Chapter 23
SILAS
My eyes flutter open. I’m in the stairwell, staring at the ceiling.
What happened?
I blink, and my hand goes to the back of my head. I feel the wetness and smell the copper at the same time. I try to get up and ah…I’m so fucking dizzy.
Cookies are everywhere.
I’d been racing up the stairs.
Did I fall?
I remember…a sharp pain. And then falling.
Someone with my face smirking back at me.
Is this another flashback?
He had white eyes.
That’s…new.
So, not a memory.
I scramble to my feet, then…dizzy. I slip down a few stairs but catch myself. I have to get upstairs.
Oakley.
Cupcake.
The dads.
I grip the banister. There are three floors to go, and I don’t have time to be dizzy.
One foot in front of the other. And another. And another.
With two floors to go, I stop and puke my guts out.
When I hit the penthouse, I take a detour and stumble into the foyer by the elevators.
“Anyone home?”
I’m met with silence.
That’s right.
The Wildlings were giving us space. But I need help. I need…
Anders’ field serum.
Maya did something funny with the serum the last time we were all together.
She put it in the beer fridge.
I stumble down the steps, catching myself on the couch before making my way through the sunken living room. Up the stairs to the beer fridge in the large island that divides the kitchen from the living room.
A small pouch with injectors and a packet of that black polymer, right next to the Shiners.
Hilarious.
“Don’t ever inject the red one.”
Got it.
“Blue is true.”
I slide out the blue injector pen and twist on the needle. I aim for the back of my head and inject it directly into the wound.
Fucking ouch.
The ringing intensifies.
I throw up again.
Okay. Okay. I blink a few more times. The serum works fast. I can feel my fucking skull knitting back together.
My thoughts, so scattered, begin to stitch themselves into one coherent thought.
I need to get upstairs. Now.
Grabbing the silver case and the polymer, I book it back to the stairs. The serum gives me a temporary boost, and I start taking the stairs two at a time.
I burst onto the rooftop into a nightmare scenario.
Cupcake, bleeding on the ground. The dads, all bleeding on the ground. And Oakley grappling…with me.
A gun spinning on the concrete floor.
My mind empties, and I close the distance, climbing onto the back of this person who looks like me, but isn’t. I grab his jaw, locking eyes with Oakley. He drops his chin and puts every bit of his weight into pummeling the man’s ribs.
When Not-Me is wheezing, out of oxygen, I break his neck, dropping him to the ground.
His skin is free of tattoos, his eyes are white, and he looks like I did in high school.
That’s just fucking creepy.
I hold up the case. “Who’s the worst?”
“Erik,” Oakley chokes out, gasping for air.
My heart drops, and I race over to find him shot in the chest. Through and through. I follow the bullet’s trajectory, and that’s when I see Ant. He’s been shot in the arm, and it’s hanging funny. He’s pale and his hands are shaking. That’s shock, I think. And a broken arm.
I grab the scissors from Maya’s kit and zip a line straight up Erik’s T-shirt. Not bothering to switch out the needle, I make several quick injections of the blue in a circle around the hole in his chest.
“Papa is next. He’s got a pretty bad leg wound. Lots of blood loss,” Oakley says, two fingers to the artery in Thane’s neck. “He’s still breathing. His heart’s beating fast.”
“Better than nothing,” I say, looking back at Erik.
I’m…forgetting something about chest wounds.
One disaster at a time.
I zip a line up Thane’s pant leg and make five injections around the bullet hole in his leg. He’s holding Ronan, who’s dazed and bleeding profusely from the head. I see a thin line of bone, but no brain matter. He might’ve gotten lucky with a deep bullet graze.
I hold up the needle. “This will stop the bleeding.”
Ronan pulls back, terror sharpening his features.
I hold up my hands so he can see the tattoos. I let my eyes turn black. “It’s me.”
“That shouldn’t be comforting, but it is,” he says, sounding like he might vomit.
He holds still as I administer a couple of injections on each side of the wound.
“Pinch this together,” I tell Thane.
I hand the blue injector to Oakley. “I can’t… Can you see if Cupcake is still…?”
Oakley takes the injector. “I’ll take care of her.” He looks into my eyes. “You should know that Cup defended us, almost as viciously as you would’ve. We’ll do everything in our power to make her better.”
Unable to consider anything else, I grab the kit and move to Ant.
He’s shivering but looks weirdly proud as I cut through his shirtsleeve, revealing where the bullet that went through Erik hit Ant.
“The bone is broken.” Bone white, I say to myself. I open the silver case and take out the white injector. “It’s a new protocol, but I think I inject this first and then use the black polymer.”
Ant nods, sweat beading along his brow. “That’s… I think you’re right.”
I inject above and below the break, as best I can tell, then pull out the polymer, gingerly wrapping it around his tiny arm.
“How’s Erik do—” Ant’s eyes widen. “Behind you!”
Something hits the back of my freshly healed head. I fall, dropping the remainder of the polymer.
I’m on the ground. Looking up at my own face. Again.
“Hello, Silas. I’m Blake.” He bows, then makes a show of cracking his neck. “You’re gonna have to work a little harder than that to kill me.”
I’m disoriented, but something… Mav’s initiation.
Blake shakes his head. “Or instead of trying to kill me, you can come with me.” His eyes turn white. “I’ll give you an upgrade.”
“Fuck. You.”
Blake grins, and it’s the most unnatural thing I’ve ever seen.
“Do you think these assholes know anything about you? Do you think they understand you in the slightest?” He must see something in my face. “Of course they don’t. You’re a tool to them. A weapon they can point at…anything.”
“Shut up,” I growl as the wounds on my head stitch back together.
I want him to stop talking.
“Wouldn’t you rather be free to follow that instinct like a heartbeat, instead of holding yourself back all the time?” He pounds his fist into his palm in a rhythm. “Kill, kill, kill. Yes?”
Yes, that’s… That’s exactly what it’s like. Every beat. Every minute. Every hour. Every day.
He pushes the hair off my forehead. “You must be so tired.”
I take a deep, shuddering breath. I am tired. Exhausted from pushing against what every cell in my body wants to do, all the time. My only reprieve is killing.
And he’s offering it to me on a platter.
For a moment, I think about what it would be like to let that side of me gallop, like a horse on the beach. I could reign terror everywhere I go.
Fuck, what a relief to simply…be.
I don’t think about it for very long, but I do think about it. And I let this Blake—this other version of me—see me considering it.
He smiles. Like he’s won something.
“By the way, you’re gonna give that long-haired guy a tension pneumothorax if you let his chest close completely.” He shrugs. “It is a painful way to die. Which, I’m sure you enjoy as much as I do.”
Dammit. I knew there was something Anders told me about a sucking chest wound.
“Oakley, grab the straw from the silver case and insert it into the wound before it closes,” I call over my shoulder.
Blake’s smile, so smug and certain, falls.
I let the black take me.
Unlike the Wildlings, where I pull my punches, I go after Blake with everything I’ve got. I’m a blur, breaking his ribs, kicking out his ankles, punching the center of balance behind his ear.
It hardly makes a difference. He heals almost instantaneously. Like Edison.
“You ever wonder why you were the only one who survived?” he asks, wiping blood from his mouth as his ankle stitches itself back together.
All the time, I think to myself. His eyes are still a disturbing white. And something that never made sense finally does.
“It’s because he made me look like a BEC,” I say, gesturing to my eyes. “Like the urban legend.”
Blake shakes his head. “That was no urban legend. He didn’t just make you look like a BEC, Silas. He used BEC DNA to make you. You’re part BEC. That’s why you survived when the others didn’t.”
“How could you possibly know that?” I ask, circling him. Trying to figure out his weakness.
None, as far as I can tell.
“Our progenitor had three different labs, each with a different set of protocols, all using Silas Blake’s DNA as the base.
One folded immediately after he died. Only mine continued to operate after yours was raided.
” He gestures between us. “Your scientist figured out the BEC mix years before the useless scientists at my location figured out something similar.”
I wondered, briefly, the source of Blake’s mods. Is he photosensitive like me or does he not have any weaknesses at all? And what about those scientists? Are we going to find a lab with dead bodies or are they waiting for him to come back with me?
Not that it matters. Whatever his history or motivations, he’ll be leaving this rooftop in a body bag.
He sees the shift, the decision made, and comes after me with everything he’s got. It’s terrifying, the hatred in his eyes. Like I’ve disappointed him by not going along with his plan to be murder buddies.
Fuck that. I already have murder buddies.
His fists are lightning fast, and within seconds, my nose is broken, and I’m bleeding from a couple of different places. Weirdly enough, this is good news.
Yes, Blake is faster than me and stronger, but he’s untrained. He doesn’t have a dad who survived the worst things imaginable, or uncles who kill with glee, or cousins with half a dozen different fighting styles.
He may have me beat when it comes to genetics, but he’ll never know the love of a big, insane family.
Seriously, fuck this guy. I dodge his punches and make him pay by bringing my foot down on his knee.
He screams in pain and stumbles back toward the pool. He’s going into the water, grabbing my shirt on the way down. Unable to stop the momentum, I tumble in after him.
The last thing I hear before I go under is the soft whomp-whomp-whomp of Wimberley’s helicopter.
Blake holds me underwater, but I twist and twist until I’m facing him. I push up and get a quick breath. He follows me up and pushes me under again. He’s keeping his head above water.
A fatal mistake.
He’s given me a perfect shot at his neck.
Instead of fighting for oxygen, I claw at his throat and rip away the flesh. The white drains from his eyes, and he lets me go, stunned. I stand, gulping oxygen. His spine is visible and the waterfall of blood cascading down his chest is turning the pool red.
It’s not enough though. I know it’s not enough.
Edison once described the night he had to defend Hedy to the death. Hand placement is everything, he’d said. Right jaw, left shoulder. Lift and separate.
Some may call it cheating because I already removed some of the bulk of Blake’s throat, but Ant always taught me to take my advantages where I can.
I spin him around, grab his right jaw, grip his left shoulder, and rip his fucking head from his fucking body.
Maverick’s fast-roping from the helicopter to the deck, and he sees everything.
His eyes are wide as saucers as he lands.
“Silas?”
I look into Blake’s slack eyes, then back to my cousin. “Not everything knows how to die.”
Mav pulls up his rifle, and I realize, belatedly, that I’m basically holding my own head.
“I’m me!” I yell, tossing the head off to the side.
“I know,” he yells back, gesturing to my hands. “Tattoos.”
Maya is the second one down the ropes. I point to Erik. She races over and examines his wound, then looks around the deck.
Ant yells above the rotor, “Looking for the bullet?”
She nods.
“Through and through,” he says, gesturing at his arm and the bullet hole in the big planter to the side of the pool.
She sends him a thumbs-up, then pats Oakley’s shoulder.
“Good job remembering the straw! Most of you yahoos forget!”
Maya looks up to the helicopter and makes a few hand signals while I decide to keep my mouth shut about Blake’s input.
Oakley gestures to Cupcake, who’s found her way to his lap. Maya gives her a once-over. She gestures the through-and-through sign again, then sends me a smile.
“You’ll still wanna take her to the company vet, but she responded to the injection. Her shoulder is healing well.”
A rescue basket is lowered, and Erik is loaded into it, then hoisted into the air. Maya stays with Thane, wrapping his leg in the polymer. The helicopter takes off.
Ant and Ronan, both nearly healed, walk to the edge of the pool and help me out.
Blake’s headless body spins aimlessly in the currents created by the helicopter, the blood-red water nearly black in the moonlight.
Ronan slumps against me, patting my chest. “We’re gonna need to drain the pool.”