Chapter 68 #2
Dr. Grey was still fingering one of the needles filled with what I was now certain was a sedative of some kind meant to keep Jay compliant while they used my tech on his mind.
Jay had said Dr. Grey was the director of DARPA, and they wanted to use the manipulator on soldiers.
Did they think that if they manipulated the parts of the brain that felt things like empathy and love, they could eliminate the psychological side effects of war?
I stood before the broken pieces of the manipulator, staring down at my work as I forced back the urge to vomit.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes at the thought of all the ways they could use this device to turn the man I loved into something unrecognizable.
Jay… the man who liked to spend his downtime playing cozy games like Stardew Valley. The guy whose favorite way to start the day was with a sticky cinnamon bun and a coffee sweet enough to give a toddler cavities.
The man who’d stopped to help a stranger who’d been pushed to the ground on his first day of work.
And now, these evil people wanted to use me to twist that beautiful mind up into something violent and insidious.
I couldn’t do it…
But… the armed guards loomed over him, their expressionless faces hidden behind their reflective tactical goggles…
Seb stood by the elevator, blocking the only way out, and Melanie watched me with a smug look on her face as she toyed with the chilli pepper keychain I had given Jay all those weeks ago.
Every single person in this room knew how important Jay was to me.
They knew it, and they would use it against me until they got what they wanted.
I realized that even if I obeyed now, they would never let either of us go.
They would dangle my love for Jay over my head for the rest of my life…or until they had successfully damaged him beyond repair… whichever came first.
He was expendable to them.
A tool that they could use to control me.
Either they shot him now, or they chipped pieces of him away as punishment for any failures I might make…
I choked on a desperate sob.
Of course, the first time you fall in love with someone, that very love is the reason they get hurt…
I don’t know why I ever thought I deserved anything as good as love.
I was freaking Murphquake.
Murphy’s law.
Of course, this would happen…
My heart broke as I found myself wishing I had never met Jay Reynolds. A wish I never in a million years thought I would ever find myself making.
My love for Jay was going to destroy him.
If I didn’t love him, there would be no reason to hurt him…
Suddenly, my mind made a connection.
The idea came to me so swiftly that there was no time for the thought to even register on my face.
Slowly, I reached forward, my hand hovering over the broken pieces of the manipulator.
Pausing for only a second, I met Jay’s eyes and watched as his brows pulled together in confusion. He knew me well enough to sense that I’d thought of something. He tilted his head in a silent question.
Holding his gaze, I let him see everything I hadn’t yet put into words, knowing this might be my one and only chance to tell him how I felt.
His frown deepened as he searched my face.
“Milo?” he asked, his voice somehow sounding young and small.
I swallowed, the very air around me heavy with the weight of what I was about to do.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Jay’s eyes widened, and his mouth parted in surprise.
Then, I reached past the manipulator and grabbed the extractor instead.
Tearing it off the charging port, I slammed the device into my temple, keeping my gaze firmly trained on Jay’s face as I called forward every memory I possibly could of him to the forefront of my mind.
I started from the beginning, remembering the day we met.
“Are you new here?”
“You don’t have to help me…”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
The extractor gobbled up the memory in seconds, so I quickly fed it another one. I dug deep and tugged on the memory of the first time he kissed me…
“You like it when I touch you, Milo?”
“Yeah…”
“Good. That’s good…Because I like touching you, too…”
My chest ached as the memory was torn from my mind, but I forced myself to carry on, even as I started to lose sight of why I was doing this in the first place.
The extractor began latching onto the happy memories on its own, syphoning them up one by one, until all that was left was an unexplainable ache where my heart used to be.
All the lazy mornings I’d woken up with Jay’s mouth around my cock.
Every warm, cozy evening on his couch, playing Stardew…The night he’d brought me a bouquet of forget-me-nots… which had also been the first time he’d ever called me baby.
The NeuroExtractor devoured the memories of all the times he’d held me.
All the times he made me laugh. Tears streamed down my face as one by one, the happiest memories of my life blinked out of existence.
Most of them went easily, flying from my mind like dark matter being pulled helplessly into a black hole…
but one memory… one memory seemed to hold on.
It clung to my mind as the extractor shredded through my consciousness, and I found myself smiling through my tears as it hovered briefly in my mind’s eye.
It was the memory of the way Jay’s lips curled whenever he said my name.
My-loh.
Somehow, he managed to always make those two syllables sound like music.
He made my name sound like poetry.
My throat closed up as I watched him writhe and fight against the restraints as he desperately tried to get to me.
He wasn’t humming my name in the way that had always made my cheeks heat and my toes curl.
No.
Now he was screaming it.
“MILO! MILO—NO! PLEASE! BABY, DON’T DO THIS!” His voice broke as he screamed and screamed, his own face now soaked with tears.
I gave him what I hoped was a comforting smile, praying he understood why I had to do this. Why I had to forget him.
‘It’s because I love you…’ I whispered, but I didn’t think he could hear me.
No one could.
Not with the echo of Jay’s grief shattering against the concrete walls.
It didn’t matter.
All that mattered was that Luke wouldn’t be able to use my love for him as a weapon.
I clung to this truth for as long as my mind would allow it.
Holding on to that thought as hard as I could, I lost myself to the sound of Jay’s wrecked voice as he called out for me over and over again.
It hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced… But soon, I forgot why he was crying.
I forgot why I was crying.
In minutes that felt like hours, my vision began to blur, and the excruciating sound of screaming began to fade.
Then, the world went dark as the NeuroExtractor finally wiped my mind clear of everything Jay Reynolds had ever done to make me love him.