Vicious Memories

Chapter 50

I had a hard time falling asleep after Felix's story, my thoughts churning like violent seas beneath a storm. When I did sleep, I thrashed about, Box staring at me with worry, my dreams troubled and troubling...

The screens crackled to life and there they finally were.

"The picture quality okay?" the man behind me asked.

"Just fine," I said.

The monitors each showed a different room, and each room held a person. Dim anticipation began to build as I viewed them on the black-and-white displays. It was odd how my all-consuming attention could make the people on the monitors seem more vibrant than the real world around me. A stirring and sharply detailed picture of a redbreast hung on one wall to my left, a ripe splash of ruby against the rich oak paneling; the carpet bore a psychedelic orange and blue pattern, the hallucination of some hippie artist; several gold figurines flexed and posed on the desktop; a rainbow of paperback spines peered at me from the inset bookshelves on my right.

But I only had eyes for the screens.

These are your people, a taunting voice in my head murmured. This is what you would have become.

No. I shook away the thought. I wasn't a murderer.

Just because someone told you that your killing was okay, doesn't mean you're not a murderer.

I was preparing a second retort when an impossibly elegant and beautiful woman strode through the door behind me. A crisp white doctor's coat swished around her knees as she moved. Upon her entrance the flavor of the room changed palpably, as if she had sucked out all the air and replaced it with something harder, more intense.

I turned in my chair as she strode directly up to me, not sparing a glance for the guard at my back.

"Nice to finally meet you," she said. Her voice came out excited, eyes fever-bright. "I'm a big fan of your work."

"As I am of yours." I stood up and shook her offered hand. Her grip was strong, viselike.

She looked around the room vaguely, only mildly interested in the contents until her gaze fell to the screens behind me and her whole body lit up. Her movements crackled with energy as she slid past me to gaze at the people on the displays. As they had for me, it seemed the black-and-white screens held a subject far more important to her than anything else.

She turned back to me and smiled with such genuine excitement I was reminded of a child receiving her first-ever Christmas present. I couldn't help but smile in return.

"I can't wait to start working with you," she said. "We're going to do amazing things."