Chapter 21
I don’t remember most of the walk, and I know I should. Like there should be something there—landmarks, turns, the shape of the road, anything. But it’s all…smeared. Blurred at the edges like a corrupted file my brain refuses to open.
What I do remember is the bag. Bright yellow.
Obnoxiously bright, like someone wanted to make damn sure I didn’t miss it.
It was sitting just off the road, half hidden in the grass.
Somehow, I knew it was for me, but I opened it cautiously.
Inside was a bottle of water, my phone, my glasses, and my keys. No note, no explanation.
Someone let me go.
As much as I want to believe it was Reese, my brain very rudely has convinced me it had to be someone who did so against his wishes. For what reason, fuck if I know.
I remember standing there for a solid minute, staring at the bag like it might bite me. Then I drank the water in three gulps, hands shaking, throat burning, and ordered a Lyft like a normal person who definitely hadn’t just escaped a superpowered ex-kidnapper’s murder basement.
The driver didn’t ask questions.
God bless rideshare culture.
By the time I get back to my apartment, I’m running on fumes and spite. I barely make it through the door before everything in me just…gives out.
My knees hit first.
Then my hands.
Then the rest of me follows, collapsing onto the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
For a second, I just lie there. Breathing. Or, well, trying to breathe. It still doesn’t feel right. My lungs hitch like they’re expecting something to fill them that isn’t air, but only oxygen and silence presses in.
And then…
It hits. All of it. All at once.
He’s not dead. He’s alive. He has been for seven fucking years and never bothered to have the fucking courtesy to let me know. And here I had let myself believe that he would’ve actually run away with me back then. Of course he wouldn’t have.
I was a fucking idiot.
My mom is three thousand miles away. My uncle betrayed me. The man I had let myself get obsessed with despises me because of…okay, quite possibly the worst mistake I’ve ever made in my entire fucking life.
But I’m not quite sure I deserved to be fucking tortured for it.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know I was dooming dozens of people to their deaths.
Fuck, I’m sorry.
And then he…
“Fuck.”
My hand curls against the floor as the dam breaks wide open, a crack splits down my chest, and it all comes spilling out until I’m crying.
Not the quiet, dignified kind either. It’s messy, ugly.
The kind that makes your whole body shake like it’s trying to eject something from your system and can’t manage it.
I press my forehead against the floor, breath stuttering, glasses smudging, shoulders trembling as I lie here and sob.
“Fuck,” I say again, weaker this time.
Then I hear footsteps. Tiny ones, soft and familiar.
Felix appears like a small, judgmental guardian angel, weaving immediately into my space. He nudges his head under my hand, purring like a chainsaw.
“Hey,” I choke out. “You’re not supposed to see me like this.”
No one is, not even the damn cat.
He ignores me, obviously. He climbs onto my back like I’m a piece of furniture and presses his entire body weight against me, purring louder. Some of the tension inside me immediately eases.
I let out a shaky, wet laugh onto the floor. “Thanks for the emotional support.”
Reaching above me, my fingers curl into his fur, grounding myself in something real, something normal. He’s warm and solid and alive. Not shadows. Not…him. Just a cat who probably thinks I’m being overdramatic.
It takes a while before all the ugly sobbing finally slows, long enough that my throat feels even more raw and my head is pounding. Eventually, I manage to push myself upright, using the wall for support as the room tilts around me.
“Okay,” I say hoarsely. “Okay, we’re good now. All better. We’re thriving.”
Felix meows like he doesn’t believe me.
“Way to be supportive.”
I stumble into the kitchen, grabbing onto the counter when my balance wobbles again. My gaze drifts down, and I freeze.
His food bowl is half full.
I know I didn’t fill it the day I was taken.
“Okay,” I whisper as a slow, cold awareness creeps up my spine. “That’s…super cool.”
Someone was really coming here to take care of my cat?
I scrub a hand down my face while Felix, traitor that he is, starts eating his kibble like nothing about this is concerning. Grabbing a glass out of the cabinet, I fill it with water and down the whole thing. After that, I push away from the counter and start checking.
It doesn’t take me long to find the cameras.
Because of course there are cameras. They’re hidden well, better than most people would ever find, but not better than me.
I move through the apartment methodically, ignoring the way my body protests every step.
One by one, I find them and disable them and throw them in the trash.
The one in the bedroom, the one in the kitchen, and even the one in the fucking bathroom.
But then I find the one in the living room and stop.
It’s tucked neatly into the corner beneath the top shelf of my bookcase, angled just right to see most of the room. I stare at it for a long moment, take a step back, and stare at it some more.
Reese let me escape.
Now that I’ve survived most of the emotional turmoil from the past few days, I can see that actually makes sense. He put cameras in my apartment and let me go, hoping I’d give him a way to get to Malcolm.
Of course it would be so he could use me.
“You know what?” I mutter at the camera. “You can keep that one.”
I think of Reese watching me now, like he did before. Like he’s done a lot of times before. But I think the one that will stick with me most didn’t even involve a camera. Just him watching while his shadows touched me, ghostly hands exploring my body, getting me off.
Fuck, it was hot.
But it was also not what I wanted.
After all this time, after being without him for so long and then having him back, I wanted his touch.
I wanted to feel his body against mine, feel his arms surrounding me.
Fortunately, the weight of his cock in my mouth was the only thing that kept me from spiraling.
It was confusing being so turned on, so many hands on me while experiencing the unnerving things they made me feel, and also wanting everything Reese refused to give me.
And now I’m going to keep this damn camera out of nothing but spite so he can watch me without being able to touch me even if he did fucking want to.
Felix jumps onto the couch, staring at me like I’ve finally done something worth his approval.
“To be clear,” I say, voice still wrecked but steadier now, “this is me choosing chaos.”
The camera, shockingly, does not respond.
I turn my back on it and head to my desk in the corner of the room. Because apparently, when my life falls apart, my coping mechanism is cyber warfare, which is probably only slightly less healthy than using humor.
My computer hums to life, the familiar glow of the screens washing over me. For a moment, I just sit there, staring, wishing I could blame them instead of me for what I did to Reese.
Maybe then our reunion would have gone differently…
But it doesn’t help to dwell, so I shake those thoughts away and get to work. My fingers start moving. I don’t even fully know what it is I’m looking for. Just…answers.
It turns out that the Bellrose Institute systems are harder to crack than they used to be. That’s new. And annoying. I frown as I push deeper, bypassing new security layers that definitely weren’t there before. It takes a bit of time, but I finally break my way in.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Who’s been busy?”
The data starts to unfold in the form of sealed files and restricted protocols, things I absolutely should not be able to access. My jaw tightens as I open one.
POST-RESUSCITATION ANOMALIES
I blink, and a chill sends a shiver shooting down my spine as I read through the clinical language that’s cold and precise. References to subjects who exhibited “non-baseline manifestations” following death.
My stomach swoops.
Ascension.
It’s real. Reese wasn’t lying about Malcolm. It’s all here, documented and studied and weaponized. Everything right in Malcolm’s pocket.
My fingers move faster, pulling more files, cross-referencing, digging deeper. Efficiency reports pop up on one screen while operational metrics get dragged to another. Patient evaluations, experiment analyses, test subject cases. I run timeline comparisons on all of it.
When the data comes in, I can’t breathe.
It feels like the shadows are inside my lungs all over again.
After the incident…
After I burned everything down…
Bellrose Institute really did win.
There were more experiments. More test subjects. They streamlined, got better. More efficient, more controlled.
Less…resistance.
There’s nothing choking me now, but I still find myself gasping for air, my throat tight, my chest heaving. It’s not that I didn’t believe Reese, but it’s entirely different seeing all the proof laid out in front of me, the pieces snapping into place.
The camera behind me can see my screens, but I don’t care. I might hate Reese right now, but I hate my uncle even more. If Reese sees something that can help him in his fight against Malcolm, then good. Let him see. Let him choke on it the same way I am.
My hands hover over the keyboard, fingers twitching like I might start tearing it all apart, like I can undo it if I just hit the right sequence of keys.
But I can’t. It’s already done.
My stomach twists, and a broken breath leaves me, erratic and shaky. There’s nothing physically wrong with me, nothing in my lungs, nothing wrapping around my ribs. But I still can’t get a fucking full breath in. Maybe it’s the shadows lingering, or maybe it’s something else entirely.