58. Ryker #2
I pictured her again, not as a comfort this time, but as a boundary.
As a line in the sand.
He could steal my blood.
He could steal my past.
But he would not steal her.
He would not touch her life.
“You did this while I was in the hospital. While everyone thought I was recovering.”
“Yes,” he replied. “For some of that time, you were there. Part of it here.”
My pulse hammered. The words twisted something in my skull. Not a memory, but a pressure, like a door trying to open.
I saw a flash. A white ceiling. A restraint strap. A needle. The smell of antiseptic so sharp it made my eyes water.
I blinked hard, but it didn’t go away. It was there.
Waiting.
“You weren’t having headaches because your brain was healing,” he continued. “You were having headaches because your brain was trying to remember what I removed.”
Something hard closed around my lungs. “So those flashes were real.”
He stared at me. “They were real.”
My jaw clenched. “You took my memories.”
“I edited them,” he corrected. “Removed the unstable parts, and simply left what was useful.”
The baby cries continued under his words, turning the conversation into a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.
I pressed my palm to the glass, not touching the babies, just touching the barrier between them and me.
Between my blood and their lives.
Between my past and my stolen future.
The Pied Piper’s voice came quiet again. “Do you know why I’m showing you this?”
“To break me,” I said.
He shook his head once. “No. Breaking men is easy. I want you functional.”
“Functional for what?”
He stepped closer, and for the first time I felt the full weight of him, not as a story, not as a monster in someone else’s chapter, but as the man who had shaped my life with invisible hands.
“You came here to make a deal,” he said. “So I’m going to show you what you’re buying.”
My stomach turned. “Buying?”
“You traded yourself for Nate. You think that means the story ends there.”
My voice came out thick. “It ends with him safe.”
The Pied Piper’s smile deepened slightly. “Safe is a temporary illusion.”
My hands curled into fists again. I wanted to smash the glass. I wanted to grab him by the throat. I wanted to do something that would make my body stop shaking.
But I didn’t move. It’s what he wanted. He wanted me to lose control. And I was fucking done giving him what he wanted.
I forced my breathing steady. “What are you telling me?”
He tilted his head, studying me again. “I’m telling you that you are connected to me whether you like it or not.”
“I’m not connected to you. You violated me, you sorry son of a bitch.”
His expression remained calm. “That’s an emotional word.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
He didn’t react. He glanced toward the nurses again, then back to me.
“You’re going to meet them,” he said.
The muscles in my neck nearly snapped in two with the tension. “Meet who?”
He gestured toward the bassinets. “Your line.”
My entire body went rigid.
“No,” I said. It came out immediate, visceral. “No.”
He watched me like that response was data. “You’re attached to a future you believed was yours. That attachment is valuable.”
I stepped toward him. “They’re babies.”
“They’re assets,” he replied.
The casual cruelty made my vision go red.
I stopped myself a foot away from him, shaking with restraint.
“If you ever put them in my sight again, I’ll burn you down when you least expect it.”
He smiled, almost indulgent. “That’s the spirit.”
“You think this is funny?”
“I think it’s honest,” he said. “I think we’re finally past the phase where you pretend that you’re a man who only wants peace.”
I stared at him, my chest heaving. He was wrong.
I wanted peace, a life not made of blood and missing time.
Sloane safe. Nate home. A future where I didn’t have to keep proving I could survive.
Children with the woman I loved. But the future he’d shown me through that glass didn’t only threaten me. It threatened everything.
If my blood was in this place, then this place wasn’t a distant evil. It was personal. It was mine. And he’d done it on purpose.
The Pied Piper turned and walked down the corridor that ran alongside the glass.
“Come,” he said.
I followed, because stopping meant giving him control of the pace, and I refused to be dragged in spirit if I couldn’t fight in body.
He walked with the same measured cadence, passing doors with numbers instead of names.
Through one window I saw a room with a row of chairs bolted to the floor and straps hanging from the armrests, like a classroom designed by someone who hated children.
Through another I saw a wall-mounted screen looping footage of boys in white clothes standing perfectly still.
My stomach twisted. The film. The chair. The snakes.
That wasn’t the past.
It was the goddamn blueprint.
The Pied Piper stopped at another door and looked back at me.
“You want to know why Hamilton was here?” he asked.
“He’s your errand boy.”
“He’s my instrument,” he corrected. “Hamilton doesn’t understand what he’s part of. He understands data. Outcomes. Grants. Publications. He thinks he’s building something important.”
My blood ran cold. “And what is he building?”
The Pied Piper’s smile barely moved. “Proof.”
I stared at him. “Proof of what?”
He stepped closer. “That you can make a monster on purpose.”
My stomach turned hard.
He watched it land.
Then, casually, like he was naming another line item in a file, he added, “He also understands procurement.”
The word procurement made my skin crawl.
“That’s what you call what you did to me?” I snapped. “Procurement?”
His eyes stayed steady. “That’s what it is.”
The air tasted wrong in my mouth.
I forced my voice to steady. “What about Sloane?”
His expression didn’t change, but he straightened, like the subject interested him more than the others.
“What about her?” he asked.
“If you’ve been aware of her,” I said, every word measured, “if you’ve been watching her, then you’re going to tell me what you’ve done.”
He smiled faintly. “I haven’t done anything to her.”
The phrasing hit like a knife. Haven’t. Not won’t.
I stepped closer, too close.
He looked pleased by the reaction. “Attachment makes men stupid,” he reminded me.
I forced myself to stop moving, to stand in place like my feet had been bolted down.
“Say it. Say what you want.”
He paused, showing he was very much in control. “You’re going to help me.”
My nostrils flared as I imagined a thousand ways I was going to kill the motherfucker. “No.”
He smiled, patient. “Yes.”
I bared my teeth. “You don’t get to decide that.”
He tilted his head. “You decided the moment you traded yourself.”
“The deal was Nate.”
“The deal was your obedience,” he corrected. “Nate was the payment you wanted. I gave you what you wanted, and you gave me what I wanted.”
I stared at him, the words carving channels in my brain.
“Obedience,” I repeated, disgusted.
He nodded. “Structure. Compliance. Cooperation.”
My nostrils flared. “I would rather die.”
His smile deepened by a fraction. “You say that now.”
He turned, reached for the door handle, and paused.
Then he looked back at me, voice calm enough to make me want to vomit.
“This is the part where you decide whether you’re a man who reacts,” he said, “or a man who adapts.”
I stared at him. “I’m a man who kills.”
He held my gaze, unbothered. “We’ll see.”
The door opened. The next room was brighter. Cleaner. More equipment and stainless steel.
A clinic. A lab. A place built for taking things out of people and labeling them.
My breath caught.
The Pied Piper stepped inside like he belonged there. He looked at me over his shoulder and spoke like he was inviting me into a tour of a museum.
“You wanted to know what you were made for,” he said.
My blood went cold again.
He gestured toward the room. “Welcome back,” he added. “This is where it started.”