A syringe.
The Handler drives it into Silas with cold efficiency, body angled just enough to steal momentum. His thumb slams the plunger home while Silas is still fighting, still twisting, still trying to close the last inch of distance. For one impossible second, it almost seems as though fury alone might overpower whatever he’s been given.
Then the chemistry reaches him.
“No!”
The scream rips up through me hard enough to flay my throat.
Silas stumbles.
The change in him is immediate, visible, monstrous in how fast it happens. Rage fractures around confusion. Confusion gives way to something worse, something stripped and primal. His hand flies to the puncture point as if pressure there might stop what is already racing through him. Knees buckle. Lock. Buckle again. He blinks hard, once, twice, as though he can drag the room back into focus through will alone.
The Handler lets go.
Silas drops to one knee.
My whole body launches toward him without permission, instinct stronger than pain, stronger than fear, stronger than sense. It lasts less than a second. The Handler catches me from behind before I get even close, his hand slamming into the back of my head and driving my face into the carpet.
Pain explodes across my cheekbone.
Fibers scrape skin from my lips, my mouth filling with the taste of old cleaner and blood.
His weight crashes down over me an instant later, knee pinning my lower back, hand twisted in my hair, wrenching my head sideways until my neck screams and my eyes are forced toward Silas whether I want them there or not.
“Watch.”
I scream. Buck. Claw. Try to drag air through lungs that have suddenly forgotten how. He is heavier than he looks, practiced in all the small brutal ways that matter. His forearm presses between my shoulders until every breath has to be stolen in thin, desperate pulls. His fingers knot tighter in my hair, hauling my face higher.
Silas is still trying to fight.
That is what destroys me first. Not the collapse. Not the drug. The fact that he is still trying.
His hands claw at the carpet, fingers dragging useless furrows through cheap motel fibers. One shoulder jerks as though he might brute-force himself upright through sheer hatred. His mouth opens on a breath that fails halfway through. Then his eyes find mine.
That is the wound that goes deepest.
Not the blood.
Not the trembling.
Not the way his body is already beginning to fail him.
His eyes.
They lock on me, and in them is the exact instant a person realizes he has encountered a kind of danger fists cannot answer. Fury is still there. Love is still there. So is confusion, pain, terror, all of it collapsing inward at once.
“Silas!” My voice comes apart on his name. “Silas, stay with me. Stay with me, stay with me-”
His breathing changes.
Recognition hits so hard it nearly stops my own heart.
That sound is not new. My body knows it before thought does. Too shallow. Too irregular. Not the rhythm of ordinary suffering, not even the rhythm of panic. The hideous wrongness of a body forgetting how to keep itself going. His chest rises in inadequate little pulls. Falls too slowly. Pauses too long. His lips part, eyelids growing heavy over eyes still fighting to remain open because I am calling him, because some part of him is still clawing toward my voice.
No.
No no no no no.
