"Heh heh heh!" Rondok's mouth split into a grin, baring white teeth. His eyes were sinister, his face dark. No matter how you looked at him, he resembled a villain.
Human Modification did more than ravage the body. It twisted the soul as well, and that was its worst side effect.
The woman who had just sewn her neck back together felt a bad premonition rising in her heart. She was tempted to retreat. After all, she had never been known for her fighting prowess, even among her own kind. When she met an enemy too strong to beat, she either fled at once or played dead on the spot. Last time, she had nearly been killed by her former lover.
Of course, that so-called romance had been scripted in advance: how they met, how they spent time together, and how their relationship eventually became more than friendship.
A Modified Human's emotions were twisted to begin with. Love and affection did not exist for them. Every bit of that supposed romance had been an act.
As for the female Modified Human's identity, Green would have recognized her if he had been there. She was Arolinka, the woman he had killed back when he was posing as Kavarant. At the time, however, he had not known that his former lover, Arolinka, was Number Six of the Numbered People.
As for her earlier death at Green's hands, she had faked it to get away.
Green had sensed something was off at the time and suspected there was more to her than met the eye. Given the circumstances, though, he had not wanted to complicate matters.
Now it seemed that releasing him from prison and then having him encounter Arolinka while she was being pursued by the City Guard had been a test