It doesn’t matter as long as we get this done.
Her lips part, and she opens wide. One of her front teeth is chipped, and another farther back looks like it’s missing a chunk.
I don’t think about that, only delve my gaze inside each of them searching for that bundle of metal.
There. “First molar on the top left, same as the rest of us,” I announce, and hesitate. “I’m the one who needs to—”
“She’s got the strength to do it too,” Jacob snaps. “Let her deal with her own mouth. You can do mine first.”
He steps forward, his stance rigid, and drops his jaw as far as it’ll go. I tear my gaze away from Riva, revulsion coiling in my gut as I prepare to get down to work.
We talked about this part of the plan, and I pictured the process to try to prepare myself, but none of that could have matched the awfulness of actually having to reach into my friend’s mouth, grip a tooth, and rip it out of his gums root and all.
As I pinch my thumb and forefinger around the right one, even more nausea fills in my stomach. “Sorry,” I can’t help rasping.
Then I wrench the molar out with a heave of my arm, as fast as I can manage.
Jacob is the most impervious of us all, but even he gives a ragged groan as blood spurts over his lips along with a puff of dark mist. Dominic is at his side in an instant, placing his palm against Jake’s jaw by the wound. Dom’s mouth presses flat, and Jacob’s shoulders sag with released tension.
The sprig of wildflowers Dominic plucked up withers and disintegrates in his hand.
I want to apologize to him too, but none of this can be helped. All we can do is get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Break the tooth,” Andreas reminds me in an urgent tone.
I set Jacob’s molar on a flat stone and stomp my foot on it with my full inhuman strength. It shatters with a crackling of circuitry.
If the guardians were tracing us using that, the signal just went dead. But there are four more devices beaming out their radio waves.
Andreas is waiting when I raise my head. My stomach keeps churning as I perform the second extraction. He buckles over with a gagging sound, and then Dominic is there by his side.
A leafy twig crinkles away into dust from Dominic’s hand. Then he faces me. “My turn.”
I hate doing this one the most. Dom has been through all the same training as us, and I know his slender frame has plenty of muscle packed on it, but he’s the smallest of us four. The least overt in how he’s feeling.
I never know how he’s really doing behind his quiet demeanor, but we all know he’s got at least a few things haunting him.
Clenching my jaw, I tear out his tooth even faster than the others. As his hand shoots right into his mouth to heal the wound, I crush yet another tracker under my heel.
When I step back, Riva lets out a faint strangled sound. Shuddering, she grips the side of her face and drops the tooth she must have just dragged from her own jaw onto the stone. It smashes under the slam of her foot.
Blood dribbles over her chin, and her shoulders quiver. My gaze leaps to Dominic, but Jacob pushes between him and Riva.
“She waits,” he says in a steely tone. “If she can deal out pain, she can endure a little. Take care of yourself, Zee, and Dom’ll make sure you’re okay first.”
Riva’s head droops. She doesn’t protest, but something twists in my chest.
I hate what she did and everything that came after, but the viciousness of Jacob’s rage is unsettling even me. And I’m normally the brute around here.
To get it over with as quickly as possible, I brace myself and catch hold of my molar. My muscles balk in the first instant against damaging my own body, but I push through the resistance and haul the tooth out.
Pain screams through my face. I sputter with it, and Dominic is by my side, palm against my cheek.
Soothing warmth blooms through my gums. When he pulls back, a dull ache remains, but the gaping hole is sealed.
We agreed beforehand that he’d only put in as much energy as it took to remove the possibility of infection.
He moves to Riva next, and Jacob doesn’t argue. She holds perfectly still as Dominic works his healing power on her. Then she wipes the bloody spittle from her mouth with the back of her hand and stares at all of us with her bright brown eyes smoldering like coals.