Chapter 84
Igot my mother set up in the panic room, though it was more like an underground bomb shelter that had been stocked for the upcoming zombie apocalypse that no one had told me about.
“Milo… I’m really sorry. I forgot we weren’t supposed to show our faces,” my mom whispered as I tucked her into a large sectional set in front of a massive TV that was lined with hundreds of old DVDs.
“It’s okay, Mom.” I sighed as I slipped out the box set for the first season of Friends and got the show set up for her.
I didn’t know how long she was going to need to stay down here, so I figured a nine-season show would keep her busy for a while.
“I just… my head… sometimes I get confused, and things get all mixed up…” Her voice cracked, and my heart broke for her.
“I know. It’s not your fault.” I clicked play, then crossed the room and dropped a kiss on her head. “I’ll get you all sorted out, I promise. But right now, I need to go help Jay make sure we’re able to stay safe, okay?”
My mom nodded, her lower lip trembling, making my chest tighten with guilt at the thought of having to leave her down here.
“The kitchen over there seems to be fully stocked with non-perishables. Help yourself to anything you want if you get hungry. Want me to make you some popcorn before I head up?” I asked, and she shook her head, giving me what I was sure was meant to be a reassuring, albeit watery smile.
“No, honey. I’ll be okay. Go see if Jay needs help.”
“Alright. Love you.” I dropped another kiss on her head before slipping out and locking the heavy steel door behind me with the passcode Jay had given me.
By the time I made it up the stairs, it was clear Jay had already been hard at work.
I found him in the kitchen fiddling with a gun that was bigger than I was—all while barking questions off to NOVA.
“Based on all the information you have, how many of them should I be expecting?”
“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”
“Bad news, always.”
“It looks like he’s taken out a contract with a group of professionals; there are at least twenty of them coming.”
“Fuck,” Jay cursed, and I flinched as he dropped the gun on the table to run a hand down his face in frustration.
“What’s the good news?”
“Good news is, Dr. Caspian Grey seems to have dropped him completely. I have an email chain here of him asking for backup, and Grey basically telling him where to go. Essentially, he told Luke he’s on his own in retrieving you and Milo.
Since Luke never held up his end of the deal with the NeuroManipulator, Grey has completely withdrawn DARPA support. ”
“Great. So at least we don’t have to deal with the entire US Military,” Jay grumbled, resuming whatever work he’d been doing on the large firearm.
NOVA laughed softly. “Nah, just twenty or so highly trained assassins, and of course, Luke and Seb.”
“Seb’s coming?” I asked, feeling like that was an odd choice for Luke. Seb was a marketer. He didn’t have any combat training. He would probably just get in the way.
NOVA fell silent for a minute before answering, and a cold chill rolled through me at her ominous pause.
“Yeah. Since we took out TECHA, I’ve been checking in on them, and… Seb’s gone through some modifications.”
Jay froze again, his gaze darting up to the speaker NOVA was using to communicate.
“What did Luke do to him?”
“Same thing he did to you. Just… maybe a little worse. He didn’t have as much time to experiment with Sebastian, or an unwilling biotech genius, to work on the tech. So Seb is… Well. You’ll see.”
A complicated flurry of emotions flickered across Jay’s face at this, and I found myself going to him and slipping my hand into his palm.
He jerked slightly at the contact and glanced down at me with a deeply furrowed brow.
“You alright?” I asked, which was probably a stupid question. He was surrounded by guns, ammo, and what looked like several small high-tech bombs. I shivered looking at them and made sure not to jostle the table at all, just in case.
Jay swallowed and squeezed my fingers.
“Yeah, it’s just… fuck. I should have just killed him. It would have been kinder.”
I frowned, not sure what to say to that.
On the one hand, I harbored a lot of anger toward Sebastian.
He’d betrayed us to Luke, and had tried to manipulate me sexually not once but twice…
but still. I was elbow deep in Jay’s head every day.
I knew how badly being experimented on had fucked him up.
It wasn’t something I wished on anybody, especially not the man that Jay had basically treated like a brother for most of his life.
I knew they’d been close before Luke killed Jay’s father. Luke had done everything he could to poison the relationship between the two of them, and turning on Sebastian felt like we were playing right into Luke's twisted games.
“If we can capture him, I can try to fix him, too,” I offered gently, and Jay gave me a dark, sad look.
“Milo… I won’t be taking any prisoners. I’ll be killing as many of them as I can before they take me out. If I can get to Luke, this all stops, and at least you and your mom can go free once the coast is clear.”
My mouth dropped open at what he was implying.
“What do you mean?” I hissed.
He just looked at me with that blank, emotionless expression he’d adopted since his time in the The Cave.
“You know exactly what I mean, Milo.”
“You are not sacrificing yourself for us!” I snarled, but Jay didn’t flinch.
“There are twenty armed men coming for us, Milo. I’m one person. I can probably pick a lot of them off before they make it to the house, but if they come in from the air, we’re fucked. I can’t cover all sides on my own.”
“I’ll help you! NOVA will help!” I protested, and finally, Jay’s cold mask cracked.
His face went white with a potent mix of fear and anger, and suddenly, he had me slammed against the wall. I gasped in surprise, shivering at the commanding feel of his fingers digging into the flesh of my shoulders.
“You will stay in the panic room until NOVA tells you it’s safe to come out.”
I narrowed my eyes on him.
“No.”
He growled and shook me.
“Milo. This is not a fucking game. You will stay in the panic room or so fucking help me—”
“Or you’ll what?” I challenged, knowing full well he would never do anything to hurt me.
He couldn’t force me to stay there.
Jay let out a low, frustrated growl, but I just stared at him, letting him see that this was not something I was going to ever agree to.
“Listen, I get that you have all these big macho scary soldier memories in your head, but you’re forgetting that I’m actually pretty freaking smart.”
“I would never forget that,” he snapped, his grip loosening slightly on my shoulders.
“I may not be good with the guns and the hand-to-hand stuff, but I can still help.” I gestured to the table with all the artillery scattered across it.
“I bet we can find a way to set traps to take out anyone coming up to the house on foot. Then you’ll only have to worry about covering the roof.
“Also, if you wear your mask, NOVA and I can keep an eye on where the threats are and communicate with you the whole time to make sure you don’t get taken by surprise. I can watch the feeds on the monitors in the lab.”
“Milo…”
“Come on, Jay. We’re wasting time arguing about this. I’m not going into the panic room. If we die tonight, so fucking be it, but I’m not letting you do this alone.”
He gave me a flat look before letting out a long-suffering sigh.
“You have a dirty mouth lately. I’ve been a bad influence.”
I beamed at him, shrugging.
“Sometimes the odd F-bomb adds just the right amount of emphasis… Speaking of bombs, how many do you have? Do you have the blueprints for this cabin? I can start planning traps while you finish doing whatever you were doing to that gun,” I quipped cheerfully, deliberately ignoring his dark scowl.
He shook his head and dropped a grumpy kiss on my forehead. Annoyance was radiating off of him in waves, despite the fact that he’d clearly accepted I wouldn’t be cooperating with his version of the plan.
“If you die tonight, I’ll fucking kill you,” Jay grumbled, and I laughed, standing on my tippy toes to brush a kiss across his stubbly jawbone.
“Such a drama queen.”
He let out an irritated huff before striding off toward the lab to get what I assumed were the schematics for the cabin, his jaw pulsing the entire way.
NOVA and I hovered in silence for a moment as I stared after him, wondering how on earth a little nerdy MIT graduate like me had somehow found himself plotting the deaths of an entire team of hired killers.
“Welp, if we survive this, I guess I can add ‘Proficient at setting booby traps’ to my resume,” I joked to NOVA.
“Milo, if you survive this, I don’t think you’ll ever need to worry about your resume again.”
And I realized she was right.
If we made it through the night and managed to take out Luke once and for all, all of his shares would finally be bequeathed to Jay, who was the rightful owner of the company…
and I had a feeling if I wanted to spend the rest of my days tinkering in one of his labs, there would be no resume required.
Feeling shockingly devoid of any anxiety, a smile broke out on my face as I was filled with a new sense of purpose.
“Let’s get Neurovance back,” I whispered, and NOVA made a small sound of approval.
“If anyone can do it, it’s you two,” she chimed, and as Jay returned with rolls of blueprints under his arm, I grinned.
She sure was right about that.