A double was difficult to control, but enormously satisfying: Obediah hacked the woman in the ribs, twice, and then jumped inside her and forced her to stab the husband. Not mortally, but with enough force to crack a rib and perforate a lung. Then it jumped again and had the husband get her, smack in the middle of the head. The cleaver got stuck—her skull wouldn’t release it.

Then it dialed 911, explained the scene at length, and went to work on the fallen woman’s body.

By the time the cops showed up—plenty of them—the EMT was parceling the wife’s body into pieces roughly the size of a beer can.

The baby was crying in its crib. Obediah jumped into the baby—and was retrieved by a Hispanic officer.

The other officer ordered the EMT to drop the hatchet. Upon failure to comply, he shot the EMT a few times.

The Hispanic officer covered the baby’s eyes protectively. It was delicious for Obediah to then overtake the Hispanic officer and walk him past the bleeding EMT and the hacked-apart woman to the open window.

Obediah threw the baby right out the window. Five floors. Watched it explode on the pavement. Heard the screams of passersby rise up.

The other officer was yelling at him. Obediah turned, reached for a kitchen knife.

The other officer shot his partner, and Obediah jumped into him.

Chapter

Odessa sat on the sofa next to Linus, eating Indian food delivered by Postmates—costing almost twice as much as the menu price of the food itself, but Linus knew she didn’t want to venture out after dark, for fear of being ambushed by some click-hungry blogger with an iPhone, nor did she want to be left alone in the apartment.

It didn’t feel like a splurge. Nothing felt special anymore.

Normally they would be watching Netflix on Linus’s laptop or streaming a basketball game (if she was feeling generous), but she wanted to stay away from anything that might cause her to trip over a news report. Invisible walls had gone up around her life, and Linus’s by extension. She didn’t like it, but it felt necessary. Her mood was like the tiny air pocket in a bubble level, supersensitive to any gradient change and impossible to keep centered.

Linus was a sweetheart, filling the quiet spaces with small talk about his day, trying to keep the second hand moving. But inside Odessa’s mind, a second voice spoke to her, and it was her own.

You took a life.

She had killed a fellow agent in the line of duty. That point was not in dispute. In her healthiest moments, she ticked off all the events that led her to shoot Walt Leppo; in her darkest moments, she questioned everything about that night, including her own rationality.

Your career is over.