Polynice smiled pleasantly, saying nothing. He began to slowly retrieve one sharp instrument at a time, placing them on the desk in front of me like a waiter setting an elegant table setting. He set each instrument close, just out of my reach. It didn’t matter. He had me tied so tight I could hardly breathe. All I could move were my toes, my head, and the very tips of my fingers.

“You destroyed my life’s work. You disgraced me, my family, and my profession,” Polynice said in his island lilt.

“Profession?! Since when is being a psychotic pederast butcher a profession?!”

Dr. Polynice paused and looked me in the eyes. At his height, even though I was on top of the desk, we were practically at the same level.

“Do not confuse me with my clients.”

By now he had six tools laid out. Any one of them could skin the flesh off my bones. “Oh, please! You killed those kids. You chopped them up and reassembled them, knowing full-well what some sick fuck intended to do with them!”

I saw the doctor shudder. He didn’t like what I had to say. I saw an opening and jumped in.

“Come on, Doc, admit it. You were a little into it.”

Polynice looked up from his instruments. “I brought dead tissue back to life. Mine was the power of the creator.”

“But you killed ’em, Doc!” I laughed. “Come on, seriously, you made one of those little cuties for some personal fun time, didn’t you?”

“I DID NOT!” Polynice slammed his fist on the desk, shaking. “I would . . . n . . . never do that to another . . .”

“Had a hard time in the clinker, Doc? Somebody bigger than you bend you over the bunk?”

Polynice looked at me. Tears were welling in his rabid eyes. His entire body was trembling.

“You put me there.”

I glared back. “Fuck you. I’d do it again, and I will.”

Polynice grabbed a scalpel and came at me. I’d already decided if I was going to die it wasn’t going to be at the hands of this sick bastard. I pushed from the only place I had any leverage—my toes—and rocked backward as hard as I could. As Polynice slashed at me, I fell back and went through the glass and out the apartment window.

I fell hard and fast, hitting the soggy pavement two stories below with a resounding crash and a shower of glass. The chair shattered, a couple of bones broke, and I lost some skin, but I was alive. I shook the ropes and shattered wood off and ran back in the building at full speed.