Page 145 of Johnny

but I reach up and slap his face with my free hand. He grabs that wrist too and we struggle. But I’m

still weak from the drugs and he overpowers me easily, throwing me backwards on the bed.

“What the fuck?” he yells.

“What the fuck? What the fuck? You’re a goddamned murderer! Take me back. Take me back to the

island where you found me. I’m getting off this ride. You just fucked up everything! Do you know that?

You fucked up everything! I’m going to go back to that dungeon, chain myself to that wall, and die! I’m

so fucking done with this!”

“Don’t be stupid,” he snarls. “I’m not taking you back to that dungeon. We still have a lot of shit to

do before this can end and I need your help.”

“My help?” I scramble back up on my knees and then crawl out of his reach and push my back up

against the bulkhead. “My help to do what? Kill more people?”

I’m hysterical. I get it. I’m confused, and I feel like shit, and I just took part in a mass murder.

“If that’s what it takes.”

But it was a rhetorical question. I didn’t expect him to answer.

I close my eyes tight. Squinting them. Then I whisper, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

He sighs. And then the mattress sinks down and I open my eyes.

He’s sitting down, his back to me. Hunched over with his head in his hands. He rubs them down his

face a few times. Like he’s tired.

No. Not tired. This… this is nothing like being tired.

This is weariness.

He’s weary.

He went on a long journey, was weary…

I know because I’m weary too.

“I’m so fucking sick of this shit!” I yell. “All of it! I’m done! Do you hear me? I’m fucking done!”

He shakes his head a little and then straightens up, staring ahead at the other side of the room. “I

don’t want to do this anymore either, Megan.” His voice is low and tight with control. “I didn’t ask to

be me. I wasn’t given a choice when they put me in charge of shit. I don’t want the money. And if my

soul had been told… if there’d been full disclosure when the essence that is me was told it was time

to be born into this life… I’d like to think I’d have said no.”

I frown. “What the hell are you talking about?”