The Border Part Eight Read Online Free Page A

some pleasantries, but she didn’t stop. After all, as a girl who worked down on the seventh level now, she had no time to waste up on the first.
    The first level seemed so tame now. Almost pitiful.
    “It really sounds crazy down there tonight,” Olivia said a few minutes later, down on the sixth level, as Katie made her way to the next door. “I think you’re going to be busy.”
    Katie smiled, but Olivia’s comment only made her feel more nervous. She’d quickly become used to the things that occurred on the first level, and the second had been pretty easy too; it was with the third level that she’d begun to struggle, and the sixth had almost killed her. The pay was good, though, and she’d been able to take regular nights off to recover from any injuries she sustained. Stopping at the next door, she took a deep breath and tried to brace herself for one final night of action.
    “Dear God,” she whispered, repeating the ritual that she’d begun to use in an attempt to stay calm at the start of each shift, “please let me get through this. Please -”
    She paused, before thinking of the money. That was all that really mattered. With the money, she’d be able to escape, to get out of Bowley and never look back.
    With a trembling hand, she opened the door and stepped through. The music was even louder now, and before she even knew what was happening, several figures lunged out of the pulsing red haze and grabbed her by her arms, pulling her down the steps.
    ***
    “I feel so bad about Bob,” Candy whispered, staring down at her hands in the stark bathroom light. She was halfway through getting dressed, with only her shirt and socks left to go, but suddenly a wave of sadness had settled in her soul and, with no other obvious sources, she figured the problem had to be Bob. “Maybe I should talk to him…”
    She paused, before looking over her shoulder, toward the door that led through into Tom’s dark bedroom. “Do you think I should do that?” she called out.
    “Do what?”
    “Talk to Bob.”
    “Why?” From his tone of voice, he seemed to find the idea highly amusing. “Forget him. He’s human garbage. He’s a complete waste of time. Why would anyone talk to a man like Bob unless they had no choice?”
    “But he’s sad ,” she continued. “I dunno, I spent a lot of time with him, I feel like I don’t want him to get too down.”
    “You’ll be telling me next that you love the idiot.”
    “I…” She paused again. “Well, I mean…”
    Turning back to look at her reflection in the mirror, she realized that Tom might have a point. After all, even though she found Bob utterly infuriating, and even though the incident with the hit-man had made her run a mile, she couldn’t deny that she missed having him around. The idea of loving Bob was crazy, it made no sense and it infuriated her, but her feelings for him were uncomfortably close to how she always imagined love would be, so it was impossible to discount the possibility entirely. She wished there was a simple swab test that would tell her the answer, one way or the other.
    “I…”
    Her voice trailed off.
    “No,” she whispered, seeing the sense of shock in her own eyes. “I can’t love him, that’d be…”
    “You’re making a classic mistake,” Tom called through. “You’re mistaking love for pity.”
    She frowned. “I am?”
    “You feel sorry for Bob. You wish his life wasn’t such a mess. You wish he wasn’t a complete moron. I get it, those are natural reactions that anyone would feel when faced with a man like Bob. But none of those things mean that you love him. Love’s something deeper, and I honestly believe that the vast majority of people never actually experience love at all. They aren’t loved, and they don’t love. They try, of course, and they pretend, and society coddles them and tells them they’re feeling actual love, but… There are, what, six billion people on the planet? Almost seven?” He cleared