He watched Cole with a level of anguish his friend had never seen in him. He couldn't get close to Jude, stayed a few steps back from her, flinching when Cole tightened his hold on her and her skin gave dangerously under his grip.
"She's-she's--" All of a sudden he was shaking where he hadn't been before, and getting words out was difficult. "Cole, she's dead, Cole. She's dead. She's been dead for months, she's been dead since I found her. She was in the morgue and I didn't want to see her like that, not another person. I brought her back but she seemed fine I just didn't know what to do. I knew it was a mistake, that it was wrong, so I left her and--" His eyes widened. "Oh god we have to shut her off. She can't stay like this we have to--I have to--"
His thoughts had grown so fragmented, leapfrogging ahead of one another, that he stopped talking altogether. Sam turned on heel and walked toward the door at the back of the penthouse. When he pulled the key out from under the chain it hung on from around his neck, he snapped it with one firm tug, unlocked the door, and went inside, leaving it wide open.
Inside were tables cluttered with electronics, windows covered with long blackout curtains, tools and empty birdcages. In the center of the room was the thing itself, the machine, long and low and gleaming blue-white under hanging lights. Sam walked over to one of the tables and turned on a computer that was connected by long wires to the machine in the center of the room. He seemed to have forgotten Cole, or was willfully ignoring his presence as he powered up the computer and started entering commands. He was talking to himself, low, under his breath.