Hector’s dark eyes soften, like he’s remembering the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He sits all the way down and rests his back against the bars. “It is like a second you, an alternative you that lives inside your flesh, your soul. Not separate, but with different brains, almost. I feel nothing of him now. It’s wrong. Makes me feel wrong.”
Fucking Null-wards.
“How did the first shift feel?” I ask.
“Like a fever,” Hector whispers. “A heat in the blood that wants to expand. Your skin feels like a suit that is too small, and then…el alivio. Relief. You are more than a man.”
Clay shifts his weight, his eyes flickering toward us. I can see the skepticism fighting with the awe on his face. He and I have always been human through and through, but I understand what he’s feeling.
We’ve seen enough of that world to envy those with magic.
Envy. Yeah, that’s putting it mildly.
“Why do you ask me these questions?” Hector searches my face for an answer, but I’m not ready to tell him the truth—not yet.
I don’t even know what the truth is.
“I’m trying to understand our new quote-unquote boss,” I lie, the words tasting sour. I don’t want to understand him, I want to destroy him. “He moves like something that isn’t fully human. I need to know what we’re up against.”
Hector nods slowly. "The beast knows a predator when he scents one. That man… I also sense something that is different, even without my crocodile. There is a vibration that puts me on edge. It is dark. It is trouble. You should be very wary of him, señor.”
“Rory thinks he has magic in this place,” I admit. "Innate magic that bypassed the wards somehow.”
Hector looks at the ceiling, as though focused on the humming Null-Wards we can’t see but can always feel. “I do not know,señor Bevan. But I know this: a penned animal is twice as dangerous as one in the wild.”
The claxon for the end of chow sounds in the distance.
“Go,” I tell him. “Get some food before the kitchen shuts.”
Clay passes Hector some tobacco for the trouble as the big man slips out.
I’m left alone with my second, and Imran.
He’s slumped against the wall, a pile of fragile bones in a faded jumpsuit, his head lolling at an angle that looks painfully unnatural.
Suddenly, his eyes snap open—wide, glassy, and swimming with a fever that’s burning him up from the inside.
“Tally?” he rasps. The sound is so weak it makes the hair on my arms stand up.
“I’m here, kid,” I reply. I reach through the bars, wishing I could pull the sickness out of him with my bare hands. “Go back to sleep. Save your strength.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he stares at the peeling gray ceiling as if he can see right through the concrete and the Null-wards to the sky above.
A beautiful smile stretches his cracked lips. “I heard him… the crocodile man.” The breath catches in his throat. “Just imagine, to have all that strength. Being a wild creature. It must be amazing.” He coughs, and a little bloody spittle escapes his lips. Clay flinches and looks at the floor.
“I wish I could do it,” Imran croaks out sadly. “Feel my skin stretch until I’m so big these walls just… crumble. Then I’d run and run, strong and scary. Nothing could hurt me. Just once.”
With an effort that seems to drain the last of his energy, he reaches a skeletal hand into the stagnant air, his fingers trembling as they claw at the shadows. “I don’t want to die without knowing what a spark feels like.”
His head lolls toward me and Clay. He looks at us, eyes beginning to close. “I’d run all the way home, see Mama, Papa and Avi. Just one last time before…” His arm loses its battle with gravity, dropping heavily back to the cold concrete with a dull smack. “Be something more than a boy who died and never did nothing.”
His eyes flutter shut. “Just once,” he murmurs, then seems to fade into sleep again.
Clay looks completely defeated, working his jaw as he tries to swallow the grief.
I hate it.
Hate it all.
