Chapter 41
“The kind that makes sense if you can see the future.”
The words echo through the chamber and bounce around my skull like a fucking ricochet. For a second, all I can hear is the hum of machinery around us and my own pulse trying to punch its way out of my throat. Because…
No.
Nope.
Absolutely fucking not.
“Okay,” I say slowly, holding up a hand like I’m trying to pause reality itself. “So…what? One of your Ascended slaves has precognitive abilities?”
Malcolm lets out a soft breath of laughter through his nose, almost fond. “You’re smarter than that, Cason.”
Of course I am. I was just hoping it wasn’t the other thing.
“You’re Ascended,” I say, and it’s not a question this time.
My uncle inclines his head once, and somehow, that quiet confirmation hits harder than every explosion upstairs combined.
I stare at him. At the man who’s been around my entire fucking life. The man who orchestrated my kidnapping. The man who destroyed Reese. The man standing in front of me now like he’s discussing quarterly earnings instead of confessing to being something not entirely human.
“How?”
Malcolm is silent for a moment. Then, “It’s been twelve years since my wife and I were in that car accident.”
That part I already knew. A drunk driver crossed lanes during a storm, and Aunt Claire died instantly. At least, that’s the story we were all told.
Malcolm’s gaze drifts somewhere past me, somewhere distant as he continues. “We were trapped in the car together. The engine compartment had collapsed inward, and I couldn’t move my legs. I could hear her breathing. At first.”
The room starts feeling a little smaller as something twists uncomfortably in my stomach. But I let him speak.
“I remember trying to keep her awake. Talking to her. Telling her help was coming.” He swallows, his voice trembling on the next words. “But it was all lies. I knew she was dying.”
I haven’t heard Malcolm talk this emotionally since my father’s funeral, maybe not even then.
“She bled out sitting beside me while I watched. And there was nothing I could do.” His chin shakes. But then his jaw ticks, and it stops. When he speaks again, his voice is more steady. “When they finally got me out of the vehicle, I flatlined on the street.”
That part I didn’t know.
“EMTs were able to revive me on the scene and took me to the hospital. When I woke up…” His eyes settle back on mine. “I could see things.”
The low blue light reflects strangely in his gaze now, making him look different than I’ve ever seen him.
“Possibilities,” he says. “Fragments of different futures. Probabilities branching into outcomes. Nothing concrete, not destiny. Merely paths. Some clearer than others. And many of them included Ascended.”
“And your first instinct was to become a fucking supervillain about it?” I snap.
I swear he almost smiles.
“Actually,” he says, “my first instinct was fear.”
Okay…well, I guess that tracks.
“‘Fear is the path to the dark side,’” I mutter under my breath.
“Most of the futures I saw ended very badly,” he continues. “With violence and chaos. Cities burning. Governments collapsing. Ascended using their abilities without restraint. People like Reese Morgan.”
My jaw tenses. “Don’t.”
“I’m not insulting him,” Malcolm replies calmly. “I’m being honest. Reese is exactly the kind of Ascended I saw repeatedly. Powerful, violent, uncontrollable.”
“And yet you made him into that.”
“Because I also saw possible futures where he was necessary. Ones where he would protect you.”
Those bad feelings from before—the ones I felt when I first realized just how much Malcolm had actually planned—come rushing back, barreling right through my chest and knocking the air out of me.
What part of this is actually ours, Reese?
I was right.
What Reese and I have is because of a fucking plan.
Does that make it not real? Does that make it all a lie, an illusion?
“I know what you’re thinking.” Malcolm’s tone is gentle, and for once, it doesn’t sound fake. “But I didn’t choose him for you, Cason. Fate chose him, and I just listened.”
The next breath I take comes a little easier.
I want to accept that.
Malcolm turns and paces once around the edge of the central structure in the middle of the room. He peers around, like he’s taking one last look. “I told your father everything, of course. He was the only person I trusted.”
Dad.
Something thick lodges in my throat because fuck him for talking about my dad.
But I’m also too curious to stop him.
“We researched it all together,” Malcolm continues. “Compared incidents, medical reports, survivor testimonies. We were the ones who coined the terms Ascended and Ascension.”
I swallow hard. Because somehow hearing that feels intimate. Ancient. Like the foundation beneath my entire life just shifted.
“You told Reese you killed my father,” I say quietly.
Malcolm doesn’t hesitate. “I did.”
All that electricity itches to come shooting out of me again, but again, I hold it back.
“But what I didn’t tell him is that I tried to bring him back.”
My powers settle into a dull static as everything inside me stops. I fear I know what he means, but I still have to ask anyway even though my voice hardly works, the words coming out too quiet.
“What does that mean?”
“Your father didn’t die of a heart attack, Cason.”
My gaze gets stuck somewhere far away, and my ears start ringing.
No, no, no…
“He wanted to Ascend.”
My heart pounds in my throat as my breaths come as gasps.
“You’re lying.”
It’s barely a whisper, and I don’t know if he hears me. I can barely hear the words myself.
“He wanted abilities of his own. Power to protect his family if any of those futures I saw came to pass.”
“No.”
I refuse to believe it. I can’t believe it. My dad hated risk. He liked old movies and expensive coffee and overexplaining that damn kinetic installation to donors. He wasn’t…
He wouldn’t…
“I tried to talk him out of it,” Malcolm says softly, gentle again like he knows how difficult this is to hear.
“I begged him not to try. There were too many futures where he didn’t survive the process.
Too many where he crossed Pulse Zero and never came back.
But he insisted. He believed the risk was worth taking if it meant protecting you and your mother. ”
Something hot and wet slides down my cheek, stinging all the way down.
“Before we went through with it, your father asked one thing of me.”
I force my gaze back to his and hold my breath.
“He asked me to do whatever was necessary to keep you safe. To keep you alive. I swore to him I would.”
The machinery hums louder. The lights feel brighter. My breathing picks back up, fast and shallow. Every thought in my head crashes together all at once until I can’t separate them anymore.
My uncle has been Ascended all this time.
My dad wanted to Ascend too.
If my mom knew he practically willingly killed himself, that would break her more than his death already did.
But that’s not entirely fair. Because I did the same thing, didn’t I? Only I was even more selfish. My dad wanted to protect his family while I only wanted to protect myself. I didn’t want to feel weak anymore.
I did exactly what Malcolm wanted me to. For exactly the same reason.
My hands shake, and electricity flickers uncontrollably beneath my skin, small blue sparks snapping across my fingertips.
Malcolm notices. “Cason—”
“Don’t,” I choke out.
Because I can’t. I can’t fucking process all of this at once.
“Why?” I ask. Because that’s the only question I can manage right now. “Why the fuck did it have to be this way? Why did you have to go about it in the most fucked up way possible?”
“As you already know, trauma is a necessary ingredient in Ascension.”
I laugh. Not because anything is funny, but because if I don’t laugh right now, I genuinely might start screaming. “So you psychologically destroyed me for science. Good to know.”
“It wasn’t science.”
“Really? Because it sure feels a lot like human experimentation.”
“It was survival.”
I scoff so hard it hurts my throat. “You keep saying that like it magically excuses everything.”
“You think I enjoyed what had to be done?”
“Yes,” I fire back immediately. “Honestly? Yeah, a little. You’ve got a very unsettling vibe right now.”
“You see cruelty,” he says quietly, like he’s tired. “I see necessity.”
“That’s what every terrible person says.”
“And yet,” Malcolm replies, “you now stand a fighting chance in this world because of me. You can’t deny that you understand me more than you want to.”
That shuts me up. Because…fuck him. Fuck him for that. Part of me does understand. I think about the man I killed upstairs, about how little I felt afterward, how little I still feel. I think about Reese telling me he’d burn the world down for me and knowing I’d do the same.
“You think Ascended are inherently good because you love one,” he says when I still haven’t managed to respond. “Because you are one. But I’ve seen what happens when people like us are left unchecked.”
“You mean people like you?”
“Yes,” he answers without hesitation. “I know exactly what I am, Cason. Everything I built, everything I’ve done, was to create control before chaos consumed it all.”
“By killing people.”
“By creating structure and guidance.”
“You can’t do both!”
“I can when the alternative is extinction.”
I stare at him. At this man who watched his wife die, his brother die, and then decided the solution to everything that fate showed him was to build an empire around death itself.
But the most horrifying part of it is that he genuinely believes he’s right.
“You manipulated me into destroying Reese’s resistance, and that was more than just to add to my trauma. Wasn’t it? All those Ascended your people hunted down, all of those they killed…”
“It was all to prevent worse outcomes.”
“Fucking hell.” I stare at him in disbelief. “You really don’t hear yourself, do you?”
His jaw ticks for the first time. “Reese Morgan was recruiting Ascended without oversight, without containment. Some of them were dangerous beyond comprehension.”
“They were people.”
“They were volatile.”
“You’re fucking volatile!”
A strange look flickers briefly across his face, then the faintest of grins. “Exactly.”
For a moment, that response freezes me in place. Because Malcolm really believes he’s dangerous too.
“Reese and his people have discovered only one instance of rogue Ascended out there.” His eyes hold mine, steady and unsettling.
“But there are more. There are always more. Ascended no one controls, people who crossed Pulse Zero and disappeared back into the world. Some are terrified of what they become. Some hide. And some enjoy it. Some embrace it. Some become monsters. Everything I’ve done is to try to prevent that. ”
I open my mouth to say something else, but a different voice cuts through the chamber from behind me. Low and familiar and furious.
“And yet somehow,” Reese says, “you still ended up becoming the worst monster in the room.”
Malcolm straightens, and I turn around.
And standing in the doorway, shadows curling violently around him like smoke before a fire, is Reese Morgan.