As he’d hoped, it distracted Nate, who launched into an in-depth complaint about a new employee at his company who was driving him nuts as they made their way to the table he’d selected.
“The owners are selling too.” Nate dropped down into his plastic chair with more oomph than necessary. “They claim our jobs are all safe and we’ll be transferred over along with everything else, but would you trust that?”
Bay shook his head.
“Exactly.” He crossed his arms and made an expression that could only be described as a pout. “Maybe this is a sign, you know? Maybe the universe is telling us to finally ditch our shitty jobs and do what we actually enjoy.”
“How did I get pulled into this?” Bay took another sip of his latte, but it’d cooled enough there was no burn this time. He tried not to feel disappointed by that fact, or the fact that he hadn’t received any more messages from Unknown, despite not having answered his last text.
“Come on, all throughout school you kept saying how you didn’t want to be a professor,” Nate motioned to his pressed white button up and black slacks, “Look at you now.”
“It’s not all bad.”
“You hate it.”
“I’d have to care enough for that.” And he didn’t.
“Be honest with me,” Nate said, growing serious, “If you didn’t have racing, would there be anything left that you do care about?”
“Can we not do this again?” He appreciated how much Nate tried to look out for him, but he’d liked the reprieve from his nagging. “What made you bring this up, anyway?”
“You know how I was dating that Academy student?”
“Mercer Blakely,” Bay nodded. “Yeah. You were together for like two years.”
“He graduated but opted to stick around instead of sign the oath to give up loyalties to his home world,” Nate said. “He works at the Inner City precinct.”
“I’m not sure why you’re telling me this?”
“We’re still close, broke up amicably. When we graduated, I asked if he could do me a favor and keep his eye on your grandmother’s case. Since it was a closed case no one cared about, he wouldn’t get in trouble for it so he agreed. Well, apparently someone checked on the file.”
Bay straightened in his seat. “Who?”
“Don’t know. They never entered the building.”
“Someone hacked the system?” That type of criminal behavior could only come from someone confident enough they’d be able to get away with it. Someone who either was or had Brumal or Imperial backing. Or…
“The Shepards might have,” Nate suggested. “I can’t think of a reason why, but word on the street is their members have been turning up dead. It’s been kept out of the media because some of the deaths have been linked to Baikal Void—allegedly—but, what if something shook Haroon up and the guy got spooked?”
Nate and Berga were the only two people who’d believed Bay when he’d said his grandmother would never gamble. They’d known her, had come over for study sessions and stayed for dinner most nights. Idle was a warm and welcoming host, always opening her door for Bay’s classmates without question.
“I know you gave up after the lawyers told you it was a lost cause, but if something is going on, I wanted to let you know. Just in case.”
Bay’d gone to bed the night he’d discovered there was literally nothing more he could do and he’d have to vacate his home. And woken the next day a different person.
He’d needed sleeping pills to fall asleep due to the level of anxiety he’d been feeling, but upon waking…Nothing. That’d been the start of the desensitized version of himself that he still was today. It’d been as though the part of his brain that controlled emotions had simply flicked off like a light switch.
For a while, that had been a blessing, but pretty soon he’d realized it meant life was dull and without the ability to feel happiness or even pain, there was nothing for him to look forward to or stick around for.
Racing, Sila, and videos from the Seaside Cinema lit that spark for him, but it never lasted, always fading back until he was left in that emptiness all over again.
That was why his choice in porn had gotten more and more twisted and dramatic over the past couple of months. It seemed like in order to achieve peak pleasure, Bay needed more than simply a photograph of Sila and mildly aggressive fucking playing on a big screen. The darker the movie the better and he kept choosing worse and worse ones, things that would send his grandmother screaming into the night if she were alive and found out.
Her grandson was a freak who liked to fantasize about being tied up and beaten until red and raw and bloody.
He dreamed of being owned, because then whether he lived or died, the choice would be out of his hands. Someone else could make that decision for him, and the thought of that was such a huge relief that it actually made him hard sometimes just thinking about it.
Which made him feel like a monster.
