“No sight of him yet. Most of the team is gone. Once you get here, I’ll do a sweep of the house.”
“And my son?”
“He’s here, sir.”
“Leave him with my son and go find the boy now. I’ll be in shortly.”
“Let me disarm him first,” the man said, and I grunted in annoyance at the fact that Luke had hired people professional enough to know it was probably a bad idea to leave me strapped to the tits with weapons.
The goon was thorough, and he even managed to find all the tiny throwing blades in my harness. The only thing he missed was the garotte, which wasn’t going to be much help to me with my hands bound behind my back.
Finally, once he was satisfied he’d rendered me completely defenseless, I heard glass crunch under the man’s boots as he left the room. I immediately rolled onto my knees, doing my best to get up, just to get hit so hard in the face that my mask went flying.
I crumbled to the ground again, coughing and spitting up blood as I rolled onto my back with a groan.
The shadow of the third man crouched over me, his head blocking the shine of the moon as it tried to spill in from the hole in the ceiling.
“Jay,” the man spoke, and I winced as I realized I recognized that voice, if not the face of the man it was attached to.
Seb’s thick, golden hair was gone. It had all been shaved off, and he had several barely healed surgical scars snaking over his skull. Even in the dark, the sutured gashes were clearly puckered and red.
One of his eyes was milky white, and the other’s pupil was so small that I wondered how he could even see properly in the dark like this.
Jesus fucking Christ. What did they do to you, Sebastian?
My eyes darted over him, taking in the tactical gear he was wearing and the comfortable way he was resting an assault rifle against his shoulder as he crouched over me.
“Seb?” I croaked, refusing to believe that the boy I used to catch frogs with had been turned into this… thisscienceexperiment.
His one working eye shuttered briefly at the sound of his name.
He frowned for a moment, but then whatever was left of him seemed to melt away, and there was only Luke’s monster smiling back.
“Not any more,” the thing crooned, tracing a cold finger down my cheek, causing me to jerk away in disgust. The monster laughed softly, and its voice turned to something that sounded inappropriately chipper.
“Sebastian is dead,” he sang, and all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. “You can call me Patient 003.”
“Shit! He’s coming down here!” I cried, and NOVA did her best to try to calm me down as I nearly succumbed to a full-blown panic attack.
They had Jay!
What if they hurt him!?
I couldn’t let that happen.
I was fumbling with the handgun Jay had given me, trying to remember how to switch the safety off, when I heard the big ogre’s footsteps on the stairs leading down into the lab.
“Milo, you need to get into the safe room,now!”NOVA hissed, but I was shaking my head, unable to stop the tears from streaking down my cheeks.
No. No freaking way. I was going to go save Jay. I was NOT leaving him again!
I promised I wouldn’t.
I promised!
Finally managing to get the safety off, I pointed the handgun at the door to the lab, doing my best to keep my arms steady as my entire body shook and quivered with barely restrained sobs.
I could do this.
