Page 112 of By the Pint

Of course. Because if he was the type of telepath like Killian and I, he likely would have been terminated at first discovery. No point in keeping a creature that saw your secrets as well as your victim’s. I thought of Casey and my stomach turned itself into goo.

The hacker removed the glove on his right hand and placed his palm on Killian’s newly exposed chest. I felt the presence of telepathy in the room, smelt it. That icy, minty chill in my nostrils. Pretty sure my heart stopped beating. My palms began sweating. Would Killian be able to conjure a realistic enough memory to trick the hacker?

The hacker closed his eyes, and Killian’s darted about the interrogation room as though bored and looking for some kind of poster to read. And despite the fact that none of the room’s six occupants could breathe, everyone seemed to be holding their breath.

Eventually, the pair broke apart. No one said anything. Evidently waiting for the hacker to speak. But his eyes caught mine. And in those few nanoseconds, he pulled me into his mind. He wasn’t the kind of telepath that had to touch a person to read their thoughts. He was like me and Killian, and Casey.

I saw a boy. A human boy. In an inner-city apartment, playing a computer game. His name was … Tyler. His tummy rumbled. The bread bin was empty. He was trackside at a school playing field, his trainers muddy, dusty, broken, his t-shirt ripped. He was a teenager waiting outside a nightclub for an older man. The man took an envelope of cash from him and counted every note despite the bitter wind biting at Tyler’s fingers. Tyler was older, not by much, and waiting outside the same nightclub, this time for a different person. A woman. A vampire. She’d promised to fix everything.

You… I started to say, but my thoughts were being cut short by my raging heartbeat.You remember things from when you were human?

The hacker gave me the smallest, almost imperceptible, one-shouldered shrug.I’m doing this for him, because he asked me,he said into my head, and out loud, in a softer, kinder, and younger voice than I expected, “His story tracks. It wasn’t deliberate.”

Just like that? So, Killian had asked Tyler to lie to his superiors, and he did? I was missing something, but what?

Good Cop smiled like it was the best possible outcome for everyone and got to his feet. “Killian Grey, I’m placing you under arrest for the accidental turning of Casey Freckleman. Wewill proceed to take you into the station, where you will be held while you await trial.”

“Is it a mixed gender gaol?” Killian asked, completely unfazed by it all.

“It is. Mixed species too,” Bad Cop said, as though this should frighten Killian.

“Sweet,” was his reply.

Nikola placed his hand on Killian’s bicep and began guiding him out of the door. I felt like I should’ve said something. I’m sorry? I forgive you? Thank you?

But I said nothing. Killian, who seemed to understand perfectly what was going through my head like he’d finally found a way to break through my defences, simply nodded.

I nodded back and watched as my once ride or die was led out of the building in more or less — minus the chains around my wrists — the same way I had been four centuries ago.

In the space of thirty minutes, I had both gained and lost a friend.

37.

Dima

For the first three weeks, I camped in the narrow corridor separating Casey’s bedroom from the rest of the facility. It was dark, a little dusty, and there was no space to lie out. But that didn’t bother me.

Casey was almost perfectly still throughout. Occasionally, he stirred like he’d had a nightmare. Like a dog kicking out its legs, but then, just as soon, he’d drift back off into a peaceful, motionless slumber.

My emotions came in waves. For long periods of time, I’d watch him through the glass, unmoving, unfeeling, almost. As though I were floating out of my body and watching myself watch Casey. As though Casey were someone else entirely. Any random Assembly patient. A stranger. Then I would remember who he was, and how much I missed him. How much I craved to hold him against me, to hear him laugh, see him roll his eyes or cross his arms or sayThat fucking vampire. And I wouldfold in on myself. On my knees crying in a dusty two-foot-wide crevasse.

Sometimes I was angry at him. For taking so much of my heart, knowing full well his mortality was only ever temporary. Sometimes angry at myself for witnessing Casey’s intentions and still falling in love with him. Sometimes Killian for concocting this nuclear plan. Sometimes the universe for not seeing to it that we met earlier, or for ever letting me meet him.

And as if that weren’t painful enough, my brain would then helpfully remind me we’d only known each other a matter of months, and what sort of loser grieves someone they’d only known for a couple of months? And that he owed me nothing, and I was pathetic. Really, truly, utterly pathetic. That when he finally emerged from his cocoon, he wouldn’t know who I was, or care that I’d waited for him.

But … I couldn’t not. Wait for him, that was. I wrapped my fingers around the locker key hanging from my neck. Rubbed my thumb along the metal grooves.

“Here. You keep it.”

“Maybe, someday in the future, when everything has … calmed down, when I’ve calmed down after my turning, you can find me and give it back.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect when he woke up. How quickly would he become lucid? How quickly would they send in the hacker to assess him? Would it be the same hacker as before? And if it was, would I have an opportunity to pull him off to one side and … what … convince him to pretend he saw nothing? If I get the chance, I will bribe him.

“Don’t assume things will pan out the way textbooks predict,”Nina had said when Casey first began showing signs of waking.“Because of the slow way in which he was turned, and the fact that there aren’t a lot of accidental turnings, especiallyones with such small traces of blood being exchanged, we don’t know what to expect. Who knows? Expect the unexpected.”

Still, I watched, and I waited.

Now and then, Nina would pass by me on her way into Casey’s room. Each time she gave me a pitying tilt of the head and thought something along the lines of,It’s such a shame he won’t remember him,orGrieving like this is the worst,orAt some point he’s gonna have to give up the ghost.

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