Since the conception of my project, I’ve been keeping track of time but ultimately losing touch with the world. The importance of the here and now. All the moments that make this intolerable life worth living.

I was clear in my directive. Sure of what I was and my purpose. I couldn’t see beyond the next step of the project. I couldn’t imagine a higher purpose. I was so consumed with the immediate result, it wasn’t until I stood outside my cabin, watching the flames lick high into the night, that I realized how misguided I had been.

Blakely had been a siren sent to lure me and infect my brain.

Her rejection made me doubt myself in that one defining moment. More so, it made me question who I am as a scientist. I questioned my methods; I had remorse for my subjects. I nearly ended my life.

And why? For what? Guilt has no place within the scientific method. I’ve realized this now. Hell, no one posted missing persons’ posters or funded websites to find those people. They were vagrants. Their lives wasted.

I gave their lives meaning.

Blakely accused me of having a god complex; she compared me to Dr. Frankenstein, and ultimately, that may be true. As a biomedical scientist, a certain level of god-like ego is necessary. After all, the curing of diseases is simply another form of creation. I take the abnormality and design a treatment, coding the building blocks of DNA to correct the defect.

With her, I gave life to the dead. I brought the dead parts of her to life. I brought her to the world of the feeling.

I am a god.

And she is my creation.

She is my beautiful monster.

How can I not love her? She harbors a part of me. Blakely’s mind was designed by my science—a piece of me so intimate, it’s the very nature of my being.

Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, I won’t abandon my creation.

For ours is a script torn right from the pages of a Shakespearean play. That’s the misfortune. Where do we go, how do we end, when we were fated to be a tragedy?

I have to alter every facet, change all the components. I have to rewrite the whole script to give us a redemptive ending.

If I can master altering the very fabric of her neural pathways, then I can change our outcome.

I just need time.

The USB drive in my pocket is noticeable and distinctly different from the weight of the pocket watch I used to carry. But on that drive is the formula for the newest iteration of the compound, the one I administered to Blakely.

The cure to psychopathy.

The urge to check the time crawls under my skin like a burrowing deathwatch beetle. I can hear its warning screech. Anxiety festers at the edge of my mind.

She’s late.

Something’s wrong. I can feel it in my cells, the way I can sense a storm brewing as the barometric pressure falls with a charge in the air. The atmosphere is crackling.

Blakely does as she wants, goes where she wants, but she’s never late for this particular activity. In her new and unsure state of being, this is the one pursuit she believes gives her control.

Under the marquee sign, the giant plate-glass window reads: Martial Arts Training.

I scratch at my arm, the itch digging in deep. The niggling desire to know the time winds around me like a tightened spring, the coil tension near snapping.

I dig out my phone from my back pocket and wince at the pain. The burned flesh of my hand is still tender and in the stages of healing. As I light the phone screen to display the time, instant relief fills me, like getting a hit of a favorite drug, my craving subdued.

That relief quickly dissipates as a severe realization sinks in. Blakely isn’t coming. She’s changed her routine. The possible reasons for her sudden departure in routine vary, but there’s only one motive that has my heart rate climbing.

She knows I’m watching.

I quash the thought immediately. I’m careful. I’m very careful, and I’ve kept my distance. At no time during the past six weeks has there been any indication that she’s aware of me. Yet here we are, and I can’t quell the alarm firing through my body.

I pack away my journal and hike the green rucksack over one shoulder. A final glance at the doorway of the martial arts studio, then I set off down the sidewalk toward Tribeca.

Desperation tightens around my chest like a band, the pain acute and demanding. My skin feels clammy, my breathing labored, as I frustratedly drive my hand through my hair. Normally, I’d turn to my devices and applications to locate a subject, but my little monster is smart. Just so, so clever. She’s been off the grid, limiting her Internet activity and using a burner phone with no Wi-Fi access. My senses are all I have to track her.

The city is muggy, stifling, as I weave through the teeming crosswalk. Even the air is dense and feels crowded as it presses against my skin. I reach the brownstone and unlock the front door of my new apartment, the one I secured a block away from Blakely’s place. It wasn’t an easy acquire; the landlord had to be persuaded. But with a hefty down payment and six-month’s rent paid in advance, the overpriced closet is mine and in a prime location to keep watch over my subject.

I unload my pack at the entryway and, like every other time I’ve done so, seek the comfort of seeing Mary’s face. There’s no comfort, however. No framed photo of us when we were kids. None of her Renaissance paintings line my walls.

I had to leave my worldly belongings behind. A dead man doesn’t return to clean out his apartment. And Blakely checked. Twice. As if needing confirmation that I was really gone, she went through my mail. She watched my loft, stalking my old haunt the way she used to stalk her targets.

With a resigned frown, I glance around the sparsely furnished studio. Eventually, the landlord of my old place will either auction off my possessions or toss them.

I stop in the kitchen to grab a water from the fridge. Door held open, I relish the cool refrigerated air as it blasts my slick skin, gaze landing on the top shelf with the five glass vials.

A thump snags my attention, and I hastily guzzle from a water bottle before I grab one of the vials and head into the bathroom.

Location wasn’t the only reason why I chose this place. The converted studio next door was condemned due to a fire. Renovations stalled when the price of building materials went sky-high, leaving the place vacant. With the state of the economy, the project is likely to stay abandoned for the foreseeable future.

I slip the vial in my pocket before removing the bathroom mirror to expose the hole in the wall. Cut large enough to crawl through, I clear the opening and enter the dark apartment.

The air inside here is only marginally less humid then outside. The unit doesn’t have power, so I had to utilize the electricity from mine. I drilled a small hole through the baseboard and wall to run two power cords, which feed power to the devices I consider more vital than air-conditioning.

The thump comes louder this time, and my phone buzzes in my back pocket with the alarm.

I turn off the reminder, then set my phone on the bare metal table. Construction debris and dust covers the unit. The wood floors have been pried up in areas. Cabinets ripped out. The walls have been stripped to reveal the original brick. It reminds me of Mary’s cabin in a way, the age and history, the solid bones.

I take a syringe from the basket under the table. “The anesthesia wore off quicker than anticipated. I’ll account for that from now on.”

As I fill the syringe with the contents of the vial, the restrained man in the center of the room groans and wriggles against his bindings. I was able to secure an old gurney from a hospital’s dumpsite, but unfortunately, I did have to break into my retirement fund to acquire all new computers and lab equipment.