We’re not avenging angels, or deities of fate, Alex. Blakely said these words to me—and she had no idea how right she was.

There were no deities of fate in charge the night my sister was brutally murdered.

There was no moral to her story, in what doom befell her. She was stolen, tore from this world in the most violent display.

There were no avenging angels to balance the scales, just a psychopathic killer with a hunger to feed.

I spent months trying to make sense of it, trying to understand how an individual could commit such an atrocious act. I analyzed every book on the subject of psychopaths. Hours upon hours of research and study, and truly, there was no definitive answer. Worse, there was very little conclusive proof that monsters like the one that killed my sister could ever be rectified.

I had given up on psychology completely. It was about as useful to me as mythology. I am a man of science. I am a biomedical scientist. I eradicate disease. This is what I understand.

Then it donned on me, like the Fates themselves wove a shiny new thread right into my life, gifting me the answer.

Psychopathy is a disease of the mind. Not unlike a virus, an infection. A sickness.

I couldn’t bring Mary back, but I could stop the disease from spreading.

In the end, there was only one solution:

Cure the sickness.

The telltale rattle of chains pricks my ears, and my fingers halt over the keyboard.

She’s awake.

Slipping my arms into my lab coat, I move into the sterile white room and draw back the canvas curtain. Blakely lies on a gurney. Her wrists are secured with leather braces, the chains fastened to the cinderblock wall. As she slowly begins to rouse, her eyes flutter open.

This is my favorite part. The subject fresh and new and full of possibility.

“Where the fuck am I?” Blakely’s voice is hoarse from hours of unuse. As she becomes lucid, her eyes dart around the room, taking in her surroundings.

The white walls. The three large monitors. The whiteboard. The steel island with equipment. One side of the curtain is sterile and devoid of distractions. The other side is a laboratory of my design, years of research and dedication.

As her eyesight improves, Blakely’s gaze finally lands on me. Her features draw together in anger.

“Well, not anger,” I say out loud, correcting my observation. “Anger is an emotion felt by a healthy person. Your response is reactive to your circumstance. You’ve learned to display the proper corresponding emotions.”

She tests the wrist restraints and understands quickly that she’s trapped. Her eyes track me as I move to the foot of the gurney. “And what circumstance is that, Alex?”