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three-dimensional collection of tools and instruments.
    She gave him another pointed look. He shrugged with no smile on his lips, but the tense lines around his eyes eased.
    “Give me your hand again.” He selected a four-inch cylinder and placed it in the boy’s hand, curling the fingers around the object. “Small. When I place it against your skin, it’ll move and make a high-pitched noise. You’ll feel the vibration, but there won’t be any pain.”
    The boy swallowed hard, nodded, and released the instrument.
    Onyx brushed the boy’s neck again and rested the tip of the cylinder against the skin. When the child flinched, he stroked again with his fingers and hushed him.
    “By the time you count to thirty, it’ll be over.”
    A whine split the silence. The boy gripped Analena, but he didn’t move. More like ten seconds later, not thirty, Onyx pulled back and motioned Aaron forward. “If you have a way to disintegrate this, do it. If not, sprinkle it with iron filings, take it past the perimeter, and bury it.”
    Aaron gave a quick glance to Analena. At her nod, he spun on his heel and disappeared down a tunnel at the far side of the cave.
    “Hena, could you get some water?” Analena asked.
    Onyx reached back to the boy’s throat. “Can you tell me your name?”
    “Ars.”
    A deep furrow formed between Onyx’s brows as he glanced back at Analena. “Try that again, buddy.”
    “Gha.”
    The boy took a sip of the water from the cup Hena delivered, sputtering out as much as he drank, and finally muttered, “Gar.”
    Onyx nodded, “Okay, Gar, you can call me Trace.”
    Analena shot him a quick glance.
    He ignored her, not taking his gaze from the boy. “I’m going to take off the cover and look at your eyes. Again, not touching, just looking.”
    “K.” The boy gripped Analena tight enough she had to bite back a sound. She watched as Onyx—no, Trace—untied the scarf and dropped it on the table. One large, rough hand fisted on the table at the boy’s hip as his jaw tensed, but his voice remained even as he reached for Gar’s face.
    “I’m going to move your head from side to side so I can get a better view, okay?”
    The boy lifted his chin, not flinching this time as Trace cupped the small face and gently looked at the wreckage she’d found in the detention cell. One eye socket sagged, the flesh depressed and unstructured without the form of an eyeball beneath. The second eye stared ahead unseeing, glassy and gray.
    “Going to use another tool, again no touch, Gar. You won’t hear anything. This scans your muscles and nerves. You won’t feel a thing.” He placed the rectangular box of metal and plastic beneath the boy’s fingers. When the child’s hand withdrew, Trace ran the rectangular med scanner over Gar’s face, lingering on the side with the hazy eye. “Your good eye is going to need some drops. I’ll have a look at the other one later.”
    Analena scowled. The boy was obviously blind. How could he lead him on?
    Trace gave a terse shake of his head. Puzzled, she looked back at Gar.
    “The drops won’t hurt, maybe a tiny sting. If you want, I can give you something to numb your face, like they gave you—before. I know that’s probably not a good memory, so you’re choice, bud.”
    “They didn’t give me anything.”
    Trace swore, and Analena closed her eyes as bile churned from her stomach to her throat. It was the boy’s hand, firm, and warm in hers, that kept her from losing what little control she had. She’d brought enough children from the detention labs. Only recently had the surgeries escalated to higher level of inhuman practices. Absence of anesthesia and pain medication angered her enough to wage war on the Regent council and their guards by herself, but only Gar’s life mattered right now. She couldn’t change the past.
    “I don’t need anything,” said Gar.
    Trace’s fingers shook visibly, and his skin tone had turned to chalk, though his stroking of the