Chapter 33 #2
Malcolm is too smart not to already know about it, so I’m not risking anything by telling him now. And I know he’s not the one behind it because he has an entire laboratory at his disposal. Whatever he does here is hidden in those internal servers Cason is currently setting fire to.
Besides, if I claimed to be here just to chat, he’d be suspicious.
If I could actually get information from him, then two birds, one stone.
“We both know we can’t let whatever’s happening continue.”
That smug look of his grows. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“Let’s not get sentimental,” I say with a forced grin of my own. “I’m just interested in not letting someone else start a fire neither of us can put out.”
Malcolm falls silent, studying me again.
I can see it in his eyes that he knows exactly what I’m talking about, and he’s weighing his options and the usefulness of giving me whatever information he has.
He knows we could fight this at least as well as he can.
Maybe even better because we don’t have to worry about rules or about hiding, not in the same way he does.
“Do you want to know what your problem is, Mr. Morgan?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You think you’re better than me, but the truth is, you and I are exactly the same.”
Well, I wasn’t expecting that.
“I’m nothing like you,” I tell him, my jaw clenched.
“Are you sure about that?” He rises from his chair and rounds the desk, leaning back against it two feet from me, his unnerving gaze locked on mine.
“Like knows like. Similar minds and all that. You see the signs of a potentially new Ascended force, a messy one at that, and your first instinct isn’t to help them. It’s to stop them, to destroy them.”
It takes me too long to answer because…
He’s not wrong.
I may not want to own them like he would, but I also don’t want them unleashed.
Me and the others, we give Ascended a choice.
They’re free to join us or to go about living their lives.
However, they choose the latter knowing that Malcolm and the Institute are never far behind.
Either way, we always keep tabs on them.
If they were to start another faction, well… we wouldn’t be able to allow that.
Just like Malcolm doesn’t want to allow our resistance to continue.
“The difference is,” I say finally, accepting my role, “I don’t pretend it makes me righteous.”
“No. You just pretend it makes you different from me.”
I push to my feet, slowly. “Careful, Malcolm. You’re starting to sound like you need me.”
“I don’t need you,” he replies, his tone suddenly a little too casual. “I’m offering you a choice.”
When it comes to Malcolm, it’s always a choice that’s never really a choice. But I stay quiet and let him get it over with anyway.
“Shut it down. Your resistance. Work for me again, and we can fight against this together. You’ve built something unstable, as we’ve already learned once, and you’re simply repeating the same cycle and hoping for a different outcome.
You gather power without discipline, without hierarchy.
The best thing for you to do would be to dismantle it before what happened last time happens again. ”
An image of Ash flickers in my mind, accompanied by the bitter taste of smoke and loss.
“You lost control,” he continues. “And your people died because you were overly ambitious.”
Before I can stop myself, I shoot a scowl at him. “They died because of you.”
“They died because they were a risk.”
“And you think that’s going to make me stop?”
He shrugs. “I think you’re smart enough to learn from your mistakes.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a choice, Malcolm. Isn’t there supposed to be something in it for me?”
The tablet on Malcolm’s desk makes a noise, and the screen lights up. He picks it up, takes a look, and there’s a flicker in his eyes, his interest piqued.
Sebastian’s voice cuts in from the radio in my ear, low and tight. “Fuck. You’re not going to like this, boss.”
I don’t react, even as my pulse spikes.
“Something wrong?” I ask, keeping my own voice casual now.
“You wanted something in it for you?” Malcolm looks up from the tablet, and the wolfish smile on his face is one I know well, one I fucking loathe. “I think I may have a way to convince you.”
The doors open, and two of Malcolm’s Ascended step inside, dragging someone between them.
Cason.
He’s unconscious, blood dripping down his temple, head lolling forward, green hair hanging over his face like a curtain.
Something inside me goes very, very still.
A calm before the storm, me standing on the eve of destruction.
Everything goes red, and every rational part of me just cuts out completely.
My vision narrows until there’s nothing in this room except him and the way his chest barely moves, the way his hands hang useless at his sides.
The way someone—someone who’s fucking dead—hurt him badly enough to draw blood.
I try so fucking hard not to move, not to speak. But each beat of my heart is heavier and louder than the last, like everything inside me is trying to break out of my body just to get to him faster.
Malcolm watches me, and I can feel it. I can feel his satisfaction.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him set down the tablet before opening the top drawer of his desk. He reaches inside, and metal scrapes softly against wood. He pulls out a gun. Every muscle in my body coils tight, ready to snap.
Malcolm steps around the desk, unhurried, as though there isn’t a storm building inside of me.
He moves behind Cason.
He lifts the gun.
And presses it to the back of his own nephew’s head.
Something inside me cracks wide open, and I swear I can hear the break. My jaw locks so hard it aches. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to move. To fucking kill him. Right here, right now. To tear this entire place apart with my bare hands if I have to.
But I don’t.
Because he could move first.
“That’s what I thought,” Malcolm says, almost conversational. “Cason made it pretty obvious how he felt about you, and you’re even more obvious right now. So what’s it going to be, Reese? You both walk out of here and disappear, or are you going to keep playing this game without him?”
“You’d hurt your own nephew?” I ask, my voice low enough it barely sounds human.
Malcolm doesn’t hesitate.
“I killed my own brother.” He says those words casually, like he’s commenting on the fucking weather. “So why not?”
It’s not what I expected, but I’d be lying if I said I was surprised.
But what comes with it is the very real, very immediate knowledge that I’m standing in a room with a man who has already proven there is no line he won’t cross.
And now, he’s daring me to find mine.