'I remember… it was the strangest thing. After the operation… I woke up… and suddenly I just didn't give a shit. It was like I'd been cringing… cringing my whole life… skulking like a beaten dog, and then… I could really breathe deep, you know? Like… those first days of spring… or that first line of coke. And I realized: people… People were my problem. I went to bed worrying about people… went to work worrying about people—I even worried in the fucking shower! I'd think… Why did I say that? or… Why did bitch-face look at me '\ that way? or… What if Tom tells Dick… that I fucked Harry? Cringing. Wringing my hands. Catching my breath. Worry-worry-worry…

'But now… hmm. Now everything is…' Pale lines bucked against crowded shadows, and she cried out. 'What can I say?' she continued, talking as though to catch her own drool. 'Anything goes, professor… Anything.'

There was nothing to see but pain, the bite of blood, his brow crimping to his cheek as though his eyes had become greased marbles. Even so, it was as if a great palm pressed his face back and to the side, his temple to the wall, away from the horror his ears could so plainly see. Sam. Sam.

The creaking stopped. 'Getting close, doc?' she cooed, her voice mother-tender. 'Why is it… you all look… so lovely the moment just before?'

A faint slapping sound, relentless beneath the chorus of three humans breathing.

'There's a way… to get it… you know. Just… tell me… tell me where you stashed the data…'

Her voice had become a quavering thread.

'Just… tell… me…'

Again Thomas was blinking, trying to peer past his obscuring blood.

'Never,' Neil grunted.

Another gunshot. A strange noise escaped from Thomas's chest. A cry? The slapping sound, flabby, wet, continued uninterrupted.

'Are you…' Sam mumbled. 'Are you shooooor,'

'You thought…' Neil replied drunkenly. 'You thought screwing me would do it?' Spoken between swallows of spit.

The slapping stopped. Panting filled the silence. 'Mackenzie,' Sam said, like a sprinter searching for her voice. 'Mackenzie's idea. You risked so much banging the professor's wife… He thought all your tweaking might have left your executive functions especially vulnerable to sexual stimuli… So I thought what the fuck…' She laughed at this, and the slapping sound resumed, the tempo more furious. 'But, mmmm, I had no idea it would be so… delicious.'

Thomas stared blind.

'You've doomed yourself,' Neil croaked. 'You realize. Every Neuropath who's engaged in violent sexual behavior has gone serial. They fall into some kind of obsessive loop. Once they start, they can't seem to get enough.'

'Threshold compensation?' Sam asked.

'Exactly. Once the volume goes up, there's no turning it down.'

'Crank it, I say…'