Chapter 49
A Taste of Your Own Poison
Elara
I wake up choking.
Not on air, on absence. On the memory of air.
My lungs burn like they’re trying to remember how breathing used to work, each inhale shallow and sharp, scraping my throat raw.
The floor beneath me is cold metal, vibrating faintly, like the building itself is still humming with the aftermath of violence.
Red light pulses above me.
Not alarms anymore. Emergency lighting. Low. Constant. Like a heartbeat that isn’t mine.
My head throbs. My mouth tastes wrong—chemical, bitter, coppery—and when I try to swallow, I realize I can’t.
Something presses against my lips, tight and suffocating.
Duct tape. Thick. Wrapped too many times.
I try to gasp and panic spikes instantly when the tape pulls at the corners of my mouth, skin burning.
I blink hard, forcing my vision to clear.
I’m not on the floor anymore.
I’m kneeling.
My knees scream in protest, skin raw against metal grating.
My arms are pulled behind my back, wrists bound so tightly my fingers are numb.
There’s a rope around my neck—coarse, unforgiving—tethered to the wall behind me just short enough that I can’t straighten up.
If I try, it bites into my throat, forcing my head back down, forcing my gaze forward.
Forcing me to watch.
The room is vast. A central lab chamber.
Stainless steel tables. Glass walls smeared with handprints and blood that’s dried dark and ugly.
Cabinets ripped open, vials shattered, chemical residue pooling and staining the floor in unnatural colors.
The air smells like antiseptic layered over something toxic and sweet.
Lucan stands in the middle of it.
He’s wearing the mask.
Black. Smooth. Inhuman. The filters hum faintly with every breath he takes, steady and controlled, like he’s not even exerting himself. His clothes are spattered with blood—not sprayed, not messy, but smeared, like it’s been handled, transferred, earned.
My stomach twists violently.
Halldórsson is strapped to a table to my right.
His arms are restrained flat against cold steel, wrists bound with thick cuffs bolted into the frame.
His chest rises too fast, breath ragged, eyes wild as they flick between Lucan and me.
There’s blood on his temple, dried and sticky, running down into his eyebrow. His gun is gone. His authority is gone.
Henrik is there too.
Strapped upright in a chair across from Halldórsson, wrists and ankles locked in place, head forced forward by a metal brace around his neck. His face is pale, drawn, streaked with sweat. There’s blood at the corner of his mouth, like he’s bitten through his lip and kept biting.
My father.
The man who ruined everything.
Lucan turns slowly, deliberately, like he knows exactly how long it takes for fear to ripen.
He looks at me.
Even through the mask, I feel it. The weight of his attention. The way the room seems to orient itself around him, like gravity has chosen a new center.
His head tilts slightly.
Curious.
Evaluating.
My chest tightens so hard it hurts. I try to speak. Try to scream his name. All that comes out is a muffled, useless sound trapped behind tape.
Lucan looks away.
Dismissed.
He walks toward Halldórsson.
Each step echoes. Slow. Heavy. Final.
Halldórsson thrashes weakly against the restraints, metal clanking. “Lucan,” he says hoarsely, voice cracking. “Listen to me. You don’t have to—”
Lucan doesn’t answer.
He reaches for a tray beside the table. On it sits a cluster of syringes, glass vials glowing faintly under the emergency lights. Labels are handwritten. Clinical. Detached. I don’t know what they say, but my body reacts anyway—goosebumps rippling across my skin, nausea rising like bile.
Lucan selects one.
Clear liquid. Thick. It clings to the glass as he lifts it, slow and deliberate, letting Halldórsson see it. Letting him imagine.
“No,” Halldórsson breathes. “No, no—”
Lucan presses the needle into the vein in Halldórsson’s arm.
There’s no dramatic stab. No flourish. Just precision.
Halldórsson gasps.
His back arches violently against the restraints, a raw sound tearing from his throat as the chemical hits his system. His muscles seize, tendons standing out sharp beneath skin. His breathing turns erratic, shallow, like his lungs can’t agree on what they’re supposed to do.
Lucan steps back.
And watches.
Halldórsson’s eyes roll back, then snap forward again, pupils blown wide. His mouth opens in a silent scream, jaw trembling as his body convulses against steel. Foam gathers at the corner of his lips, flecked with red.
I scream behind the tape.
It comes out broken, useless, the sound vibrating against my own skull. My throat burns as I strain against the rope, tears blurring my vision, my body fighting restraints that don’t give even a millimeter.
Lucan lets it go on.
That’s the worst part.
Not the pain.
The patience.
Halldórsson’s convulsions slow. His chest stutters, then stills. His eyes stare glassy and unfocused at the ceiling, mouth still open like he’s mid-breath that never came.
Silence drops into the room, thick and heavy.
Lucan turns toward me.
My vision tunnels. My heart slams so hard I think it might crack my ribs. Blood roars in my ears. I can’t look away. The rope won’t let me. My body is centered, displayed, positioned like this is all for me.
He wants me to see.
He walks closer, stopping just in front of me. I can smell the chemicals on him even through the tape, sharp and metallic. He crouches slightly, bringing himself level with my face.
For a moment, I think he’s going to touch me.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he reaches up and grips the edge of the mask.
Slowly, deliberately, he lifts it just enough that I can see his mouth.
Blood stains his lips. Dried. Cracked. His jaw is clenched so tight the muscle twitches. For a moment I think he won’t say anything, like it coasts him everything to form a simple word.
“Y-you watch,” he suddenly says, voice hoarse, chocking on the first letter, like he hasn’t used it in weeks. “Because that’s what you do right?”
My breath hitches into a sob.
He straightens and turns toward Henrik.
My father flinches.
Lucan doesn’t rush him.
That would be mercy.
He moves the way he did in the hallway—slow, deliberate, as if time is his to spend. He crosses the space between them with a calm that makes my stomach roll, then stops behind Henrik’s chair and places a hand on the metal brace holding my father’s neck in place.
Not gripping. Not squeezing.
Just claiming.
Henrik’s breath catches, chest straining against the restraints. His eyes flick to me, frantic, pleading, and the sight of it makes something hot and sick coil in my gut—because he’s not pleading for himself.
He’s pleading because I’m watching.
Lucan leans down, close enough that Henrik can’t look away even if he wanted to. “Speak,” he says.
Henrik swallows hard. “Vapor—listen—”
Lucan’s hand slides from the brace to Henrik’s shoulder. His fingers curl with clinical precision, like he’s locating a tendon. A pressure point. Something fragile.
Henrik gasps as Lucan applies pressure, just enough to force pain to flare—sharp, immediate, humiliating.
Henrik jerks, restrained. His voice cracks. “Stop—stop, please—”
Lucan doesn’t.
He reaches to a nearby counter, selects a syringe without looking at labels, and brings it back with the same calm patience he gave Halldórsson. He holds it up where Henrik can see. Where I can see. The clear fluid catches the emergency lights and turns briefly silver.
My pulse spikes so hard my vision blurs.
Henrik shakes his head violently within the limits of the brace. “No,” he whispers. “No, please. Don’t—”
Lucan presses the needle into Henrik’s arm.
No flourish.
Just decision.
Henrik’s body arches against the chair, muscles tightening as if his nerves are being yanked like strings. A strangled sound pushes through his throat and he tries to breathe through it, tries to stay composed, tries to be the man who always has a solution.
But pain doesn’t respect intellect.
His head drops forward, then snaps up again, eyes glassy with shock. He makes a desperate, broken sound behind clenched teeth, and I feel it in my own bones like sympathy I don’t want to have.
Lucan watches him with that same eerie stillness.
The same patience.
He tilts his head slightly, like he’s listening to something deeper than Henrik’s pleas. Like he’s measuring how much Henrik can take before he breaks.
I twist against my bindings, wrists burning. The rope around my neck bites tighter as I lunge forward, forcing me back onto my knees. My breath comes fast and panicked behind the tape, hot against adhesive, my throat raw. Tears smear down my face and drip onto my hands.
Lucan doesn’t look at me.
That’s worse than any threat.
Henrik’s voice is hoarse now. “Vapor—please—please just listen—”
Henrik sucks in a breath, shaking so hard the chair rattles. His eyes flick to Halldórsson’s body on the table, still, glassy-eyed, mouth slack, and something in him crumples. Reality catches him in the ribs.
He looks back at Lucan, voice trembling. “I… I sold it to your father.”
Lucan stills.
Henrik rushes the words out like they’re poison he can’t keep inside. “The serum. The Ghost Serum. Eidolon. I made it. I’m the one who developed it. The early version, the unstable version. I sold it to your father.”
The room seems to shrink, air compressing around the confession.
Lucan doesn’t move.
But something changes in him.
Not calm.
Not relief.
A deeper kind of stillness. Like the last support beam in a building just snapped and the whole structure is deciding how it’s going to collapse.