There were no deities of fate in charge the night my sister was brutally murdered.

There was no moral to her story, in what doom befell her. She was stolen, tore from this world in the most violent display.

There were no avenging angels to balance the scales, just a psychopathic killer with a hunger to feed.

I spent months trying to make sense of it, trying to understand how an individual could commit such an atrocious act. I analyzed every book on the subject of psychopaths. Hours upon hours of research and study, and truly, there was no definitive answer. Worse, there was very little conclusive proof that monsters like the one that killed my sister could ever be rectified.

I had given up on psychology completely. It was about as useful to me as mythology. I am a man of science. I am a biomedical scientist. I eradicate disease. This is what I understand.

Then it donned on me, like the Fates themselves wove a shiny new thread right into my life, gifting me the answer.

Psychopathy is a disease of the mind. Not unlike a virus, an infection. A sickness.

I couldn’t bring Mary back, but I could stop the disease from spreading.

In the end, there was only one solution:

Cure the sickness.

The telltale rattle of chains pricks my ears, and my fingers halt over the keyboard.

She’s awake.

Slipping my arms into my lab coat, I move into the sterile white room and draw back the canvas curtain. Blakely lies on a gurney. Her wrists are secured with leather braces, the chains fastened to the cinderblock wall. As she slowly begins to rouse, her eyes flutter open.

This is my favorite part. The subject fresh and new and full of possibility.

“Where the fuck am I?” Blakely’s voice is hoarse from hours of unuse. As she becomes lucid, her eyes dart around the room, taking in her surroundings.

The white walls. The three large monitors. The whiteboard. The steel island with equipment. One side of the curtain is sterile and devoid of distractions. The other side is a laboratory of my design, years of research and dedication.

As her eyesight improves, Blakely’s gaze finally lands on me. Her features draw together in anger.

“Well, not anger,” I say out loud, correcting my observation. “Anger is an emotion felt by a healthy person. Your response is reactive to your circumstance. You’ve learned to display the proper corresponding emotions.”

She tests the wrist restraints and understands quickly that she’s trapped. Her eyes track me as I move to the foot of the gurney. “And what circumstance is that, Alex?”

Any emotionally sound person would be panicking right now. Pleading to be released, begging to know why this has happened to them, what’s going to become of them…

“You’re very intelligent, Blakely,” I tell her, adjusting my glasses as they slip down the bridge of my nose. “That’s why you’re so perfect, and also why I had to subdue you in the manner that I did. You’re so aware of your environment, always alert and on guard. Taking you by surprise was never going to be easy. So, I set the stage for you to expect an attack, to be ready for it, so when that one opportunity presented where your guard slipped, just for a second…” I snap my fingers to demonstrate.

The corner of her mouth kicks up into a smirk. “You sound proud of yourself. How very courageous of you to attack a girl.”

I lift the clipboard strung to the back of the gurney. “Let’s drop all the predictable banter. We both know you’re not just a girl.” I walk toward her and touch the inside of her wrist. She doesn’t flinch away, and I smile. “Steady pulse. Nice and slow.” I make a note on the page, then lift my eyes to hers. “You’re a psychopath.”

Her gaze narrows, her chest rises and falls with measured breaths. Her mind is puzzling out the situation. It’s fascinating to watch. What conclusion will she draw?

“Is this some revenge against me?” she asks. “Who hired you?”

I tsk as I pull the swivel stool around and take a seat. “I expected more from you, but I suppose we need to get the obvious questions and assumptions out of the way. No one hired me,” I state. “Though I’m sure there are plenty of vilified ex-husbands who would pay to see you suffer painfully, that’s not why you’re here.”

She tosses her head to clear away the strands of blond that have fallen over her eyes. A sudden yearning to reach out and brush her hair aside grips me. I clench my hand into a fist around the pen, then make a note about my impulse on the clipboard.

Everything must be documented, even my reactions to her. I’m part of the parameters of the experiment. I’m a variable. Plus, I’m human and have human urges; this is normal. I simply need to make sure I’m aware of those urges at all times, as she will try to use them to manipulate me.

“Then why are you doing this to me?”

“As cliché as this sounds—and I apologize—it’s not personal. My twin sister was a victim of a psychopath. A serial killer. Dr. Mary Jenkins was a renowned neurologist at Hopkins. Then a deranged killer without a conscience set his sights on her.” I pause for dramatic effect. “He lobotomized her. To death.”

Grayson Sullivan was never convicted or even charged with her murder, but the authorities knew he was responsible. The murder was perpetrated with his MO. Sullivan escaped custody before charges could be brought against him, and he remains at large.

“I don’t believe you,” she says. “I would’ve found something that extreme online. I searched you thoroughly.”

“I have fail-safes in place. I’m notified every time an article or mention about my sister is posted. I either take it down, or a program I coded directs it to another site and renames the link. I can’t have my subjects stumbling upon this information and making any kind of connection. That would be sloppy.”

Her dark eyebrows draw together. “Subjects,” she repeats.

Out of all that was said, this is the grain she picks out. With a sigh, I situate my glasses. “Yes, you’re now my subject.” I stand and push the stool back. “Well, technically, you’ve been my subject since that first night at the club. Once I identified you as a psychopath, I started analyzing and collecting the necessary information in order to get you to this stage.”

A long pause where she considers my answer, then: “People will notice I’m missing. They’ll look for me.”

She must have learned this tactic from a movie. It’s completely unimaginative. I’m disappointed with our first real interaction. Where is the fiend? Where is the vile, unfeeling creature that I know her to be?

“No one will look for you, Blakely. I know who the people closest to you are. I researched your parents. I looked into Rochelle, one of your main clients. As you’ve built a sheltered life to keep people out, there’s no one who will miss your company. On that point, you’ve done the work for me.”

She doesn’t deny my claim and, unlike the average person in a similar scenario, being told they’re all alone in the world has no real impact on her.

“How long?” she demands.

I inhale deeply. “However long it takes.”

Her features contort, and she shakes her head against the bed. “What is it? However long what takes, Alex?”

I lift my chin. “The cure.”

Confusion settles in the hard creases of her forehead. She still hasn’t made the connection.

“Alex, I’m sorry for what happened to your sister, but whatever you have planned…there has to be someone better, more interesting than me for your purpose.”

“Blakely, let’s not insult each other with mind games and tactics. I know how good you are at reading people and influencing them. That won’t happen here. I’ll answer any question that you have, but please don’t tire yourself or me with pointless arguments.”

The soft expression masking her face dissolves. “You abducted me. Chained me to a fucking gurney”—she snaps her wrists against the restraints—“and you’re actually using the word please? Like this is some social experiment for your fucking lab geeks and I’m a willing participant? Have you lost your fucking mind?”