Chapter Twenty-Seven
Whether Hades’s guardian was a monster or a protector depends on your point of view. Either way, don’t start a fight with
the darkness unless you’re ready for Cerberus.
—A.G., untitled blog
Private Dane had done a lot of sketchy assignments in his life, but guarding some weird-ass secret laboratory two thirds of
the way up a mountain, on countless private forested acres hours away from the nearest town, had to top the list.
“I’m freezing my nuts off.” Croft, Dane’s squad mate, wasn’t hiding his annoyance as they continued their patrol around the
perimeter of the building, which looked short and squat from the outside, its low profile set into the mountainside with most
of the floors underground. “Snow’s fucking burying us now.”
Dane grunted. They weren’t supposed to talk on the watch.
Croft wasn’t wrong, though. The morning had started with a dusting of snow that had picked up strength with the falling night,
piling on the ground and weighing down the tree branches. Now, the darkness around them had an eerie white cast to it, with
thick clouds overhead and ceaseless snow blurring the view like static on an old television.
“Stupid to make us come out,” Croft went on. “What are we even watching for?”
“That guy we took down,” Dane said, against his better judgment.
“What, Agent Grayson?” Croft scoffed. “Did you see how deep into this hellhole they took him? He’s not getting out of that
lab.”
“He ain’t normal.”
“No shit he ain’t normal,” said Croft. “He’s the one they call the Dead Man.”
Dane knew that—they’d gotten the same fucking briefing on the target. “Yeah, and he’s the only Dead Man in the fucking world.
Someone might want him back.”
“You see this fucking snow? And this fucking mountain?” Croft gestured to the sky and then the steep mountainside, the snow
dense enough to block the view of the chain link and barbed wire fence below. “There are no plows because there’s no fucking
roads here. No fucking towns. Even if someone managed to find us—big fucking if—you’d have to be a world-class driver with
an all-terrain vehicle to make it up the mountain. No one is coming for the Dead Man.”
They fell silent. Gusts of snow blew across their path as the wind howled between them, deep and powerful and rumbling like
a supercharged V-8.
Dane paused. “Did you hear something?”
The table beneath him was cold against his bare back.
Grayson registered it distantly, the way he would have registered the clouds in the sky—or the way he registered the bite of metal on his wrists and ankles.
The air was cold too; there was the low, persistent hum of a generator somewhere, but whatever power it provided sure wasn’t being used for heat.
In his nose were the scents of strong antiseptics and an unpleasant earthy smell of damp underground.
He opened his eyes to overly bright fluorescent lights on a low ceiling and stark white walls. Whatever table he was on seemed
to be in the middle of a good-sized room. The wall to his right had windows in the top half, the better to observe him with,
maybe. On the wall to his left was a metal cabinet and a desk, only the back of a monitor visible, and above his head was
the telltale red dot of a camera. Everything had a hazy sort of quality, which he was gonna blame on whatever was coming through
the IV hooked into his left arm, and he was cold because they’d taken everything except his boxer briefs.
Whatever was coming, it wasn’t gonna be a good time.
He flexed experimentally, not surprised when the metal on his wrists and ankles refused to budge. He hadn’t been captured
by amateurs. They knew how strong he was.
Grayson looked up at the camera. “Can I have my clothes back, please?” he said dryly.
A moment later, a door in the wall at his feet swung open. In walked Victor Nichols, in a lab coat and carrying a tablet,
his pale blue eyes eager behind the glasses. “Agent Grayson. You woke earlier than expected.”
More people in lab coats were following Nichols into the room, four of them. They were spreading across the room like efficient
robots, never meeting Grayson’s gaze.
His eyes went back to Nichols, whose edges seemed blurred in the too-bright lights. “How about you put me back to sleep?”
Grayson said. “And I wake up in a bed, in a room that isn’t forty below?”
“Your sense of humor is lacking.” Nichols was typing into the tablet. “But given your circumstances, I suppose it is remarkable
that you kept it all.”
One of the scientists had stepped up to the desk on his left and seemed to be booting up the computer. Grayson watched as Nichols strode over to the desk and set the tablet carelessly on the surface. “What are we doing here, Doctor?”
“Tests. Obviously,” Nichols said, like Grayson was stupid, as he made his way from the desk to the metal cabinet, which was
being unlocked by a second scientist.
“What kind of tests require me to be chained to a table?”
“Did your brother destroy your imagination along with your feelings?” Nichols snapped.
The metal cabinet door swung open, blocking what little view Grayson had from the table. A moment later he heard wheels behind
him, rolling along the smooth floor.
Nichols was suddenly leaning over him. “We’re going to spend significant time together over the next few months, so I want
to make something clear: You are not unique.”
Grayson pushed the word months out of his mind. “What’re you talking about?”
“You are not the precious snowflake so many in our field believe,” Nichols said with a nasty sort of smile. “You are simply
an experiment. And experiments can be duplicated.”
Grayson squinted against lights beyond Nichols, too-bright and oddly haloed through the drugs. “You think you can make more
Dead Men?”
“I will make more Dead Men,” Nichols said. “In this lab I’ll have all of the materials I need.”
“Materials.” Grayson pulled uselessly against the restraints. “What’s that code for? Empaths?”
“Observe,” Nichols said, turning his head to talk over his shoulder at the lab coat–clad figure behind the desk. “Merely the
implication of empaths in danger triggers a protective reaction. This is exactly the flaw we cannot tolerate in our new subjects.
Make a note of this moment.”
Grayson flexed again, even though it was pointless. “Who’re your new Dead Men going to be? You gonna have more soldiers kidnapped, like the ones you took to Polaris?”
“No need this time,” Nichols said distractedly. “This lab has been staffed with a larger-than-average security force of trained
military personnel. I’m authorized to make any of them my test subjects at will.”
“Do they know that?” Grayson said. “For that matter, does Stone Solutions know you’ve got me here and what you’re planning?”
“You mean Vivian?” Nichols scoffed. “As if she’d ever have the stomach for it. But rest assured, I am backed by those with
the real power.” He moved the tray closer, the wheels squeaking along the floor. “I’d hardly expect you to grasp the importance of
my work, but we do not require your approval, and your cooperation can be forced. I have my soldiers and I will have my empaths,
and I cannot wait to see all we can accomplish now that we no longer have to kowtow to your infantile demands about their
treatment.”
Nichols leaned over Grayson again, his pale eyes very large behind the glasses. “You know, I had actually thought it was safest
to dispose of you completely. I even had Holt on my side,” he said. “But I can admit that this is better: Now I can harvest
everything of use from you until we can recreate the experiment. And then you can die.”
Grayson could just barely see the edge of the tray at the bedside: a selection of syringes and surgical instruments, their
shapes fogged along the edges, just like the room’s people.
Nichols was now giving his bare arms and chest a cursory glance. “I can see the evidence of your empathy-induced enhancements,
particularly the accelerated healing. You have very few scars, especially given your history.” He leaned closer. “Though there
is this one here. I assume this is from the incident in November?”
He was pointing to Grayson’s shoulder, to the round bullet scar.
You got this scar protecting me from corruption, Reece had whispered the night in the truck in Vancouver. You took a bullet for me.
You believed saving my life was worth more than your freedom, Grayson had answered. A bullet was more than worth a chance to save your heart.
Grayson hadn’t saved Reece from corruption after all.
But that bullet had still been worth it, and he should’ve told Reece that when he’d had the chance.
Nichols seemed to realize Grayson wasn’t going to answer. He huffed. “Silence is pointless. I have your medical records.”
He reached for the tray again, and as he straightened, he was holding a syringe and a small vial. “We’re going to start with
some chemical testing. I have theories, of course, but I need to confirm—”
The door at Grayson’s feet opened. Nichols turned sharply toward the sound, his eyes widening with shock for a split-second
before they immediately narrowed. Grayson craned his neck as much as he could to see.
Standing in the doorway was Reece.
He was completely alone, in the same hoodie and jeans from the EI facility, looking particularly short and slight in the frame
of the door.
“Reece.” Grayson’s voice was hoarser than he’d expected, not much more than a quiet croak. “Get out of here.”
Behind Grayson and around the room, scientists were springing into action. Grayson could hear them on the phone, the words
security and get to the main lab immediately. Could hear an insistent alarm start up on the floor above.
“Mr. Davies,” Nichols said, his lip curling. “How are you here?”
Reece still stood motionless in the doorway. His eyes were on Grayson, flicking from the IV to his bare chest to his cuffed wrists. “Front door was open.”
Reece’s sarcasm was gonna get him killed. “Reece,” Grayson said again, more insistent and even more hoarse. “This is Victor Nichols. You have to run—”