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Chapter 44

Quinn was careful to stay in the shadows, making her way across the building. It seemed to take an eternity, but eventually she found a secure room.

She opened the door to find that Adam had apparently gotten there before her. He didn't seem to notice her at first, so she spoke up hesitantly. "What are you doing?"

He looked up from the screen. His glasses were askew and blood was visibly dripping down the side of his face.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Th-They got to him," he said shakily.

She realised what had happened and her heart sank. In the panic, she'd forgotten to give him a heads up. "I know," she said quickly, but he continued over her.

"He just kept talking, a-and I didn't notice anything wrong. He didn't do anything at first. He-He just talked, and I believed him..." He paused, realising. "What do you mean, you know?"

She hesitated. "Look, I know you're upset..."

"Don't do this to me now, this is serious." He said, a dangerous edge to his voice. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

She paused, trying to think of an excuse. "Look, I didn't want you to freak out about it."

"Well that worked out well, didn't it?" He let out a shaky laugh. "Do... Do you have any idea what I've been through tonight?"

"What?"

"I just got attacked by a walking corpse, my friend held a gun against my skull, and you can't even pick up a goddamn phone?"

She swallowed, nodding her head. In all the years they'd known each other, she'd never seen him this angry. "Listen, you have a right to be upset, but..."

"You realise what could have happened?" He gestured over at the computer screens. "He could be seriously hurt right now, o-or dead, and I could be him again permanently... I could have killed him. I came this close..." He faltered, turning to her and running his hands through his hair.

"I... I just assumed..."

"W-Well, you know damn well what happens when you make assumptions at times like this." He started to raise his voice, and she mimed at him to calm down, but he ignored her, letting out something resembling a laugh. "You don't care, do you? It's... It's all just theoretical to you. You never think about how your actions affect other people."

She looked away from him and into the screen. It displayed a small room that was dimly lit, and there was a table covered in sharp tools and bottles of chemicals. It stirred some sort of memory in her, but she couldn't place it.

"Th-The door's soundproof, I checked," He added.

"I'm sorry," she said eventually.

"You know what?" He said, turning around to face her. He paused for a second, deliberating, before shaking his head. "We'll leave it at that, okay? I... I don't want to talk about this anymore. Consider that book closed."

She struggled to find anything she could say that wouldn't make it any worse. Eventually she decided on, "What did he tell you?"

"C-Can we not..." Adam didn't look at her. "It doesn't matter."

There was an awkward silence as Adam picked up an instruction manual from the shelf and opened it up. Eventually Quinn broke it. "You like him."

He let out a strangled sort of laugh. "You're doing this now?"

"If that is what he said, then he wasn't lying." She thought back to what Jessie had told her about drained people's actions being shaped by their previous thoughts, then about what Luke had told her about distractions. "I don't know if that makes a difference now, but he was telling the truth. He didn't want to say it at the wrong time, and so I just... I promised him that I wouldn't tell you."