Raj couldn’t move, he was so frozen in fear. The phone pulsed at him, mocking him, daring him to answer. He missed it the first time, but she called right back, and this time he put the handset to his ear, spoke in a creaky voice.
“Hello?”
“Raj?” fumed Beth. “Raj, what the fuck did you do to iSA?”
He took a shaky breath.
“I shut her down.”
“No you did not. You did something else. It’s throwing up all kinds of errors, and the console logs make it look like something messed with a system update.”
“That could be,” he said, making sure the desk was still tight against the door. It was stuffy in the room, the air stagnant and unmoving, but it was better than the alternative.
“Jesus, Raj! I know you’re in a pissy mood, but this is just stupid. Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be to repair this stuff? This is like thousands of dollars of work you’ve ruined! What the hell were you thinking?”
“You know damn well what I’m thinking,” he said, trying to control his voice, trying not to let his anger and paranoia get the better of him. “iSA is dangerous. You made a killing machine.”
She sighed deeply, fuzzing out the sound for a moment. He knew the face she was making: she was mad. Very, very mad.
“You’d better pray I can get this working again, Raj,” she said quietly. “Because I swear to god, if I can’t, I am going to make you pay. Do you understand me? Pay.”
“Give it your best shot,” he said, setting his jaw.
She hung up on him. The phone dimmed and went dark before he lowered it from his face. A knock at the door jolted him back to life, and he waited for the follow-up secret rat-tat-tat-tat to let him know it was safe to open.
“How did it go today?” Debbie asked, sliding through the narrow opening, dropping a bag of food on the ground.
“The same,” Raj said. “Still no progress. And I worked all day.”
She sat down beside him, rubbed his back gently.
“Today was my turn with the grief counsellor,” she said. “He wanted me to list all the good things about Reggie.”
“Short session, then.”
“I couldn’t think of anything, so I started listing all the good things about you instead.”
“Short session, then.”
She smiled, kissed his cheek, rested her head on his shoulder.
“Don’t be rude. You’re funny, smart, strong—”
“If I were strong, I’d be able to leave this room.”
“Ziggy said you went out yesterday…”
He turned his head and she lifted hers, and he stared into her eyes, trying to look brave, but unable to pull off the lie.
“Yesterday just made me more scared than ever,” he said. “Do strong people see a challenge and run for cover?”
“If they’re smart they do. If the challenge is too big.”
He shrugged, looked at the ground, but she turned his face with a gentle hand, and kissed him. She meant it to give him his power back, but it felt like pity, and it drained him more.
He put hands on her shoulders, pulled himself back, and she watched him cautiously, lips moist, waiting to resume.
“I can’t…” he whispered.
She moved his hands off her shoulders, kissed him again, and he let her do it, for whatever reason. Need, defeat, it was almost the same thing.
