Niño obeyed.
Emmett heard a tear of Velcro behind him. Niño spat into his own hand.
Emmett reached around to guide. A bit of maneuvering, a slow push, Niño sliding in deep. A pleasurable kind of pain, like eating to overfullness.
It was over fast; it seemed Niño didn’t indulge this particular kink often. A treat reserved for special occasions. His breathing, like his body, tensed and stuttered. A final thrust and Emmett came with him, splashing ropes over the container of spoiled takeout.
After, Niño disappeared into the bathroom, naked from the waist down. Emmett buttoned his jeans and closed the fridge.
His phone buzzed. Aaron.
Shit.Emmett had briefly forgotten him, blinded by his need. Now that he remembered, he didn’t feel as bad as he should. He really was becoming a monster.
He crept into the living room, peeking his head around to see Niño cleaning himself in the bathroom. The bag of EmaC-8 lay on the table where he’d dumped it.
The old Emmett would’ve waited for him to return and probably ended up paying whatever Niño demanded. But the new Emmett was done feeling ashamed of taking what he wanted, as much as he wanted.
He pocketed the bag and ran.
CHAPTER 39
Once home, Emmett shut himself in the bathroom and administered the drug. He intended to take one dose, but just as a handful of pretzels begets an empty bag, he found his mind telling lies to justify another. He took the second with a one-two punch of guilt and relief. And now that he’d already overdone it, why stop there?
The third hit of serum spread a flurry of hot, tainted needle pricks through his gut. His heart rate accelerated to an uneven gallop, his skin fluttering in great gelatinous waves. What the fuck? His fat was not just undulating but expanding. His shirt stretched tight around his bloating belly. A button popped and pinged off the mirror. He was blowing up like a fucking party balloon.
A ragged cry of horror erupted from his mouth.
Then all at once, his body contracted to its former size. The balloon deflating. He collapsed against the bathroom counter and wheezed. Ragged, like something stretched too far, his insides a frayed edge of snapped fibers hanging loose. What had happened? Why had it just stopped?
He pushed himself upright, revealing his stomach. Showing through the lank curtains of his busted shirt, it was livid with reddish-pink stretch marks. A bloody bruise brewed at the injection site like a gathering storm.
He remembered something Halleck had said at their recent check-in:We’ve seen cases of participants doubling up doses, creating a sudden, dramatic imbalance in thyroxine and triiodothyronine, with weight fluctuations to match. Double that in moments of high stress.
It was the EmaC-8. Too much of a good thing.
He’d need to be more careful.
Emmett weighed in first thing the next morning. He’d lost six and a half pounds overnight, a triumph mitigated by a pain so strident and savage he almost didn’t recognize it as hunger.
He grabbed something to eat on the way to work. The satiating effects of the breakfast burrito—an infant-size stomach bomb of eggs, refried beans, ham, cheese, and sour cream—wore off before he got to the office.
Fortunately, someone had brought in donuts. Each time he walked by he pilfered another, managing five over the course of two hours before a coworker joked, “Why don’t you just take the box back to your desk?”
At lunchtime he drove through McDonald’s, ordered double his usual amount, and scarfed it in the car: a large Big Mac meal, two McDoubles, ten-piece Chicken McNuggets, apple pie. Barely a drop in the abyss of his need. He struggled to focus all day and stopped at Vons on his way home, loading a cart with frozen pizzas, taquitos, Pop-Tarts, cereal: $120 worth of crap that barely dented his superhuman hunger. No, hisHunger—the big-Hkind. He could feel the food worming painfully through his digestive tract, stretching the walls of his stomach until they threatened to tear.
He was, technically, full. But it wasn’t enough. Still he felt compelled to eat—butwhat?
Maybe it wasn’t food he craved at all—at least, not the kind he could order at the drive-thru. Not the kind of steaks he could get by the pound at the meat counter.
He let himself imagine it, just for a second—the forbidden fruit: the succulent chew of fresh human meat—then thrust it from his mind, frightened by the longing he licked off his lips.
He’d been so good, hadn’t eaten a bite since the night he found Marco Jiménez in his trunk. Of course he hadn’t; he’d been off Obexity most of that time. The Hunger was a product of the drug. Being back on it didn’t mean he could just start killing people again.
But it wasn’t that easy.
From day into night the craving hounded him. Hollowed him. After a few hours his physical hunger returned, twisting his restraint until it thrummed. Was this how he’d felt all those times he’d blacked out? Was this Hunger what had driven him to kill?
How much longer could he hold out?
