target—trying to keep track of this many people was shit.
But Checker was out of jail, and Arthur was safe, and I could be happy about that for now. For just a moment, I wanted to live in this bubble of relief and not think about old acquaintances snatching at either my consciousness or my commitments.
If they would let me.
“You all good?” I asked Checker.
“Now I am.” He frowned and pointed at my face. “Are you okay?”
I touched my swollen cheek and the crust of blood across my nose and split lip. I probably should have cleaned that off before going into the station. “I’m fine. Long story.”
“Catch me up on the way to Arthur?”
“Yeah.”
I walked with him back to Pilar’s car, and we piled in. As I drove, I began outlining for Checker everything that had gone down since he’d been taken into custody, including the mounting evidence of the doctor’s powers and D.J.’s increasingly clear fingerprints behind it all. “I’m thinking this has gotten personal for him,” I said. “And that he’s after you—probably backtracked to find you after they made Arthur. Before that, he had turned Teplova into his own personal Frankenstein-making machine.”
“Frankenstein was the doctor,” Checker murmured.
“What?”
“Frankenstein was the name of the doctor, not the monster.”
Coach wasn’t a monster, I thought. I hadn’t gotten to talking about him yet. I almost didn’t want to. Checker needed to know, but I wasn’t eager to gouge into that weakness in my psyche, or to admit I wanted to save someone who’d been so actively targeting us.
“Teplova was D.J.’s own personal Frankenstein, then,” I said impatiently. “Whatever. My point is, just because we found Arthur, I don’t think that means D.J. is finished with us. We need to track him down and stop him. Will you be able to get into the police systems and see if the bomb squad found any other explosives at the first precinct?”
“You mean other than the bomb you set?” His mouth twitched. “I’m honored. I’ve never had someone commit terrorism on my behalf before.”
“It wasn’t terrorism,” I said. “Just, you know. Incentive. Can you do it?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t sound altogether enthusiastic, though, and when I cast another sidelong glance at him, he was looking down at his lap, toying with the hem of his shirt.
“Look, I’m sorry your old friend turned out to be a homicidal kidnapper who mutilates people for his own amusement,” I said. “But we have to figure this out.”
He sucked in a breath and bit at a nail, gazing out the window now. “Is it wrong that…”
“What?”
“Never mind.” He sniffed and scrubbed at his face. “I almost hope he’s—like maybe someone from Pithica planted all this in his head or something. Wondering if there’s still some chance this isn’t his fault. But then I think back and … I think that’s wishful thinking.”
“Why psychically brainwash someone when you can just pay them,” I agreed sardonically. “Besides, Simon’s pretty sure Pithica isn’t even part of this.”
Checker hissed out a breath. “I know. But even if it’s all him, doing this, even though it probably is, I just keep thinking … if he’d had … It’s complicated.”
How dare he. Here I’d been teetering on the brink of a guilt spiral about wanting to help Coach, and Checker wanted to wax blithely nostalgic about the person who had orchestrated everything? After his old friend had tortured mine into becoming someone Rio wanted me to shoot on sight?
Coach’s situation was the one that was complicated. D.J. had made his choice—not just one but a thousand choices, descending to more hellish abuses with every branching. And now Checker was usurping this role from me, begging to shield his friend—even when being delicate about such a villain would come at the expense of not only Coach, but every single one of Checker’s other friends who’d been in the line of fire since this began?
And he hadn’t even hesitated over it. Like we were nothing.
The deep moat of anger at both him and Arthur that had been swelling up inside me threatened to overflow and burn us both. I’d spent all night strung out worrying about Checker, and his only concern was the guy who had almost killed me half a dozen times while I’d been trying to fix this whole mess. It was like he didn’t even see me. Same as with Arthur. I was an old reliable tool, a convenient missile to point at whatever they needed killing.
We were always weapons, shivered Valarmathi. We knew that.
I