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Chapter Three: Preparation

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"Do you know how they happened, Detective Riley? The injuries?"

Slim didn't seem to expect an answer. He sat next to John in the warm windowless space John had pegged as a half-finished basement. The leather chair was snuggled up to the television screen in the corner furthest from the stairs, thick area rug underfoot, overhead lamp and file cabinet to one side. Everything was comfy and well used—everything but the cheap plastic stool where Slim now perched, tapping a pencil against his teeth, eyes fixed on Finch writhing uselessly on the screen. Every now and then Slim made a hmm-ing noise and wrote something down in his notebook. He had an air of diligence, like a dedicated student doing his homework.

Finch's collar was wilted and dark with dried sweat, his suit lapels a squashed mess under the shoulder restraints. Squirming against the hip strap had his glossy black — "Aubergine, Mr Reese," the Harold in John's mind corrected — waistcoat riding up; John knew the indecorous display of rumple-shirted belly must be maddening to whatever small part of Finch's brain wasn't busy being terrified.

John had no way of knowing how old the current footage was; could be hours, could be days. From the growth of his own beard he knew he was 48-72 hours post-capture. But thanks to Finch's fussy grooming habits, he had no frame of reference for the thinner stubble visible on his employer's jaw, straining to talk through chattering teeth.

"Please. My name is Harold Crane. I don't know why I'm here. Why are you... what do you want? Please tell me, please just—say something. I, ungh, I have money. I have money, a lot of it, I swear. Let me go, and you—ahhh, oh god—you can, all of it, whatever you, however much you want. Whatever you want. Please say something..."

A long time ago, one undercover mission had required John develop a heroin habit. It was only a few months, and the subsequent withdrawal had been miserable enough. But he'd had no real need of the drugs in the first place, no years of pain to muzzle, no metal in his bones to turn to cold fangs in the marrow—

"Say something, goddammit!"

The man on the screen said nothing. He checked Finch's pupil response, felt his pulse. Then he placed one finger against Finch's temple andpushed. As his neck bent slowly, inexorably to the side, Finch's gasp gave way to sobs of please no stop stop please stop NO— until finally his left ear touched his left shoulder, and he screamed. Once, then again. The third scream ended abruptly and he went mercifully limp against the bed.

Slim was scribbling furiously in his notebook. He finished and flicked off the TV.

"I'd assume something ordinary like a car crash for the original trauma," he said lightly to John. "Though you and your friend sure don't seem like the ordinary type. Still, spinal injury and second-degree burns: classic auto-collision. But the second incident was probably—"

"Second ins'dent?" John's head was rolling on his neck, now that there was no image of Finch to anchor it in place. He had promised himself he wouldn't talk. Wouldn't give his captor the satisfaction. But Slim didn't seem to care either way, and Harold was hurting somewhere, had beenhurting all along, and John needed to know.

"Oh yes. You didn't know?"

John bared his teeth at the ceiling: it was almost a smile.

"He's a very private person."

"Oh. I had kinda figured..." Slim made a vague gesture with his pencil. "But uh, anyway, yeah, there are two discrete sets of surgical scars: different procedures performed by different doctors. The second doctor was better. Much better. Taking your friend's demographics into account, I don't think I've ever seen better mobility after multiple pelvic fractures. The spinal fusion was downright poetic. But all that happened afterward."

Slim was warming to his subject. His accent wasn't uptown, his vocabulary wasn't particularly educated. Not a doctor, John found himself thinking.But not an amateur, either.

"I bet your friend didn't take the time to fully heal from the first uh, car-crash or whatever. You see that a lot—in workaholics, especially: patients taking things too fast, slacking on their PT, and then," Slim snapped his fingers. "Boom. A second incident. Usually a fall."

"But something a lot more violent happened to your friend, I'd say—an assault, maybe. Or another, very bad, accident. That's when all the pins had to go in. And there was no rushing convalescence that time; nothing like a crushed pelvis to ensure patient compliance." He snapped his notebook shut and stood, stretching. "Chow time, Detective."

Slim went to the wall and pulled a water bottle and a BoostPlus shake from the dusty bulk-buy packages on the floor. He poured both into a Big Gulp cup, added a precise measurement of a white powder, and held it up to John's mouth. Sucking it down, John made a list of the ways he could use the straw between his teeth to kill the deceptively frail man before him. Quick ways, slow ways, clean ways and messy ones, painless or awful, gruesome, excruciating—he would get a lot more than three screams out of Slim before he passed out, by God—

Suddenly he realized he was slurping nothing but vanilla-flavored air through the straw. He stopped and Slim threw the empty cup away, blinking at him curiously.

"I've never... had a job quite like this before," he said quietly, almost shyly. "Nobody else has ever been down here, actually. You're in my chair." He laughed awkwardly and tapped the already-tilting stool with his toe. "I should probably get another one."

"You c'n have your shair back f'you stop this."

Slim smiled, shaking its head. "It's losing lumbar support, anyway. The human body is a miraculous thing, you know. It does the work for me, really; all I have to do is create the right conditions. That's never been more true than with your friend there. His own body, his own mind, his past, his relationships,"—he nodded at John—"his biochemistry, even his own clothes. They prepared him for this. All I need to contribute now is the touch of a finger."

He gazed at his own hand reverently for a moment.

"My client didn't tell me much about you, Detective Riley. But I think I have a pretty good idea. You weren't always a cop, were you? And I'm sure you were very good at your job. But, one professional to another, I hope you can see that there are certain advantages to doing things my way."

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