The girl sat cross-legged on the carpet.  A large book was laid out on the floor in front of her.  Her head hung over it, supported by her hands.  Small, pink fingers twisted through fine strands of lusterless hair. 

She was looking sickly.  Ever since the full moon, her golden hair had turned to hay, dull and brittle.  Her skin was a waxy tallow.  On the rare occasion she looked up, her eyes were haunted and sleepless, underscored by dark circles that gave the sockets a sunken quality.

How long could the girl survive in solitary captivity?  How long would it be before she succumbed to madness or just gave up and stopped eating? 

And what were those changes doing to her? 

Each time they took ahold of her, they ripped her apart and put her back together again.  How long could her body go through that before her heart failed?  Before her brain hemorrhaged?  Before her bones and muscles lacked the strength to reassemble themselves, and there was nothing left but a hideous, hybrid corpse?

Realistically, how long did she have to live anyway?

The Observation Center door opened with a whoosh of air released from the hydraulic lock.

From behind him, Tray Cullen heard a surprised voice mutter, "Oh."

He looked over to see a black skirt billow with a sudden turn, and go back out the door.

"Emily, wait."  The door was already closing behind her.  He dashed for it and slipped through the narrowing gap. 

She walked a fast clip without turning around and Tray had to jog to catch up.  He stopped her just before she passed through the plastic sheet that formed the first barrier leading to the cleanroom lab.  If she had decided to turn right instead of left, she would have taken them back to the wolf room.  The memory of the last time they were there fell on his conscience with a dull thud, and Tray couldn't help but wince, even before Emily slapped away the hand that held her back by the crook of her elbow.  

"Please," he implored, as she started walking away again.  "I need to talk to you."

"Well, I don't want to talk to you." 

"I'm sorry, okay?  I screwed up."  He wasn't sure what held her there while he apologized.  Perhaps it was the sheer force of will he was exerting.  Tray faced the hostility of her glare, while she waited for a good explanation.  Her arms were folded and pressed tightly against her chest, accenting the breasts coddled in her white sateen shirt.  Her bottom lip was puckered from a frown, and he couldn't help but be a little turned on by the effect.

"I didn't think it was going to be like that.  I thought—"  What had he been thinking exactly?  That it would be easy?  That they would stroll in collect a few samples, take a selfie with the beast, then go grab a latte?  No.  He had wanted her there because he knew it was going to be hard, and he didn't want to have to do it alone.  "Okay, I don't know what I thought.  Can you just give me two minutes to explain?  I want to make it up to you."

Tray began to falter under her gaze.  It was as though she could see straight into him, directly to the corruption at his core.  Like she could see that slimy hobgoblin that roamed the inner reaches of his soul, blackening every good intention he ever had.  Not that there had ever been many of those. 

He found himself longing for her good opinion, in the same way he had always strived for Whitney's.

He had gone into nursing because he desired to show his big sister how much he wanted to help people.  More than anything, Tray wished for her to see him as a good person.  He wanted that more than he ever cared about doing anything for anyone else.  Although somewhere in the maze of self-deceptions he called his consciousness, he did believe he had altruistic motives.  At least, for a little while, he did.

Whitney had been so happy about it.  And when Tray began hedging, telling her there was no point because no one would hire him with his record, she went to the courthouse to prove to him that it was sealed.

"See," she had said.  "Because you were under eighteen, it's like none of it ever happened.  You can't let your past hold you back from your future."

Tray had forced a smile.  "You're right.  I'm going to go for it."

When their father tried to stop him, standing up from the dinner table filled with rage at the injustice of the fates, she stepped in.

"I absolutely forbid it," he had yelled.  "You're a Cullen.  You should be a doctor.  Why do you continuously have to disappoint this family?  What have I done that I can't come home without some new shame laid at my doorstep?  A nurse.  That's no job for my son.  That's no job for a man."

"Dad, a lot of men are nurses."  Whitney had said using that sweet, gentle voice, which always talked him down from his rages.  The voice he could never say no to.  "I think it's wonderful that Tray wants to do this."

It took two more weeks, but she finally convinced him not to interfere, and he even paid for the school when the time came.  And the whole family was in attendance when Tray graduated, even if Whitney was the only person he had invited. 

The first day on the job at the hospital, she took him out for lunch and gave him a present.  It was an expensive diving watch, and she had gotten Love you, Bro engraved on the back.

"I'm so proud of you," she had told him.

It was about a year later when he got fired and arrested for stealing pharmaceuticals.  And Whitney was there to bail him out.  And she kept bailing him out of jail and jam after jam.

Whitney was his guardian angel.  She never stopped fighting to save him from himself, although it had always been a losing battle.  He was forever sliding back down the banks of that pit, but she never seemed to tire of trying to pull him out.

It had always been her infinite kindness and generosity that helped put the creature in his head to rest for a while.  Just never long enough.

Then the diagnosis came, and he realized she would soon be too sick to ever help him again.

It pushed Tray to go back to rehab.  He decided to get better so he could become her personal nurse.  This time, he would help her as she fought another losing battle – the hopeless fight against the brain eroding sickness without any cure.  Some horrible thing the doctors called Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease.

Before he left rehab, she was hospitalized.  His plan to move in with her and care for her had slipped away.  But then along came the DTAA, and shortly after them, Palmer.  And that automaton devil gave him a new way to help her.  A real way. 

Tray saw it clearly now.  He would have to let that the hobgoblin come out.  It was time for it to be put to work to save Whitney.  It was time for him to throw out the last vestiges of his humanity.

So why did he still care what Emily thought of him?  After tomorrow night, everyone in the bunker would know how horrible he really was, and she would never see him again.  Yet the need to have her forgive him itched at his mind like the need for a fix.   Somewhere in his bad wiring was the craven need to show her he wasn't a bad guy, have her look at him with kindness, laugh and tell him to forget about it.  It was just another sickness of his spirit.

"You know you're not supposed to leave her unmonitored," Emily said.  "If R.J. catches you out here, he isn't going to be happy."

"I don't care."

"What? So now suddenly you're brave?  Why couldn't you have shown a little of that backbone when we were in there with that thing."

"I'm sorry—"

"I had to touch it."  She stepped closer to him.  Her words were pitched through her tight jaw and became more shrill as she spoke.  "Do you understand?  I held its paw in my hands.  And now on top of everything else, I can't stop dreaming about that fucking thing."

Tray suddenly focused on her.  It was like the changing of a lens.  Until then all he'd seen was the beautiful woman that was mad at him.  A woman he needed to forgive him to fill some empty hole that would never be filled.  He hadn't seen the red puffiness in her eyes, or the bleached out look of her skin.  All the signs of distress were lost on him.

She was having the same dreams.

"Are you unable to sleep?  I'm so sorry."  His hand went up to lightly touch her hair with a comforting stroke, but she intercepted it and whacked it away.

"Stop saying that.  I don't believe you."

"But don't you see we're the same.  That thing has done something to us.  I wake up in the middle of the night hearing that thing howling.  In my dreams, I touch it just like I did that night.  Somehow it has infected us with something."

"You're an idiot.  Infected."  She rolled her eyes.  "It's psychological, doofus.  You're scared of it, so you dream about it.  Besides, it hasn't been the dreams keeping me up.  I have a lot worse things to worry about than Fido in there."

 "Like what?  Let me help."  

"Stay out of my life.  Stay away from me.  Take your schoolboy crush and shove it up your ass."  She pushed the palms of her hands against his chest and shoved him back.

"I just want to help."

"Well, if you want to help, you can start by dropping dead."

"Is there a problem here?"  Paulson stood down the hall, by the door outside his lab.  He was a good thirty feet away and had to shout to be heard.  His voice held more complaint than concern like they were a bunch of kids making too much noise outside his house.

"No, we were just..." Tray stammered.  Emily took the opportunity to walk off.

Before stepping through the door to the decontamination area of the cleanroom, she spun to face him again.  The plastic sheet fogged her over hiding the subtle details of her face, but it was clear her skin was flushed, and the muscles in her neck were taut.  "Stay the hell away from me, or else.  You might think I won't hurt you, but you'd be wrong."

She disappeared through the door.  Paulson shook his egg-shaped head at him before returning to his work.  Then Tray was all alone.

He would never have Emily's forgiveness.  And if Whitney ever found out what he was about to do, he would never have hers either.  He would save her, but it would be tainted – just like everything else he ever touched.  And the disgust in her eyes would be a thousand times worse than anything he had ever experienced.

But he had to do it.  It was better for her to be alive and hate him than the alternative.  Wasn't it?