“Are you saying that wasn’t you I saw on the network’s surveillance footage, wiping the memories of network guards and exerting mind control over them?”
Aidan’s lips tightened. “It isn’t what you think.”
“You didn’t breach network headquarters and violate every protocol put in place to protect the humans who help us?”
“I know it looks bad, but—”
“You didn’t fuck with the guards’ minds,” Seth continued, anger rising, “possibly giving them brain damage, and roam the compound freely?”
“I—”
“You didn’t comb through the records room, then make yourself at home in Chris Reordon’s office, searching confidential files for information you could feed the vampire army you’ve raised as well as the scientists you’ve commissioned to increase the dosage of the tranquilizer?”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me!” Seth bellowed.#p#分页标题#e#
Everything went quiet.
Aidan.
The vampires in the lab.
Melanie.
Bastien.
Even the guards in the hallway fell into silence, so Seth’s voice must have carried through the thick walls.
“It isn’t what you think,” Aidan insisted.
“You made the network your playground, endangered all of the humans who work here by compromising the guards and security, and helped yourself to an ass-load of confidential information and research. At the same time, a surprisingly adept army of vampires rose against us and miraculously gained access to the only sedative that works against immortals. A sedative that can only be obtained on these premises, along with a detailed compilation of dosages and their effectiveness, culled from the research performed here. Quite a coincidence.”
“Seth—”
“That tranquilizer was used against Lisette,” Seth snapped.
“The French immortal?”
“She nearly died, Aidan! She lay comatose for days! She’s a telepath, yet even her mind was quiet.”
Aidan stared at him. “When did this happen?”
“You know damned well when it happened!”
“It isn’t what you think,” Aidan repeated.
“Then why don’t you tell me what it is?”
The minutes stretched. Every once in a while, Seth heard bone scrape against bone as the virus struggled to heal Aidan’s hands, but not a flicker of pain touched the Celt’s impassive face.
“Well?” Seth prodded.
“Do you know why poor people play the lotto, Seth?” he asked at length.
“What?”
“Wealthy people on the news are always condemning poor people for playing lotto, saying they should take that one dollar a week and invest it in whatever the hell rich people think will miraculously eradicate poverty. A savings account that will accrue a Lilliputian amount of interest by the end of the year. Four dollars more a month put toward paying down debt. They say lotto players are irrational. They say they’re stupid. They think all lotto players mistakenly believe that they have an excellent chance of winning big. They call lotto players sheep and accuse them of playing for no other reason than that everyone else seems to be playing and they want to be part of the “in” crowd. I’ve even heard them accuse poor people who play lotto of being greedy and self-destructive. And do you know why?”
Before Seth could ask him what the hell he was talking about, Aidan continued.
“Because they don’t get it. Because they’ve never had to struggle. They don’t know what it’s like to work two jobs you hate just to pay the rent and put food on the family’s table. They don’t know what it’s like to have a car so old and in such poor condition that you say a prayer every time you turn the key, hoping it’ll start. They don’t know what it’s like to not get to attend college because there aren’t enough government grants to go around and their parents can’t afford tuition. They don’t get what it’s like to work the same low-paying, dead-end job day after day, having to take shit from a boss who fucks with his employees’ lives for no other reason than he’s an asshole who likes to fuck with peoples’ lives and is in a position to do so, and to know that this is what their lives will always be like because they can’t do a damned thing to change it. They don’t know what it’s like to live without hope.”
That caught Seth’s attention.
“They can’t comprehend,” Aidan said, his tone almost begging Seth to understand, “the fucking stress and depression a life without hope dumps on a person. They can’t understand that for just a few minutes, when that man or woman buys a lotto ticket, the stress that constantly tightens their shoulders eases just a bit. That just imagining winning the power-whatever, imagining all of their financial woes disappearing, imagining being able to quit their shit jobs and tell their asshole boss to go fuck himself gives them a desperately needed moment of happiness, of peace, and helps them get through the day. That every time their jackwad boss treats them like shit, they can think of that ticket and of the drawing at the end of the week and how awesome it would be to win, slim though the chances may be, and—again—get a brief mini-vacation from the stress. That that one-dollar ticket gives them something nothing else in life has. It gives them hope.”