“Oh, Milo isn’t going anywhere, are you, Milo?” He stroked his fingers through my hair, and I flinched away from him, hating the feeling of his hands on me.
“Don’t fucking touch him!” Jay roared, and Luke just laughed again.
“Keep that up, and I’ll have Marcus here shoot your boy in the kneecaps. He doesn’t need to be able to walk to work. I’m sure I can get him set up with a wheelchair, and he’ll be just fine.”
Jay’s face went white, and his eyes widened at the threat. He glanced at me, and I saw it the moment he truly understood why I’d done what I’d done all those months ago.
They were doing the same thing to him that they’d done to me.
Using his love for me to manipulate him.
My eyes filled with tears as he trembled, showing the first sign of fear since I’d been carted into this room.
“Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m having a strange sense of deja vu. It’s almost like we’ve been here before… except this time, there’s no NeuroExtractor for anyone to wipe their memories away.”
Jay and I stared at each other as Luke leisurely made his way over to the center of the room, pinching the thighs of his pants and tugging them up as he sat back on the desk.
He smiled at Jay and me as we both knelt before him, held at gunpoint by Marcus and Sebastian.
“Now, here’s what’s going to happen,” Luke drawled, speaking slowly as if we were too stupid to follow along.
“Sebastian is going to kill Jay, so there’s no reason for Milo to try for act two of his little romantic tragedy once I get him back to Neurovance.”
“NO!”I screamed into my gag, jerking toward Luke as fear like I’d never known before exploded through my chest.
Marcus grabbed me and forced me back on my heels, barely grunting with the effort of restraining me.
Luke smiled at my obvious display of horror, and I fuckinghated him.
I hated him more than I ever thought it possible to hate someone.
“Oh yes, Milo. Then, once your little boyfriend is dead and gone, we’ll get you set up in a nice lab where you’ll do your work quietly and efficiently for me. With your help, I’ll return Neurovance to its former glory, and everything will be right as rain.”
‘Never! I’ll NEVER work for you!’
As if reading my mind, Luke’s smile widened.
“I see. You need an incentive… Well, Marcus informed me he saw the door to what looks like a safe room in the lab downstairs… I wonder who could be in there?” Luke pulled out his N-phone and opened up a screenshot of the N-book post my mother had taken earlier at the cafe.
“If you don’t want to work for me, I suppose I could just continue my work on patient 002. She’s looking well rested. Maybe she’ll last longer this time around before her mind completely breaks.”
I was so furious and terrified that I was shaking.
My fingertips were so cold they were numb, and my heart felt like it was trying to literally crawl up my throat and out of my chest. Unable to speak or even scream, I just shook my head back and forth, unable to stop the endless streams of tears from pouring down my face.
No, no, no, no… please… no….
I’d promised him.
I’d told him I wasn’t going anywhere.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
We were supposed to be together now, we’d done everything right…
“So, Milo. What do you say?” Luke’s eyes flashed in the moonlight, and his smile spread so wide across his face that for a moment, I really thought I was staring in the face of a demon, instead of a sick, greedy, twisted man.
“Shall we get to work?”
