“Anders says the trick to taking them is to answer C all the way down,” he says, cracking a rare joke.
I double-check, and he seems to have provided genuine answers. His answers also mostly mirror Maverick’s, which I find weirdly endearing.
I share his results, and he compliments me. “Having taken a number of these things, I will say this is the most thorough while also being the most efficient. Well done.”
“Good to know all that scholarship money didn’t go to waste, huh?”
“Very good indeed,” he says, patting my hand before getting up to leave. “I’ll send in Silas next.”
Forty-five minutes pass, and no sign of Silas.
Which is just enough time for me to pore over his files again. This time, instead of staring at the walls, I’m just sad.
I haven’t interviewed him yet, but my sense of Silas is that helovesthe killing, that it feeds him. Oddly enough, this might disqualify him from the psycho Olympics.
For one, most psychopaths aren’t killers. Or, if they are, murder is usually a means to an end, not a source of joy. In fact, one of the first things I learned in my studies is that psychopaths experience emotional flattening. They literally cannot process profound emotions, which is why Holmes thought it was important to point out that he loves his family.
This theory is further strengthened when I pull up ops tapes while waiting for Sy to show.
Holy hell.
Silas’s delight in these videos almost certainly excludes him as a psychopath. I still don’t fully understand the nature and impact of the genetic modifications he was subject to. I don’t know if they occurred in the petri dish or after he was born, or what any of that means by way of a label.
His records are surprisingly void of those kinds of details.
As I consider why that is, Silas appears in my doorway, running his hand through his short, messy hair.
Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear.
Silas toes the floor, which is super fucking endearing when paired with his tight musculature, tattoos, and overall aesthetic. I push that thought aside and give him shit for making me wait.
“The point of doing these tests within a few hours of the operation is so we can capture your mental state directly afterward. This delay will impact my test results.”
“Does that mean I don’t have to do it?” he asks, hitting me with a silver-blue doe-eyed look.
I put my hand on my hip. “Don’t look at me like that, Sy.”
“What do you mean? Did my eyes turn black?” He pulls out his phone and turns the camera to selfie mode.
“No. But I know when someone’s acting all helpless and sweet.”
Helpless and sweet, he mouths, shaking his head. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you’re trying to charm me out of making you do an unpleasant task.”
“I don’t mind taking the test.” He sucks in his bottom lip—as if I would ever fall for that. “I’d just rather you weren’t the one seeing the results.”
“Makes sense. It’s highly unethical for me to administer this test to you,” I answer. This is both the truth and, apparently, a common joke in the Wimberley office.
Except. Huh. My words seem to shock him.
“Then why…?” He lets the question die off.
I pick up a stack of papers and tap them on the desk, organizing them. “I talked to Hedy about it this morning, shared my concerns with her, but…”
“This isn’t a legal operation, and ethics are a lot less concrete,” Silas says, parroting Hedy’s words from our conversation almost verbatim.
Huh.
