Page 27 of Tyton: The Spider and the Dragonfly (Tyton #1)

C

allie woke with a start. She had murdered two people. Two people who probably had friends. Parents. Maybe even partners. People like Brin.

At the time, Callie wasn’t thinking of that. The only thought in her head was Sesi. Sesi might be in danger. She could hear them through the door. Talking in whispers. Walking, heel-toe away from her.

It only clicked now how truly lucky she had been.

If they hadn’t been concentrating so hard on getting to the lab or if one of them had turned, she would have been caught.

Or if they hadn’t been talking, she might have been heard sneaking up on the one in the rear.

Or if she hadn’t cut as deeply, he might have made noise and alerted the other.

But none of those worries had been present in the moment. Even when her hands were coated in blood, hot and sticky, she had only thought of getting to the next one before he found Sesi. Even though Sesi could have easily dealt with them herself. She had seen her do it.

Which meant she had murdered for no reason. What did that make her?

Dots appeared and disappeared. Callie sat, her legs hugged to her chest as she bit at her fingernails until they were ragged.

Half an hour later, Sparx held Callie who was having an existential crisis in one arm and balancing a can of Choklat in the other as her sobs tried their best to knock it out of his hand. He waited until after the tears and the Choklat had been drunk before speaking.

“How many people did Brin kill?”

“What?” Callie sniffed.

“How many?”

“None!” Callie’s brows furrowed, indignant.

Sparx sighed and moved the empty can to the floor so it wouldn’t stain the bed. “She never told you, did she?”

Callie just stared up at him, squinting in confusion.

“Brin killed a lot of people, Cal. Mostly homeless. At least you were trying to prevent someone from getting hurt. Brin killed people because they got too close to corporate property.”

Callie sat up, her mouth opening and closing several times. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

Sparx scoffed. “How would that conversation go? Hey babe, I’m home, I toasted some guy so skezzed out that he didn’t know he was trespassing?

Brin was great until everything else that happened, but she clearly didn’t want you to see behind the curtain.

” Sparx held on to the back of his neck like it was a lifeline.

“I mean, I don’t blame her. Look at you. ”

Callie had to admit that she wasn’t taking this well.

“Why did she tell you then?”

Sparx pulled Callie’s hands away from her mouth. “I don’t know. People tell me all sorts of things. I guess I just give off the vibe that makes people want to overshare.”

“But you’re bad at keeping secrets, Sparx.” Callie pulled her hands back, mildly annoyed.

“I don’t think it was a secret. She just didn’t think you’d want that dumped on you.

” Callie was about to bite a fingernail, but Sparx glared at her.

She threaded her fingers together instead.

“Think about it,” Sparx continued. “You’d just finished corporate training, you were working a stressful job.

Brin didn’t want to use you as her therapist.”

“God,” Callie massaged her forehead. “Am I a self-absorbed arsehole?”

“Wait. You learned that your ex killed people for a living and your first thought is whether or not you’re the problem?” Sparx shook his head. “That’s such a you reaction. No, Cal. Brin loved you. She took on way too much and couldn’t admit when she needed help until it was too late.”

Callie flicked her eyes to Sparx and then stared at her hands, fingers tense and flexing.

“Look,” Sparx sighed. “I don’t want to shit on your memories of Brin, but…” Callie stared up at him. “Brin didn’t feel guilty about killing those people.”

Callie’s frown deepened. “Then why did she need to talk about it?”

“Because her problem was that there were so many of them.” Sparx let it sit for a moment while Callie’s face froze. “And the ones you took care of? They probably killed just as many or more than she did .”

“But I don’t want to be a killer!” Callie protested.

“Most people don’t.” Sparx put his hand on her knee. “That just means you aren’t a psychopath.”

“What about Sesi? Or Talia.” Callie resumed biting at her fingernails.

“They aren’t killing random people for fun, Cal.”

“But they’re good at it. They kill a lot ”

Callie’s fingers had found their way to her mouth again. Sparx pulled them out and held them so she wouldn’t chew her nails bloody.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Are they terrorists?

Vigilantes? Freedom fighters? I don’t know.

But just because you killed a couple of people who probably deserved it so you could protect someone in the moment doesn’t mean you’re like them.

It doesn’t mean you aren’t good. Hell, it doesn’t even mean they aren’t good. ”

Callie made to pull her hands back to her mouth, but Sparx held fast. “If we’re all killing people for good reasons now, who’s bad?”

Sparx exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. But if we’re going extinct and trying to take the planet with us, we can’t be all that good, can we?”

Callie huffed a small, mirthless laugh. “The only ethics classes I took were about killing Primaries to keep the AI from breaching containment.”

“I didn’t take any classes, so maybe I’m not the best person to talk ethics,” Sparx smiled.

“You haven’t killed anyone, so you obviously didn’t need them.” Callie nudged Sparx with her foot.

“True, but I have ghosted a lot of boyfriends.”

“You’re the epitome of evil.” Callie kicked him back. His humorous comment didn’t fix her issue, but it provided a tiny bit of hope that Callie might feel at peace with herself in the future. Sparx seemed to know it too.

Sparx brought Callie in for another hug. “Do you want me to stay?” He felt Callie shake her head against his arm.

“Thanks for coming over. I appreciate it. I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”

“You’re a good person, Cal. You know that, right?” Sparx squeezed once more before he left.

Callie dimmed the lights and crawled back into bed.

She knew Sparx was right. She hadn’t just killed a random person, she had acted out of a fear.

And the revelations about Brin were shocking, to say the least, but also somehow, not?

If that made sense. How many people had those guards killed?

And for what? How many had corporations killed?

What was the blood on her hands compared to that?

But she hadn’t shared everything with him either.

She hadn’t told him how her body reacted to watching Sesi kill.

He didn’t feel the rush of adrenaline Callie felt when she drew the knife across those guards’ necks.

Callie’s fear wasn’t that she had killed.

Her fear was that she might have liked it.

When the edge of the round blade sunk effortlessly into the skin and tore a hole through the man’s trachea making it impossible for him to utter a sound as he fell, relief had washed over her. That , she could understand. The feeling that chased it, she could not.

She couldn’t put it into words, and so she hadn’t told Sparx. It wasn’t power. It wasn’t even pleasure, but it had felt good . Like a mother bear, defending its cubs. Not that bears existed anymore or that Sesi even needed defending. That’s what made it worse.

The feeling just clicked . Like it belonged there. Like she belonged there. And if Sesi couldn’t defend herself, she might be able to rationalise it. But the opposite was true.

During her AI psych training, they had been taught that people who kill fall into five categories. The first is self-defence. That did not apply to her; she could simply have turned around and left like Sesi told her to.

The second is following orders. Like Brin. Third: protection of others. All of these fall under the umbrella of socially acceptable and still usually require regular therapy sessions.

Then there are the others. Theft. Revenge. Hatred. All motivated by external factors and can be mitigated by education, a functioning justice system or reduction of poverty.

The fifth one is thrill-seeking and attention. The person is broken. No amount of education, therapy or money will fix someone who kills for fun.

And Callie worried that the feeling she got fell under thrill-seeking . Because Callie was an expert in worrying. Which, she also knew, would be pointless because if it did fall under thrill-seeking , there would be nothing she or anyone else could do to fix it.

Callie scrunched up her pillow and lay flat on her back, consumed by thoughts of becoming a serial killer.

It was nonsense. She knew it was nonsense, but Callie couldn’t help it.

She sighed in annoyance. She could get some anxiety chem from the Vendr, but she had to work the next day and it was too late to take them.

Callie released a muffled yell into her pillow.

Throat sore and brain still doom-spiralling, the only thing left were some old therapy exercises – go through the steps of something monotonous, but mentally demanding. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes.

She could walk to work. Wave to Mike. Scan in at NovAITech. Open her locker door. Put on her SubSuit. Put on her mask. Turn on her SubSuit. Scan in past the Secondary. Scan in to the Ruskov chamber. Fear for her life.

No good.

She racked her brain for anything else meaningless that she did and understood immediately the problem.

There was nothing else. In the two years since Brin had left, Callie had allowed her life to become so minimal, that she had nothing.

No hobbies. No sports. Not even any friends, aside from Sparx.

At the time, it had seemed like a way to step back and destress, but now, here she was. Merely existing .

Rope. It had been far too long, but nothing else she did had a set of simple steps. That’s why she always liked it – it was simple, yet tedious in the best way.

Callie balled her fists and flexed her toes, forcing herself to come back into her body. She took three deep breaths and tried again.

She would start with her arms behind her back, an elbow in each hand. They would lace the rope through the space between her elbow and rib cage. She would feel the rope slide against her skin into the middle of her back. One wrap. Two. A single column tie.

Up to her right shoulder. Held in place and wrapped around her ribs. Nodome, reverse direction, another nodome. Back up to the left shoulder.

The tightness in her chest eased. This might be temporary, but she felt marginally better than before.

What she really needed was to talk with someone else who understood and that was a very small group of people. She doubted Talia would be much help, which only left Sesi. Who she had just killed for. And who had just kissed her.