Severance Package

If Keene didn’t, McCoy would only continue to pester him.

Might as well engage him.

Would do him good to pay attention, probably. If McCoy were to be believed, they could be working with Girlfriend in the near future.

The pain was so blinding, Jamie found himself detached from his surroundings. He was aware that Molly was moving behind him, sending fresh waves of agony up his arm and into the hot pain centers of his brain. Jamie’s hand and arm felt like a thick mass of rubber, alive with agony, able to be bent any way his torturer wished.

His torturer—his friend Molly.

His office spouse.

Suddenly, he was being lifted up. Jamie was startled to discover that his legs could support some of his weight.

Molly had positioned herself behind him. He could feel her body heat, her chest pressed up against his back. The long sleeves of her blouse brushed against his bare forearms. They’d never touched before, except for the occasional handshake or shoulder pat. If he wasn’t in so much agony, he might have been aroused by the touch of her unfamiliar body.

She was a lot smaller than Jamie, but that worked to her advantage. She could tuck in behind him, do what she wanted, and Jamie would have no prayer of reaching around and stopping her.

Not that he knew how to do something like that.

Molly nudged him to the left, left, left, pointing him to a corner of the empty office.

“That’s it, Jamie,” she whispered.

“Whyareyoudoingthis,” Jamie said. His voice was raspy. Wheezing. Desperate. It startled him to hear it.

“Shhhhhh, now. The pain will stop soon.”

Keene said, “What’s she doing?”

“Holding him up for us to see.”

“Like a slaughterhouse employee showing off the chicken.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“She going to slice his throat, hang him up by his feet now?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Does it matter that I’m vegetarian?”

“I don’t think she cares.”

Molly hurled Jamie to the floor.

Jamie caught himself on one hand—the numb one, unfortunately. His arm was too weak to support his body weight, so his face hit floor. Sucked in air and dust from an industrial carpet that hadn’t been vacuumed in at least a month.

He saw that Molly was slipping off her shoes, delicately sliding them into a corner of the office, where they’d presumably be out of the way. But for what?

What was she doing?

Jamie pushed himself up to his knees, then reached out his good hand to the desk. He’d pull himself up, bolt, and leave it to the guys with the cozy white jackets with the buckles and straps to figure out. Molly had lost her mind; that much was clear. Had she lost it after she shot her boss in the head, or was it a good while before that? Who cared? Jamie needed to get out of this office. Off this floor.

Home to his family.

But as he reached out his hand, Molly grabbed it. Yanked it toward the ceiling a few inches.

Then pressed two of his fingers backwards in such a way that it paralyzed him completely.

She did this with one hand.

“Ow,” Jamie said, more out of surprise than pain.

Molly looked at him and smirked. She mouthed something to him, and applied more pressure.

Okay, now it really, really hurt.

“Oh God please let go. I can’t move.”

She mouthed something again.

Maybe Jamie was losing his mind, because he could have sworn she mouthed: “Just play along and don’t pass out.”

But aloud, she said: “Tell me everything you know about the Omega Project.”

“What?!”

And now Molly pressed her fingers against Jamie’s, and Jamie found himself making a hideous sound that tried to accomplish three things at once:

Suck in air.

Express pain.

Beg.

He’d never made a sound like that before, never thought his vocal cords were capable of such an animalistic cry.

“Tell me,” she said loudly, as if announcing it to the whole office, “about the Omega Project.”

“I don’t know …what you’re … talking about.”

Molly shook her head, as if she were disappointed.

Then with her free hand—again, Jamie couldn’t believe his entire body was incapacitated by one soft, slender hand—she reached over and unbuttoned the cuff on her blouse. She was the only one in the office, aside from David, who wore long-sleeved shirts in the humid Philadelphia summer. As Molly rolled up her sleeve, Jamie saw why.

A thick silver bracelet was strapped around her wrist. It looked like a series of metal dominoes linked together, side by side, enveloping her delicately muscled forearm. Molly tapped one of the silver dominoes, then flipped open a compartment on the bottom. She pulled something out.

Then she showed it to him.

A silver blade. Nothing too long. It was shaped like a triangle, with one long end wrapped in black electrician’s tape.

Jamie recognized the blade. It was an X-Acto blade. Common office supply, especially in the newspaper business. He’d done paste-up at his college newspaper for a few years. Nicked his fingers with X-Acto blades endless times.

Now Molly pressed the sharp edge of the blade to the pad of his thumb, like a teacher touching a piece of chalk to a blackboard.

“The Omega Project,” she repeated.

Keene asked, “The Omega Project?”

“No idea.”

Keene turned a laptop around, closed the video feed, opened up a new window, and started typing. One window led to another in a furious progression, with Keene typing a series of keywords and passwords and search terms.

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“Strange. I’ve never run across anything with a name like that. It’s so … 1970s. We wouldn’t give an operation a groaner like that.”

“Bloody strange.”

Then McCoy’s face lightened. “Wait, wait,” he said. “Hold off on that search.”

“Why?”

“I think she’s messing with his mind.”

“And ours, too. So there is no Omega?”

“Remember, she’s auditioning. Maybe she’s just showing off her interrogation techniques.”