The OC had become so familiar R.J. had stopped seeing it.  He had been in every day that week, but when he thought back, he couldn't remember any particular details from the time he had spent there.  The memories were of the generic template in his mind called the Observation Center.  He knew what each monitor showed.  He could name every knob, switch, and dial on the consoles and say what they were used for.  If he thought about it, he could almost feel the fake black leather of the chair seats and point out which one squeaked when you leaned back on it.  But there was a flat quality to it all.  The texture of everyday life was removed.

He was about to leave for the day and had just stepped in for one last look.  The room chilled him with its starkness.  The lights gleamed off the white surfaces making a blizzard-like fog.  The hum of the cooling fans rose to a rumbling, chugging sound that bulldozed every noise in its path.  Fine goosebumps spread across his neck as it seemed like he was looking at it for the first time.  Its well-known features were suddenly cold and alien, as though the OC had been picked up and dropped onto the surface of some distant ice planet.

R.J. wanted to get out of there.  It was Saturday and he had a date with Nikki.  They were going to have dinner at a steakhouse.  Afterward, Nikki wanted to stop by a trendy club where a friend of hers worked.  The bartender—or as she called him, the mixologist—was going to be making Halloween themed cocktails which she wanted to sample, while surrounded by all the people in their costumes.

Nikki loved Halloween.  As she said, "When else do you get a chance to pretend to be someone you aren't."

He was already late, but he wavered—lingering a moment longer at the window and looking into Amy's bedroom.

The girl sat on the bed with her back to the wall, knees pressed to her chest.  A book was flung next to her, its cover spread open but the paged turned down—buried against the blanket.  Amy's face was hidden by the fortress of her legs and was as unreadable as the book.

Horus's report said she was agitated and aggressive, but she looked miserable and withdrawn.  The doctor had tried to make out that her behavior yesterday was part of a larger trend and made a recommendation for actions to be taken.

R.J. liked Horus—it was hard not to.  Horus was always quick to smile and slow to speak.  When he did speak, there was grandfatherly wisdom in his voice that made him seem older than his fifty-eight years.  His body was big and lumbering, but he carried himself with dignity.  There was a grace with his movements that came from being confident and unhurried.  And in the snake pit of the Music Box, Horus was someone who could be trusted.  But lately, there had been something off with him.  He was nervous and jumpy.  He looked haggard as though he hadn't slept well in weeks.  His eyes were permanently rimmed by a red corona and they darted around, seeking out phantoms in the shadows.  He wasn't the same person he was back in May.

Watching the tape of the session, it appeared that he was pushing the girl too hard, poking at her sore spots until she snapped.  And what was worse, he did it with a distracted, disregard to what was happening in front of him, until things had gone too far.

A review of the tapes of the past week showed much the same story, except they ended with Amy in tears or sulking away from the window and refusing to speak.  Her outburst may have been bizarre, but in light of these other sessions, it seemed long overdue.

When R.J. called Horus into his office, he kept his eyes on the printed report rather than look at the sad, beleaguered face in front of him.

He flipped a page over as though he were looking over an important passage.  "I really don't think extra precautions are necessary."

"Did you read the report?"

R.J. had been finding it hard to express his profound disagreement with Horus's professional judgment, but the condescension in the old man's voice made it a whole lot simpler.  He lowered the sheaf of papers, making the look of displeasure on his face clear.  "I have.  So just to make sure I got it straight: a little girl in an impenetrable cell threatens you and your response is to have her drugged out of her mind?  There's no way in hell I'm going to authorize that."

"The dosage isn't that extreme.  And this isn't about me.  She is deeply disturbed.  This fit of aggression only exposed her potential for violence.  She might not be able to hurt any of us, but she may harm herself.  If you won't consider a medical solution, you need to add more manpower to watching her.  Things can't go on the way they have.  She needs constant supervision."

After the first couple of months, things had relaxed at the Music Box.  The staff, once stretched thin, had fallen into a comfortable routine.  Amy was never sick.  Never acted out.  Despite Horus's warnings, she never once showed any signs of being suicidal.  All she did was read and listen to music.  R.J. wasn't going to start making everyone pull double shifts again because of Horus's paranoia.

Even the lycanthrope for all its magnificence had become part of the routine.  They had done everything they could to identify and catalog its biology short of an autopsy.  Now the only thing to do was keep tabs on its growth and development and test its capabilities.

Returning from his thoughts, he tossed the report down to signal that the meeting was over.  "I'll monitor the situation.  If she continues to exhibit violent tendencies, we'll revisit this."

Watching Amy, R.J. began to blame Horus less for her outburst.  How much of her problems were R.J.'s fault—all of their fault?  Her extreme captivity must be torture.  Never being allowed outside in the fresh air.  Only getting to talk to two people—one of which was a government-appointed therapist.  Treated like a toxic monster by everyone she came into contact with.  He had never actually read the Geneva Convention, but he was pretty sure doing this to a POW would make you a war criminal.  And Amy was just a twelve-year-old child.

Nikki thought he spent his days casually tormenting animals with cosmetics.  It was something that she didn't exactly approve of but didn't criticize too severely.  She liked eating meat too much and she was well aware of the cruel methods employed by most meat producers.  She could hardly condemn one industry while supporting the other.  So she teased R.J. but never lectured him.

What would she think if she knew the truth?

What kind of a monster would she see him as, if she knew what he really did for a living?

Someone who didn't know her well might think she was too callous to care.  But R.J. knew better.  Whenever he thought about the person Nikki was, her two tattoos always came to mind.

The first was a chef's knife on the inside of her left forearm.  A faint reflection of a skull shimmered in the knife's steel and a ribbon furled around it with the inscription: "As strong as my blade."  It was a big, prominent piece of ink that was almost always on display, flashing out beneath the cuff of a black T-shirt.  It fit seamlessly with the tough chef that you didn't want to fuck with the persona she cultivated.  It was the body art of a person who was sarcastic, stubborn, and even unsympathetic.

The other one was on her right shoulder. 

It was smaller and a much simpler design than her knife.  Her shirt almost always concealed it.  Even in bed, the strap of her tank top would hide it unless it slipped, revealing the black silhouette of a bird.     

Shortly after they had started dating, R.J. had woken up one morning facing her back and spotted the winged raven in flight for the first time.  He shimmied over to her side of the bed and nuzzled into her.  On an impulse, he leaned in and kissed it.

"What are you doing?"  Her voice was warm with sleep.  Her hand drifted up and caressed his hair.

"I never noticed this tattoo before."  He ran his tongue across it.

The skin tensed under his soft administrations and she turned, pushing him away.  "Don't."

"What's wrong?"

"I got that one for my mother." 

The woman who had ridden him furiously the night before with an intensity born out of selfish physical desire was gone.  A younger girl was in her place.  She wasn't teary but her expression was sad, as though instead of waking her, he had interrupted a tragic memory.  "You know the Beatles song, Black Bird?"

He nodded.

"They played it at my mom's funeral.  She wanted it instead of a hymn."  She rubbed her shoulder as though she were working out a muscle ache.

"I didn't know your mother was dead."  R.J. was at a loss of what to say.  His parents had been gone for almost two decades.  They had passed in a car crash, while he was in Australia attending a conference on giant squid.  It had been hard on him at the time but now that the pain was behind him, he never thought of anyone as having parents.  There was a blind spot in his understanding of the world that assumed everyone had suffered and moved on just as he had.  He forgot that each person's suffering was unique.

"She died two years ago.  Cancer."  The word came out as though it were an evil spell that could conjure the demon by speaking it.  Her eyes were windows onto a gray lake with a misty rain drifting across its surface.

This was the other side of the woman he loved.  This was the Nikki who called her sister six times a day when she had the flu.  The woman who cried when she watched a wedding in a movie.  The lover who wrapped her arms around R.J. and stroked his face when he had a bad day.  The person who would be repulsed by him, if she ever found out about Project LARS.

She was very different from Mila.  Mila would have understood the need for what he did.  Mila would have joined up for the cause without a second thought.  But Nikki would never grasp the significance of his work.  She would only see a scared girl in a cell and her boyfriend—soon to be ex-boyfriend—as the sadistic warden.  Viewing himself through her eyes, R.J. found it hard not to see things the same way.

In her bedroom, Amy rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand.  An aura of despondency hovered around her. 

R.J. should be leaving but something tethered him there.  For months, he had kept a clinical distance from Amy.  She was a subject.  Not a patient.  Not a prisoner.  But a research subject—it was an important distinction.  There were reasons not to get involved.  He served science and objectivity was important.  He told himself this as he watched her, his own reflection ghostly in the one-way glass.  

Slowly, almost absentmindedly, his hand searched out a button on the console in front of him.  A fingertip lightly touched the surface of the toggle switch feeling the coolness of the plastic.   In the silence of the OC, its click sounded like a shot.  Amy glanced up and around as a static hum filled her room.

"Amy," R.J. spoke and the word creaked out over the speakers mounted into the ceiling.  "Amy, are you alright?"