Free Fury: Book One of the Cure (Omnibus Edition) by Charlotte McConaghy

breathe out and nod, feeling his words reach somewhere inside and calm me. I start from the beginning, doing as he says and recounting pictures. This is what I’ve done my entire life. Everything in my world is a picture, an image I recall in finite detail. This is the same. Separating the two parts of my brain, I start to speak, trusting that he can keep up with me.
    I sort through the images, starting from all those years ago when I woke up naked and shivering and nearly dead for the first time. The days after that were the worst of my life. I had no idea what to expect—I was experiencing the sickness, the bruising, the fevers and aches and bleeding all for the first time. Afterwards I became aware, in future years I made preparations, but in the beginning it was a vivid, impossible nightmare of horror.
    I become possessed by the pictures of what I’ve done. I tell him everything I can see, all the pieces I can pull out of my head. I try to stay separate from them.
    Afterwards he starts to ask questions. Hundreds of them. He is so thorough, so precise. He wants details even I have never considered, and I am amazed by him, even as I’m sickened by the activity. I assume he must be good with details because of his work—he is writing everything down, storing it in his tablet. For the first time in my life, I have given someone the pictures in my head, and he has kept them in a way that makes them real.
    *
    I feel mortified. Dirty. “Can I have a bath?” I ask abruptly. It is late afternoon and we’ve been talking for hours.
    Luke nods, distracted and still focused on the notes he’s taken. He has that line in the middle of his eyebrows. He gets it when he’s concentrating, I’ve learned. He jogs to the bathroom and starts the water running, then comes back and heads for the kitchen once more. He chops and prepares food, and all the while he frowns, miles away and utterly lost in the words I’ve spoken.
    I watch his broad shoulders and note the tense shape of them. “What are you thinking?”
    He looks up, his expression clear and calm. “I’m thinking we need to go to these crime scenes and find our proof.”
    And this, I think, is more frightening than anything either of us has said all day.
    The bath is as spectacular as I hoped. My aching body sinks into the hot water with a strange agony of delight. It’s so hot that it burns, but I like it; I like the thought that it’s scalding everything away. The lights beyond the window twinkle and I stare at them, letting my eyes go blurry so the colors dance and sway. I wonder if this is how Luke sees the world—colorful and bright and sparkling. I want to get inside his head and see how it works, see what he thinks and feels and hides. I want to see myself through his eyes, and I want to see his family and his cooking and his job. I don’t know him at all, but I want to, and that makes me nervous.
    He’s so calm about all of this because of his cure. His brain isn’t functioning in the correct way anymore, so it’s wrongly interpreting meeting a murderer as something that’s not too bad. Perhaps his fear receptors have short-circuited, or his logic centers. The thought is a sad and disappointing one. I wonder what he’d be like if he was normal. I also wonder what he’d do if I punched him in the face for no reason. Because he certainly wouldn’t get angry. He wouldn’t get annoyed, or want to hurt me back. He doesn’t have a fight response anymore—only a flight one.
    I know all of this. I remind myself every day. It’s why I never get attached to anyone—how could I possibly respect a drone, or trust their emotions?
    It’s just that … Luke’s different, somehow. He’s sort of … more normal than anyone else I’ve met. Does any of this mean I could stand to live with him? Normal or not, he is still a drone and I am still a monster.
    But, but… baths . And food .
    Once I’ve blissed out in the bath for a super long time and the water’s