Chapter 38 Unstable Variable My Arse
UNSTABLE VARIABLE MY ARSE
Careful What You Wish For - Jack Harris
Nightshade
Forty-eight hours is an eternity and a blink.
The first twelve I spend trying to tear the door off its hinges.
Not because I think I’ll succeed. But because I need my hands on something solid while my head tries to split itself open. Because if I sit still, I see Kayla’s face in the blank wall and I’ll start carving it into my own skin just to make the image stop moving.
I don’t know how the others are so calm, so broken and beaten. Despite everything they’ve put me through, my righteous rage has fuelled me, kept me going, kept me strong. Kayla. I’m as rabid to find her now as I was the day I learned she was taken. Why aren’t the others? Do they not care like I do?
By the second cycle, the staff stop reacting.
No guards rush in. No barked commands. No sedative fog. Just the same quiet hum behind the walls, the same patient system letting me rage until the rage runs out of oxygen.
That’s when I know Bones is right.
They’re not containing me. They’re letting me burn off excess heat.
A controlled fire is useful.
The door opens exactly when it’s supposed to.
Valentine enters without ceremony. No entourage. No Seytan. He looks like he stepped out of the night and never bothered to change. Hair neat. Gloves black. Eyes the colour of a storm that doesn’t need lightning to kill you.
“You’ve been informed,” he says, voice level.
I stand. The room feels too small around me. “Where is she?”
Valentine doesn’t blink. “Not here.”
My laugh is ugly. “Brilliant. You came to tell me what I already know.”
“I came to tell you what happens next,” he replies.
I take one step forward and the guards on either side of the doorway shift, barely. Not raising weapons. Not threatening. Just reminding me the room is not mine.
I’m faster than them. Stronger. Meaner.
I don’t move anyway.
Because Valentine is the real door.
I can kill the guards. I can paint the corridor with their insides. It won’t open the world. It won’t bring Kayla back.
Valentine watches me weigh it. Like he’s watching a gauge. Like he’s waiting for the needle to settle.
“What happens next,” I say, slowly, “is you tell me where Kayla is.”
Valentine’s gaze doesn’t flinch. “No.”
The word lands clean. Not defiance. Not fear. Procedure.
“You’re not just leaving this island to search,” I growl. “You’re bringing her back.”
Valentine’s jaw tightens a fraction. “We’re leaving. That’s the order.”
Order.
Not request. Not bargain. Not mercy.
Something above Seytan. Above the island. Above whatever petty kingdom she thinks she owns.
“Leaving,” I echo, tasting it. “With what? Shackles?”
“With oversight,” Valentine says. “With conditions. With a handler.”
He looks at me when he says handler, and for a heartbeat it’s almost funny. Almost.
“You,” I say.
His mouth doesn’t change. “Yes.”
I step closer, slow, deliberate. “You think you can handle me.”
Valentine’s eyes sharpen but he doesn’t reply.
I lean in until the guards tense, until the air between us feels like it could spark.
“You’re here because she’s your daughter,” I whisper.
If that’s true, it’s leverage. If it’s false, it’s an insult.
Valentine’s expression holds – perfect, polished, empty.
But his eyes—
His eyes darken for a fraction of a second, like something deep shifted and then locked back into place.
Not grief. Not love. Ownership.
Or guilt, perhaps.
Maybe both.
“She is an objective. An asset of the system,” Valentine says quietly. “Not a conversation we need to be having.”
My smile is a knife. “That’s what you tell yourself so you can sleep.”
Valentine’s gaze flicks over my face, then past me, as if he can see the shape of my obsession in the air.
“We leave at dawn,” he says. “Be prepared.”
He turns to go.
I move.
Fast.
The guards are nothing. A blur. A mistake. I’m across the room in a heartbeat, hand closing on Valentine’s collar, dragging him back hard enough that his boots scrape.
His head snaps toward me. Not startled. Just…displeased.
The kind of displeasure that comes from a man who rarely experiences resistance.
“Say her name,” I snarl in his face. “Say Kayla. Say it like she’s real.”
The guards surge. Two hands grab my arms.
I don’t feel them.
Valentine doesn’t struggle. Doesn’t flail. Doesn’t even raise his voice.
He simply looks at me like I’m an equation that won’t balance.
Then he says, very softly, “Kayla.”
The sound hits my ribs like a bullet.
For a heartbeat everything in me goes utterly still.
Valentine continues, quiet, clinical. “If you want to find her, you will walk out of this room without killing anyone. You will take the transport I provide. You will follow the instructions you are given.”
My grip tightens. “Or what?”
Valentine’s gaze is steady. “Or you don’t see daylight – or Kayla – again.”
A lie? Maybe. But the way he says it – like a man reading a verdict he didn’t write – makes it feel true enough.
So I let go.
The guards retreat with me, cautious, like men backing away from a live animal that has decided not to bite…yet.
Valentine smooths his collar once. No tremor in his hand.
“Dawn,” he repeats, and leaves.
The door clicks shut.
The room holds the echo of his voice like a stain.
Kayla.
It doesn’t soothe me.
It makes the world sharper.
Dawn doesn’t look like dawn in here. It looks like the lights shifting half a shade cooler. Everything is artificial and I can’t wait to be rid of it.
The door opens and this time it isn’t Valentine. It’s two staff in grey and a guard with a face like a slab. They toss clothes onto the bed. Black trousers. Black boots. A black shirt that fits like it was measured off me while I slept. A jacket with no pockets.
“No pockets,” I note, voice flat.
The staff member doesn’t look at me. “Dress.”
I do. I can feel the leash already. Not physical yet – psychological. It’s everywhere. In the way they don’t speak unless they have to. In the way the fabric is engineered to deny hiding places. In the way the boots are sturdy but not heavy enough to be used as weapons.
They don’t want me comfortable. They want me functional.
The cuffs click on once I’m dressed. Not tight. Not cruel. Just present.
They march me into the corridor.
The building feels…different.
Not quieter. Not calmer. Busier.
A hum underneath the hum. Doors opening that don’t usually open. Staff moving with purpose, not routine. The air smells like antiseptic and something faintly electrical. Preparation.
I see Honey first.
He’s in the corridor ahead, flanked by guards. Cleaned up. Hair damp. Jaw clenched. His eyes find mine and for a second something fierce flares there.
He’s smiling.
That’s not good.
Honey smiles when he wants to stab something until it stops being recognisable.
Snow comes next, walking like he owns the corridor, expression lazy, eyes too bright. He lifts his chin at me as if we’re heading to a party instead of whatever this is.
Ghost is pale but upright. There’s a new rigidity in him, the kind that comes from knowing there’s no alternative but forward.
Bones looks as mad as I feel. He’s already watching the system. He takes in the guards, the routes, the exits, the timing between movements. His eyes flick to the ceiling corners, counting cameras without looking like he’s counting.
He catches my gaze.
No nod. No greeting.
Just the same message as always: This isn’t freedom. This is deployment.
Hatchet is last. Silent. Still. Carrying his violence inside his body like a weapon that doesn’t need to be drawn.
They herd us into a holding room near the roof access.
Not the roof. Below it. No windows. No view. Just a sterile room with six chairs bolted down in a semicircle like a support group designed by a psychopath.
Snow sits like it’s a joke. Honey sits like it’s an insult. Ghost sits like he’s bracing for impact. Hatchet doesn’t sit until the guards force him, and even then it looks like the chair is the one trapped.
Bones stays standing until a guard points. He smiles faintly and sits. Because compliance is a tool, and Bones always holds the tools.
I stand. No one challenges me.
The door opens. Valentine enters. Behind him Seytan follows like a lost sheep. White coat. Perfect hair. Perfect disappointment. She looks like she’s attending her own funeral and is annoyed that everyone else insists on mourning.
Valentine stops at the centre of the semicircle. Seytan stays a step behind, like she’s refusing to stand beside him.
Handler and warden? Or handler and subordinate? Either way, she doesn’t like the position.
Valentine’s eyes sweep over us. “Listen.”
Honey laughs once. “No.”
Valentine doesn’t react. “You are being transferred off-island.”
Ghost’s shoulders jerk. “Transferred where?”
Valentine’s gaze slides to Ghost. “To the mainland. The mission is simple—”
Bones speaks without raising his voice. “Under what authority?”
Seytan’s mouth twitches.
Valentine answers, “Not yours to question.”
Bones’s mouth curves.
Valentine’s eyes sharpen a fraction. “It is under Project Marrow authority.”
There it is.
Project Marrow. Not asylum. Not facility. Not island. Something above.
Seytan’s jaw tightens, and she can’t help herself.
“This is a mistake,” she says, voice calm but edged. “You’re unleashing unstable variables into an uncontrolled environment.”
Honey leans forward, grin vicious. “Unstable variable my arse.”
Seytan doesn’t look at him. “You’re all property—”
Valentine cuts in, flat. “Assets.”
The correction is small. Surgical.
It lands like a slap.
Seytan’s eyes flash. “Call them what you want. They destroy everything they touch.”
Valentine’s gaze doesn’t move from us. “Good.”
Seytan’s lips press together. “You’re doing this because of her.”
Valentine turns his head slightly – just enough that the shift is unmistakable.
“Careful,” he says.
Seytan smiles. “Truth makes you nervous now?”