Page 24 of Anarchy Missing

“I know that too. And believe me, that goal is still the only thing that matters. I want it just as bad as you.” I’m not sure that’s really true. Thomas is possessed with what we’re doing to this city. But I’m definitely committed. “I’ll take care of it.”

“How? No,” he amends. “Don’t tell me. Better if I don’t know.” I’m just about to hang up when he says, “Have you thought about the nanites?”

“No, I have not,” I say, anger building at the mere mention of that stupid plan. I plugged that flash drive into my computer when I woke up this morning from my little trip out to the roof. But none of it makes sense to me. I really have no clue what Lincoln does up there in his cave. Most of it was code, anyway. Shit I have no hope of ever understanding. And the rest… just more big biological terms that read as gibberish to me. “But I did give you assholes an answer. And it’s still no. I don’t want that shit inside of me.”

“Well, Sheila came up with another idea. Just a little interface on the back of your neck. It’s not even sub-dermal. Just a sticker, really. With electrodes on it. On the back of your neck. It can monitor all kinds of things through your skin and maybe we can figure out…” He pauses. “Get a handle on what kind of things are happening to you. Then maybe you’ll see it’s no big deal and we can do the nanites. The interface will tell us a lot more if we combine the two—”

“You got an address for her?” I interrupt, looking at the knife in my hand. I don’t really want to think about what’s happening to me.

“Sure,” Thomas says. “I’ll text it.”

“Cool. I’ll take care of shit tomorrow.”

“Case?” Thomas asks before I can end the call.

“What?”

“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right? We’re still close enough to tell each other shit like that, right?”

I’m still staring at the knife in my hand. Is it so bad, really? That I need to cut myself for relief? People do that shit all the time.

Psycho people, the inner me replies back.

“Yeah,” I tell Thomas. “Yeah, sure. We’ve always been close.”

Thomas waits to see if I’ll say anything else. But I don’t. So he says, “Good.” Then, “Good. Whatever you need, man, I’m still here. Just remember that.”

“Got it,” I say, ending the call and throwing the phone onto the cushions next to me. It buzzes a text—Lulu’s address, I presume—but I’m already standing, pulling my shirt out from my pants and unbuttoning it.

Two minutes later I’m on the roof, naked. Knife in hand, poised above the fleshy muscle of my left arm, ready to carve.

The city whispers to me. Only this time, it sounds like the Blue Boar.

I cut deep. Let the blood flow with the light.

And the pain disappears.