Chapter Twenty-One
The shattered door to the balcony loomed ahead.
I must have unwittingly broken it when I’d defended myself against Adam’s three men.
Wind howled through it like freedom itself.
My booted feet barely touched the ground as I broke into the open air.
Cold night slammed into me, the scent of rain hitting seconds before rain lashed against my skin, blurring the city lights below.
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t look back. I vaulted over the railing, and fell.
For a heartbeat, I was weightless. Then instinct took over. My wings exploded fully open, pain lancing through the sensitive membranes as they caught the rain-needled air and jerked me upright. The wind roared around me, filling my ears, tearing away the last of my control.
I soared. I didn’t know where, I didn’t care. I just needed to get away from Adam, from Reuben, from the truth that had gutted me.
The city blurred beneath me, a smear of color and shadow until I saw the dark glimmer of the river. I dropped lower, the wind slicing my tears into cold streaks across my face.
When I finally hit the riverbank, my knees buckled. Mud splashed up my legs as I sank down, clutching myself tight. My wings folded, trembling, slick with rain and blood.
The sobs came in jagged bursts, sharp enough to hurt. I pressed my forehead to my knees, the night pressing down around me like a living thing.
I’d had parents.
A mother who’d named me.
A father who hadn’t lived long enough to know he’d been blessed with a daughter.
Blessed? My sobs came harder, my tears flowing uncontrollably.
The river burbled and whispered, indifferent, carrying the reflection of the moon through a break in the clouds, like a wound that would never close.
And for the first time since I could remember, I wanted to disappear.
Not die, just vanish. Somewhere the past couldn’t find me, and the truth couldn’t hurt anymore.
But even as I sat there shaking, my tears filling the river and my wings curled around me like a broken shield, I knew it was too late.
The truth had already carved itself into me.
And I would never be the same.
The river’s whispers soon became the hum of the facility, while the smell of mud and the lashing rain as quickly gave way to disinfectant and blood.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to reminisce, tried not to see. But the darkness behind my eyes wasn’t empty, memories crowded there, jostling for my attention. And suddenly, I was there again.
The walls glowed white and sterile, the glass at one end thick and distorted.
My cell had always been too small for the air I suddenly, desperately needed, and the hum of fluorescent lights pressed into my skull as Kira lay outside the glass.
She’d been too weak to make it back to her own cell, and now her body was sprawled lifelessly across the floor.
Her magnificent wings were dull and gray, splayed wide like broken sails.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Could scarcely believe what I saw.
Then Adam stepped into view.
He crouched beside her, his white coat brushing the floor.
For a long moment, he didn’t move. His hand hovered over her shoulder, trembling momentarily before he set it there.
A gentle, human touch. He parted hi lips, a whisper escaping.
Not even my enhanced hearing could make it out through the too-thick glass, but it looked like he spoke her name.
Then he caught himself and straightened, his softness vanishing like it had never existed. His hand fell away and the scientist mask dropped back into place, impassive and unreadable.
But I had seen it.
For one impossible second, I’d seen him break.
My pulse thundered, grief and fury tangling into something wild. I slammed my fists against the glass. “You killed her!” The words ripped out of me, but no sound came, only a pressure, a vibration so sharp it hurt.
The camera above my head sparked, then shattered.
I froze as the air warped, invisible waves rippling through the walls, bouncing back to me. For an instant, I saw everything—the corridors, the guards, the sealed labs beyond my own—like the building had unfolded itself inside my skull.
Then it was gone, leaving only the acrid smell of smoke and the echo of my heartbeat.
I sank to my knees, shaking. I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t want to.
When I looked up again, Adam was staring through the glass, the faintest furrow in his brow. Not anger. Not disgust. Something closer to sorrow.
He reached for the control panel, and I thought he might step inside and say something. Explain. Thought he might care. Instead, the reinforced shutter slid down, sealing me away from the scene outside.
The wind off the water bit through my clothes, dragging me back to the present. The river shimmered black beneath the oppressive clouds that now covered the moon, an old wharf jutting out over the water like something dark and skeletal.
I drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around them, my wings hanging limp against the wet earth. I hated that I could still see his face, the moment before the mask. That small, human fracture in his expression.
Had I imagined it?
Maybe I’d been desperate even then, searching for something—someone—who could prove they weren’t the monsters. But he’d been the one standing over her body. The same man—scientist—who’d created so many of the younger ones like me, before he’d caged them too and watched them die.
I let out a shaky breath as another burst of rain splatted against the river.
“I’m such a fool,” I whispered into the night.
For wishing he was the man I saw in that heartbeat of compassion.
For wanting him to be human when he couldn’t be.
When I wasn’t.
The increasing wind caused the river to lap against the posts, soft and steady, seemingly in synch to the steadily increasing, drumming rain.
I sniffed. Mother nature didn’t care who was monster and who wasn’t, so why should I?
Yet, despite everything, I wept again, quietly this time, my tears vanishing into the rain until there was nothing left inside me but the hollow space where hope used to live.
The rain faded sometime in the night, leaving only my shivering body and the whisper of water, and the low murmur of wind through the reeds.
I didn’t remember falling asleep. Just the slow unraveling of exhaustion until everything went black.
When I woke, it was to harsh, unrelenting heat. But though the sun blazed overhead, pressing against my skin like it was punishing me, I ached from the still-cold ground, my wings stiff and heavy with dried mud.
Then I heard voices. At first, distant, then closer. Human voices.
“Jesus, what is that?”
“Is she hurt?”
“Oh my God, are those real?”
I blinked into the light, my vision swimming. Shapes became people, at least a dozen, maybe more. Men in work clothes, women clutching their phones, all staring.
One woman gasped. “She’s got wings.”
I pushed myself upright too fast, the world spinning as my wings flared wide.
They caught the sunlight, black and iridescent, too large, too wrong.
A collective murmur rippled through the crowd.
A woman crossed herself even as a baby suddenly cried.
But as some people stepped back, others leaned closer, their curiosity like knives.
“Is this a prank?”
“Call the cops.”
Their voices tangled around me, a net I couldn’t escape. I wrapped my wings around my chest, realizing too late that my torso was unclothed, my breasts bared. Heat rushed to my face, humiliation burning hotter than the sun.
I wanted to vanish. To sink into the river and let it take me away. Except, I couldn’t swim. I’d never been taught. The thought struck like a cruel joke. All this vitality, all this supposed power, and I’d never learned how to survive in water.
The crowds chatter grew louder, more frantic. Phones lifted high, screens gleaming. A few were already livestreaming.
Then I heard it.
A low thrum. Distant, but rising. The sound of blades cutting the air.
My heart seized.
The helicopter crested the tree-line, sunlight flashing off its chrome-plated body like liquid fire. The wind from its rotors whipped the river into whitecaps, sent dust spiraling across the shore.
I didn’t need to see the helicopter’s markings to know. I didn’t need to guess.
It was him.
Even through the glare, even through the panic clawing at my chest, I knew.
Adam had found me.