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There’s only one place I can go.

The one person whose deal still stands, no matter how much I hate him.

Slowly, I get up. Drag myself to the torture chamber. And grab my phone, its flashlight still shining, from where it sits on the floor next to the closet.

Morgan

are u busy

can you pick me up

But when I hit send, I hate myself more than I ever have.

“Jesus,” Daniel mutters as he shines his phone flashlight at the cut between my finger and thumb. He leans across the corner of his IKEA dining table, face wrinkled in a combination of disgust and confusion. “What the hell did you do?”

I mumble, “Slipped.”

It doesn’t seem like he believes me.

Daniel’s apartment is a studio that he’s made a passing effort to decorate, but not a particularly successful one. The most unique thing he owns is a record player; every other available surface is covered in meal-prep materials (seven days’ worth of badly seasoned chicken and rice) or film-bro shit. He had to shove his Producing for Documentaries homework out of the way to make room for my injured hand.

“Can you move your fingers?” he asks.

I tap my thumb and pointer finger together, as requested. It doesn’t feel like Felicity’s knife hit muscle or anything important. Only the delicate webbing.

The cut has stopped bleeding by now. I took a bunch of paper towels from under the penthouse sink to put pressure on it, and kept them there the entire drive down. (Daniel did, in fact, pick me up, since he doesn’t have class right now; the look he gave me when he saw me standing in front of Potomac Loft Living was unsurprised at best.) I’ve said maybe five words to him.

I ask, “You have superglue?”

Daniel eyes me. “For your hand.”

I stare at him, and he gets the hint. While he rustles through his junk drawer, I let my eyes slip closed. The overhead light makes me feel awful, and my heart beats like it’s about to burst. I try to swallow it down, breathe deep to settle it, but it doesn’t work.

I—I wish I was having a meltdown. Completely losing my shit. It’s so much easier to escalate everything beyond logic, lash out and scream, because then at least it’s out of you. Instead, I’m stuck at this table, a pressure on my chest like I’m trying to breathe past an anvil.

Felicity knew. They knew who Jane Doe was the entire time.

And they used me.

I mean, the fact that they were using me isn’t a surprise. We were both very aware of the position they forced me into. It was blackmail. It was cruel. But some stupid part of me thought, I don’t know, maybe we’d come to an understanding. We could sweep it under the rug and deescalate the situation, undo the nuclear armaments surrounding our mutually assured destruction.

We understood each other. We could have managed.

If I hadn’t killed Cordelia, we could have found a way out of what we’d done to each other.

No. Why the fuck am I thinking like this. Felicity can go to hell for all I care. They were going to kill me. I flex my hand until the split between my finger and thumb burns with pain. Look what they did. I don’t give a shit about them, and I never did. Fuck them.

“So,” Daniel says as he takes a fistful of instruction manuals out of the junk drawer to peer through a mishmash of rubber bands, pens, and mini-tools. “Did you get anything good out of this?”

I don’t respond, and Daniel waves an old tape measure to get my attention. “This little reconnaissance mission of yours. You were obviously after something. Did you get it for me?”

Right. Because I said at Capital Rewind that whatever I found would be Daniel’s. For his producer credit, in exchange for his protection. For our deal.

The driver’s license and photo of Cordelia Sutherland are perfect, too. They’re everything Daniel wants and more: A new development. A real, genuine piece of journalism. I’d fulfill my end of our agreement and make him someone worthy of that producer credit, more than just his uncle’s underling. And then the world would know the dead girl’s name, and they’d leave me alone, and it would all be over. That’s why I came here. That’s the reason I texted him for help in the first place.

But I haven’t felt protected for a moment since we met, he’s done nothing but make it so much worse—

Do it. It’d be so easy. Take the driver’s license and photo out of my pocket and give them to him. Just like that. Two little movements and it’ll all be over, but Jesus Christ, I can’t stop thinking about Felicity kissing me outside Capital Rewind, panicking on the floor of the guidance counselor’s office, tucking me into their bed. The scars on their thighs and the way they looked at me across the table at the queer bookstore. If my bio parents find out I’m alive. Cordelia Sutherland on the penthouse floor and ten-year-old Felicity waiting for a sister who would never come back to them—