Severance Package

“Even if her subject knows nothing?”

“Even better. She has to take it all the way.”

“She’s sick, mate,” Keene said.

“She’s awesome. Hand me that file, will you?”

Jamie tried to squirm away, but each movement yielded fresh agony in his arm.

“What are you doing?” Jamie asked. He could feel the tip of the blade on his thumb. Maybe it was his imagination, but the blade felt like it was sinking into his flesh, deep enough to scrape bone. God. Was she actually stabbing his thumb?

“Tell me about the Omega Project,” she said aloud.

Then Molly squinted and whispered: “I know you don’t know anything, Jamie. Don’t pass out.”

“Why the hell are you asking me then?”

“Wrong answer,” Molly said.

Then she cut him, dragging the blade down the length of his thumb, across the thick muscle at the base, and out before she reached the vulnerable veins of the wrist.

Jamie howled. He tried to move, but couldn’t. He couldn’t see the damage to his thumb, because his palm was facing Molly, who was now placing the bloodied tip of the blade to his index finger.

“Tell me about Omega,” she said again.

Then she whispered: “Stay awake.”

Stay awake? Jamie couldn’t see his thumb, but he imagined a Ball Park Frank on the grill, skin burst and curled open, exposing the meat beneath.

God, what will make her stop?

Jamie tried to move. Bolt forward. Knock her off balance. Anything.

But he was paralyzed.

She pressed the blade deep into the tip of his index finger.

Only now did he realize that Molly was holding his left hand. Jamie was left-handed. He held pens with his thumb and index finger. He grabbed the adhesive strip on Chase’s diapers between his thumb and index finger. He ran his fingertips down Andrea’s chest, feeling her soft skin and bumpy edges around her nipple, and it was one of his favorite sensations, and now lost to him forever because—

—because Molly was ripping his index finger down to the palm.

She asked him more questions. Maybe it was the same question. The Omega Project. Whatever that was. The Alpha. The Omega. Omega Man. Early Man. Dead Man. But Jamie couldn’t hear, because he was in shock by then—dazed and incoherent and searching for some other part of his body where he could hide out for a while. Away from the pain of his burst hot dog fingers, and the warm blood—his blood—running down his forearm, racing around, dripping from his elbow.

Maybe she was on his middle finger now. He thought she might be. Because it felt like she stopped halfway down. Because one of her own fingers pressed down at the base of that finger, which was partly how she’d paralyzed him, and maybe she was going to finish off the hand and slice off the tops of his fingers and put them in a little Ziploc baggie for later and ask him again about the Omega Project on the way to the ER….

“I guess you don’t know anything after all,” she said, or maybe Jamie fantasized it.

Molly let him collapse to the carpet again.

He could move again, if he wanted.

He didn’t want.

“I’m proud of you,” she whispered. He watched her stockinged feet walk around his body, trying to avoid stepping in the blood.

He didn’t want to listen to her voice anymore.

“But we’re going to do just a little more,” she continued. “Try not to pass out.”

He heard Molly’s words but tried not to extract any meaning from them. But that was difficult. Words were everything to him. He had been a writer—was still a writer, even if it was toiling over meaningless press releases for financial services that made absolutely no sense to him.

It was impossible to deny her words had meaning.

Try not to pass out.

Which was an incredibly frightening statement. Because “Try not to pass out” meant there was more pain coming. Probably a great deal of it. And that didn’t sound good. Jamie thought they’d explored his personal threshold for pain quite thoroughly. It was exactly one thumb, one index finger, and half of a middle finger.

So when Molly lifted him to his feet again, wrapped a well-muscled arm around his torso, and rested his weight on her own body, he thought:

I’m in for more pain.

And we’re going to work on that together.

But then the blade was in her other hand, and this time she had a fist curled around the taped-up part, and the blade was pointed down like a dagger. Her supporting arm loosened, and Jamie slipped down a bit. Her arm caught him under his right armpit and extended around his neck—tight. Almost choking him.

The blade touched Jamie’s chest, right through his shirt. Pierced the skin like it had pierced his thumb.

And then the blade whisked down his chest.

Oh God.

This time she was going to kill him.

“Ugh,” Keene said. “Not sure I’m in the mood for an evisceration. It’s almost supper.”

“Shhh,” McCoy said.

“What is she doing?”

“Don’t know.”

“She’s not cutting his chest. Not that I can see.”

“No, she’s not.”

“What, is she pretending?”

“Hang on a sec.”

McCoy had the Girlfriend file on his lap. Which showed how much he was engrossed in this operation. Usually, he’d store his can of Caley between his legs. He flipped through a few pages.

“She flashed me a seven, right?”

“I believe so, mate. I can roll back the recording if you like.”

“No, no. We both saw it. Seven is this guy. Jamie DeBroux. Media relations director. Formerly, a journalist. He received the lowest risk assessment.”

“Which explains the fingers.”

“Yeah … hey, you’re right. I didn’t think of that. That’s brilliant.”

“Look. She’s still slicing at him.”

“Still no blood?” McCoy asked, but slid himself closer to the laptop nearest him and punched in a few numbers. The same scene popped up on his monitor.

“No,” said Keene. “Either she’s playing around with him, or she has the worst aim I’ve ever seen.”

“What the devil is she …”

Then McCoy smiled. He was like a kid at a birthday party who’d blasted apart the pinata with one whack of the stick. Candy and toys rained down all around him.

“I love this girl! Oh, man, I want to be her baby daddy.”

Keene looked at him. There was no way he was asking “What?” again. He stone refused.

“When we meet, I will fall to my knees and worship her blood-caked feet. Oh man, I am crushing so hard right now!”

Keene wasn’t going to do it. Not dignified.