The car swerved hard, taking a sudden right turn down a narrow side street.
For the next twenty minutes, silence reigned. It was a heavy, pressurized silence, broken only by the rhythmic thwack-hiss of the wipers and the hum of the engine.
Hellhound drove with skill. Random turns. Doubling back. Hopscotching through neighborhoods. He watched mirrors with a predator’s intensity, looking for headlights that lingered too long, turns that matched ours too perfectly.
I sat in the dark, clutching my bleeding arm.
The adrenaline was gone. In its place, the sickness came rushing back.
It started in my hands. The tremor in my left hand jumped the gap. My right hand, resting on my thigh, began to shake.
I stared at it.
No. Not yet.
My vision flickered.
It wasn’t darkness. It was light. A sudden, blinding white sheet dropped over my eyes, erasing the car, the street, Havoc’s silhouette.
White-out.
I gripped the door handle, grounding myself. Count. One. Two. Three.
The vision cleared, leaving grainy static at the edges of my sight.
Nausea rolled in my gut, hot and oily. The pressure inside my skull wasn’t a headache anymore, it was a vice being tightened by a giant hand. My brain felt too big for my skull.
I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the cold glass of the window.
I tried to picture holding her, but my mind betrayed me. I saw my hands, my shaking, scarred hands, and superimposed over them was the number from the file.
Fifty-five.
I had killed fifty-five people for Dresner. Maybe they were bad men. Maybe they were innocent. I didn’t know. I had just erased them because a voice in my ear told me to.
What right did I have to touch Clare? She was healing. She was light and stubborn resilience. I was a graveyard walking on two legs.
She’ll leave. When she knows what you really are. When the memories come back and you’re drowning in blood. She’ll look at you with horror, not love.
A lump formed in my throat, hard and painful.
I pressed my hand against the tactical vest. The folder was there. The proof of my monstrosity.
I wanted to burn it. I wanted to throw it out the window and let the snow bury it. But I couldn’t. I needed to know. I owed it to the fifty-five ghosts to know their names.
“Xavier.”
Hellhound’s voice came from the front, cutting through the static in my head. He was watching me in the rearview mirror. His eyes were bordered by exhaustion, but sharp.
“How you holding up back there?”
I opened my mouth to speak. My jaw felt stiff, uncooperative. “I’ll make it.”
The lie tasted like copper. I wasn’t making it. I could feel the threads of my consciousness fraying, snapping one by one. The chemical overdose from the implant was reaching critical mass. My system was crashing.
“We’re clear of the city. Two hours out. Can you hold on?”
The wipers beat out a rhythm. Time. Out. Time. Out.
