Page 216 of Because I Killed Him
I stare over Charlotte’s shoulder at my Bond screen as the civil credits keep falling: 1,346… 1,298… 1,247…
Behind us, the light of the Sono-Chamber dims and vanishes. Jerome finally turns, an energy drink leaking down his wrist from a crumpled can, his chest still bare beneath the brocade robe. He surveys the scene: Charlotte’s clawed cheek, me gagging as if I might vomit, and the sour stench of monkey feces hanging in the heat.
His voice drops in disgust. “What the fuck?”
Charlotte snaps upright and wipes blood from her chin with the back of her wrist. “Excuse me, Professor. Miss Prew attacked us. Henry removed her.”
Henry appears again in the doorway and bows, a gesture so graceful it almost seems mocking. Jerome exchanges a glance with the robot, then waves a hand at Charlotte.
“Henry will take you to a medic.”
“No.” Her eyes flash darkly. “I willnotleave my friend.”
“It’s either a medic or wait outside my door. Pick fast, sweetheart.”
Henry moves forward like a closing gate. Charlotte breathes heavily through her nose, then shoots me a look that says,I’m not finished. As she follows Henry out the door, my attention returns to my Bond screen.
992… 923… 887…
“Waldsten?” Jerome says, watching my vacant stare as if he’s studying a bug in a jar.
I don’t respond because a suspicion has crept into my mind, howling as if something is dying in my heart: the last words I spat at Edmund, the secret I cut him open to insult him with.
You really are a beast.
Now, the beast is going to kill me for it.
Some things arrive too early, others too late.
But when they’re right on time, it can only be fate.
—ALESSANDRA VISCONTI,
LITTLE BOOK OF MOONLIT RHYMES
CHAPTER 52
Jerome’s voice still rings in my ears as I break for the lavatory. Vomit rises in my throat, hot as acid, and I can’t swallow it down. I burst through the hallway, around the corner, find the door Henry showed Charlotte earlier, and slam it shut behind me. I barely hit my knees in front of the toilet before the vomit erupts in wet, violent waves.
Between the convulsions, suspicion hits me in fractured images. Is Edmund doing this? Is he killing me? Wasn’t offering me Bliss and dissolving our formal agreement enough? Or was that the point all along? Did he give me the choice to walk away, knowing I’d take it, so he could finish me himself?
No. I can’t believe it.
My heart won’t let me.
Whoever is doing this, the way they’re attacking me now is subtle enough to go unnoticed. Nobody will ever suspect, because the crimes draining my civil credits are planted seamlessly in my record, backdated and timestamped, each one bringing the guillotine blade closer to my neck.
I check my Bond screen, shoulders heaving: 756.
I gag again as bile creeps up the raw edges of my throat. A few more minutes, and I’ll fall below the arrest threshold of one hundred civil credits. Once I hit fifty, I’ll be sentenced to the guillotine.
I hunch over the open toilet, vomiting until my ribs feel bruised. Theacidic taste lingers on my tongue as I stagger upright and collapse against the sink. I force myself to look at my sunken reflection, like a ghost’s face framed in filthy hair, eyes red and swollen, vomit streaking down my chin.
Again, the thought that Edmund is behind this attack flares in my mind, and again I crush it.No.It isn’t him. After the way he touched me, kissed me, held me as if I were the only thing keeping the world from becoming a stranger to him, it couldn’t all have been a lie. I couldn’t have been so blinded by love that I missed the monster crouched behind his smile.
But it doesn’t change what’s happening.
I’m going to die.
