“Based on all the information you have, how many of them should I be expecting?”
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Bad news, always.”
“It looks like he’s taken out a contract with a group of professionals; there are at least twenty of them coming.”
“Fuck,” Jay cursed, and I flinched as he dropped the gun on the table to run a hand down his face in frustration.
“What’s the good news?”
“Good news is, Dr. Caspian Grey seems to have dropped him completely. I have an email chain here of him asking for backup, and Grey basically telling him where to go. Essentially, he told Luke he’s on his own in retrieving you and Milo. Since Luke never held up his end of the deal with the NeuroManipulator, Grey has completely withdrawn DARPA support.”
“Great. So at least we don’t have to deal with theentireUS Military,” Jay grumbled, resuming whatever work he’d been doing on the large firearm.
NOVA laughed softly. “Nah, just twenty or so highly trained assassins, and of course, Luke and Seb.”
“Seb’s coming?” I asked, feeling like that was an odd choice for Luke. Seb was a marketer. He didn’t have any combat training. He would probably just get in the way.
NOVA fell silent for a minute before answering, and a cold chill rolled through me at her ominous pause.
“Yeah. Since we took out TECHA, I’ve been checking in on them, and… Seb’s gone through somemodifications.”
Jay froze again, his gaze darting up to the speaker NOVA was using to communicate.
“What did Luke do to him?”
“Same thing he did to you. Just… maybe a little worse. He didn’t have as much time to experiment with Sebastian,oran unwilling biotech genius, to work on the tech. So Seb is… Well. You’ll see.”
A complicated flurry of emotions flickered across Jay’s face at this, and I found myself going to him and slipping my hand into his palm.
He jerked slightly at the contact and glanced down at me with a deeply furrowed brow.
“You alright?” I asked, which was probably a stupid question. He was surrounded by guns, ammo, and what looked like several small high-techbombs.I shivered looking at them and made sure not to jostle the table at all, just in case.
Jay swallowed and squeezed my fingers.
“Yeah, it’s just…fuck.I should have just killed him. It would have been kinder.”
I frowned, not sure what to say to that.
On the one hand, I harbored a lot of anger toward Sebastian. He’d betrayed us to Luke, and had tried to manipulate me sexually not once buttwice…but still. I was elbow deep in Jay’s head every day. I knew how badly being experimented on had fucked him up. It wasn’t something I wished on anybody, especially not the man that Jay had basically treated like a brother for most of his life.
I knew they’d been close before Luke killed Jay’s father. Luke had done everything he could to poison the relationship between the two of them, and turning on Sebastian felt like we were playing right into Luke's twisted games.
“If we can capture him, I can try to fix him, too,” I offered gently, and Jay gave me a dark, sad look.
“Milo… I won’t be taking any prisoners. I’ll be killing as many of them as I can before they take me out. If I can get to Luke, this all stops, and at least you and your mom can go free once the coast is clear.”
My mouth dropped open at what he was implying.
“What do youmean?” I hissed.
He just looked at me with that blank, emotionless expression he’d adopted since his time in the The Cave.
“You know exactly what I mean, Milo.”
“You are notsacrificingyourself for us!” I snarled, but Jay didn’t flinch.
