Blackthorne Solutions.

The dark room was about six feet by six feet and painted black. I sat in a chair in the center, a clicker in each hand, keeping my eyes on the dot of light on the wall in front of me. To the right and left, in my peripheral vision, photos were projected in pairs at a faster and faster pace.

RIGHT: A child in a pirate costume.

LEFT: A child with a black eye.

(click left)

I answered as I was told, choosing the more violent image without forethought. The Thing didn’t have a say. But it wanted one. It had opinions, and I had to think around it before I clicked.

RIGHT: Viet Cong shooting a man in the head.

LEFT: A flower with drooping petals.

(click right)

It was always there now, starting as a whisper in the shadows and growing into a scream in the darkness every day, every hour, every breath.

RIGHT: A dead fish on the shore.

LEFT: A dog with cigarette burns in its eyes.

(click left)

I was coping. I changed my methods as often as I could think of a new way to drive it away. Running out of ideas wasn’t an option, and Ronin’s call had come just in time.

RIGHT: The blood and guts of surgery.

LEFT: A butcher cutting a side of beef.

(click right)

The lights went on. I took the electrodes off my head. A young tech came in from the back and helped me with the wrist monitors. She was Korean without a trace of an accent. Her name was Mimi, and it belied her seriousness.

“Did I pass?” I asked.

“There’s no pass or fail,” she said.

I knew that. They kept saying it as if it was true.

I looked to the right, where a small one-way window hid the camera. “Ronin, did I pass?”

His voice came over the speakers. “I’ll meet you in the hall.”

Blackthorne Solutions could mean anything. The corporate name was so generic, and its parent company’s holdings so broad, you could research your heart out and never find out what was going on. But the offices took up three high floors in an expensive office building overlooking the East River.

Ronin met me by reception, dressed in jeans and a crisp white shirt. He led me to a stairway he accessed with a thumbprint. “Hope you don’t mind walking up two flights.”

“I think I’ll make it.”

I hadn’t spent long in the military compared to Ronin and Greyson, but I’d been there long enough to know I was considered some kind of indolent ass for not enduring basic training.

He had to use his fingerprint to get onto the next floor, and my retinas had to be scanned to get into the back offices. Everything was white and dark gray wood, glass, and chrome. Ronin walked slightly ahead, saying nothing until we arrived in his corner office and he closed the door.

He took a folder off the desk and sat on a tweed couch, indicating I should sit in the love seat opposite him. “Do you want anything? Coffee? Tea?”

I wanted coffee, but it was late in the day. I wanted him to just get to whatever was in that folder. “Water’s fine.”

He nodded but didn’t get up or call for anything. “So here’s the deal. You heard a little about what we do here.”

“You invent new ways to kill people.”

“We like to call it defense development.”

“How slippery.”

“You expected any less?” He looked up as if alerted. “Come in.”

There had been no knock, but the door behind me clicked open. A man in his early twenties brought in a tray with a coffee carafe, two cups, a bottle of water, and a glass of ice. He set them on the table between us, poured, and left without a word.

“That’s a neat trick.” I looped my finger in the cup’s handle. If he’d gone to the trouble of reading my mind, I might as well acknowledge it by having the coffee.

“Not really.” He dumped cream into his and drank.

“Greyson says you guys dated.”

“We met in basic.” He shrugged. “We were nineteen.”

“She was eighteen,” I corrected. He should have this shit down cold. “Do you have any feelings about what we told you?”

“I didn’t marry her. You did.”

“You’re not concerned about her on a personal level?”

“Have you met her?” His question came out with a cough of a laugh. “She can handle herself.”

“Then why take me on if you’re not doing her a favor?”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t my friend. I’ll do her favors, but you’re also a good candidate. Believe me, I couldn’t do a thing if you weren’t right for it.”

“Can you tell me what makes me right for it?”

“No. We’re under contract with a few government agencies. The program you’re looking to enter is paid for by Defense.” He put down the cup. “The DoD’s real particular about who we test on.”

“Liability, right?”

“Right. There are some pretty risky trials running right now. What we’re thinking for you isn’t on that list, but there are still hoops and a very strict NDA.” He pushed the folder toward me and picked up his coffee. “You might want to take it home, but if you leave it in the cab and the Times prints it, you could wind up in Leavenworth.”

“This isn’t Kansas anymore.” I opened the folder and skimmed. Hold harmless. Liability release. Federal arbitration in the DC courts. FOIA clause. I wasn’t a lawyer, but I’d seen versions of most of it before.

“There’s one thing that’s not in there because it’s a prerequisite.”

“What?” I closed the folder.

“You have to be active service.”

I tossed the folder on the table. It landed with a slap. “That’s out.”

“I can probably swing it with you on reserve duty. You’re IRR, right?”

“I was on a four-year MSO.”

“Crap,” Ronin said. “Surgeons get blown when they sign on.”

“Not quite.”

“You can still sign on for the reserves.”

“No.” I stood up to leave.

“IRR. Individual Ready Reserve,” he said as if I didn’t know what IRR stood for. “You stay home. No training. That’s the last carrot I have.”

“I’m not a root vegetable guy, but thanks.”

Having refused the carrot, I left without considering the stick.

I was losing her. I saw it happening and I’d stepped right into it.

No one, least of all a psychiatrist, wanted to live with a crazy person. I didn’t want to come home to open heart surgery either.

Yet the more I tried to get a handle on it, the worse it got. And the more I let loose and tried to stop worrying, the faster the Thing came back. It was always there now, and the days between breaking her got fewer and fewer. Sometimes we’d be at it on normal days and I’d get rough and demanding anyway. But unless I was on the edge, the Thing couldn’t see it.

“Did you do the test with Ronin today?” Greyson asked when she came upstairs from her last session. She’d had to take evening hours to accommodate patients with day jobs.

I held her close and kissed her. She tasted of the handful of almonds she’d wolfed down between patients.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What was it?”

“Trigger test. I don’t think I pass muster.”

“Maybe he’s working on something else.” She slid away from me.

Her optimism only highlighted the fact that she was losing hope. I couldn’t shatter it, nor could I bear to hear her ask me if I wanted to enlist in the reserves. I decided right then that I wouldn’t tell her. All her hope would flow there.

“He’s working on sending you every vet he comes across.”

“I have a hard time telling these guys they can’t see me.” She got a jug of OJ from the fridge and gave it a hard shake. “You see the hard time we’re having getting someone for you.”

The fridge clicked on, and I stiffened. I was so sick of hearing a voice in the hum of technology that I got annoyed at the appliances.

“‘Getting someone for me.’” I walked the length of the kitchen for no reason. “I’m a patient now. A run-of-the-mill nutcase with scheduling issues.”

“Caden.” She poured juice into a glass. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what? I’m the guy with a paranoid delusion that something’s watching me.”

Juice in hand, she came close to me, and I didn’t want her to. Not unless she wanted my dick in her ass.

It had been five days.

She didn’t take this seriously. She thought I was a case to be cured. I hadn’t told her everything because I didn’t want to scare her, but maybe that was the problem. She was coming at me, sliding her hand under my jacket, and with her big eyes and her perfume, it was risky. I was dangerous and she was pushing and pushing in ways she couldn’t understand.

Her perfume wasn’t soothing anymore. It boiled every emotion together. I didn’t even know which one I was reacting to anymore.

“Did I tell you this Thing wants to fuck you?”

She stopped the glass halfway to her lips.

I continued. “It’s obsessed with you. It thinks I don’t deserve you.”

“Caden.” She was level and serious, as if she was going to lay down the law. Speak the truth. Get the true fucking facts. “This is your fear that you don’t deserve good things.”

“Oh, is it?”

“This is you punishing yourself.”

What I’d been holding back herniated, popping past the membrane of resistance fully-formed, blood-red and screaming. My Thing bridged days of suppression, begging for release to be the man she needed.

“Punishing myself for what?” I stepped toward her.

She didn’t budge. She wouldn’t. I knew her that well.

“You were overworked.”

Fallujah again. The rows of bodies and the fast decisions.

“I was doing my job. For the hundredth time—”

“You’re driving me away because you think you don’t deserve to be happy.”

“You think I’m making this up because I have guilt?”

“I never said you were making it up. Your experience is real, but denying this is a defense mechanism isn’t helping you.”

She was minimizing it, but she wasn’t. She saw clearly where I didn’t. She was honest and loyal. She was brave. Very brave. Because she knew there was a battle in my soul, yet she still stirred it.

“Greyson.” I put my hand on her throat and slid it back to the base of her silken hair. Her lips loosened and she blinked quickly. Her nipples would be hard, and she’d be most of the way to wet. I could take her right there. I could fuck the courage and honesty right out of her. “You’re a warrior. I don’t deserve you, but not for the reasons you think.”

I released her and walked to the front of the house. I needed air. I needed space. I needed to avoid turning my rawness against her.

A force hit me from behind, slamming me against the couch. I bent over the arm and righted myself, turning toward her. She was red-faced, hair webbed over her eyes, teeth bared, hands up and ready to strike.

“Let it out. Just let it go,” she growled, pushing me again.

She could hit much harder. For all her bravado, she was holding back.

That insight came from a cold place, and the cold place was colder than ever while the warm place where the Thing lived ran hotter.

And there we were.

Half a step toward her, and she didn’t move.

“You think I’m crazy?” I said.

“I never said that.”

“I’m not the crazy one.” Another step. She took half a step away, then shoved my shoulder. “You’re the crazy one.”

“Stop running away. Face it, Caden. Face me.”

She vibrated with frustration, rippling like a flag in a hurricane. She raised her fist to hit my shoulder again, but I grabbed her wrist before it hit home.

She wanted me to face her? She was getting faced.

I twisted her arm behind her back and threw her over the couch, holding her wrist against the small of her back. She looked back at me with utter defiance, daring me to finish or not. I put my hand on her cheek and pushed her head into the cushions.

Leaning over, I spoke firmly into her ear. “This is me facing you.”

I let her face go and pulled down her pants. Her eggshell ass glowed in the lamplight. Eye to eye, she watched over her shoulder as I pulled my cock out of my pants.

“Tell me if it hurts and let’s see if I give a shit.”

Without preamble or a courtesy stretch, I shoved inside her as far as I could. I was balls deep in two thrusts and she bit back a scream, writhing. I yanked her arm back and grabbed her hair, fucking her through her cries. With every slap of my body against her ass, the whirlwind intensified. The thick, hot liquid of the unknown force watching me, and the brittle ice of who I was spun in a blinding cone of light and dark.

When I came, all the air left my body. My heat entered her and I was awake again.

“Please,” she wept. “Let go.”

She was really crying, and I had her right wrist twisted behind her back.

“Shit.” I let go and lifted her.

Inside the sound of my wife’s sobs, where wet hitch met breathy exhale, where true guilt met broken sorrow, the Thing spoke. For the third time, the whisper between whispers made verbal sense.

It had a name.

Damon.