Page 53 of Devil May Lie

“He’s capable of forming deep attachments,” Bay clarified. “Like with Flix and myself. He cares about us and worries for us, the same way anyone else would for their friends or family. He doesn’t like to lie and is in fact fairly blunt. Usually.”

“The guy doesn’t have a manipulative bone in his body,” Sila confirmed. “Boring.”

Bay sent him a warning look that Madden couldn’t fully decipher the meaning of. “He can be crafty when he wants something.”

Couldn’t everyone?

“He once created a toxin that strips off layers of a person’s skin one at a time,” Madden said. “If that’s not psychopathic…”

“That’s just it,” Bay nodded, “He still fits the bill in many ways. When you and I make decisions, for example, emotion is only part of the equation. For psychopaths, emotion is the equation. Berga doesn’t consider the potential ramifications for his creations. He merely acts on his impulse to see what might come of them.”

“So he doesn’t feel remorse.” All of those people he’d killed over the years, or all the ones who would probably die at the hands of one of his inventions, didn’t seem to weigh on Berga’s mind.

“He has,” Bay stated cryptically, “once.”

Madden frowned, but before he could ask more about that, the professor carried on.

“Psychopathy is the least of Berga’s concerns anyway. He’s got an intense fear of blood on his person, but he isn’t afraid of blood, so hemophobia is out. There is a set of rituals he must complete before certain acts, like bathing before bed and covering his shoes with plastic slips before entering a lab or the hospital. We call these things Contamination OCD. But,” Bay sighed, “he doesn’t have mysophobia either. Germs don’t worry him.”

“Can you repeat all of that in layman's terms?” Madden was smart, but it sounded like a whole lot of jumbled shit together and he was struggling to paint a clear picture.

“The crux of it all?” Bay said. “Berga really has a fear of abandonment.”

“What?” that didn’t sound right, no matter which way Madden spun it.

“It’s presented itself as a sort of mysophobia, wherein he fears getting blood on him will instantly make him undesirable and lead to rejection. His Contamination OCD is a result of this. Up until this morning, other bodily fluids,” he cleared his throat pointedly, “were also on the list, but it seems like he may have made some progress there. That’s thanks to you, Madden.”

“Me?” They were talking about come, obviously. “Is it because I told him he looked hot?”

“Probably,” Bay shrugged. “One can never be positive about these things, but considering that’s the only variable that’s different in Berga’s otherwise regular routine, I’d say it’s more than safe to assume.”

Okay, psychopathy didn’t seem like an important part of the equation here, so Madden removed it, thinking over the rest of the information he’d just been given. A person was born with psychopathic tendencies, but the rest of it…All of that was usually trauma-based.

“What happened to him that he developed a fear of abandonment?” As far as he knew, Berga’s parents were both alive, together, and lived in the city. He’d seen them at events in the past since they were both respected members of society. They’d mentioned their son in passing before, and it’d never sounded like there was any animosity between them.

If not his parents, though, who?

They could be faking, keeping up appearances for the public…Madden’s own parents did that. Whenever they were displeased with him, they kept their disappointment contained until they were behind closed doors away from prying eyes and gossiping mouths.

“I can’t say,” Bay replied coolly.

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“It’s not my place.”

“Seriously?” He recalled what Berga had said in the Academy. “It was a female, wasn’t it? When did he develop these problems?”

“He was around six years old.”

So, not an ex-lover then…

“Tell me how to get him to trust me.” If Bay wouldn’t reveal all of Berga’s secrets, then Madden was going to have to get them himself, but to do that, he needed to break through this fear of abandonment issue. “He won’t let me close to him.”

“He doesn’t let anyone close to him,” Sila stated. “Pity really. We’d have so much fun checking people’s insides together.”

“Varun,” Bay warned, and Sila actually grinned behind him as though finding the chiding tone endearing.

“Madden already knows what I am,” Sila reassured. “I’ve been to the Docks enough times by now. An observant person like him would have picked up on it.”

---