Chapter 11 #2
And in what had once been the building’s main office, Ken Nakamura sat behind a mahogany desk that probably cost more than most people earned in a year.
Riot stepped out of the shadows. “We need to talk.”
Ken didn’t jump—Riot had to give him that.
The Chimera just looked up from his paperwork with that plastic smile Riot remembered too well from shared beds and regretted mornings.
From desperate nights when loneliness and suppressant crashes had driven him and Stave and Prepper to take comfort wherever they could find it.
Ken had always been willing to provide. For a price.
“I was wondering when you’d visit.” Ken leaned back in his chair. “You look like hell. Suppressant withdrawal doesn’t suit you.”
“Where are my medications?”
“Storage room. Third door on the left, combination 2847.” Ken’s smile widened. “But you didn’t come all this way just for pills, did you? You came because you wanted to see me.”
“Why were they delayed?”
“We want you back. All three of you.” Ken spread his hands, then let his legs fall open wider—a deliberate display that usually ended with someone on their knees. “You boys were profitable. And fun. The Syndicate’s never found another team quite like you three.”
Riot’s jaw tightened until his teeth ached.
He remembered. Late nights after dangerous jobs, blood still drying under their fingernails.
Ken’s Chimera abilities letting him become whatever the three of them needed—soft and yielding or hard and demanding, shifting pheromones and presentation to match their moods.
Cash pressed into their hands and mouths pressed against their skin, the twin currencies that kept them coming back even when they knew better.
That was before. Before the Nulls. Before seven months of stability with people who didn’t want anything from him.
Before Cass.
“Not interested.”
“No?” Ken’s scent shifted. The change was subtle at first—a warming of the artificial pheromones—but then it hit Riot’s hindbrain like a sledgehammer.
Caramel and cinnamon. Sunshine and sweetness.
Cass’s signature, perfect in every detail except for the synthetic undertone that marked it as manufactured.
He’s mimicking my Omega.
“I could be him for you,” Ken murmured, voice dropping into that seductive register that used to work.
“I’ll give you what you’re clearly not getting.
Your little missionary doesn’t seem like the type to put out, but I remember what you like.
” He tilted his head, baring his throat in false submission.
“You always did your best work when properly motivated.”
The rage came up so fast Riot didn’t have time to leash it. His vision hazed gold at the edges and then he was moving, vaulting the desk in a single motion—
Ken was ready for him.
The Chimera dropped under Riot’s initial grab and came up with a knife that hadn’t been visible a second ago, slashing at Riot’s ribs in a strike that would have opened him up if he hadn’t twisted at the last second. The blade caught his jacket instead, parting flannel like butter.
I forgot how fast he is.
Riot caught Ken’s wrist on the backswing and wrenched, trying to break his grip on the knife, but Ken flowed with the motion instead of fighting it, using Riot’s own momentum to spin inside his guard and drive an elbow into his gut.
The air left Riot’s lungs in an explosive grunt. He staggered back, and Ken pressed the advantage with a flurry of quick strikes—throat, jaw, groin, all the targets that would end a fight fast.
He’s not trying to kill me. He’s trying to put me down.
Riot blocked the throat strike, took the jaw strike on his forearm instead of his face, and let the groin shot land because it gave him the opening he needed.
Pain exploded through his pelvis, but he was already moving, grabbing Ken’s extended arm and using it as a lever to slam him face-first into the mahogany desk.
The impact cracked something—wood or bone, Riot didn’t care which.
Ken tried to spin out of the pin, but Riot had his weight on him now, one hand grinding Ken’s face into the desk while the other wrenched his arm up behind his back at an angle that threatened to dislocate the shoulder.
“You want to try that again?” Riot snapped. “Wearing his scent? You want to fucking try that again?”
Ken laughed, blood dripping from his nose onto the polished wood. “Just—demonstrating a point—about how compromised you are.” He wheezed as Riot wrenched his arm higher. “You never would have—reacted like this before. You’re losing control, Riot—”
Riot slammed his head into the desk again, cutting off the words. “Before is over.” Another slam. “I’m not that person anymore.” Another, harder. “And it stops being business—” He wrenched the arm until he felt something pop and Ken screamed. “—when you involve people I care about.”
He dropped Ken and stepped back, breathing hard. Ken slumped against the desk, cradling his dislocated shoulder with his good hand. But he was still smiling, blood on his teeth.
“There he is,” he said softly. “There’s the monster Gensyn made. I was wondering if he was still in there.”
Walk away. Get the suppressants and walk away before you kill him.
Riot headed for the storage room.
The pharmaceutical supplies could have outfitted a small military unit.
Suppressants in every grade and formulation, from the weak over-the-counter stuff that barely took the edge off to the military-spec doses that could flatline a Berserker episode in seconds.
Combat stimulants. Painkillers. Things that didn’t have labels, stored in black cases with biometric locks.
Riot found his delayed order on a shelf near the back—three months of Berserker-specific suppressants, enough for him and Stave and Prepper. The vials clinked against each other as he shoved them into his jacket pockets, his hands still shaking with unspent adrenaline.
One dose would bring his hormones back into balance, smooth out the ragged edges of his control, and make it easier to think about something other than Cass’s heat-scent and Cass’s skin and Cass’s soft sounds of pleasure.
Take it. Take the edge off. Be safer.
But something twisted in his gut at the thought. Brother Matthias was in that hotel room right now, doing something that made Cass lie. Something that made him afraid.
Riot didn’t want to be dulled for whatever came next.
He pocketed the vial without uncapping it.
Twenty-six minutes.
The hotel’s alley smelled like garbage and old piss, but Riot barely noticed. He positioned himself beneath Cass’s bathroom window, back pressed against brick, and focused on the sounds drifting down from above.
“—necessary to reopen some of the previous points, Brother Cassiopeia.” Brother Matthias’s voice was calm, clinical, with that particular cadence Riot recognized from his post-modification days.
Handlers who thought they’d unlocked the secret to controllable Berserkers.
People who spoke gently while they did terrible things.
“The negative energy has been building.”
Floorboards creaked overhead. Movement. Someone crossing the room.
“I understand,” Cass said, and Riot’s chest clenched at the resignation in his voice. He sounded sad. And scared. “How many points?”
“The standard ones first. Then two new locations to address the earthly attachments that seem to be interfering with your spiritual development.”
The first sound made his whole body go rigid—a sharp, pained whimper that cut through the air like a blade. Then another. Then soft sobbing that Cass was clearly trying to muffle.
No. No no no—
The scent of blood drifted down from the open window. Fresh copper, bright and wrong. And underneath it, something that made Riot’s stomach heave—
Alpha pheromones. Heavy. Unmistakable. Aroused.
He’s getting off on this. The sick fuck is hurting him and getting off on it.
Riot’s vision went gold. His hands found the windowsill, ready to haul himself up, ready to tear through that room and—
More whimpering. More blood. The wet sound of something being pressed against skin. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t fucking see what was happening, and his mind was filling in the blanks with images that made him want to scream.
I could be up there in three seconds. I could have my hands around his throat in five. I could—
“Please.” Cass sounded so small, barely recognizable. “M-may I seek solace, Brother Matthias?”
The silence seemed to stretch for years. Then: “You may.”
Shuffling sounds. Fabric rustling. And then more muffled sobbing—the particular quality of sound that came from someone pressing their face against another body. Against the person who had just hurt them.
“Seeking solace” means he’s hugging his torturer. He’s crying on the man who just—
Riot slammed his fist into the brick wall, feeling skin split and bone jar. The pain helped. Barely.
“Remember that spiritual growth requires sacrifice,” Brother Matthias said. “The pain is negative energy leaving your body, making space for divine light.”
I’m going to kill him. I’m going to take my time with it. I’m going to make sure he understands exactly why he’s dying.
“Now,” Brother Matthias continued, “I’m afraid I have another missionary to attend to, so I can’t provide the usual care. But you’ve done this often enough to manage on your own, yes?”
“Yes, Brother Matthias.” Cass’s voice was barely audible, hoarse from crying.
“Good, dear one. And remember—” A rustle of robes, footsteps crossing toward the door.
“If you can bring back at least one recruit, you’ll be allowed to come home and be the partner Sister Honey deserves.
But if not...” The lock clicked open. “We may need to explore whether she should enter the Chrysalis program to correct the incompatibility from her end.”
Whatever Cass said in response was too broken by sobs to hear. Then footsteps, the door closing, and terrible silence.
Riot forced himself to stay pressed against the wall. His hands were shaking so badly he had to press them flat against the brick, trying to make the gold in his vision fade. He needed to see Brother Matthias’s face clearly.
He circled around to the front of the building and watched as an Elysian man emerged from the entrance, every detail etching itself into his memory.
Average height. Soft build that suggested desk work and comfortable living.
Flowing, layered robes in muted earth tones.
His blue eyes held the particular emptiness of someone who’d learned to fake warmth so completely they’d forgotten what the real thing felt like.
Brother Matthias walked past Riot’s position without a second glance—then paused, nostrils flaring slightly, and turned back. Then he smiled and nodded with the smile of someone who’d never faced real consequences for anything he’d done.
Riot smiled back.
I am going to kill you.
He waited until Brother Matthias turned the corner, then crossed to the hotel entrance, blood still drying on his knuckles, murder still singing in his veins.
The footsteps approaching the door were too slow. Too careful.
When Cass opened the door, his face was red and blotchy with tears, snot running down his chin in a way that should have looked pathetic, but it just made Riot want to gather him up and never let go.
His hands were curled inward, like he was protecting his fingers from contact, but his face lit up the moment he saw Riot.
That brilliant smile breaking through the evidence of tears like sun through clouds.
“You’re back!” He tried to wipe his face with the back of his wrist, wincing at the movement. “I—sorry, I’m a mess. The consultation was more intensive than usual.”
Intensive. Is that what we’re calling it?
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
Riot stepped inside, unable to stop himself from noticing all the little details. Cass’s robes were disheveled, hastily retied at his side. There was a smear of red on the door knob leading to the bathroom. And Riot could smell the blood.
The silver circlet sat heavy in Riot’s jacket pocket, pressing against his chest like an accusation.
I let this happen. I climbed out that window and let this happen.
He sat in the room’s single chair, hands shaking with the effort of not grabbing Cass and checking every inch of him for damage. Of not going back out that door and hunting Brother Matthias down and making him scream.
“How did your consultation go?” he asked.