“They are not to be treated as dangerous animals. Dangerous animals usually kill you on purpose.”

Alison and I talked through the evening. Her plan was fairly straightforward. She planned on robbing evidence she knew she could use against those corrupt cops. My only task was to make sure that, should there be people in there, I would make sure to distract them from Alison’s work. At the first sign of danger, I could bolt out. She just needed a few seconds of distraction.

Sounded reasonable enough. The next night, Martel’s family wasn’t supposed to be on the premises. If it came to a fight, only Martel and the possible goons would be there.

The next night, I set out to the place we were supposed to rendezvous at—namely, some nondescript restaurant on the Orme quays. The Orme canal gave its name to the surrounding neighborhood, which was known for being a famous resistant turf during the second World War. It was eerie to see some eighty-year-old bullet marks in the decrepit bricks that made up most of the surrounding houses. The night was young, but the temperature had already dropped low enough that I could see a thin mist when I breathed out. I rubbed my numbing nose as I made my way towards the spot Alison had indicated.

The nearest lamppost shone a dull orange light over the pedestrian street I stood in, and the few nearby restaurants were closing for the night. Still, quite a few people were merrily trudging along the river, a group of them even singing discordant melodies that left little doubt on their state of drunkenness.

I sighed as I sat down on a cold slab of smooth sandstone that was supposed to serve as a bench. I stared absent-mindedly at the shiny spots that reflected on the river surface in front of me as I pondered on what I was about to do.

I still wasn’t sure why I had accepted to do this. While I considered myself to be a somewhat rational person, I still struggled to justify why I was doing these kinds of things. More than that, I still couldn’t get to terms with most of my own behavior ever since I had discovered my powers. I always had a somewhat fragile mental state, but if there was one thing that could be said about it, it was that it was constant. I had no highs, but my lows were rare. My average was just terrible, but it came with the single benefit of not dipping lower often.

Since that day, when that girl and I first crossed paths, my life had been thrown into a bizarre spiral of absurd events. Before then, all my life had been a meticulously crafted machine of melancholy, geared with monotony and fueled on self-loathing. But Alison had thrown a wrench in that. And a bunch of other tools, for good measure.

I was still overly anxious. My leg was jumping up and down on the pavement. In truth, I was still scared of many things. I was afraid of what people could think of me, of betraying my own moral code, not being a good person, and of many other things.

Although now, it was more of the thrilling kind. The fear of getting caught, not the fear of being worthless. I used to think emotions were just that. You were either happy, or you were scared. Or angry. Or scared and angry. But not happy and scared. Turns out I was wrong. Right now, the turmoil that fueled my tensing thigh muscles and plagued my brain proved otherwise. I was still scared, a little bit angry, sad, definitely lost, but somehow, I was smiling faintly.

I had always thought the sentence ‘when you hit rock bottom, the only way is up’ sounded somewhat stupid. As when you hit rock bottom, the hardest thing to do wasn’t to chose where to go but to start walking again.

I looked up at the moon above me. The moody crescent seemed dissatisfied with being overshadowed by those dull street lights. The atmosphere felt like it came straight out of an old noir movie. I stared at the sky for what felt like an eternity as I forced myself not to overthink how tonight was going to go.

In my reverie, I had failed to notice that quite a few clouds had started covering the rest of the sky. I really hoped it wouldn’t rain. I was only wearing a hoodie, after all.

Alison arrived with the first droplets of water. It seemed she hadn’t planned for rain either, or she simply didn’t care, as she was only wearing a black leather jacket and dark pants. She also held a motorcycle helmet under her right arm.

She looked conspicuously around me as she approached, and I did the same. We were alone now.

“Ready to do this?” I asked in an attempt to sound cool as I stood up.

She looked at me with a frown.

“Oh shit, no. You’re right,” she said as she turned on her heels and started walking the other way.

I waited a few seconds in awkward silence until she stopped a few meters away from me and turned back.

“You’re supposed to laugh,” she pointed out.

“It’s supposed to be funny for me to laugh,” I shot back. My sass had escaped my lips before my common sense could act. This girl was my employer, after all. I shouldn’t antagonize her.

“Oh, look who’s grown a sense of humor all of a sudden. Maybe I can make something out of you yet,” she said with a smirk.

“Uh… yeah,” I replied awkwardly.

“Anyway,” she continued, “We should get going. The place we’re going to is a good half an hour on foot.”

Turns out the guys we were ‘visiting’ lived on the outskirts of town. Far enough that they’d have some privacy but near enough that their dealings in town weren’t affected, I’d wager.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, we reached a somewhat secluded road that forked and lead up to the top of a hill on which sat a single house.

The house looked like a rather nondescript suburban house, albeit a pretty large one. The plastered walls were of a boringly plain off-white color while the tiled roof was brown, as were the shutters and the doors. Seeing this house out of context would have elicited no reaction from me whatsoever. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it felt like this house couldn’t belong to the mob. It actually belongs to a cop. I reminded myself. Which is probably why it feels so wrong to be sneaking up on it. This isn’t a hideout. It’s somebody’s actual home.

I tried not to dwell on it. Alison had assured me that no civilians were there and that the building’s inconspicuous look was nothing more than a facade for the shady business going on inside.

As we silently crested the hill from the backside, I started hearing music from within the house. The sound inside must have been unbearably loud as I didn’t see a single window opened.

“Shit, they’re here,” Alison said with a snarl. “No choice, we have to go in. We fall back to plan B.”

I grew tense at the implication. This was not going to be a pleasant night.

Alison paused and looked at me.

“You will do this,” she said bluntly.

“You mean I can do this, right?” I replied incredulously.

“No. This is our only chance. We have to do this.”

If you’re out swimming, you might as well go gut the fishes… Or something. I thought somberly.

Alison silently pointed at a hedge near the backdoor behind which we crouched to hide while we went over the plan one last time.

“Okay, let’s recap,” Alison whispered, loud enough to be heard above the sound of music blasting from inside. “You knock on the backdoor to make a diversion. Be sure to be heard. Next, you scare them with this,” she said as she conjured a large red and white chainsaw onto my laps.

I grasped the handle nervously. I had never used one of these, but then again, the point wasn’t to cut stuff up, just to give them a good show.

“What if they’re there and have guns?” I asked nervously.

“If they are, they probably will, but it will take them precious seconds to think of using them. If things start going south, don’t overthink it, you just bolt out of here. If they chase you, try not to die,” she replied with a creepy smile.

I gulped at the casual mention of death. I had some confidence in my power, but I wasn’t willing to try and take a bullet to the head.

“Oh, I almost forgot, take this,” Alison said as she handed me one of her soldering masks.

She didn’t take out hers, though, preferring to wear the black motorcycle helmet she had been carrying all night.

“Remember,” she said seriously. “These are nasty people. You might see stuff in there that will scar you. Stuff way worse than what you’ve seen already. Brace yourself.”

I waited a few seconds to think of a reply.

“I’m not even mentally prepared for most things that happen to me,” I paused. “But… I think I’m too committed to go back now.”

Alison nodded, and without a word, stood up and carefully made for the other side of the house while I exhaled loudly. Better not overthink this.

I really hoped Alison was right about their guns.

I started the chainsaw as I made for the door. The motor roared as I pulled the cord, its noise level almost reaching that of a car engine, yet I wasn’t sure whether they’d hear it over the sound of the music.

Before I could even reach the door, a stumbling guy swung it open. He was skinny and looked to be in his mid-twenties. He wore a crappy gray two-piece suit that looked two sizes too big and a half-unbuttoned shirt. Under the porch light, I could see that his eyes were red, and if the lingering smell was of any indication, he was probably pretty high.

He immediately froze at the sight and sound of the chainsaw in motion in my hands. His eyes threatened to pop out of their sockets as he stumbled backward.

The reaction of my opponent caused me to freeze for a second. What do I do now? Better act quick. I reflexively pressed the trigger on the handle of my chainsaw as I stepped forward. The man’s subsequent scream went up an octave in response as he flailed to try and get up.

He finally clambered onto his feet and ran to the hallway at the back of the room while screaming incoherently. I waited a few seconds, both surprised and relieved that nobody had shot at me yet. The lack of response to the guy’s screams was perplexing, but my job had been to distract everyone in the house, so I needed to do something more flashy that would grab their attention.

The inside of the house reeked of cold cigarettes and weed. The room I was in was obviously some sort of gambling area. A massive table stood in its center, with poker chips and all kinds of drugs and bottles covering most of its surface. Around the table stood eight chairs, four of which had a jacket hung onto the back.

So at least five of them, then. At least considering the fact that the loose-suit guy was wearing his.

As I made my decision to follow the man inside, the music stopped. I could hear a few voices cursing in the adjacent room right as I noticed something quite interesting. On the counter next to the hallway sat a bunch of guns in holsters. I swiftly made for the hallway to stand between the guns and their owners just as they barged out one of the side rooms.

Four rather shady-looking guys looked at me from the other side of the hallway. One of them, the one I had spooked earlier, was holding a kitchen knife, and the other three sported whatever blunt object they could get their hands on.

I wasn’t sure with the distance, but it looked like they all had smoked quite a lot, as their eyes all appeared to be of the same reddish color as their colleague.

“Couldn’t you have grabbed a fucking gun?” One of them yelled at the skinny guy.

I advanced as slowly and as dramatically as I could. I still had to make sure I grabbed the attention of the other potential occupants of the house. As I walked forward, the men at the end of the hallway flinched at every step I took.

I can’t believe this, they think I’m scary! I thought. Well, maybe the chainsaw and the soldering mask are helping somewhat.

After barely three steps, the man holding the knife snapped, throwing it at me with laughingly lousy accuracy. I didn’t even have to move as the blade harmlessly bounced off of my chainsaw.

What I hadn’t expected—and neither had they—was that the chain’s fast-rotating motion would send the knife flying back from where it came from, lodging itself firmly in the thrower’s thigh. The man howled in pain as the other three turned tails and ran up a flight of stairs, leaving their wounded colleague on the floor.

I slowly closed the distance with the man on the ground while he tried to drag himself as far away from me as he could manage. As I stepped closer to him, a loud bang resounded behind me. Followed by a few others.

I gasped in horror as I got thrown forward by the force of a few bullets hitting me in the back. One of them must have pierced my lungs as little more than a bloody gurgle managed to escape my throat.

As I slumped down to the ground, my chainsaw embedding itself in the other man’s leg, cutting it deeply and spraying arterial blood on us both. The man cried out and, with a garbled choke, fainted. I tried screaming as well at the gory display, but once again, body fluids prevailed over air as blood spurted from my mouth.

I struggled to think clearly as pain seared through my perforated insides. I heaved heavily while my punctured lung slowly mended itself.

I tried stabilizing my breath as best I could during the ensuing pause in the gunfire. I gasped with effort, sucking in as much air as I could. The sound escaping my mouth when I exhaled sounded like something halfway between a choke and a retch.

They got to their guns. I gotta run out of here.

My head was flooded with adrenaline, and the loss of blood was making me slightly dizzy. I grabbed the chainsaw and jumped back to my feet.

Wrong move.

My balance had clearly been affected by my sudden rise and blood loss. I stumbled across the hallway, barely holding the chainsaw in my hand as I faced the man who had shot me in the back.

In front of me stood what was very likely to be a cop and the owner of this house. The man was tall, buff, and sported a close-cropped haircut. The professional-looking holster strapped to his torso and the gun in his hand hinted at an extensive experience with firearms.

Although he was a great deal more confident than his acolytes, the man still showed a hint of fear, flinching slightly at each of the clumsy steps I took towards him. After barely a couple of seconds, he opened fire again. Once, twice, thrice. Two bullets hit me in the shoulder, and one grazed off the side of my mask, denting it. I staggered slightly but didn’t fall, eliciting a frown on my opponent’s face. I took the opportunity to close the gap between us.

I could think more clearly now that the previous wounds I had withstood had healed already and didn’t hurt anymore.

The last bullet the man fired glanced off the corner of my mask, just above where the glass protecting my eyes was, cracking it but not breaking through. He pressed the trigger and cursed when it only produced a dull “click” sound. He looked at me for a split second and bolted the other way.

For one of those rare times in my life, my mind was clear. I was in mortal danger, and I had to do something to get out of this.

“Philippe, where the fuck are you? Get down here. It’s a fucking Rampant! Get out the big—” he got cut off by a loud resounding clunk. The noise sounded like a lousy foley sample of what an aluminum baseball bat hitting someone’s head would sound like in a cartoon.

My guess wasn’t far from the truth, as when I reached the exit where the man had run towards, I found him lying on the floor in front of Alison, who was holding a large steel pipe in her hands.

“Fuck me, you scared me!” She jumped back. “This worked way better than expected. Thankfully you already got that whole serial killer vibe going on. Helps a lot with the psychological warfare aspect.”

“I already had what?” I asked in indignation. “Never mind that, did you get what you needed?”

“No. They’re not all down here, and I didn’t find anything useful upstairs—just that one guy I took out quietly. A few seconds later, though, three of them climbed up, so I took them out as well,” she said nonchalantly.

“So, that’s all of them, if the amount of jackets on the ground floor is any indication,” I remarked.

“Alright, since we’re not going for sneaky anymore, we might as well go explore. I had expected more of them to be there and more heavily armed,” she said.

“Yeah… They kinda left their guns in this room behind, except for that guy,” I said, pointing at the unconscious man lying on the ground with my chainsaw. “He must have gone around back and grabbed one of the guns. Or maybe he had it on him. He looks like a cop as well.”

“He is,” she said firmly. “This is Frederic Martel, one of the two I told you about.”

“Shit. This is bad, isn’t it? What do we do about him?” I asked in alarm.

For the first time in the night, I could sense the familiar feeling of anxiety welling up in my stomach. Up until now, everything had been thrilling, regardless of the danger I was in. Anxiety had a distinctly less stimulating feeling to it than sheer terror.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” she stated. “Right now, we secure those guys, and we look for what we initially came here for.”

She bound and gagged the man outside with a couple of conjured zip-ties and electrical tape. We then proceeded to do the same with the man bleeding in the hallway. I made sure to wrap the wounds tight to prevent them from over-bleeding.

When we climbed upstairs, we found the three men Alison had taken care of lying on top of another like in a crappy cartoon after-fight. The last one was lying in one of the backrooms, a massive bump on his head.

We strapped them all to each other with zip-ties and gagged them. At no point did I make an effort to check if they were still breathing, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

Finally, when the men were all rounded up and rendered harmless, we started snooping around for any incriminating evidence against them.

After a good ten minutes of finding absolutely nothing, we decided to go investigate the basement. The door was currently secured by a thick padlock that Alison made quick work of with her angle-grinder. What we found there was deeply disturbing.

A big steel cage probably meant to hold big animals—or worse—was hooked to a thick electric cord that currently lay on the ground next to an electrical outlet.

The inside of the cage was covered in blood, and the smell coming from it was nauseating. The door was open, though, which meant that whatever—or whoever—had been in there had been taken out. Not recently, judging by the dry aspect of the several bodily fluids coating the floor.

After a cursory inspection of the room, Alison found what she had been looking for. The folder she was now reading contained a relatively detailed list of different types of people. I flicked my gaze between her and the list in confusion until the realization dawned on me. These were the descriptions and track records of people who had been smuggled in here.

“Those guys are actually human traffickers?” I let out in shock.

“It’s as I feared. I knew there was some really shady shit going on with them, but I hadn’t imagined they were this deep in it,” Alison said somberly.

A heavy weight set in my stomach as Alison flipped the pages, revealing page-wide pictures of people in cages, some of them bleeding. The sight made me nauseous. Most of them were sickly thin and full of scars. There seemed to be a more significant amount of women among them, some of them looking awfully young.

My disgust quickly grew into downright raging anger as Alison reached the last page. A little girl in a tattered dress sat in one of the cages, a horrified look on her face. She was cuddling a teddy bear that looked to be soaked in blood. A footnote stated: “Impacted, power unclear. Not dangerous.”

Alison’s hand was shaking. She clenched her empty fist so tight that I could see her knuckles visibly turn white.

I tentatively put a hand on her shoulder. We didn’t speak as Alison closed the folder and looked blankly at the wall.

If I hadn’t been entirely convinced before, there was no doubt in my mind that I was committed now. If not for the missing people, at least for my own peace of mind.

“So. What do we do now?” I finally broke the silence.

“Alex, do you know about the Scanner?” She asked after a few seconds of ominous silence.

“The what?” I asked.

“The Scanner. They’re an… obstacle of sorts. They’re the eyes and ears of the IHI. They can stop the spread of any information. They mess with it, somehow.”

“What? How?” I asked in puzzlement.

Alison lifted her helmet and opened her mouth. She then immediately snapped it shut. “I’m not sure. The only thing I know is that they mess with everything I try making public. I’ve been playing a weird game of cat and mouse with them for the past few years. When I first heard about them, I thought the same thing you’re probably thinking right now. How the hell can something ‘mess with information’ exactly? It didn’t make any sense. At first, I simply ignored it and tried giving trusted acquaintances all the proof I could gather about their nasty operations. But as time went by, none of them seemed to be able to publish it. Weird accidents kept happening: secure documents when missing, people started getting forgetful… Even I found myself misplacing crucial evidence. But I still tried; I was convinced there had to be a way to circumvent their influence. One day, though, things went too far.” Her gaze went distant, and her tone grew cold. “One day, they killed someone very dear to me.”

Alison took a very quivering breath, and with a rare display of sadness, she pinched the bridge of her nose like she wanted to block out tears from leaving her eyes. “She hadn’t done anything… She’d just overheard me talking over the phone about some stuff I’d seen…” she trailed off and clutched her fist. Grief flashed in her eyes, but she quickly steeled herself. “Ever since then, I stopped trying.”

I waited a few seconds in stunned silence. This was bad. If Alison was telling the truth –and I started thinking she might be– we were up against way more than we could handle. I stared at her anxiously as I mulled over the several implications this would have. We are so fucked. I only thought I was risking my life until now, but apparently, I might endanger other people just by talking to them.

“You’re not making this up, are you?” I asked skeptically.

Alison scowled and looked at me straight in the eye. “Denis Meyer, the corporal of the Hauts-De-Seines IHI division, was killed by his subordinate Daniel Ferreira. Try posting this on Twitter or whatever.”

I gulped as I gingerly took out my phone to oblige. Should I actually try? Isn’t this dangerous? But I want to know. No, I HAVE to know. I clenched my teeth in anticipation, and I pressed the ‘send’ button under my tweet. But nothing seemed to happen. Time dilated as my stress level reached a level I wasn’t quite comfortable with. I looked up at Alison in confusion.

“Feel free to try it anywhere. It won’t work. That particular story only seems to have… light consequences anyway…” Alison said.

This was surreal. I didn’t know what to think, let alone what to do.

“Fuck,” I finally said. “What do we do with them?”

“We fight them, carefully,” Alison stated with a resolve that could cut through steel.

“I meant, what do we do with our unconscious hosts,” I clarified.

“Oh. Those guys. We dispose of them,” she said in an even voice.

“No, we can’t. There has to be another way. What if we just told the cops?” I asked with hope.

“And risk having potential other corrupted cops covering their friends’ asses? Not taking that chance. Be reasonable,” Alison replied.

And with that, I snapped.

“Be fucking reasonable? Are you fucking shitting me? What about this is reasonable?” I yelled out in anger. “We could find a way to expose these guys, call the cops on them, maybe just lure them outside and take pictures or something. But instead, you’d rather play judge, jury, and executioner and sign their death warrant.”

“What signed their death warrant is what you saw in the folder,” Alison said in a glacial tone. “I warned you about the Scanner. Now, it’s up to you. You either help me, or you’re in my way.”

We held gazes for a few tense heartbeats until Alison broke the silence.

“I’ll deal with them as humanely as I can and set the house on fire to get rid of the evidence.”

Rage took control of me.

“Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK,” I screamed as I hurled a nearby chair onto a wall.

I breathed in and out a few times before speaking again. Alison’s back was turned to me, and the casual display of disdain didn’t even register with me.

“Alright, you wanna do this your way? Fuck it. I feel like I’m damning my fucking soul. But fine. Just know that you’re taking the easy way out. You’re no better than them. You’re just sating your thirst for violence in a different way.”

It was Alison’s turn to snap. She turned to face me with a red face.

“It’s not the fucking same, and you know it, you monumental moron!” She seethed. “They are fucking slavers, rapists, and torturers. I’m just there trying to stop it. If you can’t see that, you’re even more fucked in the head than I initially thought.”

I hated it. I hate all of it. I hated her for making me do this. I hated myself for getting involved. And most of all, I hated the fact that despite everything, I still felt like she might be right. So naturally, I replied with the only thing I could come up with.

“Fuck you!” I whispered. “Fuck everything. Fuck this, fuck that Scanner, fuck those guys. Fuck my life. Fuck you again, and fuck this world for making me do this.”

“Good. Be angry, but don’t sulk. Anger is more productive. Even if it’s aimed at me,” she said in an even tone.

“It’s…” I let out dejectedly. “Let’s get this over with.”

When I stepped outside, it wasn’t the weight of an unconscious man I was dragging with me. Instead, it was the boulder of guilt that seemed to have taken residence in my stomach.

I didn’t go back inside as Alison poured gallons of every flammable liquid she could get her hands on on the floors of the house. I didn’t know where the bodies were, nor did I really care to. I’d rather not think about what had happened while I waited.

Alison drew a lighter from her pocket and lit a gasoline-soaked rag hanging out of the top of a bottle. She then threw her makeshift Molotov cocktail inside and backed away. I had expected a big explosion or a massive bang, but nothing so spectacular happened. The fire simply spread quickly but far away from me. It was like watching the inside of a gigantic fireplace being set ablaze on a cold winter night.

I wordlessly passed her the soldering mask I had been carrying all night.

“I wondered for a while. Can you infinitely generate these?” I asked, part curious and part not wanting to face what we had just done.

She didn’t reply.

We stood silently in front of the morbid pyre. In front of what we’d done. This time, I couldn’t hide behind Alison’s action to justify what we had done. Tonight, I had given the world five reasons to justifiably get rid of me.

What have we done? What have I done?

A tear silently grew in the corner of my eye.

I’m not a vigilante. I’m definitely not a hero now. I’m just a fucking 19-years-old kid who’s way out of his depth.

But what was done was done. The slowly burning walls of the house we had killed five men in was a grim spectacle that I needed to stare right in the eye. Those men had died because of me. Because I had been weak.

No, because I was indecisive. My meddling helped cause these deaths. Worse, they also helped to kill those other guys in the precinct. I thought bitterly.

Although I was shaken to the core from the recent events, anger still dominated my thoughts—anger at this, anger at Alison, and especially anger at myself for not stepping up. Nothing had prevented me from standing up to her, from calling the cops on her, from restraining her. No, nothing should have stopped me—except for one thing.

In a twist of cruel irony, anger itself was what had stopped me. Anger at what those men had done. At what they had done willingly. The mere possibility of having these scumbags get away with this was enough to plant the seed of doubt and indecision in the fertile soil of my rotten mind.

I hated Alison for putting me in that situation. I hated her so much. But I was also to blame, and to focus my anger on her was a sure recipe for ignoring my own part in it. In killing those men the other night as well. Their deaths, even though more understandable than those we’d caused tonight, were nonetheless inexcusable. I needed to come to terms with it, not hide in a corner and pretend I had no part in this mess.

All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing, right? Well, all it takes for evil to prevail even faster is for stupid men like me to make things worse.

I need to be better.

I had crossed the line of ‘accidental villainy’, and there was no recovering from there. Getting better was an unrealistic goal, to be honest. The way I saw it, there would only be one obvious thing I could do from where I stood now. I needed to make sure there was no other way for her to handle things. I already knew I was no hero, nor was I ever going to compare myself with one from this point on, but I was in a position to make things slightly less awful. It would be no penance but simple responsibility.

I couldn’t bring any more light into this world, but I would do my damned absolute best to prevent some of it from getting too dark.

I inhaled a deep and sharp breath of stinging cold air.

“This won’t happen again,” I finally let out in a serious tone.

Alison kept staring ahead, demons of her own plaguing her thoughts.

We went back at a brisk pace, but slowly enough that we appeared to be jogging rather than fleeing from a crime scene, not that anybody could have seen us in the utter darkness.

After reaching the place where Alison had parked her motorcycle, she reached into her jacket’s interior pocket, took out a folded brown envelope, and gave it to me.

“Here’s your cut,” she said without emotion.

“My cut?” I cocked a brow. “We were paid by somebody else?”

“I told you I would be sharing what we found tonight with my employer. He pays me for stuff like this.”

This night had been a real eye-opener for me, both on Alison’s way of thinking and my own. I had discovered – no, confirmed – that I cared about people. And also that what motivated me to accompany this crazy girl wasn’t just the opportunity for a thrill. It was a sense of responsibility. I was committed now. No matter how fucked up things had gotten.

When things had gone south tonight, I had paradoxically reached levels of clarity and calm I had never felt before, even in therapy. I thought it a curious oddity that my brain had been at its most peaceful during one of the scariest moments in my life. Maybe it was the fact that when things went to shit, I felt like I wasn’t the only one drowning in it anymore.

There was, of course, also the fact that Alison was mentally unstable. I had known that since the beginning, but now I had a better idea of what kind of issues she had.

Alison didn’t see the limits of her own view of the world. She needed an anchor to the regular world, and tonight I had acted the part. I had grounded her when she had threatened to forsake her humanity. At the cost of six lives. I winced. Okay, maybe I’m not that good at it.

I might not have been the best person to counterbalance her violent sociopathic tendencies, but I was the only one in a position to do something about it. If I’m not there next time she goes ballistic, who knows how many people, innocent or not, will die as a result? I did not picture myself a hero, especially not after tonight, but maybe I could be a villain’s safeguard.

I stared deep into her eyes. They were dark brown, I noticed for the first time.

Yes. If not to be your conscience, at least I can try to reduce collateral damage. I may not have many convictions in life, but in this, I will not go back.

Her face relaxed as she stared back at me.

“Aww, how can I stay mad at you when you’re this naïve!” She cooed while trying to pinch my cheek.

I couldn’t muster a reply at the complete u-turn in personality. This girl has serious issues.

“Friday 29th, 19:30. The shitty kebab spot from last time. Don’t be late,” she said.

I didn’t reply.