Page 108 of Beautiful Prey

Thoughts of last night swarmed me.

After our shower, Emery helped me clean up the mess I had made, throwing away food left out and scattered on the ground. He re-stationed the projector, both of us surprised it still worked after I had thrown it across the room.

“I’d really hate to get on your bad side, sweetheart,” Emery said, examining the monitor, several cracks webbing out along one corner, one part of the screen nothing more than a green blob. “And I thought I had the temper.” He shook his head. “You're scary, you know that?”

“Yeah, don’t mess with me or I’ll throw random objects everywhere without warning. I’m crazy like that.”

“I know it. My cute little tornado.” He’d left his mask off even then, noticing how much I liked to see his face even if it made him uncomfortable. Sometimes he tilted his head in that way in which he might be listening to someone, but he never acknowledged the voices, still trying to ignore them. When I caught him grimacing or making some other face, I knew they must be trying to get to him, but he didn’t respond. It made it easier to forget sometimes they were still there, haunting him.

When we’d finished cleaning, I went to work in the kitchen, attempting to make another proper meal this time. Even after stuffing my face, I still wanted to sit and just enjoy something. Emery offered to help and I told him to sit on the couch as I took out ground meat. As I cooked it in a pan, I also pulled out a half empty bag of shredded cheese and some unused lettuce. I broke apart what was left of the tomato I had salvaged and tossed it in the pan.

Emery watched me for a moment then got antsy and told me he was going upstairs to put back the things he had moved, aka, the oven and things he’d thrown around the attic. I told him to not be long because dinner was going to be ready soon.

I’d listen to him moving things as I took out a package of instant rice from the cupboard and started to cook that too. ThenI found the box of taco shells he’d stuffed in the back of another cupboard and placed them on the table along with plates and forks. Maybe I should have felt weird about how causal it all seemed now after everything that had gone down, but I was just happy most of the tension between us was gone. Even if only temporarily.

When the food was done, I called to Emery above, not expecting him to hear me. Only a moment later, he came stomping back downstairs.

“You seriously heard me from the attic?” I said as he appeared before me.

He smirked as he tapped his ear. “Hearing like a bat.”

I raised my brows as I set the bowls of rice and meat on the table. “I must have gotten lucky then,” I said.

He tilted his head. “How’s that?”

I gave him a sort of sheepish look. “I didn’t think I had been quiet enough when I…you know.”

“Hid from me?” he said with narrowed eyes.

I nodded.

He sat at the table, placing his elbows on the tabletop. “Yeah. I definitely count that as luck. You got a lot of that going for you, sweetheart.”

My lip curled a little as I sat opposite him. I started making my taco as he piled rice on his plate.

“It was the medicine, right?”

He looked up as he set the spoon back in the rice bowl. “What about it?”

“That makes you so…I don’t know, kind of inhuman,” I said. “You know, being able to hear better, be stronger, more agile.”

I’d always been curious but had been too afraid to ask. It was clear he had reflexes and senses that were a little more abnormal than the normal person. I thought about when I had been in the attic and hadn’t even heard him come up the stairs.Or how he had practically smashed a door in to get to me. Even before, at St. Agnes, I remember him showing me why he was so dangerous. The files and videos gave me a good guess as to what my father was testing, but I wondered how much more Emery knew.

He looked beyond me as if a memory stirred in him. Then he grimaced as if pained.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to talk about. If you can’t…” I didn’t want to stir an episode in him, not now.

“They used a number of test drugs on us,” he said in a contemplative voice. “But all of them had one goal in mind. The conversations I’d heard and the data I read when they weren’t looking showed they were trying to…enhance us in some way. Enhance the senses. Enhance the mind and the body. But there was always a price.”

“The side effects,” I said grimly.

He nodded slowly. “Altering our perception, our thoughts. Our senses became obscured. Our bodies, unable to cope with the surge of energy, would putter out, leaving some of us sleeping for days, others forever.”

I circled my fork in my rice. “My father said you were his greatest achievement in one of his videos.”

“To him, I had the least…lethal side effects. He didn’t take into account mental state. Just the physical. Though there were others who survived, who endured just like me, I endured maybe more than the rest. I had the most success to failure ratio in my tests.”

“So you got the better end of the drugs,” I added.

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