Nathan didn't interrupt, didn't try to soothe. He just held me and listened.
"I'd play his favorite music, but one note off. Just enough to hurt if you really know the piece. I'd read him poetry but change random words. Break the rhythm. Destroy the things he loves by making them almost right but fundamentally wrong." The words spilled out in that horrible cheerful tone, like I was describing a tea party. "I'd feed him his favorite foods laced with ipecac. Let him think pleasure was coming then rip it away into sickness. Over and over until he couldn't trust any sensation."
"What else?"
"Scarification. But not random. I'd carve every woman's ID number into his skin. S-117 through S-144 and beyond. Make him a living memorial to his failures. Make him memorize their stories while I work. Test him on details. Every wrong answer means starting over."
My hands illustrated as I spoke, gesturing like a demented conductor. Nathan caught them, stilled them, but didn't condemn the fantasies.
"I'd use his own research against him. Find his baseline fears from childhood—everyone has them. Recreate them perfectly. The monster under his bed, but real now. The abandonment he tried to master by forcing it on others. Turn his need for control into his greatest vulnerability." I smiled, knew it was too sharp, too bright. "I'd make him beg to die. Then I'd keep him alive out of spite. My failed experiment. My defective toy that won't break properly. Then I would take a hammer to every bone, but never enough to break them, just enough bruise the bone, which can hurt so much more. I'd peel his cock like a banana at the very end, slice by slice, so he can feel what it feels like to be used, to be broken, damaged, bruised, destroyed."
"Feel better?"
"No." But the violent fantasies had burned through some of the panic, left me emptied out but functional. "Maybe. I don't know."
"Come on. Let's get out of here."
We left the boxes for another day. Another agent. Another lifetime. In the car, I pressed my forehead to cool glass and tried to reconcile the magnitude of what I'd discovered. Dozens of women, maybe hundreds, programmed to self-destruct. How many had Gabriel marked as successes? How many families thought their daughters had simply given up, not knowing they'd been weaponized against themselves?
"Your place or mine?" Nathan asked at a red light.
"Yours. Mine still smells like him sometimes. Even though he was never there. Phantom contamination."
"You know that's not—"
"I know. Trauma response. Olfactory hallucinations. Doesn't make it less real when it happens."
His apartment welcomed us with familiar shadows. I shed my jacket, my shoes, the professional armor I'd worn to dig through atrocities. Underneath, I felt flayed. Raw. Like S-047 was written on my skin in invisible ink that only I could see.
"Shower?" he offered.
"Together?"
"If you want."
I did want. Wanted the intimacy of shared water, the vulnerability of naked honesty. We undressed without ceremony, steam already fogging the mirror by the time we stepped under the spray.
"You're thinking too loud," he murmured, hands gentle on my shoulders.
"Can't stop. Keep seeing the numbers. Keep thinking about success metrics." I turned to face him, water streaming between us. "He measured success by our deaths. What kind of mind thinks that way?"
"A broken one."
"Takes one to know one, right?" I tried for light, achieved brittle. "Broken recognizes broken."
He studied me for a long moment, then did something unexpected. He smiled. Not pitying or sad, but dark and knowing. "You want to know what I think?"
"Always."
"I think you're spiraling into his narrative again. Letting him define success and failure." His hands framed my face, thumbs brushing water from my cheeks. "So let's redefine the terms."
"How?"
"Success is surviving. Success is choosing to heal. Success is learning to want things for yourself instead of performing wants for others." He backed me against the shower wall, tilecool against overheated skin. "Success is trusting me to take care of you without losing yourself in the process."
"Nathan—"
"Success," he continued, voice dropping, "is learning patience. Control. The difference between need and want."
