Page 20 of Even Robots Die

I wrap my arms around myself as a chill spreads through my body.

I don’t know what Brice wants in this room, but I already hate it.

“Sit,” he tells me, gesturing to the stool next to the only cot in the room.

I comply, but move the stool away from the cot enough for me not to touch it as I do. If those pictures are real, I’m pretty sure people have been cut open alive on that cot. I refuse to even touch it.

“Why are we here?” I ask, a shiver coursing through my body again.

I hate it here.

“This is where Michaël kept me,” Brice says, without missing a beat.

Wait. What?

He decided to live right where he was tortured? What kind of masochist does that?

I really want to be understanding and not remark on it, but my mouth doesn’t comply with my brain and before I know it, I’m saying something I might regret.

“And you’re crazy enough to stay here?”

“I need the reminder,” he answers, as if my question wasn’t a direct attack on his sanity.

“Explain,” I demand as I get up.

I hate that stool. I hate that room. If he doesn’t give me an explanation, and fast, I’ll make sure he regrets it.

I don’t have my guns with me anymore, but that doesn’t mean I won’t find something in my arsenal that will work on him.

There is a small smile at the corner of his lips as if he’s mocking me before it disappears and he answers.

“They cut my head open and toyed with my brain. I attacked my best friend because of that. I don’t feel because of that. And they did all of this with electric shocks,” he tells me, and it’s way more than I expected. “I need the reminder, or else I might turn into the monster they were trying to create.”

My mouth opens. And closes. And opens again.

I don’t know what to say to that.

It’s fucked up.

This is a freaking mess.

“I don’t do brains,” is the only thing I find myself saying.

Talk about something witty.

“I know that. But I also know that you can work magic with anything electronic …” Brice answers me, but I stop him.

I don’t know what he was going to say, but I don’t want to hear it.

“No. No, I won’t do that. I don’t work on the living. I make things. I repair things. I don’t toy with living, breathing things.”

Remember when I said yesterday that everyone had a price? I was wrong.

There is no way I’m going to play with what’s in his brain. I can see it as clear as day. He wants me to open him up and put probes in his brain and send shocks so I can reverse whatever the birds did to him. I’m not the right person.

“I’m not a freaking surgeon,” I add under my breath. “I’m not competent. Find someone else.”

No matter what price he’s willing to pay—and I’m not even sure he plans to pay me—I’m not doing this.