SEVEN
Simon
The screams were tearing the room apart.
They weren't human. They were the jagged, high-frequency sounds of a machine stripping its gears, of a biological system hitting the red line and disintegrating. Tessa wasn't just fighting us; she was fighting the very air in her lungs, her body arching off the cold concrete like a drawn bowstring about to snap.
"Hold her down!" Anders shouted, his voice cracking. The perfect, polished agent was gone, replaced by a terrified man in a ruined suit, trying to hold a gel pad against the thrashing stomach of a woman who was slowly cooking herself alive. "Goddamnit, Daniel, immobile! She’s dislodging the sensors!"
"I'm trying!" Daniel grunted. He was using his weight, his massive frame straddling her thighs, pinning her legs to the floor, but sweat was pouring off him. The scent of yeast and warm spice that usually rolled off him in comforting waves had turned sour, curdled by panic.
I was at her head, my knees bruising against the hard floor, my hands wrapped around her slender wrists. I had her pinned, her arms stretched above her head in a crucifix of surrender, leaving her utterly exposed to the room, to the lights, to us.
It was wrong. It was all wrong.
Whatever Anders thought he was doing, whatever protocol he was following from some dusty medical textbook, wasn’t working. The cooling pads were sliding uselessly across her skin, skating on a layer of sweat and slick fluids that smelled of the ocean and rotting fruit.
"It’s not working," I choked out, the air in the room thick and unbreathable, heavy with the metallic tang of pheromones. "Anders, look at her stomach. Look at the muscles."
Her abdomen was rippling, hard knots of cramping muscle twisting beneath the pale skin. Her abdomen was contracting violently, trying to expel an emptiness that didn't exist, a phantom heat that the suppressants had held back for who knew how long. The cold pads weren't stopping it; they were shocking the nerves, sending her nervous system into a riot.
"We have to lower the core temperature," Anders argued, though his hands were shaking as he tried to reapply the adhesive. "If we don't, she strokes out. It’s physics, Simon. Heat exchange."
"It's not physics, it's biology!" I snarled, looking down at her.
Tessa wasn't looking at me. Her eyes were squeezed shut, tears leaking from the corners, mixing with the sweat in her hairline. Her lips were pulled back in a rictus of agony, her teeth grinding together.
So empty,she had sobbed.Fill it.
I looked at my hands. Long fingers. Calloused tips. Stained permanently with the India ink and charcoal I used to capture shadows. I had spent my entire life watching people, studying the way light hit a curve, the way a muscle bunched under tension. I was the observer. The guy in the back of the class with the sketchbook. The guy in the bleachers who watched the tragedy unfold through a lens, documenting the fall but never catching the girl.
I hate you,she had hissed at us.You just watch.
The accusation hit me harder than her boot had. It dug into my chest, hooking into the soft, rot-filled center of my guilt and pulling.
I looked at the way her hips were jerking, a staccato rhythm of desperate, frictional need. She was grinding against the nothingness, against the air, against Daniel’s arm. She didn't need ice. She needed a crash. She needed a dopamine release massive enough to short-circuit the feedback loop of pain and panic her brain was trapped in.
She needed to come.
The realization was clinical, cold, and absolutely terrifying.
"Get the pads off her," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears, hollow and distant, like I was speaking from underwater.
"What?" Anders looked up, his blue eyes wild. "Are you insane? She’s burning."
"She's cramping to death," I snapped, releasing her wrists. "The pain is spiking her heart rate. The cold is making the muscles seize harder. We need to break the cycle."
"Simon, don't," Daniel warned, his voice a low rumble from where he held her legs. He saw where I was looking. He saw the intention shifting in my posture. "We can't. It’s… it’s assault."
"She’s dying, Daniel!" I roared, the anger finally breaking through the paralysis. "Look at the monitor! She’s at 180 beats per minute! If we don't drop her cortisol levels right now, her heart stops!"
I didn't wait for permission. I didn't wait for the committee to vote. The artist in me took over, the part of me that knew you couldn't hesitate when the ink hit the paper, or you’d ruin the line.
I moved.
I slid down between her shoulder and her waist, ignoring Anders’ shocked intake of breath. I shoved his hand away from her stomach, ripping the cold, slimy gel pad off her skin and throwing it across the room. It slapped wetly against the stainless steel fridge.
"Simon!" Anders grabbed my shoulder, his grip hard. "Stop!"
