59. PRIORITY
alistair
I keep my mouth shut, even though there’s no need to delay the inevitable.
She was bound to see it coming.
“This is where you—Delilah…. And now me….” her eyes widen, frantically blinking. “You brought me here,” her voice trembles.
She trembles, stumbling back to grab a table or something to keep herself from falling on her knees.
I’ve imagined this moment more times than I care to admit. In none of those calculations did I realize this would affect me like this.
The laboratory seems impossibly quiet with only her uneven breathing and the soft beeping of machines somewhere in the background.
She takes a step backward.
Another.
Her hand finds the edge of a workbench to steady herself again.
“You said they wouldn’t find me.”
“They won’t.”
“Because you brought me to them!” raw betrayal threatens to flow from her eyes.
I’ve betrayed people before.
I’ve built entire operations upon trust only to dismantle them when necessity demanded it.
I’ve worn faces that were never truly mine and allowed other people to believe in versions of me that existed only long enough to serve a purpose.
None of that prepared me for Ariella looking at me as though she no longer knows who I am. The unfortunate truth is that I’m no longer certain either.
“I brought you somewhere I can still protect you.”
Another truth.
Another statement she no longer has any reason to believe.
A while ago, she accepted my lies without question. Now she refuses the truth because I’ve taught her that the difference between them no longer exists.
She wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand, only for more tears to replace them.
Ariella doesn’t move when I take one careful step forward.
I stop an arm’s length away. “Do you still trust me?” the question sounds absurd even to my own ears.
She lets out a small, broken laugh. “I don’t know, Alistair.”
The answer is infinitely worse than hatred.
“I want to,” the answer trembles free. “I think I want to, but… but I don’t know who you are anymore.”
Tears escape before she can stop them.
I reach up and brush it gently from her cheek.
The gesture surprises both of us.
I should step away, or maybe she should—perhaps slap me if she wants to, and I wouldn’t stop.
She does neither.
Instead, we remain exactly as we are, carrying the impossible weight of every decision that led us here.
A discreet knock interrupts the silence.
The side door opens, and one of the senior laboratory attendants enters.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw has worked under my direction for years and possesses the rare quality of asking questions only when they are absolutely necessary.
Her eyes move from Ariella to me. “The chamber is ready, Sir.”
She turns her attention to arranging equipment at the far end of the laboratory.
Ariella follows the movement with frightened eyes. “What chamber?”
I cannot make myself answer.
“I need a little more time,” I say to Dr. Shaw.
I tell myself that delay is a strategy.
That patience will save her.
That somewhere beyond these walls, someone is already coming.
She studies me for a moment before inclining her head. “As you wish,” and leaves.
The laboratory falls silent again.
Ariella remains where she is, arms wrapped around her body, and falls back leaning against the workbench as though it’s the only static thing left in the world.
The difficulty with lies is that a man repeats them often enough that eventually he begins to depend on those lies. And that’s how I find myself hoping that one of mine is true.
For one impossible moment, I allow myself to believe that the delay will be enough.
Then the hidden door behind the eastern shelving unlocks soundlessly.
The stone panel slides aside, revealing a narrow corridor concealed inside the walls of the laboratory.
The Crown steps through and heads to the farthest corners of the laboratory—again, no other Triarchs in sight.
Ariella turns sharply at the movement. Her eyes move from the hidden passage to me. Then back again.
“Wow, now you’ve secret doors too?” she mocks.
The Crown studies the two of us for a long moment.
“I expected efficiency, Hertley,” his distorted voice catches her full attention.
“I encountered complications.”
His gaze settles on Ariella. “I can see that.”
“What does that have to do with me?” she asks.
“There has been an internal breach, as you’re aware,” he says to me, completely ignoring her. “Sensitive information has reached people who should never have possessed it.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“And yet the source remains unidentified.”
My eyes drift towards her before going back to the Crown. “She has spent years studying me.”
Ariella turns toward me so quickly that I almost regret speaking.
“What?”
“She knew my schedule. My research. My lectures. She appeared wherever the investigation advanced. I believe she’s the leak.”
Disbelief spreads across her face. “No… no, I don’t know anything about this place. I don’t know anything about any of you.”
“An academic obsession becoming something more,” he muses, absent-mindedly lifting a glass vessel from the workstation and slowly turning the silver liquid inside it.
“It explains several irregularities, does it not? Years spent following him, studying him, appearing wherever his work led. I warned you, Hertley, that fascination is a dangerous foundation for attachment.”
His eyes settle on me, cold and unreadable behind the mask.
“I even offered you the simplest solution. A Synthète worthy of your intellect. A woman who could belong to the Dominion entirely, who could carry your legacy without becoming a liability. Instead, you chose her.”
My jaw tightens, but I remain silent.
Ariella stares between us, shaking her head so quickly that loose strands of hair fall across her face.
Her voice trembles as she looks at me. “Alistair?” the way she says my name feels strangely unfamiliar, as though it belongs to someone else.
Then understanding begins to settle over her features.
“Last night you…” she cannot finish the thought, but she doesn’t have to.
I know exactly what she’s asking.
I know exactly what she fears.
The Crown says nothing. He simply watches.
I could deny it.
I could lie one more time.
Instead, I choose silence that will protect her from questions she can’t survive.
I remain where I am while she runs to me and grabs my collar, pulling me down to her height and shaking me so hard, reminding her she’s a Keinston.
She demands an explanation.
She demands to know whether any of it was real, whether any conversation, any promise, any moment we shared belonged to us or to whatever game I had been playing from the beginning.
I answer none of it.
Silence has always been my safest weapon. Today it becomes the cruelest one.
“You used me,” she yells at me, and when I still don’t speak, it goes louder. “Tell me I’m wrong!”
I can’t. Because she’s right. I saw an opportunity to take down the Triarch Dominion in her, and I used every inch of it.
The nearest object within her reach happens to be a pair of surgical shears resting beside a tray of instruments.
She grabs them without thinking.
I see the movement but make no attempt to stop it.
The metal sinks into my shoulder.
Shearing pain follows instantly, warm blood spreading beneath my shirt. I grit my teeth to stop others from seeing me as if I’m affected this much.
Nonetheless, a short breath escapes me, but I don’t pull the shears free.
The laboratory falls silent.
Ariella stares at what she has done. The anger disappears, replaced by horror.
“I…” she takes a step backwards.
She looks at me. Not for apologizing. Only because some part of her still can’t believe I’m allowing this to happen.
I spent years believing that carrying the truth alone was a punishment. Guess I was wrong.
True punishment is watching the only person who ever looked at you with trust decide that you’re exactly the monster everyone else believed you to be.
The Crown watches us with open disappointment. “What a tragic spectacle,” he says. “Years of conditioning, and all it took was one frightened girl.”
Ariella turns and tries to run out of here.
“Tch, such a defective human I thought would be the most perfect Synthète,” surprisingly, he doesn’t sound disappointed at all, but amused.
“Does it mean you’re letting her go now?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Suddenly, he doesn’t care if others see his presence when she’ll be dragged back inside. He remains standing where he is.
That’s when I pull out the shears with a loud grunt and throw them aside. It clashes against some beakers—unfortunately non-flammable because the room hasn’t caught fire yet.
She reaches the laboratory door and opens it with extra force.
Before she can take three steps, a guard stationed outside catches her.
Her cry echoes through the room as she struggles against him with everything she has, kicking, twisting, fighting to break free while he drags her back toward the laboratory with a few other guards in tow.
Something inside me gives way. I glance over at the Crown. He realizes his part of the bargain is lost.
In a second, I’m pulling out the suppressor and blowing brain of the guard holding her.
His body crumples to the floor before the echo has a chance to reach the walls. Blood oozes from the hole left in his head.
Silence follows while Ariella stares at the body.
The remaining guards freeze as their attention shifts beyond me.
Until this moment, the Crown had been little more than a myth wrapped in whispers and carefully guarded descriptions. Now the legend stands before them in flesh and shadow, and none of them dares move.
There’s disappointment in his gaze.
I realize with quiet surprise that I’ve never seen it before. Synthètes have failed. Operations have collapsed. Entire lives have been erased under my authority, and he has never looked at me as though I had become something unrecognizable.
I slide the handgun back into its holster.
Ariella slowly retreats from the fallen guard, her eyes fixed on me as though she no longer recognizes the man standing before her.
The unfortunate truth is that I’m not entirely certain I recognize him either.
Without caring about the fresh wound in my shoulder, I cross the distance between Ariella and me in a handful of strides.
A siren tears through the Dominion just then, its shrill cry reverberating through stone and steel alike. Red emergency lights ignite across the laboratory, drowning every surface in crimson.
The laboratory falls deathly still, though beyond its walls the Dominion has already descended into chaos.
This is the moment. There won’t be another.
Ariella instinctively tries to back away, but before anyone else can reach her, I pull her against me and wrap my hand around her throat.
She goes rigid with a soft gasp.
My free hand reaches for the suppressor once more and presses it against her temple. “If anyone dares to take her from me,” I say, my eyes never leaving the room, “I’ll end her myself.”
Weapons rise.
Metal slides against metal as safeties disengage.
So they all know who she is.
Her voice trembles against the clicking of disengaging the trigger of each gun pointed at me now. “Alistair? Wh—what are you doing?”
“Buying time,” I whisper in her ears and lick those stray tears away.
Ariella squeezes her eyes shut, tears slipping down her cheeks for me to taste despite her efforts to hold them back.
The Crown studies me with unnerving patience.
“I spent years fearing you would inherit my flaws,” he says at last. “It appears you’ve surpassed them. I built an empire around one woman, Alistair. You’re prepared to burn one for one.”
At last, I allow myself to genuinely smile.
It’s not directed at him. It’s directed at the security monitors mounted high upon the laboratory walls—armed individuals with the crest of CynoTech adorn their chests.
His attention follows mine.
Confusion touches his expression for the first time in my life.
I’ve spent most of my life manifesting to witness that expression. It’s somehow even more satisfying than I expected.
“Surprise, Father,” I say with dripping amusement.
The tables had turned.
Both his eyes and Ariella’s snap back to me.
Ariella, because she has just discovered that the Founder of the Dominion is the man whose blood runs through my veins.
The Crown, because the calculation has already begun behind his eyes.
A slow laugh escapes him.
“You never cease to fascinate me,” he says, gesturing toward the flashing lights and blaring alarms surrounding us. “All of this for a single act of betrayal?”
The sirens continue screaming through the Dominion while beyond the reinforced walls, distant explosions of approaching conflict roll through the corridors.
For years, he taught me that every system has a weakness.
The unfortunate consequence of teaching someone to dismantle the world is that eventually they learn how to dismantle yours.
I can’t stop the grin that finds its way across my face for him.
“You spent a lifetime turning me into your greatest achievement,” I tell him. “It’d be rude not to become your greatest mistake.”