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shoulder move back into place seemingly of its own volition. He looked up at her, and it
wasn’t B behind those startling blue eyes, not now—it was something cold and
inhuman, sizing her up, perhaps wondering how she would taste, wondering if there was
any advantage in killing her. He started to get up, and Marla pressed down on his
shoulders. “Shh,” she said, and after a moment he stopped pushing against her, and the
coldness in his eyes receded.
“Holy shit,” he said. “That was like being some kind of psychotic superhero. I felt like
Spider-Man on angel dust.”
Marla crouched beside him so they could talk more easily—he wouldn’t be able to
stand up for another few minutes, probably. She understood his enjoyment—there were
few things more intoxicating than physical power. Because she knew the thrill he was
feeling, and because she knew he was a good listener and would understand the
importance of this without having the words shouted into him, she spoke gently: “Yes,
but Spider-Man just ties up the bad guys and leaves them for the police. You’re not
going to do that, B. Mercy and restraint won’t even be an option. Do you understand?”
There was a pop as his elbow straightened itself, but he didn’t wince, only nodded.
“Right,” he said, subdued. “I’m going to kill someone, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” Marla said. “It’s you that’s doing the killing, too. Not the cloak, though the cloak
will make the killing possible, and even enjoyable, in a way. The cloak isn’t the killer,
though, any more than a sword is a killer. The weapon isn’t responsible. The one
wielding the weapon is.” And you are my weapon, Bowman. She hated turning him into
this, but it was necessary.
B looked at her, his tropical eyes full of understanding, almost more understanding than
Marla could bear. “Don’t worry,” he said gently. “I’m not your weapon. You’re not the
one wielding me. I’m making this choice myself.”
Marla nodded, though she didn’t believe it—she was setting B on this path, and the
killings he did on her behalf would weigh on her even more than the lives she’d taken
personally. She could stomach the killing she’d done herself. She never did so without
good reason, not anymore, and as she grew older she found fewer and fewer reasons to
kill, because there were almost always other options. But she was far less comfortable
with making B—affable, solid B—into a murderer. “I just want you to understand,” she
said.
“I guess this is a big thing,” he said. “The decision to kill somebody. This isn’t a heatof-the-moment
thing. I’m going in there with this as my goal. It’s not quite as big a step
as actually doing the deed, but deciding to do it…” He shook his head.
Marla nodded. She knew what he meant. The first time she’d consciously killed
someone, it had changed her entire understanding of the world. There was no act more
monstrous than the taking of a human life; all the worse acts were merely matters of
scale. The only real justification for such an act was to prevent greater bloodshed. And
even then, it was philosophically uneasy ground, even for someone as relentlessly
practical as Marla. She tried not to think about the killing much, which was, she knew,
one of the few ways in which she was truly cowardly.