Surge: Bolt Saga Volume Five (Bolt Saga #13-15)

by Angel Payne

  I shove away, suddenly unable to stand being in the same vicinity as the stinking choad. “And Christ wept in the fucking dumpster,” I mutter, swallowing against a surge of bile. “Save it for someone who’ll believe it, Lawson, because I’m not that quinoa brain anymore.” I pace the length of the room like a tiger in a cage, feeling every inch the role. “I’m the guy who watched my brother take you and your cute little EMP down and sacrifice himself in the process. Fuck.” Saying it out loud is the nightmarish necessity, bringing on the assault of images not only from that night but that moment. Once again I’m in that cavern underneath Paris, watching Tyce launch himself at our own father, knowing damn well what he was risking—and eventually gave—in doing so. His own life.

  There’s a rustling off to my right, and I’m glad for the minor distraction of watching Alex tug away his own disguise. But he performs every action with a careful eye on my father, his stare full of assessment. Since he was part of the support team back at the ridge when we went through the shit storm in Paris, this is officially his first face-to-face with Lawson Richards—a man he knows nothing about because the asshole should be dead by three and a half months.

  But fortunately, that incongruity isn’t messing with such a huge chunk of Alex’s psyche. He’s able to sift faster through the post-bombshell rubble than me and move this shit forward with the assumption that needs to be voiced. “So clearly, you were wearing some heavy-duty protective gear down in those tunnels and survived the skirmish that took out your son.”

  With a cautious glance my way, Dad eases his way back to a sitting position. Wisely, he doesn’t so much as sniff at moving beyond the top of the desk. I’m not even sure I trust him at this point, but the upright posture allows a better sightline to his face—and a faster assessment of the degrees to which he’s lying. I still don’t know his angle here, and my nerves have become unstable storms because of it.

  He tilts his head back toward Alex before stating, “Early on in the Consortium’s research efforts, they developed fabric made from thread woven out of lead. It became clear that control staff would need protection should experiments or subjects get out of hand.”

  I slam back against a wall, my impact matching the bellow of my laugh. “Subjects… So that’s what you all liked calling us back in the break room. Guess that was fun, eh? Joking around about what shenanigans the ‘subjects’ were up to while you enjoyed the weekly potluck and chugged down your Red Bull?” The acid burns hotter in my belly as I laugh again, not so loud and not so heartily. “‘Sorry, guys. Wish I could stick around and scroll through a few more memes with you all, but I gotta get back to my subjects. I’m behind on tortures, you know. Alpha eighty-nine decided to puke when I upped his voltage. Sonofabitch threw off my whole day, damn it.’”

  Once more, my father has the sense to give up all the outward signs of a mortified reaction. With a crestfallen face and sagging shoulders, he dips his head and then slowly shakes it. “You have every right to your bitterness, son.”

  “I also have every right to hurl a lightning bolt through your chest if you call me son again.”

  Dutifully, he falls into silence. A similar silence falls over Alex, who discards his former hair, mustache, and brows onto the desktop. With his hip parked against the edge, he quietly taps out the opening drum riff of Hamilton with four fingers—until Dad cuts into the air again with his aching growl.

  “Christ.” He braces his head with both hands. “It was never supposed to get to this.”

  I don’t flinch a single muscle. “If you think we care, let me introduce you to a little concept called delusional.” But maybe I’m the one who needs to head the line for that T-shirt, because my lie would trip a four-year-old’s bullshit meter. While I can barely stand the sight of my father, who’s paler and thinner than the day he “died,” my rage hasn’t blinded me to the importance of his resurrection—and the opportunity of all the answers it represents.

  “I’m already intimate with delusional.” Dad’s reply is gritty. “The bastard was salivating over my shoulder the entire time I signed on the dotted line with the Scorpios.”

  I cock one brow. “And when you jumped into bed with Faline Garand?”

  He regains his feet. “One had nothing to do with the other.”

  A barked laugh. “You sure you know what delusional means?”

  His spine turns into a steel girder; his features harden like poured concrete. “I turned to the Scorpios for financial help only.”

  A new bark, from Alex this time. “No one keeps things strictly financial with the Scorpios.”

  Dad pulls in a sharp inhalation through his nose. “They stood to gain as much from the deal as Richards Resorts, without attempting anything illegal. That was part of the deal’s allure for them. Clean money. Legitimate millions.”

  “The millions they turned around and offered you for your sons,” I growl.

  “Buy two, get three?” Alex adds, narrowing his glare. “Because, after all, they’d already snagged one on their own.”

  A thunderous pound through the room becomes the punctuation to his accusation. While the sound is startling, it’s hardly shocking—especially when the two of us look to where my father has made everything on the desk jump from the descent of his closed fist. “Do you think I made that deal willingly?” he snarls. “That any of that was my real motivation or desire?”

  Alex folds his arms, cocks his head, and channels his full Jack Ryan for his wry response. “Do you think we’d buy the line that you didn’t know your own son had been targeted, tracked, and then abducted by those monsters?”

  Dad’s shoulders drop again. “Not until they’d actually done it.” His confession is so rickety and rough, it really is nearly believable. Nearly. I refuse to push my mind over that final line of change. Believing him will mean letting go of my fury for him—and right now, just as it was for so many months inside the hive, the anger is the core of my strength, the reason I’m persevering through this surreal shit. “Whether you believe it or not is inconsequential,” he goes on, pushing upright again. “It’s the truth.” With steps like a jerking automaton, he starts to cross the dingy room—in the opposite direction from me, thank fuck. “We’d been enjoying huge success, expanding the existing resorts and starting to conceptualize new properties. The Scorpios were so pleased with the dividends on their investments, they wanted me to consider bringing other ventures under the Richards name for legitimate development.”

  “And one of those concepts was the crackpot plan of the Consortium?” Alex supplies.

  “It didn’t sound so insane at first,” Dad defends. He’s reached the other side of the room and lowers onto the arm of the couch. “When I first took a meeting with Faline and Dr. Verriere, the originating scientist behind the project, they were impassioned but rational—and very clear about the ultimate good of their purpose. Verriere explained that while Frankenstein’s fictional tactics had been the nucleus of his project, it wasn’t his intention to become a screaming lunatic with an army of lumbering giants at his disposal.” He pauses, his gaze gaining the mist of remembering far-gone times. “Verriere was driven by more than simple scientific curiosity. Genetic deficiencies severely stunted the growth in his legs and one of his arms. He was so convinced that the bio-electric process would work, he was willing to be the Consortium’s first human test subject.”

  I step closer before even realizing I’m doing so. After catching myself and scuffing to a stop, I press, “And what happened?”

  Darkness takes over Dad’s face. “It was a raving success—for all of eight hours.”

  “And then?”

  “The power surge backfired on Verriere. His system couldn’t process all the extra voltage.” The storm across his features vanishes behind an emotionless wall. And there’s an expression with which I’m more than familiar. “His blood exploded from the inside out. He was gone inside another hour.”

  Alex and I exchange a significant glance. Once mor
e, we’re nonplussed but not staggered. But I also sense that, like me, he’s also intensely curious. None of this adds up to how things eventually shook out. To how I turned out.

  “Seems like that should’ve been your writing on the wall,” Alex finally tosses out, again borrowing a chunk of Jack Ryan sarcasm.

  “Writing?” Dad returns. “Think more along the lines of a ten-foot-high billboard.”

  “But something changed your mind.”

  “Not something.” I move forward, working my knuckles against the top of the desk like a curved pizza cutter. “Someone.” As soon as Dad’s stare locks on me, I elaborate. “When Faline Garand wants her way, she won’t stop until she gets it. Take it from the guy who spent six months in her shackles.”

  Dad compresses his lips. “Or from the idiot who made the mistake of spending one night between her legs.”

  Alex groans. “So you did go there.”

  “After five martinis and watching Verriere die before my eyes”—really fucking wisely, he casts his gaze anywhere in the room but at me—“yes.” By now, he’s back on his feet and pacing back and forth in front of the couch. “Christ, yes. And let me tell you, the wind-up was much better than the pitch.”

  “And let me tell you that if I hear any more stats like that, I’ll line-drive a lightning bolt through your cheating dick.”

  I back the vow up with ballpark-worthy fireworks of my own, tagging the top of the desk with a row of bright-blue laser dots. I never thought I’d ever openly admit it, but the return of my full power is actually reassuring—especially if it means I’ll really get to follow through on this promise. But Dad acknowledges my message with a succinct nod and pivots to continue with his steady pacing as well as his astounding—but bizarrely believable—explanation.

  “I love your mother, Reece. I always will. What I did that night with Faline…well, it wasn’t a usual practice. Nor a repeated one.”

  Shit. I even believe that part. Not that I’m going to give the bastard even that morsel of assurance.

  “A one and done,” Alex murmurs. “Though I doubt the bitch let you ever forget the ‘done’ part.”

  “Bingo,” Dad states. “To the tune of video footage and photographs that were instantly turned into blackmail material—forcing me to stay quiet about what had happened to Verriere, even after the Consortium obtained alternate funding and continued building the Source, vowing to continue what Verriere had started, except using young, fit subjects who could withstand the violence of what was being done to their bloodstream.”

  I push away from the desk, advancing toward him. “Alternate funding from where?”

  “I still have no idea.” Dad doesn’t back away, even when I come closer with lightning crackling from my fists and in my gaze. He almost seems to welcome my violence, as if I’m expressing what he can’t. “Though it was why I eventually played along with every step of their happy bullshit.” He still doesn’t waver, giving me full access to the sincerity in his gaze and the undaunted set of his stance. If this is all another lie, he’s become a fucking expert at the skill. “I convinced Faline that her extortion game had enlightened me about her passion for the project and made me see their cause in a whole new light. I worked at getting closer to her, in the hopes of tracing back the money and then taking down their sources along with all of the ‘research’ facilities.”

  “But…?” Alex jabs out the prompt, obeying an instinct that’s clearly sharper than mine. Only now do I hear the implied doubt in Dad’s statement, though the lapse is understandable. Until ten minutes ago, I’d assumed my father was still a pile of rotting parts in the Morgue de La PP, along with the secrets he took to that inauspicious grave with him. Now, he’s not only filling out the mystery but apparently on his way to making shit right by it, as well. Well, as right as he possibly can, given the insane circumstances.

  “But then she started keeping me at a stiff arm’s length,” Dad continues. “At first, I thought she’d gotten wise because of the lack of sex, though that never seemed to be a problem once I’d softened her with trinkets and satisfied her with toys.” He has the grace to color, as well as avoiding eye contact with me once more. “But she was really different. Decidedly distant. A couple of weeks after that, Tyce went to Richards Hall for an unannounced visit. He was talking about things that made no sense to your mother but connected the most terrifying dots for me. Sure enough, asking questions in the right way to the right people, I learned that you’d landed in that bitch’s test lab and had been there for weeks.” He stops, bracing hands to the armrest. A second later, he drops his head over as if preparing to hurl. He sounds like it too, while continuing in a low grate, “It was like I’d stepped into a nightmare—only it had no foreseeable end.”

  I’m motionless. And in so many ways, emotionless too. Both statuses are on purpose. If I move, that might mean having to feel again. And if I feel, that means…

  Confronting the storm that wallops me anyway.

  The fresh rage. The old sorrow. The ongoing confusion that’s bound the two feelings since the first moment I was ever bound to a Consortium gurney. Fuck. It was so long ago, but it seems like only yesterday.

  “But you could have brought it to an end.” I seethe the words as the whole scope of “it” plays out in my mind. The torture of my captivity. The terror of my escape. And finally, the confusion of my freedom. Of being “banished” to the West Coast for a partying “bender” I never went on. That this bastard knew I never went on. “You could’ve gotten me out of that hell, Lawson.”

  As wrath rekindles every cell in my bloodstream, I break out of my statue state—and become a focused rocket of revenge once again.

  “You could’ve saved me.”

  And within seconds, am right where I want to be. Pouncing down on the man I’ve just spun around with one electric pulse.

  “Instead, you shunned me.”

  Glaring down into his face.

  “While you knew—you knew—what had really happened to me.”

  Crushing down onto his windpipe.

  “To Tyce and me.”

  Tighter. Harder.

  “Your own sons, sacrificed by you. And then resold by you. And then paralyzed and punished again, in that cavern, because of you.”

  Rejoicing in his chokes. Savoring his strangled gasps.

  “And then killed. Killed, because of you.”

  Ignoring the tears that spill from the corners of his eyes. The orbs, so much like mine, pleading for clemency and compassion.

  So much like mine…

  No. No, goddamnit. Not a fucking thing like mine. Or like me at all.

  “He’s dead,” I spew from numb, tear-soaked lips. “My brother is gone, and I’m naming you as his murderer, Lawson Richards.”

  And here is the moment I need. Have prayed for. Have all but dreamed about getting, from the moment I had to lower Tyce’s ashes into his memorial up on the ridge at home. The juncture of providence and payback, of fate being balanced, of wrong finally becoming right…

  But it’s not.

  Fuck me, it’s not.

  If I close in and crush down, all I’m getting from my father is air and silence. All I’m giving back to the world is what it already has. In its eyes, the man has been buried once. Eliminating him this time will serve no fucking purpose except my three seconds of satisfaction. Not even that. I’ve been through these moves before, crossing that line between deciding a person’s life and death—and even though Kane begged me to end him, there was no life-changing ray of light that appeared after I did. No magical alteration of the time continuum or manifestation of knowledge that encompassed all the cosmos.

  There was, simply, nothing.

  An emptiness I can’t return to right now.

  A breach I refuse to dive into—even because of him.

  Doesn’t mean I have to like myself for the decision. Or to be suave and serene about it.

  I’m allowed to let out this tormented roar as I let my fat
her drop to the couch like a used gym towel.

  I’m allowed to turn and stalk back across the room, yanking at my hair until strands come out between my fingers.

  And yeah, I’m really allowed to let that bastard sit there with my last words echoing in his head, because I still mean all of them. Because he’s still Tyce’s murderer. Because he should still be goddamned grateful I’ve decided “eye for an eye” is just a stupid colloquialism. Because, no matter how violently I’m beating myself up for letting him live, he’d better damn well realize that I didn’t do it for nothing. That in exchange for his damn breath, he’d better start giving up details besides how tormenting it was to know his son—his son!—was being held prisoner by the harpy lunatic scientist he’d fucked and then allowed to blackmail him.

  “Reece.” He sounds like an asphyxiated toad, and that’s just fine by me. Moves like one too, struggling to sit upright on the couch, crunching the leather under his worthless ass like a rubber lily pad. “You have to understand—”

  “Shut up,” I growl from locked teeth, letting my sparking fists fall wearily to my sides. “I already understand more than I want or need to.”

  “No,” he croaks. “You really don’t. Not how you think you do. Not to the extent that you must.”

  “And what the fuck does that mean?” As I bellow it, I whirl again. Shoot out my arms, capturing the entire desk in my electric grip. Whoosh everything violently left, the whole heavy wood piece sliding like I’m rearranging doll furniture—except for the electric cords that pop away from the wall sockets, dragging minor sparks in their wake. “Tell me, asshole!” And by now, I’ve made it clear he has no choice. He’s pinned beneath the toppled desk, his back against the couch and his legs dangling from the center, his gaze popping wide as I approach through the leftover flickers of once was the desktop lamp. “You going to tell me they threatened to kill me—and then Tyce too?” I shake out my fingers, flipping everything left on the desk into his face. He flings up his free hand, warding off the flying papers, paperclips, pens, and calculator. A small foam smiley face bounces off his head, with its motion-activated motivator stuck on repeat. My father and I continue glaring at each other beneath a barrage of one word in high-pitched Spanish. “Maravilloso! Maravilloso!”