“He said something about waiting for the right spot in the news cycle. But I don’t know what he’s waiting for, exactly,” I say, teeth worrying into my lower lip.
Ellis nods, hand over his mouth, clearly trying to withhold judgment and not doing a great job of it.
“Uh, back to you,” I mumble, glancing away. Ellis links a couple of his fingers through mine, giving them a comforting squeeze.
In the silence that falls over us, the TV is just loud enough for us to hear Clayton say, “And I would like to thank the support of the council members, Mayor Anders, and of course, my girlfriend, Lacey Vigil—”
The word sinks to the pit of my stomach.Girlfriend.
A little too quickly, I mute the TV, like swatting a mosquito out of the air. I knock a couple of empty paper coffee cups to the ground in the process.
The cup rolling on the ground is the only sound in the room for several heartbeats. Ellis’s too-observant eyes pierce me.
“Ellis—”
He pulls away with a shrug. “You know, you don’t have to go to his thing if you don’t want to. But it seems like you’re still pretty attached.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that Ellis lets go of my hand as he speaks, I feel the loss of connection keenly.
“I’m not attached,” I protest, fully ready to lay out the boundaries I’ve set with Clayton as proof. “He’s been really kindto me and not like, kicking me out of my apartment until I find a new place—”
“Yeah, but you’re not looking,” Ellis replies. It’s not just an assumption, it’s an accusation.
He seems to realize he went a little too far with that, balking at his own words and reaching out a hand to me.
I swallow uncomfortably and turn away. I take a few steps away from Ellis, barely looking where I’m going.
There’s a hallway, and I just need a few feet of space to grapple with the realization that it’s been this long, that I’ve let things go on this long. Have I become complacent in my own captivity? I feel so physically trapped by it I just need to be able to move. I don’t have the capacity to be cautious; I just need to move.
“Lacey . . .”
I don’t want him to see me freaking out like this. I just keep turning away, and he keeps following me. “He didn’t do it on purpose, I’m sure he’s just been busy, that’s not—I didn’t...”
I hate that I’m trembling so much I can barely speak. I can’t even begin to voice how angry I am that it’s been this long, and I didn’t even realize—all of it rushes forward at once and chokes out.
Words stop seeming to matter at all when I turn a corner.
A chill creeps up my back, goosebumps raising on my arms. I feel like I’ve been here before. It’s too reminiscent of Maestro’s laboratory, the dim light, the dripping sounds, the row of large, cylindrical tanks filled with foggy, iridescent liquid.
There’s someone in there.
The glowing tanks are the only source of light in the dark room. I shuffle in, barely daring to breathe as I approach a tank further down the line that has a dark shape within it. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.
“Lacey, slow down,” Ellis calls after me, voice hushed. He cuts off as he steps up behind me.
My heart nearly stops as Ellis looks at the tube, watching for the recognition in his expression. There’s an accusation in my heart that I won’t put to words, stuck in my throat.
There’s a big guy floating in the tank. Some small plastic tubing leads into one of his nostrils, and every few seconds a few air bubbles drift out of his mouth. Occasionally, he twitches a little, hands flexing and loosening. IVs attached to his arms feed in various liquids floating around him.
He looks human in many ways, but at the same time, clearly not. His skin looks green and scaly, fins growing out of his face and limbs almost like an old Hollywood lake monster.
My head is still spinning, but I’m glad for any reason to talk about anything else.
Ellis frowns deeply but steps closer to where I am. “Is this one of the guys he’s fought on TV?”
“I haven’t seen him before,” I breathe. He’s not quite as strange and shambling as some of the raging mutants Steel has faced before, but he’s not too far off. God, I don’t want to think about him right now. I can’t.
There’s a clipboard hanging off a hook with several pages attached, and I pick it up and flip through the pages, clutching at any distraction. There’s a few different pictures of this guy, and every next one he looks a little more human.
