“No. The doctors said they couldn’t guarantee he’d be all right, even if he did. H-he stopped breathing for a while before the ambulance got there. After a year, his parents shut the life support down.” Venkat stared into his champagne.
“I’m so sorry,” John said. “That’s f*****g miserable. You know it’s not your fault, right?”
“It is, though.”
“Had you ever hurt anyone before?” Robin asked, scrunching up his face.
Venkat shook his head. “I didn’t even know it was possible to—to put someone out like that on accident. I thought it was something we had to try to do.”
John had ideas about that, but he kept them to himself. For now. All he was thinking, however, was that in the middle of an assault, it wasn’t at all unthinkable that Venkat’s body and mind had acted without his explicit con
