He's prepared for any eventuality.
The thing about experiments and case studies is that their results are never truly accurate; things, people - they can all be tested but one thing holds true.
There is always a bias. A flaw in design.
.
At first, it's a clinical sort of curiosity - the sort that makes him want to split Meganada open and gut it like a fish on a slab, to find what makes it so different from the others, the angels and the failed experiments; the kind that drives him to pick apart O'Brien's mind, to unravel his thoughts and understand why he cares so fucking much about those children. They're nothing more than collateral, willing sacrifices, an expendable resource to be used when the last outlives its usefulness. He doesn't understand O'Brien's outrage, his growing discomfiture at the things they do.
You're a researcher, he'd say. You should understand.
Countermeasures will have to be put in place. O'Brien's a loose cannon, an errant variable, too willing to risk everything for needless sentimentality.
.
Could he kill a man?
Perhaps not, Sheffield thinks. He dislikes the traditional tools, dislikes the stench of gunpowder and the lack of finesse. O'Brien, he thinks, deserves more than a knife to the back or a gun to the head. It's what he owes his old friend, after all.
.
He's a researcher. Not a monster, not a madman. A pragmatist, he thinks, as he buys that nurse's loyalty with hollow promises and the brush of his lips against her wrist. A realist, he thinks, when he takes her home, when her nails dig into his shoulders as he devours her, devours all she has to offer.
The gun looks nice in her hands. Not quite as ugly, not quite as connected to him.
.
In the end, he doesn't even have to do anything. O'Brien's a fool, to think pretty words will never be enough to win someone over - not when his experiment's been a success, not when it's O'Brien lying on the floor with blood rushing into his lungs and pooling beneath him. He grabs the gun, turns it on O'Brien - "it's nothing personal," he says.
.
It gets easier. It gets easier when Seraphita begins to cry and the solar noise flares, peaks in his brain as a livid white-yellow-gold noise wail.
.
In the Yamaloka, he is judge, jury and executionor.
.
Maybe he regrets it, just a little, when he devours the pretty nurse, tastes the metallic tang of her blood at the back of his throat. He savours the sweetness, so typical of her.
He hunts.
.
To be a god, he thinks, is to be a demon. There is no great difference.