The Blonde

Zero a.m.

The Dublin Inside Her Head (continued)

The first few days she spent in and around Dublin, afraid to go anywhere else, afraid to go home, for fear of involving her family. So she went to the pub, then to the bedroom of an ex-boyfriend from college; she figured she could hole up with him for a week, try to contact someone at MIS. But he was just interested in one-time-only revenge sex; he had a new girlfriend now. “And now that Tve had you again, ” he said, “I remember you were always rubbish in the sack.”

He said this to her at a party; she ended up with the host of the party, his best friend, a pimply guy named J.J. She knew he had always lusted for her. They didn’t sleep together. A few stragglers who didn’t want to drive home crashed on J.J. ‘s living room floor, and Vanessa and J.J. joined them. He kissed her for a while. Felt her tits. Tried to feel her below, but she kept his focus on her tits.

The next ?norning, J.J. ‘s cell started buzzing while they were all still crashed out on the floor. J.J., feeling full of himself for finally having bedded the elusive Vanessa Reardon. Vanessa, meanwhile, worrying herself into a sickened state. What was she going to do next? She couldn ‘t stay with this guy forever. And she had to go to the bathroom very, very badly. And not just pee, either. But the bathroom was more than ten feet away, off the living room, in the corner of the flat.

J.J. closed his cell. His face was ashen.

“It’s Ken, ” he whispered.

Her ex.

“What?” Vanessa asked.

“Ken’s dead. Donna found him in the bathroom. He bled to death.”

J.J. lost it. He put his hands to his face and wept. Vanessa didn’t understand. Ken? Dead? The prick was only twenty-four years old. Couldn’t have been drugs. Ken was as straight-edge as they come. She’d been with him the previous evening, and …

Wait.

No. That couldn’t be right. The Mary Kates couldn’t transfer that way. They had to be injected directly. For them to transfer through saliva meant that they had to replicate at an unprecedented—and unstoppable—rate.

Unless the Operator had changed the program.

Fuck. That was what he’d done. The mad bastard.

That’s when she first appreciated the depths to which the Operator had sunk. This wasn ‘t about her. This was about every person she loved. Or lusted for. Or kissed.

During her reverie, J J. had pulled himself out of bed and shuffled to the bathroom. She hadn ‘t been paying attention. Why would she? People went to the bathroom all the time. For men, the morning piss was—

And then it occurred to her.

“J.J.,”she called.

No answer. She stood up, legs full of pins and needles, and stumbled across the sleeping bodies toward the bathroom. No one else was awake yet. She heard running water on the other side of the door. She leaned against it. The bathroom wasn’t that big. Certainly no more than ten feet separating her and J.J., who was probably at the sink, slapping cold water on his face, trying to wash away the tears. You needn’t be embarrassed, she wanted to tell him. Especially not in front of me. The woman who killed your best friend.

“J.J.”

Nothing.

Then came the honible realization, and she flung open the door, and saw J.J. on the cold tile floor, and all of the blood. Everywhere.