My eyes droop shut. Every breath sinks deeper, lulling me further away.
“You know more than that,” his deep voice booms into my throbbing brain.
“…Syfer. Fuck, I don’t know. What were we talking about?”
“Which alter would you want to meet the most?” He’s going to fall asleep too. His voice is normally so sharp and direct. But right now, it’s sluggish, warm, thick.
“Kane.”
“Why?”
“My mom told us she grew up with him. He was her best friend. He’s the one who’s kind and patient. She was closest with him and…Dessin.”
“Kane isn’t the one you want to meet the most,” he argues.
This wakes me up. “What?”
“You want to meet the infamous Patient Thirteen the most.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
“Not as a stranger, but as his daughter. You want him to know you.”
I’m too tired to feel the full force of rage pressurizing in my chest, but I know it’s there. Who the fuck does he think he is? Telling me which one of my father’s alters I want to know the most? The vicious psychopath? No, I want to meet the kind man who has loved my mother since she was a small child.
“You don’t know anything about what I want,” I rasp.
The circuit board hums back to life. And the door locks clank and click as it slides open.
“No,” I utter.Please, let this be over. Please!
Meridei closes the door behind her, leaning against the door with a thoughtful look. “I know it must feel like I’m leaving the electrical current on for a long period of time, but I’m not.”
Despite the trembling in my bones, I am unable to keep myself from dozing in and out.
“I trigger a strong electrical current. The pain you experience after that is seizures. Or, as the high priest believes, the convulsions are the demons leaving your body. It only lasts about sixty seconds.”
In no way does this make me feel better.
“Does this conclude our session?” Niklaus asks.
Meridei smirks, walking to the foot of his reclined chair, massaging his bare feet without breaking eye contact. “Ready for me to walk you back to your bed already?”
I close my eyes.
“Oryou could walk me back to my wife’s bed,” Niklaus, though his inflection is weak and slow, maintains his cold edge.
She stares at him, long and aggravated. Her eyes are the essence of a grand, gothic, haunted estate. A compound of massacres, gore, and insidious intention.
“I think you both need one more round. Resisting a woman’s hot, soaking cunt to have a dry fuck of a wife is surely more delusional than I originally thought.” She speed-walks to the circuit board behind us.
And my eyes snap open.
Meridei shoves the clothes back in our mouths as I scream.
She’s seriously punishing us because he won’t fuck her? Desperation claws at me to find a way out of this. Can I travel again in this weakened state? Can I open that unpredictable Nightlung to send us home?
Prongs on my temples. Electrodes smear the jelly on my skin. And a white blinding heat fills my head. I have no control over the thrashing that comes next. Against the restraints, I jerk like a wild animal. There is no time. It’s gone. Dissolved. Blackened from a wretched moment of eternity where this suffering never ends.
