I give a little shudder then. That’s the kind of thing Topher would say. Plan for the worst. This is the worst, Topher. I’m hundreds of miles away from you, a prisoner. Did you have a plan for this?
Setting the computer down on a glass and metal table, I find the signal easily. It’s an unsecured network called NKV82. Though I know what I’m going to find, I connect anyway. I’m immediately taken to a directory of video files. Nahx kill videos all. They are sorted by popularity. The most popular one has over twenty million hits. Twenty million? There must be a lot of survivors, then. What Kim hoped about the coastal areas might be true after all. It’s strange to think how isolated we’ve become, how our human connections depend so much on technology that without it we are like lost ships floating in a sunless, windless sea.
I stop then, for a moment, and consider backtracking. Maybe there is another signal, one not dedicated to these alien snuff movies. Maybe there is some kind of search and rescue network I can log on to. I remember the one time I watched videos like this, how sick they made me feel. But I’m curious to see if I will still feel the same way. I can’t afford to waste time thinking about it. At the very least, if these videos have comments, I should comment on the most popular one. Tell people where I am. Maybe someone can send help. I click on the top file. As the video uploads surprisingly fast and starts to play, I recognize it immediately. It’s the one where the female Nahx is decapitated. My first instinct is revulsion, but then I find I can’t look away. The way the girl Nahx looks up before losing her head mesmerizes me. I pause the video and watch that moment over and over. There is something very familiar about her posture, about the subtle changes with the position of her head and shoulders. Something I recognize. Resignation. I find I’m blinking away tears.
The video ends and returns me to the directory page. I forgot to check if there were comments. I click again to get back, and the video begins again. Again, I find I can’t stop watching. My bare feet start to ache from cold. Over and over the Nahx girl is taunted, pushed over, and kicked. Over and over she growls until I feel I can understand exactly what she’s saying. It’s not a threat. It’s a plea. Please don’t kill me.
Maybe, if she could have spoken, she would have said, Just walk away.
Over and over the machete falls and her head rolls away in a gush of blood. Please don’t kill me. Resignation. Please don’t . . .
A shadow falls across the laptop. The machete falls. I feel August clutch a handful of my hair just as the Nahx girl’s head comes off.
I yelp as he yanks me off the chair by my hair. He releases me as soon as I tumble to the tiles.
“Don’t sneak up on me, and you won’t see things you don’t like!” I snarl, cornered by the table and his dark shape. My scalp aches from where he grabbed me.
His shoulders rise and fall, his breath growling as he grabs the laptop and flings it over the railing. Seconds later I hear it clang mournfully against the roof of a car. Hating myself for not managing to send any call for help, I try to slither past him, but he steps to the side, blocking me. His hands are clenched and raised in front of his chest.
“You don’t scare me.” I kick out feebly with one leg. “You wouldn’t dare hit me.”
His fists come crashing down on the table. It explodes into a million shards of glass. I throw my arms over my face. While he is occupied with hurling the tangled metal remains of the table over the railing, I try to crawl away. There is broken glass everywhere. He reaches down and picks me up like a toy, carrying me back into the apartment.
“Don’t touch me! Put me down!” I kick and scratch at him as he shoves me into the sofa. My hands fly back and wrap around a vase on the sofa table. I swing it out and smash it across his head, shattering it, and showering myself in more glass. “See? Two can play that game!” Before I can dive off the sofa, he grabs me up again, pinning my arms at my sides. Glass tinkles to the floor as I writhe in his arms.
As he carries me away, I kick out and connect my foot to one of the pictures he had turned to the wall. It smashes to the floor in another shower of glass. He moves into the hallway, which is lined with art. I drag my legs along the wall, sending each piece crashing down, all the while hurling abuse at him, spitting and biting like a trapped viper.
When I manage to get an arm free, I grab one of the ornate mirrors he had turned, waving it in his face. “Is this what you’re scared of? Monsters? Mutants?” He smacks it away and it shatters against the wall. I slide down, but he scoops me up before I reach the floor.
“Stop it! Stop it! You’re hurting me!” Then my words dissolve into unformed wordless screaming as he carries me flailing down to the bedroom, my feet still scraping framed art from the walls. He kicks the door open, and I see the room where I lingered between life and death for the first time since I came out of my fever-induced haze. The bed is minus its mattress, and most evidence of my sickness is gone. I tear another mirror from the wall, and it splinters on the floor. August presses me down on the box spring, clutching my twisting wrists in one of his hands. In his other hand I see the shackles appear from somewhere in his armor.
“No! August, you can’t! Don’t, please, don’t!” I twist and squirm, but he manages to attach one of my wrists to the metal bedpost. I swing my other fist at his head, cracking my knuckles painfully against the hard armor. “Let me go!” I scream, and worse things, until tears are streaming down my cheeks. Somehow he has managed to restrain my good leg too. The shame and betrayal that boil up inside me turn into a terrible rage. I could kill him right now. I could kill him for this. I kick my injured leg around until he grabs me by the ankle, trying to hold my foot in front of his face.
“Is that it?” I snarl. “You have a foot fetish? Fuck you, you pervert! You deviant!” I wrench my foot from his grip and kick out. He steps back, crunching broken glass under his boots, holding his hands palms out, as though he might dive forward and grab me, all his . . . whatever . . . everything he’s held inside all this time about to spill out. Like he’s going to kill me after all, or something worse. Or he’s trying to placate me, maybe. It’s hard to tell. It’s hard to see through the tears pouring out of my eyes. “You’re disgusting. I hate you!” I wail between sobbing, pulling, and clawing at the restraints. He takes another step backward. I grab things from the bedside table and hurl them at him—candles, a clock radio, the lamp. He steps back again and puts both hands on top of his head.
“You feel bad now? You should feel bad, asshole! I hate you! I hate you repeat forever! I wish you were dead!”