Chapter 40
I don’t want to leave Reese behind.
That is the worst part.
I don’t give a fuck about the fighting or the shouting or the blood. Not even the fact that Bellrose Institute currently sounds like a warzone behind me as I sprint down one of the lower corridors.
I might care a little that the installation my father loved so much is destroyed.
However, every instinct I have is screaming at me to turn around and go back. To make sure he’s still breathing, still alive. And, yet, underneath that panic is something else. Something heavier. A feeling I can’t shake that this, whatever the fuck this is…
It was always supposed to end with me standing in front of Malcolm Bellrose alone.
Apparently, I’m still being psychologically manipulated by fate.
The hallways down here are different from the upper levels, less decorative and performative. The pretty white stone and glass give way to reinforced walls, exposed wiring, and steel doors with biometric locks. It has a distinct smell down here, like dust and metal.
The guts of the Institute.
My fingertips brush the wall as I move, and systems bloom open inside my head. Cameras, security routes, locked doors. I don’t stop running as I mentally hack my way through them. One by one, doors unlock ahead of me with sharp mechanical clicks before I even reach them.
An alarm flashes suddenly across my vision.
MOTION DETECTED.
RESTRICTED SECTOR brEACH.
“Oh, no,” I mutter flatly without slowing down. “Not my restricted sector privileges.”
Footsteps echo ahead, fast ones. I skid across the tile floor as someone rounds the corner in front of me. I immediately know he’s one of Malcolm’s Ascended. I may not have those files I downloaded in my mind anymore, but I remember a few things.
Trent something. Male, mid-thirties. Some power that isn’t much of a threat, confirmed by the fact that he already has a gun raised and aimed at me.
“Stop!” he shouts.
“How about not?”
I throw electricity at him before the last word is out of my mouth. It hits harder than I mean for it to. Way harder. The current explodes through him in a violent flash of blue-white light. His body jerks once, then slams backward into the wall hard enough to fucking crack it.
The smell hits immediately.
Burned fabric. Burned skin. Burned…
Oh fuck.
He slides to the floor. And he doesn’t get back up.
Then there’s just…silence.
Okay. So, I’m pretty sure I just killed someone.
I stare at the body for maybe too long. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen, for the feelings I’d expect to come rushing forward. Guilt or shock or horror. Anything.
Instead, all I feel is adrenaline still screaming through my veins. My pulse pounds hard enough for me to feel it in my throat. Once. Twice.
And that’s it.
That should probably bother me more than it does, but all I can think about as I move past the body without a single glance back is that maybe Malcolm is right. Maybe Ascended are dangerous.
The thought follows me all the way deeper into the underbelly of the Institute.
The walls become darker, the lighting dimmer, pools of white illumination cutting through long stretches of shadow.
My powers reach farther ahead than I can physically see, threading through the systems buried inside the walls.
I continue peeling through encrypted directories while walking, opening doors, rerouting cameras, pulling building schematics straight into my head.
And then I find something strange.
There’s an entire sector disconnected from the main network. No active surveillance, no security feeds, no digital footprint at all. That should not be possible inside Bellrose Institute.
Which means Malcolm did it intentionally.
I’m surrounded by fucking supervillains.
A final door unlocks with a heavy metallic thud. I push through it slowly. And then stop.
The room beyond is enormous. It’s circular and quiet and nothing like the sterile labs upstairs.
The walls curve upward into darkness, lined with old analog monitors and dormant machinery.
Cables snake across the floor like veins feeding into a massive central structure made of black glass and steel.
It looks less like a laboratory and more like the inside of a machine someone built to talk to God.
Or to resurrect one.
The lighting is low and a cool blue, throwing long shadows across the room.
And standing in the center of it is Malcolm.
Alone. No guards, no doctors or scientists, no restrained subject waiting for a demonstration on Ascension.
Just him, standing there with his hands behind his back as though he was waiting for me.
For about five seconds, neither of us speaks.
Then I ask, “What the fuck is this?”
My voice echoes slightly through the chamber as my uncle watches me.
“It’s time we talk.”
I laugh, sharp and disbelieving. “That’s why you lured us here?” I gesture vaguely toward the sound of distant fighting. “To fucking talk?”
“Yes.”
“What? Were family therapy appointments booked out?”
There’s a tick in his jaw, but he doesn’t respond, which just pisses me off even more.
“That’s why there’s a fucking war happening upstairs?” I demand, throwing a hand above our heads toward the muffled chaos still echoing through the building. “That’s why there are people dying? It was all just a distraction so we could have a deeply traumatic family conversation in private?”
“Yes,” Malcolm says again.
I stare at him in disbelief.
At least he’s honest about that.
Then he adds, “It’s also for the best. Some of them needed to be weeded. There are too many Ascended up there protected by structure rather than strength. Too many who rely on hierarchy instead of proving their worth.”
My stomach twists. “You’re talking about your own people like they’re fucking livestock.”
“I’m talking about survival,” he corrects. “The weakest of them would never survive what’s coming, Cason. Better to expose that weakness now than let it endanger everyone later.”
He says it so casually, like all those lives upstairs are just variables in an equation.
“And the ones left?” I ask.
Malcolm’s expression almost softens. “The strongest remain. The ones capable of protecting you.”
That lands somewhere deep and ugly in my chest because…
No.
Fuck him.
He has to be manipulating me again. Right?
“It’s time you know the truth.”
“What truth, Uncle? That everything—my kidnapping, Reese, the resistance, the entire last seven years of my fucking life—it was all part of your twisted little plan? So that I would Ascend?” I can’t stop my voice from rising in volume along with my rage.
“Yeah, I fucking figured that out on my own. What I don’t know is why. ”
Something in Malcolm’s expression shifts. It’s not guilt or regret, of course. But I think…I think it’s almost something sad.
And that catches me off guard nearly as much as his next words do.
“To save your life.”
That hits me so hard I actually stop breathing for a second. Because, no, that makes no fucking sense. He’s being his usual manipulative asshole self. Buying time. There’s no way that is the fucking truth.
I stare at him across the dim laboratory, the way he stands there so casually in his suit, both of us surrounded by what he and my father built together like he’s not the reason everything has fallen apart. My pulse hammers unevenly in my throat as confusion crashes violently into even more anger.
This is just another one of his manipulations. It has to be.
“You had me kidnapped,” I say slowly. “You manipulated me. You got people killed. You held a gun to my head two fucking days ago!”
“A test,” he replies easily. “For Reese. One he…kind of passed considering he was lying.”
“You ruined my fucking life!”
My voice cracks slightly on the last word, and even still, Malcolm’s gaze doesn’t waver.
“I know.”
And, somehow, it still sounds like he thinks it was necessary.
“You had to ruin my life in order to save it?!” I’m shouting now, having to hold back the electricity trying to zap out from every pore in my body just to get to him. “What kind of logic is that?”
He blinks.
A second passes.
And then…
“The kind that makes sense if you can see the future.”
And just like that, the monster in front of me now sounds terrifyingly sane.