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“I don’t know how you can’t,” she says with a shrug, “You’d be surprised, Branson, at how good it feels. It’s like nothing else.”

I don’t say anything.

“At least I got her to stop doing kids and stuff, and you know none of them are good people.”

She knows the right things to say because she knows me all too well. A familiar pang of regret at not trying to talk to her sooner stabs me, but really, I know there is nothing I ever could have done.

“It’s not their death that bothers me,” I tell her. “It’s that I’m worried that Jane will twist you too far. That you’ll be like her. You’re too perfect to be anything like her.” I reach a hand out to touch her cheek and she smiles.

“I’ll never be like her,” she promises. I give her a sad smile back but say nothing, and after a few minutes, I hear her footsteps fading back down the hall.

That night I dream of viruses. Infecting darkness wherever they go.

In my dream, the virus’s name was Jane.