Chapter Forty-Three #2
It’s unsettling how little there is. Just a strange, cold emptiness where compassion should be. Because the truth is, none of this matters. Not Mike, not the drink, not the lie I’m already building.
There is only him and I can’t keep starving myself of it.
I look at Deogal.
My grip on the pen slips for half a second. Ink blooms across the page in a dark, ugly blot.
Fuck.
He’s staring. At us.
Cold crashes down my spine so fast it almost steals my breath. Every part of me goes still. The thrill drains out of me all at once, leaving something colder behind, something sharper. Fear, immediate and absolute.
I wanted a glance, a reaction I could control. Something safe enough to pretend it meant nothing...
Not this. Not the full weight of his attention landing on me like a hand around my throat.
“Oh, no.” The words leave me before I realise I’ve said them aloud.
Beside me, Mike follows my line of sight—and freezes.
“Shit,” he whispers.
It feels like the room forgets how to breathe.
Everything goes unnaturally still, stretched thin and tight, like the air itself is waiting for something to happen.
The hum of the fluorescent lights grows louder.
I can hear Mike swallowing beside me. I can hear my own pulse, heavy and violent, beating in places it shouldn’t—my throat, my wrists, between my ribs.
Deogal doesn’t blink.
I suddenly become aware of everything—how close I’m sitting to Mike, the angle of my body, the heat still trapped in my face, the stupid pen in my hand, the evidence of the ink blot spreading like a confession across the page.
It feels obscene, like being caught touching myself. And worse—some part of me, some sick and humiliating part, is thrilled he noticed.
“What do we do?” Mike’s voice comes out smaller than usual, thin with nerves.
I swallow hard and force myself not to move too quickly, like the wrong shift of my body might set something off.
“He can’t see us,” I say carefully, keeping my own voice low, steady. “It’s one-way glass. Just... watch what he does next.”
“I know, but...” Mike trails off. His words die somewhere in his throat. I hear him choke on a breath. He inhales again, too fast.
“Oh my God,” he says, barely above a whisper. “He’s looking at me.”
I glance back at Deogal and fuck, his gaze is fixed.
There is something vicious in it, something so cold and concentrated it feels like the air has thinned around us. His eyes are too dark, too still like they’ve swallowed light instead of reflecting it, and all of that attention is pinned straight through Mike like a blade.
His body gives the smallest shudder, a brief, involuntary tremor that runs through him before he drags in one slow breath and forces himself still again.
I watch it happen, inch by inch, like he’s shutting parts of himself off manually, pulling the plug on every nerve.
Mike stumbles back into his chair, all awkward limbs and bad coordination. The metal legs drag against the floor with a soft, ugly screech, but he barely seems to hear it. His eyes stay fixed on the glass.
“I—” His breath catches sharply. He swallows like it hurts. “I don’t like that.”
“Sit down,” I say quietly.
It comes out far steadier than I feel, like I’m not sitting here with my own pulse hammering against my ribs hard enough to bruise.
He listens without argument, dropping back into the chair like gravity has suddenly doubled. His fingers shake where they grip the armrests, knuckles whitening, like holding onto something solid might stop whatever this feeling is from getting worse.
The monitor starts beeping louder. A few sharp clicks fill the silence, numbers shifting, and suddenly even I’m leaning forward, caught on the edge of my seat like my body knows before my mind does that something is wrong.
“Why is he doing that?” Mike whispers.
I part my lips to answer, but he beats me to it.
“It feels like...” He trails off, breath uneven, like he’s embarrassed to even say it. Then he lets out a strained huff. “Like he knows me.”
“That’s not possible,” I say quickly.
I yank my notebook open, too fast, desperate for something practical. But when I press pen to paper, my hand stalls at the top of the page. I can’t make it move.
Mike looks like he might be sick. His face has gone pale and thin, all the colour drained from it, his expression stretched with something close to horror. He shakes his head once, like he’s trying to physically reject the feeling.
And suddenly the guilt arrives. It hits hard and ugly, wrapping itself around my ribs like something alive. Because this is my fault. Every second of this. I pulled him into it. I created this.
And now I can’t tell if I’ve made a stupid mistake—or if I’ve handed Mike to something dangerous.
I push forward in front of him without thinking like I can sever their connection, but regret stabs me sharp in the chest. Because when our gazes meet, his black eyes wrap their fingers around my throat. I know I’ve made it worse.
His eyes darken, if that’s even possible, something colder settling there. Harder. There is no mistaking it now—no room left for logic or one-way glass or professional distance.
There is a warning in him. Something sick and intimate and deeply wrong, burning behind the emptiness of those pupils. His face doesn’t change. It doesn’t have to. I feel the displeasure as though he’s carving the words deep into my skull.
You’re mine.
I pull away from Mike so quickly it almost looks violent. And across the glass, I see it—the smallest shift. His jaw tightens once, controlled, and the corner of his mouth twitches so faintly I almost convince myself I imagined it. Almost.
Time stretches strangely. It feels like being held underwater.
He watches me absorb it. Watches me understand. And when he’s satisfied—when I’ve pulled back, when the message has landed exactly where he wanted it—his gaze drops back to the table, like he’s dismissing me.
Just like that.
The tension drains from his body, and the monitors hush their screaming. His shoulders loosen. His hands rest flat against his thighs, passivity taking hold of him again. As if nothing happened. As if he hadn’t just reached through the glass and wrapped his attention around our throats.
Mike exhales sharply. “Jesus.”
I force my pen to move again, to distract the way the blood races through my ears. Pretend to be clinical, invested in test results rather than my emotions.
Subject lifted head. Looked through the glass. No vocalisation.
The words don’t feel right. They feel sanitised. A lie dressed up as protocol.
Mike scrubs his damp palms against his trousers like he can wipe the feeling off his skin.
“That’s never happened before,” he says, and his voice sounds stripped down. “He doesn’t... fixate like that.”
I swallow, but my throat feels too tight for it.
“He’s just reminding us,” I say carefully, choosing my tone with precision.
“Of what?”
“That he’s here,” I answer. I lower my pen and close the notebook. “Don’t worry about it. Peter will know what to do.”
The lie sits heavy between us. I press my fingers flat against the cover to hide the tremor running through them.
But I know now, absolutely, unmistakeably, that he hasn’t disappeared, he’s still there.
And some sick part of me is relieved.