Almost a month had passed, and the only thing I was still sure of was that I'd made a mistake. I was also pretty sure the killer was smarter than me. If it was Benrick then he was a genius, and the method he used was beyond my comprehension. For all the possibilities I had at this stage, Kenrey and the guard might have murdered each other, and the only man who could tell me otherwise, Jacob Hobb, had gone missing. In the stress of it all, I'd stopped sleeping. Pressen kept me awake as much as Kenrey. When the lights went out, their faces seemed to materialize like swamp mist out of thin air. Hobb, Sariah, Rake, Lisbold, all of them were staring at me, forcing me to stay awake or they would slit my throat as I slept. The press had all but stopped bothering me. In the aftermath of the riots and the military intervention, local, national, and international news cared about little other than the mech problem. Not even Pressen had contacted me since I found him waiting for me outside my apartment.
