Deimos felt the first incision cut through his scales, then a pause. 

“Pink.” Chi’s voice was unidentifiable.

Did their fathers not have pink blood like them? That meant the pink came from…

“Chi.” Dionysus’ voice snapped.

Deimos felt Chi’s hands on the back of his neck. “Right, yeah.”

Deimos could feel Chi cutting through his scales again, as the previous incision healed closed during the surgery’s momentary pause. He felt the scalpel widen the wound, and Chi poking around with forceps, but the sensation was dampened. He could feel the touches and movements, but nothing beyond that. The feeling of being vivisected was familiar, and he appreciated the steadiness of Chi’s hands, and the luxury of painkillers.

“A little higher.” Dionysis was holding some sort of hologram of lavender light over the back of Deimos’s head for Chi to see. 

Deimos’s claws itched to get his hands on whatever technology was being used to create the projection. He tried to focus more on that than the tugging against his tissues.

“Their healing factor is even better than ours,” Chi muttered. 

The forceps pulled, and Deimos felt a twinge through his nerves, as if someone had plucked his spine like a violin string. There was a clatter of something tiny and metal dropping into the dish beside them. 

“Got it.”

Tension left his limbs. No matter what happened after this, at least Deimos knew his head wouldn’t explode. He held still as Dionysus scanned over the rest of his limbs, directing Chi to cut into Deimos’s side, right below his ribs, and in the center of his back where Deimos wasn’t able to reach by himself to remove the trackers.

Something cold was applied to all of the wounds, before gauze was taped securely over each one. They healed too fast for conventional stitches to be more than a hindrance.

“And we’re done. You did a great job, Deimos.” Chi pet over his crest, before gently helping him up. 

All told, the entire process had taken half an hour. By Deimos’s estimates, that was still too long. They had little time before Knight showed up with tasers sparking and smokers burning their noses and throats.

“I’ll go next,” Perses said, looking disgruntled. He pressed Icelus back into Deimos’ hold.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Deimos told him, voice soft. Perses eyed him. Deimos didn’t lie about pain, so there was no reason to lie about this, but getting cut into generally wasn’t… pleasant.

Chi was sterilizing his equipment, making sure everything was still sharp. He eyed the younger dragons.

“Would you like something to hold onto?” 

Chi reached into the box of medical equipment, and pulled out a worn… thing. It was like a pillow, but shaped like a turtle. Its limbs were too long, like they had been pulled and re-attached, and several patches of different colored fabric were sewn over the thing’s back and arms. 

“My big brother Pom said you could use his teddy, since he can’t be here in person. He packed the box and helped me get everything ready to help you kids here. He can’t wait to meet you all.”

Deimos wondered how the other dragons transported the supplies so quickly. Did they live nearby?

Perses hesitated, but accepted the teddy. He snuffled it as he hugged it under his chin, nuzzling it gently. It was the softest thing he ever held, not just from the quality of the fabric, but from the way the fabric moved. As if decades of scrunching and squishing had rubbed softness into the teddy along with all the patches.

“Okay,” Perses mumbled, keeping the pillow dragon clutched against his chest. He took a seat where he was directed.

Chi guided Perses down till he was laying on his chest, carefully positioning his head between pillows so it wouldn’t move, before repeating the surgery he had performed on Deimos. 

Deimos’s claws flexed against his thighs and he swallowed as the time ticked past an hour. He knew it in his head, from years of practicing counting, of honing how time passed, the tip of his tail in perfect sync with the seconds. Icelus provided a distraction in the way he clung, allowing Deimos to focus on soothing his little brother instead of their window of freedom winding down.

He listened for the telltale signs of Knight, of crackling tasers and barked orders, but they never came.

After Perses’s wounds were wrapped, and his bomb and trackers added to the growing pile in the metal pan, Moros went to lay on the pillows, then Icelus. Dionysis and Chi fell into a practiced rhythm as they operated on his brothers. 

Still, Knight did not come. There was no sign of smoke that suffocated and burned, of sparking cattle prods.

Deimos didn’t trust it.

Chi wrapped Icelus’s wounds with a focused care that Deimos didn’t understand, but felt as a warmth inside his chest. He murmured something to his youngest brother, smiling with more of that care that Deimos didn’t know the name of.

He watched with fascination as Icelus’ nerves were smoothed over, and his baby brother smiled shyly at whatever Chi was saying.

After Icelus’s surgery, Dionysis fiddled with the tray of trackers and explosives, examining each device as they scanned it with more of that purple light. Attention caught, Deimos wandered over to them, eyes focusing on their hands.