As he falls to the pavement, I follow him down, my strikes wild, the knife finding a new location every time I sink the blade into his flesh. I feel bone and soft tissue and spongy organs. A haze covers my vision. I don’t stop the attack until he goes completely still.

Some thought draws me out of the frenzy, and I glance at the woman. A beat where I notice her chest moving to confirm she’s alive, then I seal my eyes closed. All I can hear are my breaths, the buzz of the city has gone silent.

I stand and stare down at the mutilated body of Ericson Daverns.

A high-pitched ringing pierces my ears. I’m numb. I can’t sense anything around me, other than an irritating sting on my palm. I close the switchblade slowly, my movements so out of character for this moment, then I turn my hand over.

Red covers my palms and fingers. I can’t stop staring at my hands, the way the color darkens the creases of my palms. The ringing grows louder, becoming a vibration in my skull, as I examine the reopened cut on the heel of my hand.

Dread is ice in my veins. The bone of Alex’s victim that punctured me, the cut that has reopened, and the blood of my victim seeping into that wound.

Alex’s final words come back to me in haunting precision. This is exactly what you’re designed to do.

“Oh my, God.” What have I done?

This wasn’t a crime of passion. It wasn’t self-defense, though a great lawyer could make a case for it. The truth is, I had options. I could have called 9-1-1. I could have warned Ericson I’d made the call. I could have fought him harder.

I consciously chose to end him. I knew, in a fraction of a second, that Ericson would get away with hurting…maybe even killing that woman…that he’d continue to hurt others, and I shoved the Taser aside in my bag and chose the switchblade.

I needed it to stop. I needed to stop him. Permanently.

I made a choice to kill.

A scream tears through me as my fingers scrape my hair back.

Once, vengeance was my ethos.

And no one is more deserving of my revenge than Alex Chambers. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d make good on my vow to hunt him down and tear his throat out.

Before Alex, I was a harmless, unfeeling psychopath. He wanted me to experience a world of emotions I’ve never felt before. He wanted to cure my sickness.

He opened a pathway—some closed-off road of neural connector bullshit is now wide open and assaulting me with too many emotions.