“Nothing is happening between us.”
“—end it. End it before it begins.”
“Or else what?” I say, my voice hard. I don’t take to threats kindly.
Julia’s expression doesn’t change, but something cold gleams behind her eyes.
“You know what happens when you lose control,” she says quietly. “You know how unpleasant the recalibrations can be, especially when we have to do a little extra digging.” She pauses, letting that sink in. “You know how you can get, Nate, how easily obsession forms. Thatdarkness.”
I go still.
The darkness.
She knows about the darkness.
How? I’ve never told anyone about it—the black tide that rises in my blood when I’m angry, the violent urges that claw at the edges of my consciousness, the voice that occasionallyspeaks to me. I’ve buried it so deep, fought so hard to keep it contained, and sheknows.
Which means she’s been watching more closely than I realized.
Or she put it there.
“What did you do to me?” The question comes out rough, bordering on panicked. “During the procedures. The enhancements. What did youdo, Julia?”
She gives me a thin smile. “I made you better. Stronger. More capable than any soldier who’s ever lived.” She steps back, putting distance between us. “But every weapon needs a safety, a way to ensure it doesn’t turn on its wielders.”
“I’m not a weapon,” I grind out.
“You’re whatever I designed you to be.” She heads for the door, pausing with her hand on the frame. “Keep it professional with Ms. Baxter, Nate. I won’t ask again.”
She leaves.
The door clicks shut behind her, and I’m alone in my dark penthouse with rage burning through my veins and thoughts I shouldn’t be thinking.
I could kill her.
The idea surfaces, clear and cold and strangely appealing. Julia is human. Fragile. Breakable. One moment of lost control, one squeeze around her throat, and she’d be gone. No more surveillance. No more recalibrations. No more cage.
I could kill Marsh too, kill anyone who tries to control me. Burn Global Dynamix to the ground and walk away from the ashes. Total freedom.
The darkness pulses, hungry and seductive. It would besoeasy, so satisfying, too, to stop pretending to be the golden boy, to stop performing, to let the monster out and watch everyone who’s ever leashed meburn.
I press my palms against the cold glass of the window and force myself to breathe.
This isn’t you. This is whatever she put in your head. Fight it.
But that’s the thing about the darkness: I’m not sure anymore where it ends and I begin. Did Julia create it, and for what purpose? Or did she amplify it? Was it always there, lurking beneath the surface since childhood, waiting for permission to emerge?
Does it even matter?
Either way, this dark, simmering destruction inside me wants Mia, wants her with an intensity that scares me, that keeps me awake at night, that makes me do things like fly to rooftops and taste her like she’s the last meal I’ll ever have.
Find her. Take her. Keep her.
Make her yours.
I slam my fist against the glass. It doesn’t break—it’s enforced beyond measure, and I didn’t hit it hard enough—but the impact reverberates through my arm, through my chest, shaking something loose.
Julia’s wrong about one thing. Whatever’s happening with Mia, it’s already too late to end it.
