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Chapter Three: Preparation
_o\O/o_
He hated himself immediately afterward, but when Armstrong released the straps pinning his left arm to the bed Finch couldn't help but gasp out a startled "thank you."
When the hip, knee, and left ankle straps came off too, all he could manage was a grateful groan. The fever chills had passed — one less thread in the web of pain that was again becoming home — but his skin still felt raw, poisonous; the cool air now gentling the newly unbound spots was too much, too fast. He was almost relieved that the right wrist and ankle restraints remained.
The IV tube and catheter were gone. At least he hadn't been awake for that. Finch barely had time to hope it hadn't been long enough for bedsores to start before Armstrong leaned in close and his thoughts scattered like pigeons. Looking the man in the eye was unthinkable; Finch's eyes skimmed around Armstrong's hairline until they were drawn downward by the wink of metal: a stethoscope hanging from Armstrong's neck.
That's new.
Finch blinked against the reflected light and licked his sore lips.
"I very much hope that this means you—"
His breath was abruptly huffed out of him when Armstrong rolled Finch toward himself, onto his right side. He yelped; Armstrong slipped the stethoscope into his ears and caught Finch under the jaw with one steely hand. His other arm circled around and braced along Finch's spine, elbow in the small of his back, fingers at the nape of his neck. Then Armstrong sighed out two long, breathy pants. Finch startled and he began to struggle, previously-unconsidered possibilities shrieking through his mind, until he felt the touch of metal—warm from Armstrong's breath—at the base of his skull. Ah. The stethoscope.
Using the hand cradling his jaw, Armstrong slowly pivoted Finch's head this way and that, listening intently. The motions were subtle at first, almost soothing. Not unlike physical therapy, in fact. Finch remembered all the admonishments to relax, to breathe through the little clicks of metal and bone, and found himself falling back into those patterns.
Then Armstrong found a familiar sticking point—a catch in the rotation, where one surgical pin was slightly longer than the other. His long hands went still, perfectly still, long enough for Finch to feel his skull become almost weightless in that deft grip. Then both thumbs pressed into the hollow behind his right ear and shoved.
Finch gagged as the titanium in his neck, unable to bend with the spine, began to grind into it. His free arm flailed against Armstrong's side, half nerve spasm, half self-defense. His free leg had locked at the knee, useless.
Armstrong held him down until his flopping arm subsided into twitching. Then he dropped Finch's head like a hot rock and stepped away, walking around to the other side of the bed. He reached for the locked knee and Finch squeezed his eyes shut. He didn't want to know what would happen next. Maybe it would be easier if he didn't see it coming.
Unhurriedly, Armstrong probed and listened, mapping out each of the eleven pins holding Finch's spine and pelvis together. Testing their range of motion, how much pressure it took to push the audible friction from unpleasant to obscene.
During the moments when he could think, Finch thought about carpentry projects in the workshop-barn with his father. He thought of the protesting creak of wood while pulling out an ill-hammered nail; of overworked drill-holes that stripped the threads off screws and left them rattling pointlessly, good for nothing but the scrap heap.
Over and over Finch felt himself circling the drain of consciousness, but Armstrong always pulled him back from the brink just in time. Until finally one especially shrill twist hit some sort of tuning fork of agony in Finch's brain. The ringing in his ears met the creeping blackness before his eyes, and together they pulled him down, down, down into the dark.
_o\O/o_
"I'm not a killer, Detective, please believe that. It's a non-negotiable point of my contract: no killing. So. If everything plays out like it should, you will get your friend back when this is all over. Here's how that works: I let you loose down here and then you stay until I say you can leave. Sure, you could bust your way out, easy. I know enough about you to know that, injections or no, restraints or no, it's only a matter of time before I make a mistake and you kill me with your teeth or something."
John blinked. He'd made a list of ways to do that, too.
"So I'd rather do it this way. And to be honest, I don't like all this fuss." Slim waved dismissively at the zip ties, the jar of powdered constipating medication, the Big Gulp cups (one for what went in, one for what went out).
"The reason you will stay here and do what I say is very simple. There are two men outside the door where I've got your friend, and their only function is to wait for me to check in with them at precisely scheduled times. If at any time, for any reason, I fail to do that? My contract with my client is voided. Truth be told, I'm not sure exactly what that would mean for your friend. But it would be better not to find out, I think."
Slim prepared the injection, then waved it in John's face to punctuate his next words.
"So, I'm going to give you one last shot. When you wake up the ties will be gone. Help yourself to water, shakes. The toilet's down that little hall; the thermostat's at the top of the stairs. The fuse box is up there, too, by the way, but I'm sure hoping you'll take what I've said to heart. I'll be back later with some new footage. We'll go on as before for a while longer. Then I give you a phone, drive away, and text you an address. And you go get your friend. Simple. So you see, Detective, unlike you, I am not a killer."
And damned if John doesn't believe him.
"That would defeat the whole purpose, anyway — would be, quite frankly, a waste of my time. What's the point, where's the challenge, in taking something apart, if you don't mean to put it back together again?"
_o\O/o_
When Finch came to, everything was different—different in a way he was too dizzy to put his finger on right away. He blinked, found a stain on the ceiling to anchor his gaze and let the vertigo and nausea recede. As his head cleared he realized: the restraints were gone. All of them.
His thousand-dollar shoes hit the floor before he knew what he was doing. Next was the tie; he reached to rip it off completely but lingering vertigo sent his hand crashing into his nose instead of up to his throat. After a moment's pause he tried again and settled for loosening it and popping the top buttons off his collar. The buttons of his waistcoat took considerably longer. His shirt was half-untucked from Armstrong's ministrations; Finch finished the job.
He was finding the least painful way to arrange his arms when his eyes landed on the door. The locked door.
Because surely it must be locked, of course.
Of course.
And yet.
Slowly, so slowly, he shifted himself to the side, using his shoulders as ballast to swing his good leg off the edge of the bed. Balancing on the precipice, he sucked in a deep breath. He was under no illusions about standing and walking over to the door. But in recent years he'd had plenty of experience in how to execute a controlled fall. Still, he tucked his glasses into his breast pocket, just in case.
It was not a controlled fall.
When he came to again, he had the wits to start moving immediately after replacing his glasses, pushing against the cement floor with his good leg, pulling with his elbows. He was angry and he used every scrap of it to get to the door.
The locked door.
Of course.
He dropped, did his best to melt into the cold floor, cursed the familiar damned-if-you-move, damned-if-you-don't dance of musculoskeletal pain. He braced one shoulder slightly against the wall, his legs lying directly in the door's path. If he was lucky, maybe Armstrong would trip over them when he came back.
But hours went by, and nothing happened—nothing except cold, and hard, and colder, and harder. His eyes kept drifting back to the hospital bed, which he now saw was rather thicker and softer than standard issue. The restraints, too: they were smooth, padded—more like what you'd find in a kink shop than an ambulance. Suddenly Finch's neck spasmed, hard; he realized he'd been unconsciously leaning toward the bed.
No.
He looked away and started reciting the digits of pi. It was his custom in times of tribulation. Sometimes it worked.
But only sometimes.
It took him twice as long to crawl back as it had to crawl away. And then there was the Everest-like adventure of actually getting back into the bed. When he finally succeeded and spread himself out, sweating, his body fitted neatly back into the shallow imprints it had already made for itself in the foam mattress, and his eyes were streaming tears — only a few of them were from the pain.
Then the door opened.
_o\O/o_
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