On reflex, I run toward Ericson and sling my bag at his head. “You sick bastard. Let her go!”
His elbow connects with my cheek, sending me into the concrete wall. Pain radiates through my shoulder. Dammit.
He’s not fazed as he flops his unkempt, dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and continues to strangle the woman, silencing her cries. Her fearful gaze connects with mine, a plea there that riots through me. Then I notice Ericson’s pants are unzipped and slung low around his hips.
Bile rises into my throat, the burn urging me off the wall. “Get the fuck away from her, you piece of shit.”
With a grunt, Ericson slams the woman’s head against the wall. She falls to the pavement, her torn skirt riding up her thighs, a shoe missing from her foot. As Ericson turns to acknowledge me, I shove my hand into my bag.
I take a step backward as he approaches. “This is none of your business, bitch,” he says.
I agree—but it’s too late to walk away. No one cares about what’s happening on this backstreet or the woman with the missing shoe. Cars drive past, horns blare, people rushing to live their lives. Why the hell do I care?
It’s not because I was hired to do a job.
Something else, something foreign and memorable all at once, and it’s waging a war. The feeling builds and builds until it erupts. A lifetime of reserved empathy releases an avalanche.
As Ericson’s lips curl into a snide smile. He must decide I’m not worth his bother because he turns and starts toward his victim again. The helpless, defenseless woman lying in a filthy, pee-soaked alley behind a Dumpster.
As I watch Ericson kneel and lean over her, a fierce violence quakes within me, the onslaught of emotion so overpowering my vision blurs. My chest explodes with heat. Every emotion I’ve been denied takes hold with a furious vengeance.
My hand is still in my bag. I grip the solid object in my palm. My feet are taking me toward Ericson, and then the switchblade is in his back.
His guttural cry bounces off the building as I stare down at my hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife. I yank if free and, as he flails his arms to attack, I drive the blade into his collarbone. I struggle to pry it loose, and stab his chest.
As he falls to the pavement, I follow him down, my strikes wild, the knife finding a new location every time I sink the blade into his flesh. I feel bone and soft tissue and spongy organs. A haze covers my vision. I don’t stop the attack until he goes completely still.
Some thought draws me out of the frenzy, and I glance at the woman. A beat where I notice her chest moving to confirm she’s alive, then I seal my eyes closed. All I can hear are my breaths, the buzz of the city has gone silent.
I stand and stare down at the mutilated body of Ericson Daverns.
A high-pitched ringing pierces my ears. I’m numb. I can’t sense anything around me, other than an irritating sting on my palm. I close the switchblade slowly, my movements so out of character for this moment, then I turn my hand over.
Red covers my palms and fingers. I can’t stop staring at my hands, the way the color darkens the creases of my palms. The ringing grows louder, becoming a vibration in my skull, as I examine the reopened cut on the heel of my hand.
Dread is ice in my veins. The bone of Alex’s victim that punctured me, the cut that has reopened, and the blood of my victim seeping into that wound.
Alex’s final words come back to me in haunting precision. This is exactly what you’re designed to do.
“Oh my, God.” What have I done?
This wasn’t a crime of passion. It wasn’t self-defense, though a great lawyer could make a case for it. The truth is, I had options. I could have called 9-1-1. I could have warned Ericson I’d made the call. I could have fought him harder.
I consciously chose to end him. I knew, in a fraction of a second, that Ericson would get away with hurting…maybe even killing that woman…that he’d continue to hurt others, and I shoved the Taser aside in my bag and chose the switchblade.
I needed it to stop. I needed to stop him. Permanently.
I made a choice to kill.
A scream tears through me as my fingers scrape my hair back.
Once, vengeance was my ethos.
And no one is more deserving of my revenge than Alex Chambers. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d make good on my vow to hunt him down and tear his throat out.
Before Alex, I was a harmless, unfeeling psychopath. He wanted me to experience a world of emotions I’ve never felt before. He wanted to cure my sickness.
He opened a pathway—some closed-off road of neural connector bullshit is now wide open and assaulting me with too many emotions.
No…that’s impossible. Psychopathy isn’t a disease that can be cured. It wasn’t Alex’s experiment that broke my brain, it was the emotions he forced on me—emotions I wasn’t built to feel. His love created the affliction.
He made me a killer.
Epilogue
Alex
Our brains have an internal clock.
Located in the medial temporal lobe, the lateral entorhinal cortex stores cells that code episodic memory. These cells capture the specifics of an event. Basically, they capture memory.
This is our perception of time. Our clock. And some days, it’s pure torture.
I’ve been counting the seconds since Blakely escaped me.
I’ve been counting the minutes since I was inside her, since I last tasted her lips, felt her in my arms.
The days stretch on, and I count.
I destroyed every clock. Shattered my pocket watch. Torched my sister’s cabin and burned it to charred, skeletal remains. I voided data and killed my project in one violent act, all so Blakely could be free.
In essence, I tried to stop time.
So what a cruel revelation it is to discover my brain is the ultimate timekeeper.
As long as I breathe, my cells won’t let me forget her. She’s hard coded into my memory. Her sweet scent of coconut, her taste of sin. The electric current of her touch. She’s a part of my DNA now.
I scrub my hands over my face, a fervent curse uttered in despair as I try to redirect my thoughts. Like the cells coding my memories, I’ve been busy reprograming a new life—one where I’m no longer a brother or a biomedical scientist. One free of every painful tie anchoring me to the past.
And as with any program, the coder always leaves a backdoor open. Another way in. However in my case, I left a way out. The night of the fire, I waited until Blakely was clear of the cabin before I escaped through the crawlspace. I had every intention of going down with my failed experiment, but as the flames climbed higher, searing my flesh, the pain brought on a moment of clarity.
I saw her sea-green eyes and the torn emotion behind them as I asked Blakely to end my life. She was conflicted. It was just a spark, the slightest glimmer, but it was there. And that realization changed everything.
I’m counting and theorizing as I wrap my hand with bandage when my laptop pings with a new email. I finish securing the burn, then seat myself behind the screen. My heart rate spikes.
The notification is from my alerts, the ones I have set in place for specific words, phrases, and names.
Ericson Theodore Daverns appears highlighted in bold.
I click the email.
Officials are seeking information on the murder of Ericson Daverns. His body was discovered behind a Dumpster near Daverns’ apartment building. The report states that Ericson was viciously stabbed thirteen times. His blood-covered body was found with no identification, money, or shoes. Officials suspect robbery as a motive, but are asking for anyone with information to please come forward.