Page 115 of Penance

I don’t think she would be pregnant now if she wasn’t, even with the added help of sleep meds.

I move silently as I cross the room, stepping out into the hallway and pulling the bedroom door closed behind me.

A pang of guilt stabs at me, but it’s quickly pushed down and buried deep among the other emotions I refuse to entertain. They died a long time ago, anyway.

This is necessary,I tell myself.There’s no turning back now. I need her to need me, and this is the only way she can.

The guilt, the remorse—they’re foreign emotions, unwelcome intruders, but I push them aside, focusing on the plan.

I did too much just to back out now.

I’ve gone too far already.

Everything is already set in motion.

I push open the door to the spare bedroom and the familiar hum of the computers greets me. The room is bathed in a dim, ethereal glow, the only light coming from the faint illumination of RGB lights. The shadows are deeper here than in any other part of the apartment. They live here, like rabid animals that I keep in chains and muzzles. My hand lingers on the doorknob, my grip so tight that the cool metal bites into my flesh. Finally, I turn the lock, the faint click like a gunshot in the stillness.

She can’t find out.

She can’t catch me in here and ask what all these monitors are for.

I turn away from the door with a sigh. The air here is cooler, uninviting. It’s a stark contrast to the warmth of Mercy’s body, the soft rhythm of her breaths as she slept beside me.

I could go back. I could turn off the computers and slide back into bed with her. I could bury my face in her neck and drink in the scent of her like a poison that would ultimately be the death of me.

No.

No, I can’t.

“Focus,” I scold myself. “Fucking focus.”

I plop down in the computer chair and turn towards the monitors, reaching up and tapping the button that brings them to life. The screens stare back at me, and when they finally warm up, they show me my sins written out in plain black and white. Its bright white, and I can’t hide from it.

The screens show me Mercy’s apartment, except now it’s quiet and lifeless.

My fingers brush against the keyboard, and the plastic keys are cold beneath my fingers. I begin to type, the clack of the keys like the scurrying of a thousand beetles in the blackness.

I call up the command prompt, the black screen waiting for me to swallow these goddamned emotions and grow a pair. Sighing hard, I force myself to do it, and my fingers dance over the keys.

C:\> *KillSwitch*

C:\> *Override*

C:\> *Initiate Lockdown Sequence Mercy.Apt*

The code streams across the screen, a flowing river of green text on a black background. I can see the cameras in Mercy’s apartment blinking out one by one, the feeds turning to static before disappearing altogether.

They’re shut down internally now. Their hard drives have been wiped clean. Now, if anyone finds them—which they won’t—there will be no proof to link them back to me. I’ll go up thereand find them all, smash them to pieces and get rid of them as soon as I can.

With that done, I shift focus, calling up the camera feeds from my own apartment. I lean forward, my elbows on the desk, my chin resting on my interlocked fingers. The feeds from the living room, the kitchen, the hallway—they all flicker to life, showing me my own darkness.

It’s like a mirror, and I hate the reflection it’s showing me.

I don’t want to look at it, but I know I don’t have a choice.

With a deep sigh, I turn back to the keyboard. I type out another code, this one quicker—only a few button presses.

The kitchen blinks to life on the main screen, the image of Mercy standing in the doorway, her hands twisting as she watches me. Her head is bowed, her long chestnut hair hanging over one shoulder like a frayed rope. The soft hazel of her eyes is glazed with unshed tears, and her lips recite words I know so well, but I can’t hear them now.

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