Stone sighs, looking vaguely bored again. “Well, let’s not get melodramatic about it, son. Now take this, and don’t shoot me, okay?” He flips the gun around and hands it to me, butt first.
I’d like to say that something unnatural and noticeable compels me to do what he’s telling me, but that’s not true. I don’t feel anything pushing me to comply, I just do it, like it’s my choice, my own will enforcing my actions.
I snatch the gun out of Stone’s hand, and even though every part of me screams to shoot him in the fucking head, I don’t. There’s no struggle, internal or otherwise; my mind simply will not allow me to do anything other than what he’s told me to do.It scares the absolute shit out of me how easily this drug has nixed my autonomy, without a single shred of fight.
Stone claps his hands together and grins smugly, all bared teeth, like we’ve come to the end of a business meeting that’s gone decidedly well for him.
“I think it’s time to go, yes?” Stone says as if he expects one of us to answer him. He pushes away from the desk and back around it to open up a drawer, taking out a black box. When Stone opens up the box to reveal a syringe full of blue liquid, I know our countdown on figuring a way out of this is down to single digits.
Leo must know it too because he starts fighting again, uselessly, scrabbling and seizing in Rohan’s grasp, trying to do anything it takes to escape his ironclad hold. But Rohan doesn’t nudge, holding Leo in place with an ease that would be funny in any other circumstance. Even with his new strength matching Rohan’s, Leo doesn’t yet have the experience using it to combat the other man in a fight of brute strength.
But because Leo is Leo, he doesn’t give up. He just keeps going and going, no matter how pointless his efforts are.
Stone walks toward Leo with the syringe in his hand. He gives Leo an almost pleasant smile. “Don’t worry, Agent Snow; soon you’ll forget why you were ever trying to get away in the first place.”
He’s going to inject Leo with that shit, and it’ll all be over, and there’s not a fucking thing I can to stop it from happening.
Stone kneels down beside Leo and Rohan. “Hold him still and bare his neck for me, will you, Rohan.”
Rohan does as he’s told, gripping Leo’s hair and yanking his head back to expose his neck for Stone.
Leo’s eyes dart between me and Stone several times as the needle travels closer to his skin, real panic settling in on his faceas the reality of the situation becomes too much for him to retain any composure.
“No!” he yells, furious and agonised. “No, stop! No, no, no! You have to stop! No!”
The needle breaks skin, and Leoscreamslike he did when Dan injected him with Liquid Onyx. He’s staring right at Stone as he makes that awful noise, and then …
And then … what the actual living fuck?
There’s the sound of ribs cracking and the squelch of flesh ripping apart as a hole opens up in Stone’s chest cavity. Dark blood and other human gore—bits of bone and wet, red skin—spray outward from Stone’s chest and splatter across Leo’s face and neck, some of it landing on Rohan and the floor beyond them too.
Stone’s body remains upright for another few seconds before it tips over, falling to the side next to Leo in a collapsed heap of dead flesh.
Leo’s expression transforms from absolute fear to paralyzing horror in the space of time it takes for Stone’s body to hit the floor with a muffled thump.
Shock holds me hostage for another second, but when Leo lets out a strangled cry and tries yet again to free himself from Rohan, I spring into action. Rohan is staring at his—our—father’s corpse with stunned, wide eyes. The vacant glaze to them has lifted, thank fuck, which hopefully means he’s no longer under the compulsion of Stone’s orders now that the man is dead.
I grab hold of Rohan’s arm and yank him off Leo. The smaller man doesn’t protest, allowing himself to be shoved aside as I dive in to grab Leo, pulling him up off the floor and into my arms. He clamps onto me, burying his bloodied face in my neck, arms so tight around me they hurt, but I don’t care. I want that pain, the reassurance that Leo is alive and with me, here, now.I circle one arm around his waist, tugging his body further into mine so we’re plastered together at every conceivable angle, and shove the other up to grasp the back of his neck, squeezing him there, trying to offer reassurance of my own.
“Jack.” Leo’s voice is a crack, hoarse and small, afraid.
I tighten my grip on him, digging my fingers into him hard enough to give rise to bruises that won’t last like they used to. “I know, baby, it’s gonna be okay,” I murmur, soothing him roughly.
My gaze latches onto Rohan when he finally stops staring at Stone, and he starts laughing—high pitched and almost certainly hysterical. A similar feeling rises in my chest, hot and bubbling like boiling water. It’s too hot to be relief, but it’s something close to it, a harsher, crueler version of it, maybe, like good news that comes too late, when most of the damage has already been wrought, and you’re left with the aftermath.
“Hey, little brother,” Rohan says, grinning at me with his—our—father’s blood staining his white teeth. “We’re orphans! Halle-fucking-lujah.”
I offer a sharp smile in return and a double thumbs-up. No matter what else happens, any day that Ian Stone dies is a good goddamn day.
Past
Rohan
AFISA medical room has become my second least favourite place to wake up, the first being any building owned or run by my dad, so it’s a nice surprise that after getting shot almost two dozen times I find myself waking up in a normal bed inside someone's house.
For the first few years after I was injected with Liquid Onyx, I was kept in a lab like the other survivors. I was kept separate from the rest, and my mum was allowed to visit me, but that was the only difference in our treatment.
Every night I was put in a containment cell where I slept and every day I was taken out to be strapped down to a table and torn apart by my dad’s scientists. They tested my physical enhancements, attaching electrodes to my body and making me run on a treadmill or lift increasingly large weights for hours. They tested my ability to withstand cold and heat with a speciallydesigned black box that had a temperature control on the side. They worked me until I passed out, until my limits had been established or obliterated.
