“I really think we should talk,” Tobias started, but Sullivan wasn’t paying attention. He was leaning forward to peer at his laptop so intently that Tobias followed his gaze.
Onscreen, Spratt waved a hand and three of the men converged on the fourth. The fourth man talked furiously, yanking on his arms, his manner a mixture of anger and pleading. Spratt didn’t seem to care; as the three other men held the fourth steady, Spratt walked up to him and punched him in the throat, hard. The man went rigid and was allowed to fall. He clawed at his throat, kicking uselessly, and Spratt left the field of view. The three men watched the fourth struggle to breathe, his panic growing by leaps and bounds, until Spratt returned with two large black heavy-duty trash bags. The men worked together to get their victim onto the plastic, leaning on his thrashing limbs to keep him in place and—and Tobias couldn’t watch this.
He focused on a knot in the floorboard beneath his feet. He didn’t—he couldn’t—his peripheral vision caught another blur of movement, and he clenched his eyes shut.
“Holy shit,” Sullivan said hoarsely.
Tobias was breathing too fast. He couldn’t see the screen but he thought he could feel the light emanating from it anyway, sinking into his flesh, invisible and insidious, like radiation seeping through the air. He felt filthy. “That can’t be real, can it?”
Sullivan sounded choked. “I think it must be.”
Tobias stumbled to his feet and rushed upstairs, pounding on the bedroom door until Ghost yanked the chair out of the way and let him in, startled and hazy with sleep. Tobias flew past him to the bathroom, barely making it in time. He heaved into the toilet with enough force that tears squeezed from his eyes. The room was far too hot. He went to his knees on the tile, legs weak.
The images were imprinted on the backs of his eyelids—the fourth man’s mouth gaping open as he strained for air that couldn’t reach his lungs through his broken larynx, his eyes bulging, his struggles panicked and wild, the way the others—his fellow cops, men who had sworn to protect people, had held him down, blank faced, and the way Spratt had looked so regretful, as if he were sorry to have to take such an extreme measure, but nonetheless found it necessary, and the calm way he’d thought to get plastic to avoid making a mess. The whole thing reeked of the banal, and it wasn’t—Tobias couldn’t bear it.
At some point he became aware of a cold cloth against the back of his neck, and low voices in the doorway. He couldn’t make out what they were saying over the roar of his own pulse in his ears, but he didn’t think it mattered, really. There was only one possible response.
“We can’t let Mama have this.” Tobias’s voice broke, and he felt young and ridiculous, but it had to be said. “We can’t let her use this to manipulate him. Who knows what she’ll be able to make him do? It won’t stop, Sullivan. This can’t be what it’s like. We can’t let this be what it’s like.”
“I know. We won’t.” Sullivan rubbed a hand over his back. He couldn’t be too mad at Tobias if he was trying to comfort him, which was reassuring, but everything was still so hot. Tobias had sweat pouring down his temples and he was trying so hard not to think.
Dimly he heard Ghost say, “Here,” and then Sullivan pressed a cup of cold water into Tobias’s hand. Tobias took it with weak fingers and sipped, desperate to get the foul taste out of his mouth.
“You shouldn’t have let him watch it,” Ghost said. “You couldn’t guess what it was?”
“He’s not a fucking child.” Sullivan sounded tired rather than angry. Tobias put the cup on the tile near his feet and took Sullivan’s hand, squeezing gratefully. He didn’t want this in his head, he wished he’d never seen it, but he wasn’t sorry he’d watched it, if that made sense. This was part of being the one in control of his life—the ugliness and the darkness belonged to him too. Sullivan could help him recover from it, but he couldn’t make the choice for him. He wouldn’t even try.
“I’m sorry,” Tobias managed.
“Don’t be.” Sullivan squeezed his hand in return. “Don’t apologize for being compassionate, for Christ’s sake.”
“So soft,” Ghost murmured, and his tone was a mixture of scorn and affection. That was the tone Tobias had always liked most from Ghost—when it was clear that Ghost didn’t understand him but liked him anyway.
Tobias said to him, “We can’t let this be what it’s like.”
Ghost’s face did something complicated that Tobias couldn’t parse. “The world’s already like this.”
“Not my world. And not yours either, if you’d only fight it.”
Ghost just stared at him, impossible to read.
Eventually Tobias found his feet, and the others gave him a minute in the bathroom to clean up. He brushed his teeth and took a cold shower, staying in until his skin was goose-pimpled and blue and numb. He got out, toweled off, and brushed his teeth again before padding into the bedroom to find clothes.
Ghost was on the bed, sitting cross-legged, hands clasped loosely together. “Better?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know.” He pawed through his bag.
“Where’s Sullivan?”
“Downstairs. He said something about making a call.”
To his friend or his boss probably. About the vid, most likely, and Tobias wasn’t ready to think about that yet. “Talk to me about something else, will you? Anything else?”
“Are you living here?”
“Sort of.” Tobias tipped his head toward the bed without a frame or box spring, at the milk crate being used as a night table. “Not sure you could say Sullivan lives here, actually. He’s sort of a nomad when it comes to living spaces. But whatever it is we’re doing, we’re both here for it.” For now, anyway. Given Sullivan’s recent unhappiness with the events Tobias had brought into
