22. Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hector
“ No .” I stumble back, knocking into the edge of the desk. “You…can't be. This isn't real.”
Her grip on the gun doesn’t falter. “I am. And it is.”
Jonas lets out a harsh chuckle. “I knew this would be an exciting reunion.”
My head whips toward him as I aim for his head with a snarl. “You fucking knew she was the Judge from the start!”
“Of course I did. Who do you think promoted me? Lena has her favorites, and I’m a very loyal dog.”
My sister readies her gun, the click echoing off the walls. “Put it down, Hector.”
I meet her cold gaze, heart hammering in my ribs. “You’d shoot your own brother?”
“If you don't lower your weapon, I will.”
A rough, disbelieving laugh claws its way up my throat. “Do you have any idea what this asshole did? He had your guards hold me down while he tried to force his cock into me!”
“Damn bird had to ruin the fun,” Jonas mumbles, but not before something flashes in Lena's eyes.
“Either you drop the gun and kick it over, or I'll shoot.”
Everything tilts around me as the sharp edge of her words scrapes something raw inside my chest.
My sister. My fucking sister is the Judge. Ruler over this place of horrors where people suffer, where the guards kill and maim and rape.
I lower the gun slightly, more out of shock than anything else. “What the hell happened? You…you said you were leaving to make things better. You said you'd come back for me.”
Lena’s jaw tightens, scar stretching thin across her lips. “I did come back. Just…not in the way you expected.”
“That’s bullshit! You disappeared. I waited for years , Lena. You promised—”
“I promised a lot of things,” she cuts in. “I was na?ve then, but you’re still alive, aren’t you? You survived.”
“ Survived ?” My hands start to tremble violently around the pistol. “You left me to starve. I was a child.”
She looks at me then, really looks at me. Her gaze jumps from the bruises on my throat to the crooked lean of my gait. “You don’t know what I’ve done to keep us alive. ”
Taking a slow step forward, the gun falls limply at my side. “So tell me what's happening. Tell me why you hurt Charon!”
“Not until you hand over your weapon.”
Jonas hums, glancing between us in amusement. “This is about to get good.”
She doesn’t even look at him. “I’m giving you a choice, Hector. Listen to me or die in the pit. You decide.”
All I can do is stare in disbelief, breathing heavily.
Listen to her? After everything? After what she did to Charon and me? To all these people trapped here? My limbs refuse to move.
Lena keeps her gun trained on me, but her grip is shaky. She’s waiting to see what I’ll do. Jonas tenses as well, bracing for a fight, but I realize I'm outnumbered. I couldn't fight them both off with one foot, and I don't even know if I have bullets left.
So I make my choice, despite every instinct screaming not to.
Slowly, I crouch as much as I can, setting the gun on the ground with a quiet clack .
Jonas lets out an exaggerated sigh of disappointment. “Fucking buzzkill.”
My sister studies me with a stern gaze, her jaw relaxing. She finally lowers her weapon just enough to make it clear that she’s not shooting me yet. “Get up.”
Gripping my leg, I rise with a glare, never taking my eyes off her.
“Walk,” she says, gesturing for me to precede her into the hall. The barrel of her weapon presses into my spine as I limp past.
“I get him when you're finished, right?” Jonas asks, hanging back in the doorway. “I called dibs. ”
“Get back to your post, Jonas,” she snaps, nudging me forward. “And check on that fucking gas leak.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
My pulse thuds behind my eyes, the hallway narrower somehow, like the walls are closing in around me. We walk for a long, silent moment, Lena’s boots echoing steadily at my back.
“Left,” she orders suddenly, and I turn at the next junction, passing more doors until she tells me to stop.
Another keypad, another code. She types it in, then a low mechanical clunk makes me flinch as the door unlatches and we step inside.
I barely have time to take in my surroundings before the gun clatters to the ground as she yanks me into her arms.
“Fucking hell, I missed you,” she chokes, squeezing me hard enough that my ribs ache. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
I freeze in her grasp, too stunned to react. “You pointed a gun at me five minutes ago.”
Lena pulls away just enough to look me in the eye, her lashes wet. “And you were pointing one at my second-in-command. I had to keep up appearances.”
Finally, my brain catches up with the situation, and I shove her off me with a snarl. “ Appearances ? I've been right where you left me the whole time! Starving and alone and rotting!”
My sister opens her mouth, the tough mask cracking as something trembles behind her eyes. “I did what I had to,” she finally says, rolling her shoulders. “I couldn’t come back. Not yet. Not until I had something to offer.”
“Like what? A horde of soldiers who beat and rape people for fun? ”
Her expression hardens again, the silver scar over her lips twisting grotesquely. “I don't expect you to understand. You’ve only seen pieces of this place. Shadows. You don’t know what it’s like here.”
I want to believe her. Fuck, I do, but I’ve seen the pit. I’ve seen the cells. It makes me want to scream, to hit something, to hit her . But I just stand there, trembling, because I don’t know which version of her is real—the sister I loved or this monster she's become.
“You want answers?” she says, walking deeper into the room. “Then let me explain. I'll tell you everything.”
My stomach drops when I gaze after her, finally focusing on where we are. Some kind of crude lab sits against the far wall, pieced together with rusted metal counters and beeping machines I can't process.
But that's not what causes my breath to catch in my throat.
It’s the creature strapped to a steel table, barely conscious, limbs bound with leather belts. It looks almost human, veins vibrantly blue beneath thin, papery skin. Next to it on a metal tray are vials and syringes.
“What the fuck is this?” I whisper, rearing back.
Lena doesn’t even flinch as she makes her way over to the tray. “Research. The infection started somewhere, and that means it can end somewhere, too.”
I choke out a gasp, unable to tear my gaze from the poor soul on the table. Its scalp bleeds beneath clumps of hair, flesh peeling away from the bone. “You’re torturing people?”
“I’m trying to save them,” she snaps as she lifts a syringe. “This is how we do it, Hector. You'll see. ”
B efore I can even blink, she plunges a needle into the creature’s neck
It lets out a shriek loud enough to hurt my ears as its body arches against the restraints, foam spilling from its gaping mouth. The stench of metal hits my nostrils.
“Silver,” she says calmly, watching her victim writhe. “We think it slows the cellular breakdown, stabilizes the brain for a while. Sometimes they even talk.”
The creature lets out a gurgling moan that sounds almost like a word. I stagger back with a gagging dry heave.
My sister strokes the thing's cheek almost reverently, even as it snaps its teeth at her. “This one used to run the place. The original ‘Judge’. He never believed in what I’m doing here, so I had to make him see .”
“You’re insane,” I growl, swallowing down my rising nausea.
“I’m desperate,” she snaps. “You think I like this? I’m doing what no one else had the strength to do, what no one believed could be done.”
“All you're doing is hurting people!” Turning toward the door, I try to pull on the handle, but it won't budge. “Let me go. I need to find Charon. I don't want any part in your psycho experiments.”
“I’m trying to cure you, Hector!” she yells, her voice breaking on my name.
My hand falls away from the handle as I throw her a glance over my shoulder, brows furrowing. “There’s no cure. Everyone knows that. ”
She yanks down her shirt collar, revealing a glistening silver bite mark on her shoulder. “I found one. At least, a suppressant, anyway.”
“What…what happened?”
Something haunted shifts in her gaze. “I was working in the mine with our father. He turned into a biter with no warning, attacking me out of the blue. I didn’t even have time to think, I just grabbed the closest thing I could find.”
Her eyes glaze over as she continues, “It was a silver pickaxe. I buried it in his heart and watched his body seize like it was on fire. But then, as he bled out on the floor, his face changed. Suddenly, the snarling biter was gone, and he was Father again. He lived long enough to say he was sorry before he died.”
My back hits the wall, vision going dim. “You’re lying. He left us!”
“No, that's just the excuse I came up with. You were a kid, you wouldn’t have understood.”
“I waited for him,” I whisper, sinking to my knees as my legs give out. “I used to sleep by the front door in case he came back.”
“I know.” She smiles at me sadly. “And I let you believe it because the truth would’ve destroyed you.”
“It did destroy me. I thought…I thought he hated me for being…rotten.”
Lena drops her gaze then. For a long moment, all I can hear is the wet breaths of that thing on the table and my heart pounding in my ears. Eventually, she continues.
“After he was gone, I ran into town. Told everyone I could find about what happened, even the soldiers, but no one believed me. They all thought I was crazy. So I decided to enlist instead and bring it up to the man in charge.”
She begins to pace frantically, the thud of her boots hollow. “He laughed at me. Told me silver was too precious to be wasted on theories, and if I wanted to be useful, I’d put my mouth to work.”
My fingers curl into the floor, nails scraping against the concrete as I inch for the gun she’d dropped.
“But I didn’t shut up. I spent four years in his bed, gathering allies to my side. Even killed the Ferryman’s mother for a spot in the guard.”
The breath catches in my lungs at the mention of Charon’s past.