Chapter Three. Ember #5
The second thing. Torturing murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and other muthafuckas who the justice system allowed to get away with their crimes.
Slightly hypocritical? Sure. Am I losing sleep over it? No.
Am I feeling like a fucking Avenger? Hell yes.
“Jaq,” I say, my attention still fixed on the thing in the cage.
“Day two. Subject one. Test group. Seems to have recovered from the last trial. The seizure and convulsions didn’t cause permanent, adverse damage.
The CAT scan and MRI returned normal. Although, the subject hasn’t spoken since the trial, but this could be due more to psychological trauma than physical.
” They remove a light from their lab coat pocket and shine it between the bars directly in the subject’s eyes.
Animalistic sounds claw at the back of its throat as it scratches its arms. “Dilated pupils. Clenched jaw. Common signs of methylenedioxymethamphetamine usage.”
“They couldn’t just say molly like everyone else, huh?” Perla mutters.
Jaq side eyes her. “Just because you’re the size of a mustard seed doesn’t mean you need to be bitchy with me, sweet pea.”
“That’s faith the size of a mustard seed, Bishop T. D. Fake,” Gus corrects them.
Jaq shifts his side eye to Gus. “I said what I said.”
I snort, because these three can go at it all night if I don’t intervene.
“Continue, Jaq.”
With a superior sniff, they turn back to the cage. “As I was saying, along with the dilated pupils and teeth grinding, there’s been excessive perspiring and he hasn’t been asleep in two days. Some of these symptoms can occur over habitual drug use, but these have appeared almost immediately.”
“That could be a positive result, because the onset of usual MDMA effects takes about an hour and hits its peak at seventy-five minutes, give or take. But from the recorded notes, the subject exhibited the effects much sooner. Within ten minutes. And while the customary reported euphoria lasts about three and a half hours, the subject’s lasted eight.
That’s remarkable. But the adverse effects also presented much sooner—within an hour. ”
“Damn,” I murmur. “No vomiting though. Or hallucinations or signs of paranoia.”
“None.” Perla shakes her head. “And we took a urine sample, too. Did you see that? We saved that as a little gift.” She grins, and her eyes sparkle behind her blue-and-gold frames. Bending her head over her tablet, she taps the screen, then tips her chin. “Check your email.”
Arching my eyebrows, I go to my inbox and tap on the attachment inside the waiting message from her. Moments later, I lift my head and smile wide.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Nope.” Perla laughs.
“And good news. It won’t show up in that either,” Jaq adds.
“Ew.”
“Really? We’re having a moment here.”
Perla and Gus throw at their friend, who just shrugs.
I chuckle and once again glance down at the lab results Perla sent me.
According to the PDF, subject one’s urine and blood samples came back completely clean of any drug substances.
Satisfaction and triumph burn hot inside me like the fucking Olympic torch.
Not even Glass Slipper was undetectable.
But my new drug—Fairy Dust—the one I’m creating in my secret lab, the one that will fund my new empire, is untraceable.
Imagine, a designer drug that people could take in the club on Sunday night and pass a urine test at their jobs on Monday.
One that would send them as high as the goddamn U.S.
Bank Tower and keep them there longer than any other drug out there, without the crash.
One with more power than even Glass Slipper, the best synthetic substance in the streets right now.
Addicts would be flooding clubs, bumrushing pushers, hounding suppliers for this product.
And they would only be able to get it from one source. Me.
The billions Fairy Dust would generate didn’t motivate me as much as knowing it would topple the House of Cross throne and the usurper and his bitch-ass mama who sat on it.
The usurper.
Asad Prince.
My fingers involuntarily clench around the edges of my tablet.
The memory of him pausing in front of me just before he left the study earlier this evening floods my mind, and I inhale a low, deep breath, battling back the rush of rage that wants to drown me in a crimson wave.
He’d peered down at me with his usual inscrutable gray stare—like a pathologist examining me right before he gets to work dissecting and collecting.
In my sophomore year of college, I visited Surgeon’s Hall Museum in Edinburgh, and I can just see him storing pieces of me in those jars and under slides to analyze, then throw away when they start to bore him.
Because I learned that early about Prince, as everyone else calls him, except me.
Send useless prayers up that you didn’t catch Asad’s attention.
And if you did, hope he lost interest sooner rather than later.
Because the only person who had fun when Asad toyed with his things was him.
He left all his playthings broken. Which was why I couldn’t understand why so many women and men flocked to him, begging for that gunmetal gaze to just trip over them.
They offered him everything, from every hole in their body to their stock options.
Bitch, you a lie. You know good and damn well why they throwing the coochie and dick at him.
I growl at myself, disgusted that my mind would even go there.
Even Asad’s haters—mainly me—couldn’t deny the man’s face card.
After years of being in my stepbrother’s presence, you’d think I’d grown some kind of resistance to it.
But like a virus that mutates into a stronger, deadlier variant that renders immunity useless, his beauty only matures, deepens …
darkens. He reminds me of the orchid mantis that uses its beauty as a disguise to lure in its prey before it attacks them.
Since I’m a biological animal, my body’s primal response to Asad’s appearance can be excused.
The heating of blood in my veins, the hardening and ache in my nipples, the tug and tightening low in my belly, the swelling and quiver in my pussy, the moisture that spills from it, dampening my underwear …
They’re all instinctive responses to that lovely mask. Nothing more than an animal jerk.
The difference between me and the many people who fall victim to that lure is I know what monster exists behind that brutally pretty face with its silver eyes, fierce angles, and fuckable mouth. I’ve witnessed and been on the receiving end of those claws and teeth and forked tongue.
Giving my head a small, abrupt shake, I purge my Asad-stained thoughts and return my focus to the tablet and the most recent results regarding Fairy Dust.
“This is amazing. And huge.” I look up, smiling at my assistants. “Great work.”
A whimper from subject one’s cage draws my attention back to him, and a ripple of excitement undulates through me.
“Get him out and ready,” I order Gus.
I don’t miss the gleam in his eyes. This is his favorite part. It is for all of us. And not just because of the scientific work we’re doing here.
No.
It’s for the pain we’re about to inflict.
Subject one’s whimpers elevate into ear-piercing howls as Gus opens the cage door and enters.
It begins to flail and try to fight, but its skinny stature and weakened state are no match for Gus’s much larger, heavier frame.
My lab assistant doesn’t even seem to flex a muscle as he picks up the subject with ease and carries it over to a black surgical chair with chest and thigh straps, as well as wrist and ankle cuffs.
Jaq assists Gus in securing subject one in, then they fix the halo brace over the subject’s head, attaching the bottom to the chest strap.
Next, they insert a “bite block” into his mouth to hold it open.
“Perla, do you have the new sample prepared?” I ask. With this altered sample, we hope for a reduction in the adverse effects.
“It’s ready.”
She approaches subject one with a pair of tweezers, and it attempts to buck and strain against the bindings with no success. Gurgles roll out of its throat, and it tries to rear and thrash, but all of it is useless, and that shit doesn’t move any of us.
Perla lifts a small, square film from a white, round dish, lays the drug on his tongue. With the piece in its mouth, the subject can’t spit it out. But even if it could, the construction of the film is intentionally thin, intended to quickly dissolve.
We step back, our tablets out, and study the subject like a specimen.
Well, that’s what it is. Because the moment this piece-of-shit excuse for a man decided to rape the seven-year-old daughter of his girlfriend, he ceased being a human and became a thing that deserves to suffer, to die.
What the laughable justice system refuses to hold it accountable for, I will.
The laws of society claim no person can be judge, jury, and executioner.
I say, you got me fucked-up.
And every cage in this lab contains a rapist, a molester, an abuser, a murderer—those who prey on the weakest and most vulnerable of our society.
God forgives.
But before they leave this earth and discover if He will indeed meet them with open arms, they’ll fuck around and find out with me.
Ten minutes pass with no change in its demeanor other than the panicked roll of its eyes, the soft but rapid pants and heaving of its chest. But at eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds, its body slumps into the chair.
Subject one’s facial features go lax, and its eyes glaze over.
A throaty, almost hedonistic groan fills the room, and a smile curves its mouth, softening its features.
It appears euphoric. Hard to believe that just minutes earlier it’d looked like a cornered, terrified rat.