by Snow, Nicole
My brain doesn’t even feel connected. It’s disembodied.
I just fucking blank.
Nothing in my head except the roar of white noise, and I can’t move.
I can barely even breathe.
Gray’s voice seems to spiral down a distant tunnel as he yells my name.
“Leo? Leo!”
I watch him shouldering around me, crashing into Ross before that asshole can turn and run. They go down together, Ross hissing and clawing like an angry cat.
The old doctor’s no match for the vet.
Gray grips him by the shoulders and slams him down hard, his head bouncing against the wood flooring.
I still can’t fucking move. I’m just raging inside, beating against the cages of my own damn mind.
Then Ross, straining against Gray, snarls out another word. “Boudica!”
It’s like a hot-burning rage flashes through me in an instant, painting everything jagged red.
Gray looks brightest, like he’s on fire, glowing. I can see the blood in his veins, waiting to be squeezed out until he pops.
The only thing soft-colored is Ross, a passive target, not to be touched, but my body wants to kill, to rend, to destroy, to—and it damn sure wants to stop the source of this hot red knife in my mind. Right now, that seems to be my friend.
“No!” I roar, even as my hands clench into fists and my muscles bunch to launch myself at Gray.
I won’t.
And suddenly it takes everything in me to stay still, but I refuse to move.
I won’t hurt my friend.
I refuse to obey my conditioning, those words that act like implanted commands I’m meant to follow without thinking, even as my body screams.
My legs strain, wanting to lunge forward. Only for me to pull back with all my will and all my strength. It feels like my muscle fibers are about to snap with the tug of war between my free will and my conditioning.
“Boudica!” Ross roars again, loud and demanding, but I snap my head to one side, closing my eyes, clenching my teeth.
“No!” I snap back again, holding on to that word as a lifeline, my entire body in flames.
Fuck. You.
I. Will. Not. Give. In.
There’s a violent crash of flesh on wood. I can just piece the sound together even if I won’t look. Gray slams Ross against the floor again, and I hear my tormentor grunting in pain.
“Say it,” Gray roars. “Say the release word. Let him go.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” Ross spits back. “That savage will kill me if I release him.”
“Shame. I’ll kill you if you don’t,” Gray fires back, and Ross makes a sneering sound.
“You won’t. You obviously need me for something, or I—hnngh!”
This time the sound is a crashing fist on flesh. Ross belts out a howl.
Gray growls. “You remember how good I am with a scalpel, Ross. I can do a lot of things to you without killing you, believe me. You won’t like a single one of them.”
There’s silence.
Then another crash, another grunt from Ross, while my body coils tighter. The mental leash I’ve got on myself stretches.
There’s a scream in my mind that I can’t and won’t succumb to.
This howling banshee in my head wants to eat my free will alive and leave me mindless and broken and full of regret and—
“The cool green day,” Ross gasps. It’s not quite right, missing that hypnotic cadence I’m conditioned to listen for, but it’s the words that matter right now. “L-9, come back to the cool green day.”
I’m a puppet with its strings cut.
That rage bleeds out like a dam breaking, leaving me empty, loose, and I collapse, falling to my hands and knees, sucking in desperate breaths.
“Fuck,” I gasp. “Fuck.”
“You all right?” Gray asks.
“Yeah.” I push myself up on my knees, dragging my hood back so I can breathe, looking at them.
Gray still has Ross pinned, one hand curled in his shirt in a tight and straining lock, the other hand up with his bloodied knuckles clenched.
Ross’ face is a mess. His nose is smashed in, blood down his beard and cheeks and mouth. His lips are swollen and split, and I don’t think that was me.
It was Gray.
I smile. This is why I trusted him to have my back.
I stagger to my feet, striding closer, looking down at the demon who made me what I am.
He’s just a pathetic old bastard now, but he still looks up at me like he’s in control, his red-smeared mouth spreading in a bloody smirk.
“You don’t look well, L-9.”
I don’t bother answering the fuck.
Just slam my boot into the side of his head, watching with grim satisfaction as his eyes widen before he slumps unconscious.
“Come on,” I mutter, reaching down to hook a hand under one of his arms. “Let’s get him back to town.”
* * *
We’re more than halfway to Heart’s Edge when Gray’s phone rings on the dash, cutting off the GPS.
It’s Warren’s name on the caller ID.
We’ve got Ross tied up in the back seat. He’s gagged, just in case he wakes up before we get back and tries to pull anything.
Gray gives me a worried look, then leans over and taps the screen, putting Warren on speaker. “Here.”
Warren’s voice comes out haggard, dark. “Put Leo on!”
“I’m here.” I lean forward, instantly tense, alert. “You’re on speaker. What’s going on?”
“You need to get back here,” Warren says. “And I’m talkin’ now. Fuchsia was fucking around with the transmission gear while we were gearing up to broadcast. She intercepted a communication between that creepy fucker and somebody with the company.”
“Shit.” I check the time; we’re still probably half an hour out. “What’s it say?”
“Move over,” I hear Fuchsia suddenly, impatient, interrupting. “Have a listen, Lion-boy.”
I bite back my retort, even if a snarl bubbles up inside me, as crackly recorded audio starts playing over the line.
Nash’s voice, and another one I don’t recognize—dry, deadpan, sounds like it’s been mechanized through a filter.
One of the higher-ups at Galentron, then.
“—not answering,” Nash says in that clipped, cool tone that comes with an official report, the same tone drilled into us. “Ross may have been compromised. The entire mission is compromised. He gave me the order to enact Black Forest.”
I go pale.
Black Forest?
Black fucking Forest means a controlled release of SP-73 from the air over Heart’s Edge.
No.
No, Nash, he wouldn’t have brought a sample of the virus here? Not enough to infect the whole town...would he?
But that sick feeling inside me turns into pure horror, dread, as a mechanized voice answers.
“No. We can’t risk Black Forest spreading into the wild,” the voice says. “Not in the current climate. We’ll have to forget subtlety and take the brute force method. Your orders have changed. Enact Black Phoenix.”
There’s something almost eager in Nash’s voice when he says, “Black Phoenix? That’s a lot of explosives, but I know the perfect place to stage them.”
For a moment everything goes blurry.
The road in front of me, the night sky, the dashboard of Gray’s truck.
Black Phoenix.
“Leo?” Gray says sharply. “Translate. I wasn’t in that deep with security. What’s Black Phoenix?”
“Whatever it is,” Warren interjects, “I can guess it involves a lot of fire.”
“Highly flammable payload,” I grunt out. The words feel robotic, dredged up from inside me. “Pick a central target and use a highly flammable payload to make sure it goes up hard, goes up fast, and takes out as many structures around it as possible before the flames jump to take care of everything else.”
There’
s a dead silence.
Finally, Warren swears softly, and I hear Fuchsia’s disgust on the other end of the line.
But when someone speaks; it’s Blake cutting in. “Everyone’s out tonight. Everyone. It’s the Halloween event at the museum, and people are trick-or-treating, they—damn. Leo, fuck, they could kill half this town in a matter of minutes.”
“Not if we have anything to say about it. Gray, drive faster. Fuck the speed limit.”
“You get to explain why we’re speeding with an unconscious man trussed up in the back of my truck if we get pulled over,” Gray says, charging the truck forward in a hard, growling leap.
I glance over my shoulder.
In the small cargo area between the front seats and the back of the truck, Ross lies unconscious, hog-tied, mostly out of sight.
He won’t be a problem.
I hope.
Turning my attention forward again, I focus on the phone. “Listen. Forget broadcasting the Galentron announcement. That can wait. We made a bad move. We baited Nash too far. Use the radio system, hook it into the town emergency PA, tell everyone to evacuate. Get into the storm shelters. It’ll be the safest place in the event of an explosion. Whatever you do, get those kids off the streets.”
Blake pipes in. “I’ll get my volunteer firefighter crew on it, too. Start an ordered evacuation procedure.”
“Good,” I start to say, until Warren interrupts, oddly quiet.
“Hold up. There’s more.”
But before he can say anything else, I hear another voice that makes my blood go cold.
Zach.
“Mr. Warren?” he says. “Is my mom gonna get hurt?”
I clench my fists, straining into the phone. “Clarissa’s not there?”
Fuck. I hadn’t heard her voice, but I’d been so preoccupied with everything else.
No one answers at first, until Fuchsia cuts in. “She took off. Left the kid with us so no one could really chase her down. We’ve all got our hands full. She thinks she knows where Deanna is, because Ross said ‘cellar door.’” She pauses. “You know what that means, don’t you, Leo?”
I do.
And it makes my stomach drop down to the soles of my feet as a memory hits full force. Just a scene.
Cellar door.
That door in the woods.
That memory of trauma and pain I’ve blocked out.
That room buried deep underground, so deep it’s barely connected to the mansion.
Shit.
The damn museum is a perfect central location. Especially if Nash has been working out of the subterranean spaces all along. I see his plan.
Stage the explosives there. Kill as many people as possible during the Halloween bash. Watch the fire consume the whole town.
He could even make it easy to cover up. The museum’s an old building, after all. Blame it on a gas main exploding, and while the flames are on a tear, he’ll move through the chaos, picking off people who manage to escape so nobody talks.
But as much as I should care about that, there’s only one thing I can think of.
Clarissa’s going to be in that building when it explodes.
Fuck!
There’s no other word. No way to describe the flood of panic and rage that rushes through me.
“We’re on our way back now. Blake, get that evac crew going, find Clarissa—”
“I’ll do my best,” Blake promises. “I’ll get your girl, Tiger.”
“Warren—”
“Zach’s safe with me,” War says firmly. “No one’s going to hurt him. No matter what happens.”
“Thank you.”
I want to feel relief, but there’s this sickness inside me that says I need to be there to handle it all myself. I’m the only one besides Gray who knows the full extent of what Galentron and Nash can do.
And we’re still closing in on the town.
I can’t lose everything. My woman. My son.
Not because I let my shadows become too safe and didn’t step into the light soon enough.
My chest crushes up like a fist, and I can’t breathe.
I take in several deep, rough breaths, then force myself to calm down, to talk. “Let me talk to Zach for a second.”
There’s a silence, then Zach speaks. His voice has that clear, quiet calm he always has, but it’s hushed, soft, and I can tell he’s afraid. “Hi, Mr. Nine,” he whispers.
“Hey. Hey, kiddo,” I say. Fuck.
There’s a lump in my throat, my eyes stinging. “Listen, little man. You’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna find your mom, and fix this mess.”
“But...” The hesitation in his voice kills me. Fucking kills me. “But you’re not here? You’re far away.”
“Not as far as you think. I’m on my way back. I’ll get there in time.” I clench my fists against my thighs so hard I nearly draw blood. “There’s something we need to talk about, Zach.”
I shouldn’t tell him now.
I shouldn’t.
But if something happens to one of us tonight...
“What’s w—” His voice cuts off in a crackle. “—ng, Mr. N—” More crackles. “—ne?”
“Zach? Zach, you still there?’
Nothing.
“Zach!” I lean forward hard, clutching at the phone, tearing it from the dash holder. “Zach! Zach, I need to tell you—I’m...fuck, I’m your dad. Can you hear me?”
There’s no answer.
Nothing but that empty static.
After a long pause, Gray says gently, “Nash probably put in signal jammers to prevent the broadcast from reaching past town and block anyone from calling help.”
I swear, curling forward, hugging Gray’s phone close to my chest like that wonderful little boy is somehow inside, close to my heart.
“Go,” I snarl, my mouth dry. “Just go. Get us there.”
Gray’s only answer is to change gears, sending the truck leaping forward into the night at breakneck speed.
At this rate, as long as we don’t get caught by some do-gooder cop, it’s twenty minutes.
Maybe less.
We’ll get there in time, I tell myself.
We will.
That’s what I hope, right before a dark, slick voice that’s haunted my nightmares for so long rises behind us, biting off one clipped word.
“Homunculus.”
Before I know what’s happening, my entire body spasms.
My heart turns to stone.
I jackknife straight like I’m trying to stand up in the seat.
My arms fling out from my sides.
One busts out the passenger window. The shock is instant, the pain biting and harsh as glass slices through my glove and sleeve, the impact bruising my knuckles, the cuts hot teeth against my skin.
My other arm crashes right into Gray, smashing against the side of his skull.
I don’t mean to do it, but I can’t fucking help it.
It’s a trigger pulling my puppet strings. Ross must’ve gotten his gag off somehow and waited for just the right second to use it against me.
And all it takes is a split second.
Gray’s head snaps to the side, blood erupting from the corner of his mouth.
His hands wrench the steering wheel.
The truck jerks, spins, fishtails. The whole thing bucks as the tires bite the road.
We’re leaping.
Flipping.
And suddenly the world goes into a somersault, and we’re flying.
It happens in slow motion, everything moving one inch at a time while my body feels paralyzed.
There’re just sparks whizzing by, axles scraping the road, then the wheel covers as the truck rolls.
The hood scrapes asphalt, ripping up fire, and the ground becomes the sky.
Then the windshield folds in and fragments into a million beads, and I can’t see anything at all.
But I feel it as the truck goes careening, screaming off the road, and smashes past the safety barrier.
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There’s a whiplash pain in my neck as we go skidding down the hill. A slamming in my skull, a blur, a sound of crunching metal.
There’s the faint smell of gasoline. Then nothing but dull pain.
Everything goes dark.
* * *
I don’t think I’m out that long.
Not much can knock me out short of a tank, but at least the brief unconsciousness is enough to release that trigger hold on me and let my body go limp in the seat belt.
I’m hanging there before I feel hands on me, dragging me back to the real world, and a voice hissing my name.
“Leo...”
Gray. Thank fuck, he’s all right.
I swim through my brain fog, shaking myself, opening my eyes. He’s practically crouched over me, his feet braced against the seat, the truck’s cab upended and me pressed against the door.
He’s bloody, but his eyes are emerald-sharp, focused, as he fights the buckle on my seat belt.
The warped buckle. It won’t come loose.
I shake myself again, breathing in the smell of gas, and something else burning, sparky, rubbery?
Electrical wires.
Something must’ve ripped loose, and with gas leaking...fuck.
“Let me,” I say, shoving his hands away with a gasp.
Then I curl my fingers in the strap of the seat belt and rip.
The woven nylon bites my hands, yanking at the cuts on the right, but it tears, shredding apart with one vicious pull.
They made me to be a brute. Sometimes, it saves our lives.
“Go,” I say, shoving at Gray, pushing him up to the only way out, the broken driver’s side window hanging over our heads like a sunroof. “We’ve got to get clear.”
He lets me nudge him, reaching up over his head, gripping the door and hauling himself out.
I push myself up to follow, too, ignoring the ache in my body, bruises and cuts throbbing everywhere.
I can barely squeeze my bulk through the window.
But I’m free—free and dropping down from the upended truck into the dry scrub grass that’s about to catch like tinder. It’ll go up in a blaze if the sparks flicking from the undercarriage hit just right.
“Ross,” I snarl, turning quickly back to the truck. “He’s—”
“Not in the truck. Damn,” Gray confirms, dusting himself off as neatly as ever, adjusting his shirt cuffs like he isn’t covered in dirt and grime and blood. “Bastard slipped away like the eel he is.”