Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
Barnes glances up from the paperwork strewn over his desk.
His office is messier than usual, and there’s a deep furrow in his brow as he glances at me.
He’s wearing a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses that have slipped down his nose at some point during his work.
He stares at me for a moment as if deciding if he wants to berate me for walking into his office unannounced.
Then he sighs and gestures to the chair across the desk from him.
But today I’m tackling a much larger issue. My heart is pounding. I have a strange urge to reach for my mother’s cross for comfort, but I’m not wearing it. It’s been at home, in the drawer, since the incident with Cain.
I know this is a bold move. But I have to do something. My conversation with Cain has been weighing heavily on my mind, and I’m more desperate than ever to find some way to help him.
I thought that understanding him was the key to saving him, but instead I’ve been left with this horrible sense of inevitability. The cult. His transformation. The end of the world. It’s all linked, somehow, but maybe there’s a way to stop it.
There must be a way to save him.
“Go on,” Barnes says. His chair creaks as he leans back in it; he’s not built for this kind of office work. He looks at me over the top of his crooked glasses.
“So—” I pause, blinking at him. I can’t get over it. “What’s with the grandpa glasses?”
Barnes sighs, plucks them off his nose, and sets them aside. “Willow. Talk.”
“I was reading about his so-called ‘escape attempt’ again,” I say, flipping through the file until I find the details of the incident. “When his cell was broken into. That’s what triggered Sixteen’s physical transformation, right? The third eye’s opening?”
“Right…”
“And the thing that broke in was classified as a demonic entity.”
“Right. A possessed employee.”
“Have you considered that X-16 could be a case of possession as well?” I ask.
Barnes scratches his chin. “We did consider it early on but discarded the idea. His symptoms didn’t align with the possessions we’ve seen, and the physical transformation doesn’t fit the label either.”
“But you can’t assume that all possessions look the same,” I say. “And Sixteen had a strong response to a demonic presence.”
“He had symptoms before that, though,” Hunter says. “He still had…abilities, before. The physical transformation was just an escalation.”
I hesitate, thinking. “But maybe the presence had been dormant within him, and when he was approached by a demon, it triggered something. Because—” I fidget with my sleeves, fighting self-consciousness.
I don’t want to bring up the incident with my cross.
It’s weak evidence, anyway, and speaking about my necklace will only open a can of worms about my past. “Look, I… I grew up religious, and, I don’t know, some of the things that have been happening to him are reminding me of things I’ve read.
I’ve been trying to think about how it could be possible, and my mind keeps going back to demons. ”
It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not untrue, either.
Barnes mulls it over. “It’s a decent theory. If X-16 is a psychic of some kind, he’d be prone to possession…” He grabs what appears to be a random piece of paper and scribbles something on it, mumbling to himself. “So what would you suggest we try in order to deal with it?”
“I mean…” I shrug. “We could call in the Church?”
Hunter’s eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously? Didn’t take you for the church-believing type.”
I almost smile at that. Almost. “Trust me, I’m not thrilled about the idea, but we might as well try.” I bite my lip. “I don’t suppose the MRF has an emergency priest on call?”
He leans back in his chair with a heavy sigh. “It’s the MRF,” he says, sounding tired. “Of course we do.”