Brother Matthias’s fingers slid into my hair and gripped until my scalp burned. He pulled my head back so he could look down at my face, studying me the same way he studied the other boys when he was deciding which of us to use for his demonstrations. His breathing had already changed. Slower at first, then heavier, the rhythm changing as he watched the projector light flicker across the wall.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
I lifted my eyes across the room before I obeyed. Raphael crouched against the far wall with his arms wrapped around his knees, his gaze fixed on me instead of the screen. He watched everything. Not the way the others did, not with fear or confusion. He watched.
Waited.
I opened my mouth.
Brother Matthias shoved forward immediately, forcing himself in with the careless force of someone who believed there would never be consequences. His weight shifted forward as the rhythm established itself. I adjusted my breathing through the narrow passages left through my nose, because choking usually made them press the remote again.
While he moved, I watched.
The projector light flickered across the fabric of his robe. His pulse was visible in the side of his neck above the collar, a fast, shallow beat that accelerated the longer he held me there. He leaned with more weight on his right foot than his left, so if something disrupted him, his body would fall toward thestones rather than backward toward the wall. His grip in my hair tightened whenever my teeth scraped him by accident and loosened when I went still again. Cause and effect were simple here. Every action produced a reaction.
Raphael stood and I saw the shift in his shoulders when he stepped away from the wall. Brother Matthias didn’t notice. His attention had narrowed to the act itself, to the power he believed he had over the room.
I waited.
Timing mattered more than strength.
When his grip loosened half an inch, and his weight tipped forward again, I closed my teeth.
Hard.
For a fraction of a second, there was resistance, a dull pressure against hard flesh before I tore a chunk away.
His screams tore through the room, drowning out the projector’s steady hum. I pulled back immediately and spat blood and flesh onto the stones between my knees while he staggered, clutching at himself in disbelief.
Raphael was already behind him.
He wrapped his arms around Brother Matthias’s chest and locked his hands together, pinning the man’s elbows against his sides so he couldn’t reach either of us. The action was rough but effective. Brother Matthias thrashed against him, choking on the scream as blood soaked the front of his robe and dripped down onto the stones.
Neither of us spoke.
We watched.
Raphael held him upright while the screaming turned into wet, broken gasps. The pulse in his neck fluttered unevenly, skipping beats before slowing, the skin around his mouth turning pale under the projector’s light.
When it stopped, Raphael let go.
Brother Matthias collapsed sideways onto the stones with a heavy, graceless thud. The projector continued to flicker against the wall while the others stared.
Raphael returned to the corner and crouched again.
I knelt beside the body, studying the man’s face while the blood spread through the stones beneath him. His eyes were still open. The collar around my own throat gave a faint mechanical hum as it reset.
I needed to get a drink of water to wash the taste of blood out.
“She won’t like that,” Gabriel said.
I knew she wouldn’t. I knew there’d be pain, but… I stared at the broken body… and the blood had dripped into a dent on the floor, a perfect circle…
“We need to kill her too,” Raphael said.
I needed to wake up.
I didn’t want to see this again.
