Chapter Twenty-Four
Rheda
The ink has dried badly across half the page.
I stare at it for a long moment before dragging my thumb lightly over the words again, testing whether they’ll smear this time. The blue sits there stubbornly, pressed permanently into the paper in handwriting I barely recognise as mine.
The lines slope where they normally don’t. Letters crush into each other. Whole sections look rushed, almost frantic.
I hate it instantly.
I cast a look over my shoulder, as if expecting someone else to have joined me in the research room. It’s unlikely. This research room sits on the far side of the building where almost nobody bothers coming anymore, tucked behind old storage units and dead terminals that hum louder than they work.
My shift ended thirty-eight minutes ago.
I should have left the building already.
I pull the notebook closer and flip back three pages to earlier observations. I unclip the blue gel pen from the spiral binding and carefully draw a line through the weak sentence.
Subject displayed escalating psychosexual—
The words stop there beneath the thick strike of ink. Heat creeps up my neck again before I can stop it. I rewrite the sentence slowly beneath it in neater handwriting.
Subject exhibited inappropriate behavioural responses during interrogation procedure.
That’s better. Colder.
I stare at the revised line until the letters start blurring slightly. My fingers tighten harder around the pen.
The image returns anyway.
Water dripping from his jaw.
The sound he made when the current hit him.
The slow lift at the corner of his mouth afterward like he’d felt something entirely different from what we were trying to inflict.
I press the pen down too hard. Ink bursts suddenly across the page.
“Fuck.” The word slips out quietly into the empty room.
I lean back in the chair and squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to ache. The pressure helps for a second, just a second, but then his face comes back violently.
The way he looked at me through the glass like it was for me.
No.
Absolutely not.
I shove the notebook away from me hard enough for the pages to rattle. For a few seconds, I just sit there breathing carefully through my nose, waiting for my body to settle back into something recognisable.
I need something that’s going to ruin him for me forever.
Something that will stop me fantasising about him.
I need to know what he did, or I don’t think I’ll ever recover from these feelings twisting around in my gut.
I slip my badge from my pocket and place it next to my notepad. When I hold my tea close to my lips, the warmth fans across my face. It hides the tremble of my fingers. I sip quickly like the heat will stabilise me.
Finally, the screen churns out a loading page. My fingers hover over the search bar before I type his name.
Deogal Attor.
The internal system of the computer churns. The blue wheel spins once, twice—then an error box pops up in clinical font: RECORD NOT FOUND. TRY AGAIN LATER.
My fingers hover over the search bar. I try variations—Degoal, Degol, the registration numbers on the form in front of me, but nothing comes back. I switch into the forensic portal instead and try the same thing. It returns blank.
I frown.
Where is his file?
My hand moves to the legal portal. I type his ID number in slowly this time, the sound of the keys tapping a fraction too loud. The machine makes a sharp noise.
Error. User not found.
My chest seizes. I pull his paper file closer to me like it will steady me, eyes scanning all the information on the handout Peter gave to me on my first day. I drag my finger down the text until I find another number that looks similar to ID.
I type it into the court docket, and finally something dings.
There is a short delay before green flashes across the screen.
A PDF appears and I scan through it until my eyes start to blur, but nothing useful stands out.
There’s a scanned police blotter entry that’s been uploaded badly—letters jumbled, timestamps sliced into nonsense.
The word “assault” flashes up repeatedly like an accusation, but the rest is eaten by white space.
Desperation claws through me.
I drag my cursor down the screen until all the lines blurs. My head pounds angrily, but I can’t look away. I scroll for what feels like hours before something budges.
Special Case Unit.
A prickle runs up the back of my neck.
Slowly, I look up from the screen and scan the room properly this time. Corners first. Ceiling. The dark seams where wall meets light fitting. The vents. The small black domes I expect to find tucked into edges, watching, recording—proof that I’m not as alone as I feel.
Nothing.
No blinking red lights. No lenses catching the glow of the screen. No quiet indication that any of this is being seen.
My hands move to the keyboard, and I type the name into the search bar.
A dark portal pops up on screen with space for a username and password.
I’m not supposed to have clearance to the site, but I remember things.
Not properly—more like flickers. A name typed into a form once that I was asked to file once.
A password scribbled onto the corner of a desk calendar and left open as I walked by.
Random, meaningless fragments that shouldn’t add up but suddenly feel sharp and real.
Hands slick against the plastic, I type a username into the box and then move to the password box. I hesitate longer here, pulse hammering at the inside of my skull, but type what I think it might be.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I know I shouldn’t, and yet, I press enter.
The screen pauses. I’m sure it’ll flash denial in angry red font, my attempt logged and flagged, guards storming in before I can even stand.
And then—
I’m in.
A rush of adrenaline nearly makes me laugh out loud. I shove a hand over my mouth before the noise can escape and force my heart to stop thrashing so hard in my chest.
My fingers shake when I move the mouse.
A case list stares back at me. I scroll, searching for the right ID number. I find it almost immediately.
135166
Attor, Deogal.
I click.
The file is insultingly thin on here, too. I can only make out three short phrases with the rest redacted by thick black lines.
Serial homicide.
Psychosexual deviation.
Sexual sadism.
I inhale—and it sticks.
I get caught on the repeated sexual motif and heat floods my skin too quickly.
I’ve studied this. Years of it—case files, interviews, patterns that blur into each other if you let them.
Sexual depravity has never bothered me before.
But now...I feel the shift before I can stop it, something in me leaning in instead of pulling back, searching for meaning in a way that feels far too personal.
I want answers.
The thought lands harder than anything else.
I need to know what those labels mean.
I press the pad of my thumb into my knee until it hurts.
I tell myself to breathe. I tell myself to be careful. And yet, I can’t seem to remove the memory of his eyes from my mind. They seem to follow me even here, alone in a room on the other side of the prison.
I reach for my water, pressing the cold plastic to my palm as if it might cool the heat creeping into my cheeks but it doesn’t work.
Something on the screen catches my eye. A small video icon.
My hand moves before I can stop it, clicking through as a grey portal flashes open, rows of dates and timestamps lining up in neat, clinical order.
My eyes skim without really seeing, numbers blurring past until one catches, something recent enough to tighten my focus, and beside it—a still frame.
It’s small. Grainy. Easy to miss. But something in me stills when I see it. I recognise the scene immediately. Peter’s behind Deogal, arm angled in a choke.
My pulse kicks, sharp and immediate.
I know what that video leads to. I know what I could watch again.
I shouldn’t—
I exit the video, but then bring it up again almost immediately. The click is deafening.
The footage runs.
Peter’s grip around Deogal’s neck is brutal, coiled tight until his face turns red, but I’m not watching that. My gaze sticks where it shouldn’t, between his legs.
I slow it down. The image stutters slightly as it breaks apart into pieces. Movement becomes mechanical.
I try to breathe normally and fail, the rhythm slipping every time I reach for it. My thighs press together and it feels amazing. A burst of pleasure that makes my fingers tighten on the edge of the desk, nails pressing into the wood hard enough to ground me.
I shouldn’t be reacting like this. I shouldn’t be watching this.
But then his hand moves, and I track it closely.
It shifts from his knee to his thigh in one clean movement, staying there for a beat longer than I remember. He continues. His fingers curl around his erection slowly, digit by digit, and I can’t look away. My chair creaks quietly under me as I lean closer.
When he grips it, a muscle in his jaw strains. The sound that leaves him isn’t loud, but it hits me anyway, low and rough. He thrusts once, almost light, almost testing, like he’s waiting to see if he’d be caught. And then he thrusts again.
Something tight and hot pulls through my body.
I don’t recognise the way it hums. I shift before I realise that I’m moving, and the chair drags along the place that aches.
I gasp. I try to hide it, I really do, but it tears through my lips before I can catch it, and it seems to rip something open within me.
It throbs now. It begs me to touch it.
My fingers move by their own accord, resting on my thigh just like his did a few moments ago.
The pressure is unfamiliar. Wrong. It pulls something loose in my memory.
A few years ago. A flash of pink.
Olivia’s laugh, loud and careless, spilling across the table as she shoved the bag toward me like it was a joke I wasn’t in on. I hadn’t even needed to open it properly. The shape had pressed through the paper, obvious, deliberate. Her grin had only widened when I froze.
“You’re twenty-one,” she’d said, like that explained everything, like that made it normal. “What are you waiting for?”
Inside the bag was a vibrator, small but intimidating. I still have it. It’s still sealed, still hidden in my beside cabinet, unused.
My eyes prick, a sharp reminder I haven’t blinked in minutes. My tights feel soft to touch, even softer when I trail the pads of my fingers up the inside of my thigh. They disappear beneath my skirt before I can think too much about it. I shiver, the touch unfamiliar.
My other hand zooms in. The image pixelates, softening the edges, turning his features into something a little blurrier, but I need to be closer. I want to see more.
Something new blooms deep within and it’s addictive.
I lick my lips, refocusing on between his legs. His hand moves in that same slow, controlled rhythm, and my breath starts to shift.
For a moment, my fingers tingle as though something is pressing against them.
I freeze.
The sensation doesn’t belong there. It’s faint—barely anything—but it’s enough to make my stomach drop, a sharp, cold awareness spreading through me. The feeling lingers, phantom and wrong, like something brushing against me without ever quite touching. Hard and solid. And...thick.
Fuck!
My pulse stutters, then kicks harder, heat rising too fast under my skin as the connection snaps into place in a way I don’t want to understand.
No.
That’s not—
I flex my fingers, trying to shake it off, to ground myself back in something real, something separate, but it refuses to leave. And when I look back at the screen, I’m painfully aware of how close he is.
His arm jolts now, sharper, less controlled, like whatever restraint he had is slipping.
His head tips back with it, exposing the full line of his throat, and I feel my focus drag there instantly, caught on the movement before I can stop it.
The muscles in his neck pull tight beneath his skin, shifting with each breath, each strained inhale travelling visibly through him, like I can track it, like I can follow it as it builds.
Something in me tightens in response. I jolt against the chair, too sudden, too hard, and my cheeks flush red. Something sparks between my thighs. Want. Desperation. My palm moves quickly, cupping my sex like that’ll stop the ache. The pressure, the warmth—it makes everything so much worse.
My hips move without my mind consciously instructing them to. I grind against my palm slowly at first, like I’m testing how far I’m going to take it.
I swallow, hard.
He thrusts a few more times, and the room erupts with realisation, but it’s too late.
He explodes. A dark noise rolls out of him, a noise I will never forget.
My pulse jumps hard under my skin, sudden and violent, like it’s trying to get out and I shift suddenly, my hand grinding hard against my sex and then—
Oh, God.
It happens.
It hits me too fast to brace for.
A sharp, rising surge that tears through me without warning, pulling me forward in my seat as my body reacts before I can catch it, before I can force it back under control.
My breath breaks, uneven and jagged, something desperate building and building with nowhere to go, my muscles tightening around it like I can contain it.
I can’t.
My toes curl hard against my heels. My other hand flies to my mouth, clamping down before any sound can escape, my whole body locking around the aftermath as it shudders through me, leaving me breathless, shaken, and completely out of control.
It doesn’t stop, refuses to relent, and I’m trapped in its wake of destruction. My heart won’t slow. It hammers on, relentless, echoing through me as I sit there, unmoving, trying to piece myself back together around what just happened, around what I just felt.
I swallow, forcing another breath in, deeper this time, trying to steady it, trying to ground myself in something real, but it doesn’t settle properly. Because underneath the aftermath, beneath the shock and the thin, fraying edge of control I’m clinging to, something else has already taken hold...
A want.
Sharp and unmistakable.
I hate that I already know what I’m going to do next.
My hand moves to my sex again.
I hate that I rewind the footage, and I hate that I know what I’m going to do again.