Chapter 53
RYKER
Darkness had always been my friend.
It hid what I really was. Cloaked me so no one had to look too long at the black that stained my soul. In the dark, I could pretend I was only a man with scars, not the thing that put them there.
I thought the last year was brutal. The rehab. The nightmares. The phantom ache in my bones every time I moved wrong, every time the memories slipped in sideways and made me taste blood that wasn’t in my mouth anymore.
But this?
Sitting tied to a chair in absolute quiet, sealed inside a room that swallowed sound, was meant to break me down to nothing but panic. Pitch-black. No clock. No window. No clues. Just the scrape of my pulse in my ears and the slow, sick realization that whoever had me didn’t need to fucking rush.
I tried to count. Seconds. Minutes. The spaces between my thoughts. Anything to keep my mind from turning on itself. But time didn’t behave in here. It stretched. Folded. Dissolved.
My wrists burned where the restraints bit into my skin. The rope had its own ideas, tightening in small, cruel increments every time I shifted, every time I tested it, every time anger convinced me I could brute force my way out of this hellhole.
I couldn’t.
Not in the dark.
Anger was the only thing that kept me from floating away. Rage and revenge. A reason to stay present. A reason to keep my teeth clenched and my breathing controlled.
But the one thing that truly anchored me wasn’t violence.
It was Sloane.
The woman I’d looked in the eyes and told I loved, then walked away from, offering myself as payment for her brother.
I swallowed hard over my dry throat.
Even if I left here alive, I might be so fucking unhinged she would never want me again. That thought hurt worse than the goddamn ropes.
I forced my mind back to her anyway, because thinking of her was the closest thing to having fresh air.
Sloane’s hands on my shirt. Sloane’s breath hitching when I said her name. The way she looked at me when she was furious, when she was terrified, when she was done pretending that she didn’t want me.
I pictured her in one of my sweatshirts, the hem hitting mid-thigh, sleeves swallowing her hands. It should have been a soft memory. It wasn’t. It was a hunger that kept clawing at me. A want so sharp it turned into pain.
I had to make it back to her. Not because I deserved her. Because if I didn’t see her again, the last thing she would remember of me would be a masked man kissing her goodbye and walking into the dark.
No.
I tightened my fingers into fists and ignored the way my wrists screamed.
The door creaked. Light spilled in as a thin blade across the concrete floor, slicing the darkness open.
I blinked hard, my body flinching at the sudden shift. The light widened. The silhouette in the doorway stayed still long enough for my mind to try to place it.
Then a voice filled the room.
“Hello, Ryker. How are you feeling today?”
Hamilton.
Sarcastic, amused in a way that made me want to tear the bastard’s throat out with my damn teeth.
My mouth split into something that wasn’t a smile. “Fuck you.” I wanted to reach for my knife, but I realized I no longer had my sheath strapped to my calf. Hamilton had made sure I wasn’t armed. Smart motherfucker. I would have gutted him clean open before he could blink.
Hamilton chuckled as if we were catching up over whiskey instead of him keeping me in a hole.
The overhead lights snapped on.
I squinted. White glare. Concrete walls. No windows. A room built for cleaning up messes. I assumed I was that mess.
Hamilton stood in front of me in dress clothes that didn’t belong down here. Grey slacks. Blue shirt. His sleeves rolled up. The kind of man who looked like he belonged in a boardroom, not a basement.
“I thought you might enjoy some entertainment.” He tilted his head, and the tone was casual, almost friendly. Almost.
A young man in his early twenties wheeled a cart in, an old projector perched on top. He stared at the floor, and his shoulders tightened. He didn’t want to be here either. That didn’t make him innocent, though.
Hamilton looked at my stomach as it growled. “Also, a meal.”
He stepped closer with a covered plate.
The smell hit me first. It didn’t smell right. There was something sour underneath it. My hunger surged anyway. My body didn’t care about dignity. It only cared that it had been starved long enough to start bargaining.
Hamilton leaned in and untied my hands.
For a split second, warmth rushed into my fingers so hard it made me grit my teeth. Pins and needles. Pain. Then sensation. Then the slow return of strength.
He did it on purpose. He wanted me to think I had a chance.
Hamilton set the plate on my lap and lifted the lid with the same satisfied calm someone would use to reveal a magic trick.
“Peanut butter and jelly, chips, and an apple,” he said. “A balanced meal.”
The sandwich wasn’t food.
It fucking moved.
Black bugs crawled over the bread. Into the crust. Under the edges. A living layer of contamination, swarming and indifferent. My stomach twisted hard.
Hamilton watched me, waiting for disgust. For weakness.
Rage hit instead.
I flicked a few bugs off the top slice, not because I thought it would help, but because I wanted to test my hands. They landed on Hamilton’s shirt, on his collar, on his shoulder.
The motherfucker didn’t flinch. He smiled wider.
I looked down again and lifted the top piece of bread.
More bugs.
It wasn’t a meal. It was a message.
You’re not human here.
Something inside me snapped so cleanly it didn’t even make a sound.
Hamilton’s eyebrows lifted as if he was impressed by my restraint.
I waited until my fingers stopped buzzing. Until my grip felt steady. Until my legs felt like they could hold my weight for one good movement.
Just one.
I rose fast.
Hamilton’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t step back in time.
I slammed the plate with the food into his face.
The crack was wet and loud. The plate shattered. Bugs exploded across his shirt and beard.
Hamilton yelled, blood spurting from his nose and lip as he stumbled backward.
I drove my shoulder into his chest and knocked him to the concrete floor. The impact jolted through my body, pain flaring white-hot, but I didn’t stop. My boot found his sternum, and I pressed down.
Hamilton gasped, his hands clawing at my ankle.
I looked over my shoulder at the kid by the projector. “Get the fuck out,” I growled.
He didn’t argue. He ran. The door banged shut behind him.
Good. Now there were no witnesses. No distractions.
Hamilton coughed and tried to push my boot away. “You’ll regret this.”
I leaned down, my voice low. “I won’t ever fucking regret taking you down, you disgusting bastard. You played me the entire fucking time. Mark my words, you will pay for what you’ve done.”
Fear flashed across his expression, but he buried it fast.
“I should kill you right now,” I said.
“You won’t,” Hamilton rasped. “You need me.”
I laughed, sharp and humorless. “I don’t need you. I need your blood on my hands. That’s the only way this will end.”
His mouth twisted. “You’re fucking crazy, Ryker. You’re the one that was supposed to—”
“Supposed to what?” I pressed harder with my boot.
Hamilton’s lips peeled back, and for the first time the mask slipped enough for me to see the calculation behind his eyes. He’d baited me. He’d wanted this out of me.
The door opened, and two men rushed in. They were big and efficient.
They grabbed my arms and hauled me back, ripping me off him before I could do anything that couldn’t be undone. I fought with a violent refusal, but they slammed me back into the chair.
Hamilton scrambled up, wiping bug pulp and peanut butter off his cheek with the back of his hand. He was breathing hard, but his smile had returned.
He motioned toward me. “Tie him tighter.”
The restraints bit down again, this time with no slack. My wrists burned, and my shoulders screamed. They didn’t stop there, though. This time the motherfuckers tied my ankles to the chair too.
Hamilton adjusted his shirt sleeve like I was an inconvenience, not a threat. The piece of shit would find out the truth soon enough.
He looked at one of the men. “Clean this mess up before you leave.”
The guy started wiping at the floor and cart.
Hamilton stepped closer to me. Close enough that I could smell soap and cologne under his filth.
“You lived,” he murmured. “You weren’t supposed to last this long.”
My nostrils flared.
He knew. He’d always known.
The beating. The year of recovery. The reason I had to reinvent myself. The reason the world had almost lost me. He knew all of it, and he was pleased.
Hamilton’s gaze cut through me. “Let’s see how long that reinvention holds.”
Then he stepped back. “Roll it.”
The overhead light disappeared, the projector clicked, and light spilled across the wall.
Laughter filled the room.
A child appeared on the screen.
A boy with my face.
A yard with green grass. A football arcing through the air. A voice behind the camera, warm and familiar.
“Hal, over here!”
My father’s voice. My stomach dropped.
The film jumped through clips, fast and disorienting, like someone was flipping pages in a scrapbook with no care for what it did to me. The wall went black for a second, but the audio kept going.
“What’s your full name?”
A boy’s voice answered, slurred and slow.
“Hal Ryker Whitney.”
My lungs locked.
The image snapped back in.
I was eleven. Strapped into a dentist chair, drugged enough to smile at the ceiling. The camera angle shifted. A man sat in front of me, mostly out of frame. I couldn’t see him yet. I could only hear him.
It wasn’t Hamilton.
Another voice. Smooth. Controlled. The kind of calm that made your skin crawl because it belonged to someone who was in charge and friends with the devil.
My wrists strained against the ropes. I couldn’t see who was speaking to me in the film.
A black shoe stepped into the edge of the frame. Black slacks. White shirt. The room inside the film felt too bright. Too clean. Too clinical.
Eleven-year-old me yawned and slumped deeper into the chair.
“You’ll feel a pinch.”
“Yup. I know.”
The man pushed up my sleeve.
Bruises climbed up my arm with fresh needle marks. Little punctures scattered along my skin.
“What the hell?” I asked, the sound bouncing off the walls as I continued to watch the film. “I look like a pincushion.” My parents told me I had marks, but seeing it was a different story.
A rubber band snapped around the arm of my younger self, and I watched the needle slide into my vein.
My blood ran through the tube, dark and steady, into a vial waiting on a tray.
“There you go,” the man said gently. “Relax, Hal. Enjoy the movie.”
A second needle slid into my arm. On-screen, my younger self barely reacted. But my body did. A phantom chill crawled beneath my skin, faint and impossible, like some part of me remembered what my mind couldn’t.
An older nurse stepped into view. She moved with practiced efficiency, like she’d done this a hundred times. She secured my wrists to the chair and then she taped my eyelids open.
My stomach twisted so hard it hurt.
Eleven-year-old me didn’t even fight. He didn’t squirm. He lay there, loopy and resigned, as if something in him already understood that resistance wasn’t rewarded.
The projector in the film whirred.
A group of boys appeared on the screen. White clothing. Short hair. Blank expressions.
“Number 27.”
A teenager stepped forward. The rest stayed still.
“Do you know who broke the rule?”
“No.”
“Then maybe someone else will speak up.”
A woman grabbed his wrist and marched him toward a tank.
“Get in.”
He struggled. “No. Please.”
“It’s too late for that. You had your chance.”
A muscular man lifted him and shoved him into a glass cage bolted to the wall. The lid locked.
“Please no!” the boy screamed, hands slamming against the glass.
Heat rushed up my neck.
A panel slid open. Something moved. A snake slithered into the cage. Then another.
And another.
The boy curled into a ball, sobbing, shrinking as if he could disappear inside himself. The other boys didn’t react. Not one flinch. Not one glance away.
My skin crawled.
“Fuck,” I whispered to the film. “What are they going to do to him?”
The woman watched the boy cry and plead for help. “I’ll ask you again. Do you know who broke the rule?”
And then the camera found me. Eleven-year-old me.
My voice filled the room, small and shaky but determined. “Stop.”
The woman paused.
“I did it,” I said. “Let him out.”
The lid opened almost immediately as if they were simply waiting for me to confess. Large hands reached in, peeled the snakes off, and dragged the sobbing boy out.
“Are you lying, Hal?”
“No.” My voice on the film cracked. “I stole the file. I wanted to know why we’re all here.”
The film cut. Another began. It was one after the fucking other. Punishments. Torture. Fear used as currency to pull truth out of someone else.
My stomach pitched. “Jesus Christ,” I breathed, the words scraping out of me. “That’s what I lived through for four days?”
But there were no memories. No smell. No pain. I didn’t recognize any of the faces. Just the cold horror of watching myself exist inside it.
That was the point. To plant fear where the memories used to be. To teach me the idea of my missing time without giving me the mercy of understanding it.
I clenched my jaw until it ached.
No.
I wouldn’t give them what they wanted. I forced myself to breathe.
Sloane. I grabbed onto her name like a rope. Her scent when she pressed into my chest. Her voice when she said my name. Sloane hunting me in the Ritual with that feral determination, refusing to be scared of what she wanted.
She was my weapon.
She was my reason.
The projector clicked off, and the silence dropped hard.
The door creaked open again.
A shadow filled the space.
“Hello, Ryker,” a new voice said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Footsteps approached.
Black dress shoes.
Black pants.
White shirt.
My pulse hammered.
He stepped into the light slowly, like he wanted me to register every detail. Like he wanted my body to remember what my mind couldn’t.
And my blood went colder than the concrete under my feet.