For weeks after the fateful meeting, thoughts of Ink, the one with the blue eyes dogged my every step. It didn’t matter what I was doing—running with Callum, sparring with Sora or Lance—Ink was always there, his blue eyes flecked with the incomprehensible. I saw him lying in the cage, the way he had that first night. I saw him on his knees, held down by Lance’s stone-hard fists. I saw him the way he must have looked walking home from work on the day the Rabid systematically tore him to shreds.
He’d been human once.
He should have died.
And each time I imagined him, thought about seeing him again, I was reminded of the fact that I should have died, too. Jagged, uneven bits of that long-ago night worked their way into my consciousness, and like the pieces of a puzzle, I assembled them.
S
