登入For a $5 million research stipend, I agreed to let the System install an empathic link inside my body. "Subject. Are you sure you want to proceed? Once installed, the procedure cannot be reversed. This is a prototype. Side effects are not fully characterized." I looked at the sidewalk-stall clothes my girlfriend Cara Lake had bought herself, and the drugstore-grade makeup on her vanity. I nodded. That night, while she was out at her bar job. A current came up out of nowhere inside me. My whole body lit up with a sickening pleasure that did not belong to me. Seven times. A few days later I waited near the club where she worked. I overheard her with her friends. "Cara. You're something else. Pouring La Prairie into a plastic bag and using it like that? Faking poor like a champion. Doesn't Adam ever notice?" "Notice? He's stupid. He'll believe anything I say. His father got hit by a car, lay in bed without the money for treatment, died alone. I told Adam I couldn't help. He stayed up all night comforting me. I almost died laughing." The laughter went into me like a knife. I got out of there. The tears came on the walk home. I picked up the phone. "Professor. I'll go to the classified institute. I'll go now."
查看更多Cara's parents had been calling her phone nonstop. She was not picking up. She had been sitting on the floor of the rented apartment we had shared.The room was dark. She was knotted into a corner. Wave after wave of someone else's pleasure rolled through her body. She didn't know whose; she knew what it was.She had been with enough men to recognize the feeling. Her own body kept answering it.Hazel took me to a hotel banquet hall on a quiet morning. When we walked in, I saw a row of people standing there.I knew every face in the line.These were the people who had stood outside our front door when my father was alive, demanding payment."Mr. Hale, we owe you and your father an apology. We were too extreme back then. We were wrong."After my father died, I had used his name to keep paying his debts down. The debts were cleared. But what had been done to my father could never be settled.These people were innocent, too. They were not the ones at fault.I let my eyes drop."T
I was in the institute hospital for three weeks. The burned skin opened, oozed, scabbed, opened again, and slowly healed under fresh skin. The itch was constant.I was reaching for it when a hand closed on my wrist.Hazel Yates raised her eyebrows at me."Don't scratch. You'll scar."I clicked my tongue. She had come again.I tried to get her to talk first. "Did the meeting end early?""Try to talk the professor into letting me out. I'm fine. Everyone is working, and I am sitting here."She let her mouth move into something close to a smile, which she rarely did."The professor said you stay until you're fully healed. You don't get back on the project until then."She was firm. I let it go. I let my eyes drift to the burns. My expression tightened.When the professor had moved my hospital, he had moved me into the institute's own clinic in Hartfield. The burned skin had fused with my shirt. I don't respond well to anesthesia. The hours of debridement had been the worst hours
"Cara, what is it?"Roman had heard the call. He reached for her hand.She shoved his hand off without thinking, got back in the car, and drove to the apartment we had shared.The street that should have been the most familiar in the world felt wrong on the way in.She put her shaking hand on the door and pushed.A wave of rotting smell hit her. She covered her mouth.The food she had cooked for me was still on the table. It had gone bad days ago. The soup she had spilled on me, and the pot it came from, were still on the kitchen floor, both reeking.She did not stop to look. She went straight to the bedroom.She pulled the closet open.Everything I owned was gone. What was left were the cheap clothes she had bought, and rows of plastic bottles and containers.She had always hated those clothes. She was afraid the fabric would irritate her skin. Every time she wore them out, she would take them off as soon as she got home and spray them over and over with disinfectant, even t
Roman's burn was not serious. Cara sat at the edge of his bed for hours. When he finally fell asleep, she straightened her shoulders, picked up her coat, and stepped outside.She scrolled to my contact and stopped.She tapped my name, then killed the call before it connected.She lit a cigarette and let it burn down to her fingers. Then she typed:[Adam, you shouldn't have hurt Roman. His family is influential, you can't take them on.][How is your burn? When you're done, come to the hospital and apologize. You were in the wrong first. I’ve spoiled you too much, that’s why you’ve become so arrogant.]She had convinced herself she had the moral high ground. She was even willing, in her 'generosity,' to forgive me. All I had to do was go along with it.She tapped send.A red exclamation point appeared next to the message."So you've got some nerve now, Adam.""Let's see who breaks first."She tightened her grip on the phone.She turned to head back into Roman's room, but a nu












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