snacking on, but I’m just not a snacker.”
“I’d fail my next physical if I snacked on all that.”
“We don’t have physicals. If you’re slow, you’re dead,” I shrugged again.
“What’s your story?”
“Me? I have Anti-Social Personality Disorder from being kidnapped by a serial killer when I was eight. I also have an anxiety disorder and migraines.”
“You were kidnapped by a serial killer? How’d you get away?”
“I killed him,” I told her.
“At eight?” She looked astonished.
“Yep, that’s why I’m here. Then it happened again at sixteen, nineteen, twenty-two,” I paused, “actually twice at twenty-two and at twenty-six. Not all of them were serial killers, some were just rapists, but a bad guy is a bad guy regardless.”
Agent Gentry stared at me for a moment. Her mouth worked, but no sounds came out of it. I gave her another second to recover. When it failed, I looked at her.
“Sometimes, shit happens,” I told her.
The blank look cleared, I’d shaken her from astonishment. She cleared her throat and pointed at Michael, “and him?”
“Michael was a hacker, stealing identities off the internet. He stole the wrong one. Turned out to be a serial killer who came looking for him. During the struggle, he put several million volts through the serial killer. He’s a brilliant engineer. The FBI arrested him for hacking and identity theft. The Marshals recruited him for this team.”
“Has everyone in the Serial Crimes Tracking Unit encountered a serial killer in civilian life?”
“No, Xavier encountered a mass murderer. Gabriel only does it as a profession, never as a civilian. Most of us are just mentally broken for different reasons. Mine makes me think like a serial killer. Michael is a genius, might be smarter than me even, but he’s never fit in. He was bullied in school and became a recluse. Until the serial killer broke down his front door, he hadn’t seen another person in almost six months. Lucas went to trial as a spree killer that turned out to be someone different from his unit, but his story goes a lot further back than that. Xavier, well, that’s a story for another day,” I told her.
“Why?” She asked.
“Because it is a painful one,” I answered.
“Aren’t they all painful?”
“Some more so than others. Xavier’s is just, well, he doesn’t talk about it,” I shrugged again.
“Girl bonding?” Michael asked as he pulled his bags from the conveyor belt.
“Me?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Fine, sociopathic bonding?” He smiled and handed me a bag.
“Something like that,” I agreed, taking it and looking inside. He had remembered. I smiled wondering when I’d enjoy the sweet treat inside the bag.
Back at the hotel, Agent Gentry followed me into my room. I gave her a look, but she ignored it and sat down at the small table.
“Are you planning a girl’s night?” I frowned at her.
“No, but I took the liberty of looking at the warnings on your box. If you take that, I’m staying right here until Dr. Reece shows back up,” she stood as if remembering something and walked over to the adjoining door. She opened it and then returned to her seat.
“I’m not entirely sure I’m taking it,” I told her.
“How long will your migraine medicine take to work?”
“It should have already started.”
“Well, hacking boy, pun intended, isn’t going to be much good to you, I believe he’s already asleep. I can’t leave knowing there is the possibility that you are taking death serum without someone around, so I’m here. No worries, I understand no TVs, no lights, no excessive noise.”
“You know someone with migraines?”
“My father had cluster migraines. They got so bad that when he was in his forties, he ate a shotgun.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I told her.
“He waited to see me graduate from Quantico. I remember what life was like for him. While I miss him every day, I kind of understand why he did it. They never could control the migraines. Then again, I don’t think he was ever on a special diet. He ate whatever he wanted. I didn’t even know food could trigger migraines.”
“Mine are controlled pretty well. Besides, I’ll probably be slaughtered by a serial killer before they get that bad.”
I pulled the vial and the needle from the bag. Agent Gentry took hold of the paperwork. She looked at it and then me.
“You’ve done this before?” She asked.
“DHE is not unknown to me.”
“One of the known side effects is death, Marshal,” Gentry looked concerned.
“Your own experience tells you that is also a side effect of migraines,” I told her.
“You have a point.”
I inserted the needle into the vial and sucked up the liquid. It was perfectly clear. It was also going to make me sleepy and possibly sick. I slid out of my jeans, pulled up a patch of thigh fat and rubbed it with an alcohol pad. As it dried, Agent Gentry moved closer.
“What?” I asked.
“Can you inject yourself?”
“Yep, not a problem,” I gave her a weak smile, grabbed the syringe and jabbed it into my leg.
The medicine burned as it filled the fatty tissues. The liquid dribbled out just a little and ran down my leg. I’d been too quick with the plunger, the death serum filled the tissue in my leg too fast to contain it all.
I wiped the dribbles away. I didn’t bleed; I never really bled from injections. Agent Gentry sat back in her chair.
“You are a brave woman,” she said.
“Some would consider it stupidity,” I responded.
“What happens now?”
“Now I go to bed and hope I wake up,” I said.
I stood up and was overcome with vertigo. For a moment, I thought I'd crash to the floor. Somehow, I stayed on my feet. I jerked at my clothes and collapsed into bed. My heartbeat increased with the effort, so did the throbbing in my head. Minutes earlier it had just been a dull ache. Now it was a drum line beating a steady cadence of intolerable pain in my brain.
My blood throbbed in my ears, seemingly audible. My heart rate kicked up another notch, increasing the speed and pain of the rhythm of the pulsing in my skull. Rational thought left me. All I could think of was removing my skull to release the pressure that seemed to be building.
Agent Gentry did seem to have the experience she spoke of. As I closed my eyes, willing myself to die, she went to work. I felt my hoodies unzipped and my body jerked and rolled as she stripped them off of me. She spoke, but her words were unintelligible to me, sounding foreign and coarse. In response to my non-action, the younger woman sat me up and yanked off my shirt.
Finally, I felt another tug, followed by an explosive noise that sent me reeling. I stumbled for the bathroom. My knees shook, my body churned. Somehow I knelt down. Agent Gentry put a washcloth on my neck. It was cool and brought some relief. My hair was twisted back up and into place.
When I felt the wave pass, I lay down on the cold bathroom floor. The lights flicked on above me, sending shockwaves of pain deep into my skull. Gentry covered me with a towel, got a pillow from the bed and placed it under my head. She wetted the washcloth again and replaced it on my neck. The lights went out and her footsteps retreated.
I cursed my own body and weaknesses. I was no good to anyone in this condition and to be helped by a stranger was embarrassing. She had seen the weakness rear its ugly head and cripple me in seconds.
My aura hadn't come. Instead, the headache I had been creating slowly all day had triggered the migraine. The DHE slipped into my blood stream. It wasn't an instant cure, not even close, but it was bringing relief. I felt slow, but the crushing pressure was releasing in my brain. Sleep was descending over me. Coupled with the blessedly cold floor, I had no choice but to allow myself to sleep.
Fifteen
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A really smart serial killer would wait until I had injected myself with DHE before trying to kill me. Then again, I was smarter than that. I never injected it when I was alone. They’d have to kill Malachi or Nyleena first.
At some point, Lucas picked me up and carried me from the bathroom to the bed. I woke up enough to realize it was happening, but not enough to care.
Morning did not bring an annoyingly happy and shiny Gabriel into my room. It brought a very concerned Xavier with a bag full of tools and Lucas with a Mountain Dew. Xavier was taking my blood pressure. All the lights were still out, Lucas was holding a flashlight for him.
“I’m fine,” I told them for the millionth time.
“That’s twice already this year that you have injected yourself with DHE,” Xavier said without looking up from the pressurizing cuff.
“It happens,” I answered.
“Yes, but it shouldn’t happen. Agent Gentry said you had no warning,” Xavier continued.
“Bad lighting and vending machine food, Xavier. You know how I am under those conditions,” I pleaded my case.
“You should have ordered in lunch, not eaten from a vending machine. And you should have turned the lights off for a while. You know these things, Ace, why the fuck can’t you follow them?”
I couldn’t really argue with him on that. I did know these things. The lights in the Marshals’ office were terrible for me and a bag of chips and a thing of trail mix did not equal lunch.
“I will do better today,” I told him.
“Because you aren’t leaving this room, I imagine you will do better today,” Xavier nodded to Lucas. Lucas turned the flashlight off and began