Page 48 of The Associate
He opened his mouth. A sound emerged, the only one left to him.
“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…”
∞∞∞
Present
Worldly sorrow brings death.
Samuel jolted upright in bed; a strangled gasp ripped from his throat. The darkness around him was not the cube’s, but it was just as absolute, just as suffocating for one disoriented, heart-hammering second.
He was drenched. Sweat plastered the old t-shirt he slept in to his chest and back, cold, and clammy as a shroud. His breath sawed in and out, ragged, and too loud. He could feel his own pulse in his temples, a frantic, trapped-bird.
He lifted a trembling hand, touched his face.
Tears.
He was crying.
A wave of nauseous shame followed the realization. He scrambled out of the tangled sheets, the fabric feeling likerestraining hands. With a violent motion, he grabbed the hem of the t-shirt and tore it over his head, throwing it to the floor as if it were on fire.
The images from the dream swirled behind his eyes, sharp and sickening. Then they began to change, tomelt.
Elias’s green eyes glinting in the moonlight darkened, hardened into the Director’s pitiless gaze. The two faces merged, stretched, becoming one monstrous visage that loomed over him, speaking in a layered voice of gravel and sanctimony.
Worldly sorrow… good boy… brings death…
“No,” he choked out, a desperate denial to the empty room.
He stumbled across the cold floor. His target was the closet. He wrenched the sliding doors open.
He fell in, his back hitting the wall. He pulled his knees to his chest, wrapped his arms around them, making himself small. The solid pressure on three sides was a hideous mockery of the cube, but it was also, perversely, a relief. He had chosen this. He could leave.
But he didn’t. He shivered violently, the cold from the floor seeping into his bones. The tears came harder now, silent, wrenching sobs that shook his frame. He pressed his forehead against his knees, trying to push the images out.
His lips moved again.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God…”he whispered, his voice shattered and childlike.“...and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence…”
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Time, once again, lost its shape. But eventually, the words slurred. The shivering subsidedinto an occasional tremor. The sheer, mind-numbing fatigue that was his constant companion wrapped around him tighter than any blanket.
His head grew heavy against his knees. The whispered scripture became the breath of sleep.
On the cold closet floor, curled in a ball, Samuel finally slipped away, the taste of psalm on his dry, parted lips.
Chapter 12
Gael
The city at this hour was all muted grays and blurred, sleeping lights. The sleek black car slid to a curb at 5:42 a.m., and Gael stepped out into the pre-dawn chill, the automatic doors of the office tower whispering shut behind him. The grand lobby was quiet.
His office door closed behind him with a solid thud. He shrugged off his overcoat, the fine wool whispering as he laid it over the back of the visitor’s chair. He settled behind his desk, the cold, smooth surface of the mahogany a familiar anchor.
The computer monitor bloomed to life with a soft glow, casting his face in pale, angular light. The morning reports populated his screen; overnight filings, client updates from the Hong Kong office, the dry, predictable pulse of the firm’s global heartbeat.
His hand, resting beside the mouse, lifted. Hovered.
It moved not to the mouse, but to the lower right drawer of his desk. His fingers found the small, discreet biometric scanner built into the wood grain. A faint green light traced his fingerprint with a soft beep. A magnetic lock disengaged with a quietthunk.
