60. IMPOSTER
alistair
Sirens are fascinating.
Most people think they exist to warn. The truth is, they exist to create panic.
Ever since the moment the first alarm tore through the underground compound, scientists abandoned years of research to save themselves. Soldiers forgot their formations. Nurses stopped pretending they were healers and became survivors.
One sound. One carefully timed fracture. An entire civilization collapsed.
However, the Crown continues looking at me.
I know that look.
I’ve spent almost my entire life beneath it.
It’s the same expression he wore when I dissected my first cadaver without hesitation. The same expression he wore when he realized that pain could be taught until it became ordinary.
He’s trying to decide whether this was planned years ago or merely months.
The truth is that I no longer remember either.
Every contingency I ever created eventually led here.
I simply failed to notice.
The sirens continue their relentless cry. Somewhere beyond the laboratory walls, gunfire erupts. It’s showing in the security monitors mounted above.
One burst. Then another.
The guards closest to the entrance exchange uncertain glances.
One reaches for the communicator clipped to his vest.
Static answers him. He tries again. Nothing.
“What have you done?” the Crown asks me.
I tilt my head ever so slightly. “Improved your design.”
His gaze drifts toward the security monitors.
By now, most display nothing but corrupted images and flashing warnings.
A few of them still function. One of them shows the central courtyard.
Men dressed in Dominion black drag another man across the stones before a second group opens fire on them.
Within seconds, neither remains standing.
Ariella lets out a small, frightened breath. I feel it against my hand. She’s also watching the monitor where men are killing one another beneath banners they once served.
“The eastern council,” I say quietly. “They discovered the western council had been selling classified research.”
Another monitor flickers to life—the archives.
Smoke pours from the entrance while armed men disappear into the building.
“The scientific division found out that military command intended to eliminate them after the Synthète project concluded.”
A third monitor—the financial sector. Bodies and blood are spreading across polished marble.
“The financiers are exposed—they had funded both operations.”
His silent attention never leaves the screens.
“You taught me information is power,” I continue. “You neglected to mention that information is also combustible.”
A slow laugh escapes him. It should sound unhinged. Instead, it sounds almost… pleased. “You dismantled your own empire, son.”
Ariella slowly turns her head towards me, trying to understand what’s going on. With all these things happening, I can’t really blame her.
She only understands the betrayal—that I lied.
She understands that the man she trusted brought her into the heart of the Dominion.
She cannot possibly understand that for a while I’ve been trying to tear it apart from within. She just happens to be the excuse, the push that I needed.
The laboratory doors shake from a heavy impact. Then another.
One of the guards looks back. “Sir—”
A third impact splinters the reinforced frame. Another explosion rolls through the estate.
Dust falls from the ceiling. The laboratory lights flicker.
A voice finally breaks through one of the radios of the guards inside. “They’re inside.”
Gunfire.
Screaming.
“They knew the access tunnels,” the man on the radio keeps talking while firing.
More gunfire.
“They knew the security rotations.”
A final burst of static. “They knew everything—”
I close my eyes for a brief moment. Exactly on schedule.
Asher kept his word.
Right after I freed Ariella from HINR, the first encrypted message reached him. It was about a laboratory shipment of a Synthète.
Then another. A hidden account of the buyer.
And another. The location of a Dominion operative inside Parliament.
A scientist selling research.
A council member trading children for influence.
Enough truth to make him wonder who was speaking.
Never enough to reveal why.
Lastly, the final message was simpler. The meet-up.
Asher Keinston is many things. Cautious has never been one of them. And right now it’s the only thing I need.
A new image replaces the others in the monitor. The lower eastern wing.
Smoke and broken security barriers.
Men in black tactical gear are advancing through the corridors.
Behind them walks Asher Keinston with a gun in hand.
Even through a grainy security feed, I recognize the expression on his face—rage.
Beside him is Adrian, also armed. Of course, he came.
The way recognition flickered in his eyes the moment he first saw me in her apartment, I knew Ariella had asked him to look into me long before any of this began.
He had always been too observant. He simply lacked enough pieces to complete the puzzle.
Until now.
Ariella relaxes the moment she sees them both. Her tensed shoulders drop from hope. Such a dangerous thing.
The laboratory doors shake again.
One hinge tears loose.
The guards reposition themselves, not pointing their weapons at me anymore. Their weapons face the doors.
The Crown asks, very softly, even though the distorted voice almost takes away the softness. “When did you begin planning this?”
I think about answering.
About telling him, it began the day I found Ariella wheeled in a gurney, fresh after the bike accident.
Or perhaps the day he first showed me what became of failed Synthètes.
Or perhaps it began much earlier.
Perhaps it began the day he taught a child that love is merely a defect in biology.
“Maybe the day I realized you taught me how to destroy anything,” I admit. The honesty surprises me.
His gaze returns to Ariella.
My hand instinctively tightens against her. She suppresses another gasp.
“You did all this,” he gestures toward the chaos enveloping us, “for her.”
“No,” partially a lie.
“For revenge?”
“No,” partially true.
His head tilts. “Then why?”
“I did this because I grew tired of becoming you,”
The Crown studies me for a beat. Then he laughs, not a loud, maniac sound but a sad and disappointed laughter.
“I believed my greatest failure was your mother.”
I clench my jaw again.
“It appears my greatest failure was allowing you to meet one.”
His gaze settles completely upon Ariella.
My calculations begin immediately.
Distance—six meters. Two guards. Three if the one near the eastern wall recovers first.
One laboratory exit. One hidden passage.
Asher and Adrian are approaching from the lower corridor.
Time required to breach reinforced steel—forty seconds, perhaps less if I’m lucky.
We can survive forty seconds.
The Crown takes his time removing a handgun from beneath his coat and examines it with profound curiosity.
The guards look at him uncertainly. “Sir… the Keinstons have entered the laboratory wing.”
“I know.”
“We need evacuation orders.”
The lockdown was never meant to keep anyone out. It was meant to keep everyone in.
I leaked just enough truth to every faction that suspicion would finish the work bullets can’t. A frightened organization always destroys itself more efficiently than any outside enemy.
A small smile finds its way across my face despite the war steadily advancing towards us.
A strange feeling settles somewhere beneath my ribs. I’ve encountered this exact unknown feeling the day I found Ariella asleep in my faculty office. She exhausted herself trying to meet impossible expectations I set for her.
People have an unfortunate tendency to fall asleep where they believe they are safe. That annoyed me the most. I thought she felt safe around me because she didn’t know me.
But the more she did, the more darkness she saw in me, the deeper her fascination grew for me.
Back then, I didn’t know what she wanted from me. And that not-knowing was the most unsettling part, more than anything.
The feeling slowly dissolves, changing the equation with The Crown’s deafening calm exterior.
My brain starts recalculating.
Again.
And again.
The numbers refuse to cooperate.
His attention is still weirdly fixed upon the handgun in his hand, until finally he speaks, more like mutters to himself. “If the Dominion survives today, it survives without weakness,” and points the gun towards us.
Ariella goes completely still as I release my grip from her, ready to push her away. My eyes never leave him.
The laboratory doors groan under another impact.
Metal bends. Shouts echo from the corridor beyond.
Her brothers are inches away.
Good. Everything is still under control.
He looks at me one last time. My stomach drops for having no idea what he’s about to do—who he’s going to shoot.
Then he says the only thing I never accounted for. “If I cannot control the variable, I’ll simply remove it.”
For the first time in my life, my calculations fail me—right as the gun fires toward Ariella.