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“I can. Yes.” There is a shift in his tone—still annoyed, but also…intrigued? “Do you have any questions about the practice?”
“No.”
“No.” A pause. “You have no curiosity about what will happen to you by my hand?”
“Byyourhand? Not really, no—not to change the topic on you, but are you aware of the monster in the room?”
“The…monster. In the room.”
“Yeah.”
“If you are referring to me or trying to dissuade me from?—”
“What? No. I’m sure you’ve partaken of terrible actions and that we all house a monster within us, but I wasn’t going for the metaphorical meaning. There is a real,actualmonstruous creature. In the corner. Over there.”
I point with my finger. Don’t bother checking whether his gaze follows.
He mutters, to himself, but perfectly audibly, “They forgot to mention that she’s raving mad.”
“They didn’t. She isn’t. And if she is, they also forgot to tellme.”
“I’ll be the one to judge.”
I huff. “Sir, there is a green-eyed monster in that corner over there. It’s been waiting to pounce on me like a barracuda for the last quarter of an hour. The real madness, I would argue, isnotacknowledging its presence.”
“A green-eyed…? For fuck’s sake, are you talking about… Alex,” he calls, his tone considerably softer. “Come here.”
At his command, a large, thick-furred beast with tufted ears emerges from the shadows. It stretches gracefully, erupts in a terrifying yawn, shakes nonexistent dust off its brown pelt, and then slinks toward Gabriel without sparing me a single glance.
Guess you’ve stared at me long enough for tonight,huh?
It occurs to me that it looks like the cats I’ve seen on a couple of occasions, the ones that lived in the animal-sanctuary areas at the end of my level, back when I was a kid. Alex, though, is three or four times bigger than the largest I’ve ever seen. And it lookspeckish.
Or it did. Before starting to rub against the general’s legs, and…
“Whatisthat sound?”
“A purr, it’s called.”
“Is that what it does before murdering someone?”
I am, at last, facing Gabriel. And for the first time, I get to look at him while he looks back at me. And he is certainlystaring.
Briefly, he seems taken aback. There is a touch of surprise, an involuntary flinch in his features, a searching quality to his gaze that reminds me that during the ceremony, I was wearing a veil. He may have seen holos of me, but when he demanded that I be brought to his room, he had no real idea of what I looked like, and this is his first time seeing my face in person.
The silence stretches. Gabriel swallows hard, tilts his head in a fashion that I cannot decipher, and seems to need a minute to reorient himself.
So I take the opportunity to ask, “Is it a cat?”
“Related. A lynx.”
Lynx. Yes. I faintly remember hearing the word, one and a half lifetimes ago. From Dad, who was always telling me about the last history article he’d read. He held his palm against one of the elevator sensors, smiling down as he waited for me to step through the doors. “They’re felines,”he explained. “The military breeding program has a few, actually. Some are almost domesticated—they can really bond with us. Make for great companions.”
“Can I see one?”
Laughter. “I’ll see if I can make it happen, Sofia.”
I ask, “Does it live here?”
