“I need to think,” said Mr. Connor.
“No you don’t,” I said quickly, stepping toward him in the cramped office. “We’re trying to save you two, and I know how you think, so there’s no thinking allowed, okay? The last thing that strike team is going to want to see when they get in here is one of our bodies tastefully redecorated on the floor here.”
“They’ll shoot us,” said Carol.
“They’ll be a lot less likely to if you’re lying down,” I said. The backpack kept singing: all three tones, over and over. I zipped it open and started turning them off. “Lying down might be a good idea for all of us, actually.” I clicked off the last doorbell ringer. “Everybody down, face on the floor, hands above your head.”
“You can’t save us,” said Rain.
“Don’t fight me on this,” I said, but Harold reached over and turned off the lights. “Stop that—we need to be open and welcoming and harmless,” I said. “Turning off the lights in this situation is deceptive and threatening.”
“I can feel their minds,” said Margo. “Your friend, too—Sam Harris. They know we’re here but they don’t know where. I’m going to—”
“No,” I said again, as firmly as I could this time. “No mind control. You don’t understand this: I’m going to save you, or at least I’m going to try very hard, but I can’t do that if you take over even one of their minds. You have to be worth saving.”
“I need to think,” said Mr. Connor again.
“If you’re going to be good, you have to be good,” I said. “That’s more than just not murdering anyone—it’s no more manipulation, no more stripping people of their own free will. You can’t be parasites anymore, you have to be equals.”
“This is ridiculous,” snarled Rain. “You think they’re going to talk to us peacefully?”
“If we’re peaceful first.”
“You think we can just change who we are?”
“I did,” I said. “My brain was broken, or is broken, and I don’t know why or how or if it was my father or my mortuary or my DNA or what, but I want to kill people.”
“What?” asked Jasmyn.
“I wanted to do it again tonight,” I said, “when I had Agent Harris unconscious in the bathroom—I wanted to hurt him and crush him and cut him until you couldn’t even tell who he was anymore, but I didn’t. Because I don’t let a broken brain tell me what to do. Because who you’re supposed to be has nothing to do with who you actually are.”
“They’re getting closer,” said Margo.
“I need to think,” said Mr. Connor, and his voice was darker now, almost a growl of desperation. “I need to get out of this—I need to think!”
“Think about rules,” I said. “I will not hurt people. Say it: I will not hurt people.”
“I … don’t know if I will or not!” growled Mr. Connor. “I need to think!”
“I will not hurt animals,” I said. “I will not burn things. I will not call people ‘it.’”
“The rules that worked for you aren’t going to work for everybody,” said Rain, “and even if they did, we can’t just repeat a bunch of rules and magically become good people.”
I nodded firmly. “Yes, you can, because I did. Say it: I will not hurt people.”
“It doesn’t work like this!” Rain shouted.
“You’re going to come in here,” said Mr. Connor. We heard the glass in the front door break, tiny shards clattering across the floor of the entryway. “Good,” he said, “I need one.”
“No you don’t,” I insisted. “You need self-control. It’s not magic and it’s not easy but it works.” I looked at Rain. “And work is hard, and you’ll struggle every day. But you can do it.”
A sudden burst of gunfire echoed through the air, and I covered my head and ducked toward the ground, screaming that I needed more time. But then the shooting stopped abruptly, and we looked around, probing for damage in the darkness.
“Everyone okay?” asked Rain.
“Fine here,” I said. I listened for movement in the hall but heard nothing.
“I think it was outside,” said Jasmyn. We turned to the window, and she pulled aside the curtain. The sky was growing lighter—it was almost five in the morning and dawn was almost here. We saw cars, all black and unmarked, but only one person: a body, lying still and lifeless on the ground.
Soaking wet.
Shelley wailed.
“She’s here,” said Margo.
“Who’s the drowner?” I asked. “The third Withered you were covering for—who is it? How does she work?”
“Her name is—” Margo started, but stopped suddenly when another man appeared out of nowhere, banging on the window and screaming in terror.
“Let me in!” he shouted. “Let me in! She’s killing us! Let me in!”
Just as suddenly the man was caught in a storm—a rainstorm, or even a hurricane, so fierce and deadly it shattered the window and rattled the walls. Shards of glass flew in, and Jasmyn shrieked as the storm pelted her with water and glistening blades. I shielded my eyes, but then watched in horror as the falling water encircled the man, trapping him in wind and rain, cutting off all his air. His eyes bulged, his hands clawed uselessly at his rain-slick neck, and he suffocated completely, drowning barely three feet away from us. The fury of the storm abated, and the man fell dead to the ground.
“Her name is Dana,” said Margo, and we watched as the tiny maelstrom shrank and shriveled and coalesced into a woman: the homeless woman. She looked at us with haunted eyes, and then her gaze locked onto me—not feral, like in the desert, but sharp and lucid and full of a fathomless sadness.
“I’ll hold them off,” said Dana. “Try to get away.”
Then a bullet caught her shoulder and she exploded again, a warhead made of wind and water and fury, and she spun off across the front lawn toward the men who had attacked her.
“I made her sixty years ago,” said Margo. “The first I’d tried since the old days. And the last.”
“What did she give up?” I asked.
“Her mind,” said Margo. “She has nothing in her head but chaos.”
“Until she kills,” I said, thinking about the tortured intelligence I’d seen in her face. “No mind at all until she steals one from a victim, and then she realizes what she’s done.”
“For sixty years,” said Jasmyn.
“Try living like this for ten thousand,” said Mr. Connor, “and then come crying to me about how hard it is.” He froze, and then he looked up sharply. There was another crash of glass, and shouting and boots and the sudden, deafening roar of gunfire. The attack was inside this time.
Mr. Connor turned toward the door. “I need to think,” he said, and ran into the hallway.