“This doesn’t happen again,” I say, and I’m not sure if I mean the sex or the escape attempt or any of it. “Whatever you think you can manipulate out of me—it’s not going to work. I’m not that stupid.”
“Clearly you are that stupid.” She gives me cutting smile. “Or I wouldn’t have made it to the door.”
The words hit like a slap.
She’s right. She’s absolutely right. I let my dick do my thinking and she nearly walked out because of it.
“Get some sleep,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else to say that isn’t me screaming into the void.
“I—”
“No.Fuck you.”
I don’t look back as I close the door and lock it.
I lose time.
That’s the only way to describe it. One moment I’m in the shower, hot water streaming over my skin, and the next I’m standing outside her door with my hand on the knob and no memory of the minutes between.
What the fuck keeps happening?
I blink. Step back. Force myself to walk away from her room. I go and make coffee, check my watch for alerts.
There’s nothing. The city doesn’t need me.
Seems no one does.
The headaches are worse today. I want to say that the stabbing pain behind my eyes is just stress, just tension, just the natural consequence of not sleeping for three days. But there’s something else underneath. A voice. That whisper. Getting louder every hour.
Eliminate the threat.
She knows too much.
I slam my fist into the kitchen counter hard enough to crack the marble.
“Shut the fuck up,” I mutter.
Integration complete. Awaiting directives.
The headache spikes, white-hot, and for a second I see something—a flash of white walls and surgical lights and the man with a grey mustache looking down at me.
I’m sorry. This wasn’t what I wanted.
Then it’s gone, and I’m just standing in my kitchen with a cracked counter and blood on my knuckles and no idea what’s happening to me.
You’re falling apart,I think.Whatever they did to you—whatever you are—it’s breaking down.
I need answers.
I don’t know how to get them.
I bring her lunch. Ask more questions. Get more silence.
But something’s different now. She looks at me with more concern than anything else.
“You look terrible,” she says when I set the tray down.
“Thanks,” I say with a sigh, because I fucking feel terrible.
