires were exposed by one broken flange.
As he knelt, trembling with rage and fear, I caught a flash of something metallic in the dark folds of his cap and smiled faintly. Dancer might have created a similar gadget for me.
“Camera on your head, your glasses tie into it. Gives you one eighty vision.”
“Infrared,” he said sullenly.
“You saw my heat behind you.”
“He don’t send us out without tools.”
“Who?”
Alfie’s thin lips clamped together, his jaw jutted defiantly.
“Who do you work for and what is he doing? Answer me or die.”
Still, he said nothing.
“Answer me or I’ll shove your ass through that mirror with a message carved into it that says you spilled everything and I’m coming for him.”
“Fuck you will! You got no clue what you’re messing with! You can’t touch him! Nobody can! And you don’t wanna touch him! You don’t want him to even look at you!”
“Who? I won’t ask again.”
“What’cha gonna do?” he sneered. “You ain’t gonna torture me. I know your kind. Stuck up, tight-ass vigilante, saving worthless kids. Think you’re above the rest of us. Think you’re on the right side, but sweetheart, the right side is the winning side—and you ain’t on it.”
That he was right about part of what he’d said chafed. I needed information. Torture would get it. But I’ve always avoided crossing that murky line. I needed a sidekick that had no such problem. Still, a little pain wasn’t torture.
My switchblade flicked out with a small snick. “Carve. Message. Choose.”
He glanced at his brother, dead on the floor, then behind me at the dark aperture in the br
ick wall.
“You won’t make it,” I said with an icy smile. “You won’t get past me.”
Brown eyes met mine. Fury burned in them but was diluted by fear, tainted with a grim resignation. He was more afraid of his master than me.
Alfie smiled coldly back. “Then I’ll die trying.”
He did.