“Fine. Because we need you.”
He shook his head, confused.
“The police are onto you. Which means pretty soon the police will be onto Obexity. We need you to take the fall for the murders.”
“I would never—”
“Just listen,” she said, stepping toward him. “Think of it as another partnership deal: you agree to keep Monstera’s name clean, and we’ll see that you get the best defense that big biopharma can buy. You’ll be found not guilty on grounds of temporary insanity, and once you’re free, we’ll take care of you for life. Money, a lifetime supply of Obexity—”
“You already promised me that.”
“If you go down for murder, it won’t matter what the fuck we promised,” Saito murmured, inches from him now, intimidating despite her small stature. “And if you don’t do this, youwillgo down. All that big biopharma money can just as easily be used to dredge up your darkest secrets, make you look like a food-obsessed psychopath. After this morning, everyone already knows you’re a liar. Blame Obexity and people will think you’re just another fat guy making excuses about what you eat. In your case, that just happens to be people.”
“You’d never win.”
“Are you willing to take that risk,” Saito said, “knowing how little society trusts our testimony, even when it comes to our own bodies and experiences? The choice is yours: join us and be thin and rich and healthy, or go against us and eat yourself to death in prison.”
Emmett’s mouth gummed; he couldn’t speak.
“I’m going to give you a moment to think about that.”
Saito left the room. Emmett heard the front door open, and she returned a moment later to thrust his Wendy’s against his chest.
“Eat. You look hungry.”
He noticed the briefcase in her other hand.
“Just a few extra doses, in case you need a top-up,” she explained. “Depending how you play this, they may be the last you ever take.”
She set the briefcase on the floor and walked back toward the front of the house. “You have my number.”
Through the window by the door, Emmett watched her get into her car, back out, and drive away.
Alone, he stuffed his face. Then he pulled the briefcase up onto his lap and opened it, revealing four rows of six injector pens quivering with blue serum.
Indecision ate at him. He already had plenty in his system. But like Saito said, this could be his last chance.
He took the case to the bathroom and administered an injection. Then another. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. His tolerance had increased; he needed more to feel it working, to soothe his soul’s desire for self-destruction.
He managed nine before his heart thrashed, his fat ballooning and contracting.
Another three before the room spun, the walls tilted, and the floor rose up to throw a punch.
CHAPTER 49
Emmett awoke on cold tile, blinking blearily up at a ceiling of recessed lighting. Threads of pain braided themselves through every inch of his body. His mouth was dry, his stomach a pit of burning want.
Trembling, he pulled himself off the floor in front of the bathroom mirror.
He let out a cracked cry of horror at his post-overdose reflection. He resembled a shock ad in an anti-anorexia campaign: eyes as big as moons, face a shrunken box of cheekbone and jawline, ribs protruding through a pallid drip of waxy skin. Emmett struggled to wrap his head around it: not just how much weight he’d lost in one night, but how little of him had existed beneath the fat all this time. How small and fragile the “real him” really was.
His clothes lay in ribbons at his feet, torn apart in the previous night’s transformation. Downstairs he found his suitcase and put something on, then went looking for something to appease his hunger.
The house seemed barely lived in, the kitchen spotless and all but empty. In the pantry, just a few canisters of whey protein, a case of electrolyte water, healthy snacks.
He uncapped a half-eaten jar of macadamia nuts and shoved a fistful into his mouth. The crunch was sublime. He continued to eat them as he explored the downstairs, his appetite shrinking as his curiosity grew. Saito had said the house belonged to Cecil Smith, Monstera’s chief science officer. Emmett had never met him, and yet there was something familiar about this place, a watchful sterility that quickened his pulse.
The downstairs office was meticulously tidy, the desk bare except for a monitor and an empty docking station. The deep bottom drawer was locked. What was this Smith guy hiding? Evidence that he knew about Obexity’s deadly side effects? If so, it might come in handy when it came time for Emmett to prove his innocence.
