August stared at me, eyes following my movements as I paced the room. He grabbed the remote and switched off the TV, and I didn't even know where to start.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "What do you have to tell me?"

Words. Words, Ellie. You can't tell him anything without words. "You get frustrated with me a lot, don't you?"

He frowned. "What?"

"And me running out in the middle of the night like I did, only leaving an obscure note, you're upset with me for that."

"Ellie, what are you getting at, here?"

I stopped pacing, turning to face him where he sat on the bed. Headlights from cars on the nearby road illuminated the outlines of the curtains over our windows. The pizza box sat, half-open, completely empty, on the wobbly table.

"Ellie."

He snapped me out of my reverie. I clasped my hands in front of me, staring down at the tattered shoes covering my feet, feeling inadequate as all get-out. "I don't want to say."

"Why not?"

Tears glossed my eyes, distorting my vision and blurring his face when I looked at him. "Because you'll hate me."

His head was already shaking side-to-side, lips turned down. "That's not possible."

We'll see about that. "Remember when you took that bullet for me in Colorado?"

August winced, absent-mindedly rubbing his chest. "Yeah, I do."

"And afterward, at the safe house, do you remember what I told everybody? About what Angel said?"

"Yeah."

"And at your old house, how I told you it was all a lie?"

No words were exchanged for a moment. A noisy group of people passed by the door, ambling down the hall, probably drunk; easily heard through the cheap, paper-thin walls. My heart beat a furiously-paced rhythm. So did Augie's.

"I did some things I'm not proud of, August." I continued right on with the story because it didn't seem as if August held the capability of speaking right then. "So many things."

"We all do, Ellie-"

"No-no." I angled away so he wouldn't see the tortured expression twisting my features, and grabbed fistfuls of hair, pulling tight, focusing on the stinging pain in my scalp. The words I wanted to say, the words that I'd been holding in for months and months and years, burned the back of my throat and spread fire to my stomach and my throat and my brain. How could I say them? How could I tell even August this thing-this thing that would alter anyone's perception of me forever?

"The Ten Thousand Dollar Man," I said, remembering what seemed like eons ago, but wasn't even yet two years. "All those people I stopped under my illusion of doing good . . . none of them had to die."

"El, that was . . . that was so long ago."

"Not really." The wallpaper was yellowed and flaking, revealing an even less-appealing color beneath it. Amazing what people wanted to cover up. "When I first met you at Yale; when you chased me across campus and then we stopped and we were alone and my head was going haywire."

I picked at the wallpaper, gave a good yank. A generous chunk fluttered into my palm, and I dropped it to the floor. Thoughts scattered to all corners of my head, warring for dominance, creating one gigantic headache.

"I do all the wrong things." Whatever expression adorned his face was unknown to me, as I still had my back to him, and wondered if he could make any sense of the jumbled words spilling from my mouth. "I say all the wrong things. I'm human but only just. You said leaving Jessica and Blake was wrong, but it felt perfectly rational to me. This is what I hate, Augie. Okay? I hate every stupid malfunctioning piece of me. And I can masquerade around pretending to understand myself better and accept these demented pieces of me, but that will never be the truth. And it can't be fixed. Nobody can fix me. That's another illusion I don't want to suffer from."

Something crashed in a room down the hall, spiking my heartbeat another few notches, and the ensuing pause soon gave way to slovenly laughter. I ignored it the best I could. August didn't move, hardly dared to breathe, didn't say a thing.

You're still pussy-footing, Ellie. Just tell him. Tell him the truth.

I curled my fingers into tight fists and jammed my nails into my palms, hard, and then harder, until I broke skin.

Tell him the dark, twisted truth of your soul, that's getting harder and harder to deny.

"Lucille told me I can't stop what I'm supposed to be," I ground out. "I was the official first dosage of Dr. Edmund's drug. Just now we're starting to see side-effects. When I was puking up blood, passing out, suffering heart-attack-like symptoms . . . they were warnings, August. And I can combat them if I'm stronger, if I accustom myself to heavier usage of my abilities, but not forever. Not forever. And it's degrading me. Even now. All along. Everything inside of me is wearing down."

Tell him. Tell him now. You've danced around it long enough.

I teetered around to face him, eyes burning, cheeks soaking wet, chest heaving. I captured his open, handsome face just as it was right then, before he knew the truth, and before he knew what I wanted him to do.

Say it.

But my mouth refused to open and my tongue refused to betray my secret. It was alarming, this complete bodily failure. And I couldn't say it. I couldn't say it.

Because you're a coward, and you're afraid, and you'll always be afraid.

That may be true, but I-I needed to say this to him.

My skull split open with another internal war.

And before I could manage anything, something thick plowed into our motel room door, cracking the hinges and causing the walls to quake. I gasped, instinctually backing away from the potential threat. It occurred to me the rowdy, inebriated group of guys had fallen unusually silent.

August jumped to his feet and grabbed his gun, pushing me behind him. I obliged, too emotionally-distraught to focus straight on anything. He trained his weapon on the door, waiting, watching, my heart beating fast while his calmed to a slow, practiced speed. Nothing happened for a moment. His thumb pulled back the hammer, the click seeming to resonate in the deafening silence.

"August-" I began, but then the window shattered behind us and a hand wrapped around my hair, throwing me backward. August shouted my name, but the door to our room burst open at about the exact same time, and concern for his welfare flashed through me before I hit the ground with a resounding thud and pain rattled my bones. An agonizing groan slipped by my lips. Sounds seemed muffled, and there was this irritating keening noise ricocheting through my ear canals. But I registered the screams. People; innocent people. Civilians. People simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Save them, was my first thought, an Ellie-made thought, contrary to my instinctual thought, which felt only indifference towards them and knew only the desire for bloodshed at those who attacked me.

I opened my eyes to slits, a face leering down at me. I didn't recognize them, but if they pulled me out of a window by my hair and had that murderous glint in their eye, it usually indicated a particularly hostile Prophet. And a Prophet meant at least one person in the vicinity wanted to see me dead and gone, in the messiest, most excruciating fashion imaginable.

"Gotta say," the Prophet sneered, delighting in my disoriented state. "I kinda thought it would be harder tracking you. Guess being dead for six months takes a lot out of you, huh?"

"Go to hell."

Even my own voice sounded foreign to my ears. The Prophet roared with laughter, and his boot sailed into my side. People continued screaming. Babies crying. Sirens wailed in the distance. I had no idea where Augie was. And to make matters worse, before I could order my scrambled brain and get a hold of my whacko psychokinetic-like ability, the familiar sensation of a needle ruthlessly stabbed my arm, precisely into the vein, and the serum pumped through me, right into my blood. The dulling effect was immediate, thanks to the direct transmission. Usually they hit whatever patch of flesh was available, and I had a couple minutes before it took effect, but not this time. Not this time.

Thanks to Lucille's boot camp, I was able to maintain adequate awareness even as the serum deadened everything else. The Prophet attempted to grab me and I kicked out with two feet, hitting him square in the chest. He toppled over and I rolled over my shoulder, holding my throbbing side. August was in the motel room still, disarmed, fighting off two Prophets. Blood trickled from his head, but being a trained warrior and all, he held his own just fine, even under duress.

The entire scene before me was chaotic. And not everybody cramming the space was alive, either. Your fault, my conscience jibed. This is all your fault.

I didn't even need reminding anymore, because that was just a given.

The Prophet stirred, and so I limped over and drove my fist into his face, as hard as I could. It knocked him unconscious but I was sure the impact to my knuckles was worse. Probably even a broken finger or two, with my luck.

"Ellie!"

I whirled around, a huge mistake given the state of things, but somehow I remained standing. August darted from the room, now in shambles, with two dead Prophets to join the mix, and grabbed my hand on the way, hauling me with him. The sirens edged closer and if we didn't get out now, there was no chance of escaping without being caught.

We dove into the car and he gunned the engine, leaving gravel spitting behind us as we sped from the scene.

August didn't stop driving until the gas indicator flashed red on the console, and then we pulled into a gas station. A couple other cars idled around the area, but the drivers looked weary and trodden, not sketchy and threatening. I hoped, for the moment at least, that we had left sketchy and threatening behind.

August shoved the gas nozzle into his car, suppressing a yawn. "I gotta take a leak," he told me, before sauntering across the parking lot again and disappearing into the mini-mart. He left his cell phone on his seat and I grabbed it, punching in his password, and scrolling through the contacts before my brain even lucidly knew what I was doing. It just felt right, like something that needed to be done, and for the hour or so of straight driving we'd just done at break-neck speeds, it had been knocking at my nerves.

So I put the phone to my ear and held my breath, and waited to see what would happen.

"August Nathaniel Masterson! You are goddamned sure I will tan your ass when you get back here-"

"It's Ellie," I cut her off, wincing as I attempted to flex my bad hand, and white-hot fire lanced through it. Great.

Jessica said nothing, breaths crackling over the receiver. And then, "You are going to give me grey hairs, Ellie. You hear that? No, not even gray hairs. I'll just go fucking bald. I'm already losing too many to be normal at my age, I swear it."

A long breath whooshed out of me. "I'm sorry, Jessica."

"You sure as hell should be! You know what it's like having Blake wake you up and tell you two of our house mates are gone? That they disappeared, just like that? I thought I was going to have a freaking conniption, Ellie! I'll die before I'm thirty, at this rate!"

I spied August through the grubby window of the mini-mart, at the counter, ordering something. Everything seemed okay around us for the moment, but even that realization did nothing to curb my nerves. "I had to go, Jessica. I know what I have to do. You and Blake are needed there."

Some sort of gurgle bubbled out of her throat. "For God's sake, ya big jerk, all you had to do was say something. Last time we separated I thought you were dead, okay? Did you hear that? I want it to sink in. I thought you were dead."

"I know, Jessica, I-"

"And no more of that loner, emo-crap bullshit, alright? Jesus Christ, just practice a little healthy communication once in a while, yeah? It will do wonders, trust me. You'll find doors opened that you never even noticed before."

Despite it all, a smile quirked my lips upward. "So you're not angry?"

"Oh, I'm pissed as hell, make no mistake. And as soon as you tell me where you're going, Blake and I are packing our bags and coming to whoop some ass."

The gas pump clicked to a stop, just as Augie shouldered the door open of the mini-mart, a plastic bag swinging from his hand. It occurred to me dry blood was still crusted to his forehead and hair, but maybe the gas station owner had seen worse. "Thanks, Jessica."

"Don't thank me yet. Where are you staying?"

"Somewhere in Illinois. I can call you back when I know for sure."

"Illinois? Jeez Louise, man, that could potentially be quite a drive."

"I'm sorry."

She sighed. "Eh, we can get Roy to run things. He's actually fairly reliable."

August placed the nozzle back in its holder. "I'll call you back, Jessica," I said, and before she could reply switched off the phone, just as August slid into the car.

"Who were you talking to?" he asked.

"Jessica."

His eyebrow shot up. "Seriously?"

"Yes. I apologized. That was the right thing to do, right? And she wants to come see us, when we find another motel."

He nodded. "Okay."

"What's in the bag?"

"Snacks, a couple drinks, some first aid stuff." His eyes trailed over to my hand, kept securely against my body. "I think we'll need it."

"Probably."

August put the car into reverse, backed up, and we were on the road once again.

We didn't find a suitable motel until the wee hours of the morning. I slipped in and out of a restless sleep in the car. August just looked pained and exhausted. He paid for a room with cash under a fake name like we always did, and after securing the area, we slumped inside. I barely registered anything about the room through my fatigue. But even so, before I could tumble into bed, August insisted on fixing up my hand. So I sat on the edge of the bed with him kneeling in front of me, the gas station bag of supplies by his side.

And sitting there, I remembered everything I needed to tell him. Staring at a different wall with different peeling wallpaper, I remembered.

His fingers gingerly prodded my hand. An ugly bruise spread along one portion of it, creeping over my pinky and ring finger. He grabbed a tongue depressor and gauze, a make-shift splint, and began administering his impromptu first-aid.

"Augie."

He didn't look up. "Mm."

"About what I was telling you, back at the other motel . . ."

"You don't have to say anything," he said. "Really, Ellie. You don't."

"But I do."

"No, you don't." he finished and scooped up the plastic bag as he rose, dumping it on the table before peeking through the curtains covering the window, routinely surveying the area. My stomach churned and my heart hurt, and I needed, needed, needed to blurt it all out.

"August, please."

He ran a hand through his hair, grimacing when his palm brushed over the welt he probably retained. "I know what you're going to say, Ellie, and it doesn't change anything."

"You don't know what I'm going to say."

"This is hard. It is. You want the truth? Fine. Yeah, you frustrate me sometimes-a lot of times-but I know what I'm getting into, Ellie. You think someone like me wouldn't run through a pro-con list the minute I realized I was so goddamned in love with you?"

I swallowed hard. "Augie-"

"And on the running away thing, do I think you should have talked it out first? Of course I do. Not everybody understands, Ellie. Not everybody is like me. They won't all give you the benefit of the doubt, and they won't all stop to think about your side of things."

"That's not-"

But he was on a roll, now, uninterested in hearing what I really needed to tell him. "It's not perfect. Nothing is. And you weren't the only one made to be a killer, you know. I have so much blood on my ledger it's impossible to see anything but red. It was the same with Ryan, and Blake, and Jessica. Maybe not as extreme, but the principle still holds."

"August, I-"

"And if you think for one second you don't deserve to be here with any of us, then you're mistaken, Ellie Armstrong. I don't know how many times I have to tell you-"

"August!"

He clammed up at my forceful shout, always uncharacteristic of the usually-timid Ellie Armstrong.

Or, you mean, the once timid Ellie Armstrong.

Look how much six months can change.

Both of us were breathing hard, like we'd run a flipping marathon. We were hashing out our souls in the early hours of the morning, and I needed this. I needed to come clean to somebody.

I needed him, the other half my soul . . . I needed him to get it. To understand. To know. To know and . . .

His blue eyes dug deep into mine, as if he could uncover the secret without me having to say it. And I wished he could.

"Ellie," he whispered.

Now or never, you twisted animal. Now or never.

I released all the breath building inside of me.

"I like it," I said.

August frowned, confused. "What?"

"I like it."

Oh, yes, you do.

"Like what, Ellie?"

The next words were nearly impossible to get out. My tongue dried, my throat cramped, and a weird numbness tingled down my body. I couldn't even feel my throbbing hand.

"Ellie."

Listen to it. Listen to his blood; feel it; taste it. You want it.

"El . . ."

You want it.

A tear slipped free. And then one more. And four more. And I was crying. I backtracked, putting more space between us. He tried to follow me but I shook my head. The serum still clouded my mind, but I didn't have to use my abilities, not that I ever would again on him. August just stopped, because he noticed my anguish, and it was his own.

"I . . . I like it, August. I like it . . ."

"Like what, Ellie?"

"Killing people."

His heart skipped a beat. His blood pumped a little faster.

You like it. You want it. You need it.

Go get it.

"I love it, August. I love it so much. And it's not some weird thing inside of me, it just is me. I love watching the light go out of their eyes. I love feeling their blood on my hands. I love tasting their fear. I love it."

He swallowed hard, nodding, cranking his hands up behind his head. "Okay . . . Okay."

"I can't be with other people because it's hard, now. It's gotten so hard, because all I want to do is kill them. There's this desire screaming in my head all day, and that's all it wants. It's all I want."

The AC unit sputtered out, and the lack of humming filled the room with even tenser silence than before. August couldn't look away from me, and his pain twisted my heart, because it was my own.

"It's gotten worse," I continued. "And it will just keep getting worse. I'm trying to keep it contained but it's who I am. And how can you stop being who you are?"

"We'll figure it out," he tried, hands dropping to his sides. "We'll figure it out, Ellie. We always find a