Page 7 of Entity

“Afraid of heights?” Ian asks.

“Not really.” I stop a few inches from the glass.

Police drones buzz through the night, their red lights flashing below me, spotlights beaming down through a thick fog onto the streets below. I can see everything from up here. The city is dark but vivid, all its light and color bleeding together against towering buildings, and… oh,fuck.

I sway, pressing a palm to the glass. Either I’m way more intoxicated than I thought, which isn’t likely, or I’ve developed sudden altophobia. My vision spins, then pops and crackles like an antique TV screen. The cityscape flickers in and out. Towers of light disappear and reappear again under a stormy sky.

How many shots were in those cocktails?

Sick with vertigo, not trusting myself to stay upright, I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the glass.

That was the wrong thing to do.

As soon as I close my eyes, I get a sickening swooping feeling in my gut, like I’m falling through the glass and into the rainy night, plummeting downward into a black abyss. It’s the same sensation I felt in the elevator, like I’m deep underwater, but more intense. The world is opening up before me, and there’s an impossible pressure crushing me, grinding my bones, flattening my lungs.

But something tells me it won’t last forever. If I can just hold out, if I can get to the other side—

“Kit.” Ian’s voice is sharp.

I gasp, opening my eyes. The city spreads out before me, rain-blurred and bright.

I step back from the glass, unsteady on my feet.

“You good?” I turn to see Ian standing by the couch, watching me. His expression is unreadable. He’s holding a full shot glass in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. He smiles slowly. “I thought you weren’t afraid of heights.”

I return to the couch, taking the offered drinks. His eyes flit to my shaking fingers, and I’m ashamed. I wait for him to scold me, to say something like he refuses to work with someone who can’t handle her liquor, who can’t handle being 153 stories in the air. Instead, he waits patiently for me to settle in, to take a revitalizing sip of water. He watches me take the shot, his gaze piercing.

When I’m warm from tequila, my heart finally begins to slow, and I meet his penetrating stare. “Sorry about that,” I murmur. “I’ve never actually been in a building this tall.”

He takes the shot glass from me, his fingers brushing mine. There are a few drops left. He dips his finger into the glass,collecting the last of the tequila, and deposits it on his tongue. He swallows. “I should have warned you. It’s a ridiculous building, gives everyone vertigo. Too tall. Way too tall.” He laughs like it’s hilarious that he owns a penthouse in a building that’s practically in space. “Takes some getting used to.”

I can’t help but smile back at him. “The tequila helped.”

He sets the shot glass on a side table, then props an elbow on the back of the couch, leaning in toward me. “Let me distract you, Kit. Is that okay?”

I don’t know what he means bydistract, but I want it, whatever it is. I nod.

“Tell me something,” he says, voice low, taking advantage of our close proximity. “Do you know why I do what I do?”

The tequila has me loose, relaxed, and warm. Rain patters the window in a soothing rhythm. Ian’s gaze is soft. I set my water next to the shot glass, allowing my body to lean toward Ian’s. I know what he’s doing. I’ve played this game a thousand times, and I’m good at it. “I don’t know, Ian. Why do you do what you do?”

His eyes crinkle at the corners when I say his name. “Because we are more than our basest functions. We are intellect. Emotion. Curiosity. These things make us what we are. But if you take away those higher functions, then what?”

“We’re no more than animals,” I answer, a thrill running through me. This is the kind of thing I love to write about on my blog. “Or worse, we’re vegetative. Walking the line between life and death.”

“Exactly,” Ian says proudly, like I’m his prize pupil. “But what if we take away the lower, base, simplest functions of a human? You take away fear, hunger, the need to reproduce… you take awaydeath. What do we have then?”

I know what he would answer.Without his base urges, a human becomes nothing more than a computer. It’s one of hismost famous quotes. But I don’t want to repeat his words back to him like a fangirl. I want to prove that I’m worthy of his respect. “A higher being,” I answer. “A sentience no longer weighed down by its physical needs. Maybe even the next evolution of humanity.”

His smile broadens. “I love the way you think.”

“Thank you,” I say, and I feel a telltale blush rising on my cheeks. Fucking embarrassing.

“I’m not flattering you. I’m being honest.” Ian is very much in my personal space, one arm braced against the back of the couch, one gesturing as he talks. Our knees are almost touching. “I’m curious. Do you believe this so-calledhigher being, this next evolution of humanity… can it possess both, and still remain superior? The intellect…” he leans closer, and suddenly his thumb is on my chin, his eyes searching mine. “And the base urges?”

The room is very warm, its edges liquor-hazy. The rain is picking up, and the wind howls outside, animalistic. But Ian’s thumb on my chin insists that I stay focused on him, on the question. The room fades away, and nothing is left but Ian’s dark eyes, his jaw, the curl of hair on his forehead.

“What if the urges were controlled by outside, or artificial means?” he continues. “What if they were limited, unable to override the higher functions? Can such a thing claim to be superior? Or is it only a mockery, a facsimile, of what already exists?”

---