Page 54 of Fool Me Twice
He shivered as the ghost of the words danced on his skin, closing his eyes against the truth of them.
“Not hungry?” Fix asked.
How could he be when his stomach was twisted into knots? He hadn’t been able to eat properly for days. He wasn’t hungry for food.
“Not yet,” Hart said quietly, opening his eyes again and setting the box to the side.
He opened the next file on the drive. He could get lost in work. It was what he’d always done. It was why he’d escaped back home. So he read with single-minded determination, taking in line after line of information to try and drown out everything else screaming in his head.
And then he hit something.
“Wait,” Hart said suddenly, sitting up straight in his chair and scrolling back. “There. Transfer curses.”
“What’s a transfer curse?” Fix asked around a bite of food.
Hart had almost forgotten he was still there.
“It’s really rare,” he said, trying to remember what they’d been taught about it at Nexus. “It’s basically a curse made to act like a virus. It spreads from one person to the next in various ways, usually touch.”
“Okay?” Fix said. “Is that what you think is going on with Cane’s case?”
“No,” Hart said, ignoring the name and chasing down whatever thought it was that had made him pause when he saw the mention of them. “Transfer curses don’t…disappear. They spread. They increase the number of cursed people without limit.”
“So…it doesn’t help us?” Fix said slowly, frowning.
“Not directly,” Hart said, taking his tablet out and pulling up a blank document and his stylus. He started mapping out the trajectory of what had been happening to Cane, from the first moment he’d called Ash to what happened just two days ago. Hart circled the names responsible for the occurrences and the consequences of them.
“These are all the incidents Cane has reported since he believes he was cursed,” Hart said, pointing to the screen. Fix leaned in to look closer, hitting Hart with the smell of smoke once again. Hart exhaled against it. “All different people, but all in some semblance of contact within his organization.”
“So they’re giving it to each other?” Fix asked.
“I don’t think so?” Hart said, voice growing frustrated again as each new question poked holes in whatever his subconscious thought he’d stumbled upon. “None of Cane’s people showed as cursed, not even the fighter who was diagnosed right after he stabbed the other guy.”
He tapped the stylus lightly against the table, trying to unravel the mess.
“And another thing,” he said after long minutes of just running around in circles inside his head. “Transfer curses usually hop from person to person based on negative emotions. So if the first person cursed were to transfer it to someone, it would be to someone they feel negatively toward, and the curse would then enhance that negativity.”
“So the endgame of it…” Fix said.
“Is destruction,” Hart said. “Transfer curses are chaotic in nature. That’s why they’re very rarely used, and why so few people even know about them. They’re hard to contain, hard to catch, and hard to stop completely. You never know if you’ve broken the curse on everyone who has it. And if you haven’t, it just keeps on spreading.”
“So it doesn’t have to be centered on just one person?” Fix nodded. “Like this thing is with Cane, or that first case we looked at.”
“Exactly,” Hart said. “Emotions are messy. Always. And transfer curses feed on that mess.”
“Where would you even use something like that?” Fix asked.
Hart grimaced. “Wars, rebellions, overthrowing governments.”
“So not to settle a personal grudge.”
Hart shook his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it being used like that.”
Fix hummed, tapping his fork against the takeout container. “What got your attention then?”
Hart honestly had zero idea.
“I’m not sure. I saw the words on screen and got this weird feeling there was something there, but now that I’m talking it out it’s just not connecting. Let’s just move on.”