Page 74 of Somno Slave

I swap it out without thinking, fingers closing around the blue gel pen instead. The ink moves cleanly when I test it against the margin, smooth and immediate.

I wait for it to smear. It doesn’t.

I start writing.

The words come too fast, crowding into each other, my handwriting, losing its usual control as I try to keep pace with what I’m seeing.

Trying to define it.

To reduce it.

To force it into something I can hold at a distance.

But I know as soon as I write the words, I’ve made it all very real.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rheda

The ink has dried badly across half the page.

I stare at it for a long moment before dragging my thumb lightly over the words again, testing whether they’ll smear this time. The blue sits there stubbornly, pressed permanently into the paper in handwriting I barely recognise as mine.

The lines slope where they normally don’t. Letters crush into each other. Whole sections look rushed, almost frantic.

I hate it instantly.

I cast a look over my shoulder, as if expecting someone else to have joined me in the research room. It’s unlikely. This research room sits on the far side of the building where almost nobody bothers coming anymore, tucked behind old storage units and dead terminals that hum louder than they work.

My shift ended thirty-eight minutes ago.

I should have left the building already.

I pull the notebook closer and flip back three pages to earlier observations. I unclip the blue gel pen from the spiral binding and carefully draw a line through the weak sentence.

Subject displayed escalating psychosexual—

The words stop there beneath the thick strike of ink. Heat creeps up my neck again before I can stop it. I rewrite the sentence slowly beneath it in neater handwriting.

Subject exhibited inappropriate behavioural responses during interrogation procedure.

That’s better. Colder.

I stare at the revised line until the letters start blurring slightly. My fingers tighten harder around the pen.

The image returns anyway.

Water dripping from his jaw.

The sound he made when the current hit him.

The slow lift at the corner of his mouth afterward like he’d felt something entirely different from what we were trying to inflict.

I press the pen down too hard. Ink bursts suddenly across the page.

“Fuck.” The word slips out quietly into the empty room.

I lean back in the chair and squeeze my eyes shut hard enough to ache. The pressure helps for a second, just a second, but then his face comes back violently.