19. Ripley
CHAPTER 19
RIPLEY
HARDER TO brEATHE – LETDOWN
I stare out the window at the storm clouds. Thick, pyroclastic swarms of dark-grey cover the sky, swallowing the sunlight and bathing the institute’s grounds in melancholy. There’s an almighty storm brewing.
Attending therapy like usual was the last thing on my list of priorities this morning. It covered taking medication, having a check-up and figuring out how the fuck I’m going to stay alive. But then Langley intervened.
I’ve never been escorted to a therapy session before. The clinicians don’t usually pay that much attention to my so-called rehabilitation. So being marched to the north wing after he finished fussing was a new experience.
“Ripley. Please answer the question.”
I cast Doctor Galloway a half-hearted glance. “I don’t know what happened.”
“This is a safe space.”
“Really?” I drawl.
“Of course. You can tell me what’s going on.”
If I had the energy, I’d laugh in her face. I doubt my lies will make any difference now. If Rick and his friends found the Z wing, it’ll be obvious who sent them searching. I’m surprised I haven’t been cuffed already.
She exhales, studying me over her notes. I’d usually stare back. Defiant and unfazed. But the fight that once drove me forward hasn’t reappeared. So I return my gaze to the billowing storm clouds instead.
“You don’t have much time left in this program,” she attempts again. “I understand that recent events have been difficult, but don’t allow them to set you back.”
“Why do you care?” I quip.
“You’re my patient, Ripley.”
“And what about your other patients? What about the people in here with no one to vouch for them? Or the ones who will never complete their sentence and go home? Do you care about them?”
“We’re getting off topic.”
Indignation sprints through me. “How much do they pay you to keep your mouth shut? To sign off falsified medical notes and turn the other cheek?”
Looking back at her, I wait for a response. An ugly flush is spreading up her throat like a bad allergic reaction. Slowly, she stacks her paperwork then caps her fountain pen.
“Perhaps we should leave it here.”
“Do you think about the people you’ve hurt when your head hits the pillow at night like I do?” I finger the edge of the bandage covering my arm. “Or does the promise of your next payday soothe the sting?”
She doesn’t go as far as to call me a hypocrite, but I can see the accusation boiling in her eyes. That’s precisely how I know she’s full of shit. When my head hits the pillow, it’s all I can think about. She has to feel the same torment.
I may be equally as guilty, but I didn’t take an oath to do no harm like her. Though it makes me no less culpable, it sure damns her alongside me. She’s supposed to be a doctor, yet she’s in on the big lie too.
“You want to know what happened?” I lean forward in the armchair. “All the shitty decisions I’ve made finally caught up to me. And I hope the day comes when the same thing happens to you.”
I stand and head for the door. I’m not going to sit here and be lectured about the benefits of opening up and sharing my pain. Not from a power-hungry opportunist who wants to package it with a fancy label and sell my sickness to the highest bidder.
When I open the door, it isn’t Langley waiting outside. Although he surely thought that he was being helpful by bringing me to therapy today, it infuriated me to no end. I’d gladly take his meddling ways over the displeased mug staring back at me now.
“Ah, Ripley.” Elon’s thin lips pull into a grin as he looks me over. “Good to see you back on your feet.”
“Is it?” I respond blandly.
“Nice bruises. You look like a punching bag.”
“Spare me the small talk. What do you want?”
Flashing teeth, he beckons me into the corridor. “Let’s take a walk.”
The command feels like being offered a steep cliff to hurl myself off. I don’t trust the sadistic gleam in his eyes. Between more of Doctor Galloway’s torture fest or whatever trap Elon’s sprung for me, I should’ve just stayed in bed.
“No cuffs?”
“Will they be necessary?” He cocks an overgrown brow. “I can assure you that declining or running isn’t advisable. I’ll simply return with a friend or two.”
“You’ll need more than that to drag me anywhere.”
“I’m aware. But they will be able to carry you after I’ve jammed a sedative in your thigh. So, care to take that walk?”
Considering my options, I see no alternative. He nods in satisfaction when I fall into step beside him, keeping a safe gap between us. I don’t fancy getting stabbed with a hypodermic needle.
When he doesn’t lead me to the warden’s office or the solitary floor, the first flickers of panic set in. I look around the reception, fruitlessly searching for a means of escape.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warns.
“Think about what?”
Elon looms over me. “Starting any shit. This place is locked down tighter than Fort Knox right now. You’ll only get your ass kicked.”
Now that he mentions it, there’s an array of blank-faced guards manning every wall, corner and doorway. At least triple the usual fanfare. Their weapons are no longer carefully concealed—batons, tasers and glinting cuffs hang on every belt loop.
Biting my lip, I watch the show over my shoulder as Taylor, a loud-mouthed girl whose room is a few doors down from mine, gets pulled aside for a random pat down.
“Are you serious? I was just walking!” she shouts.
“Up against the wall, inmate.”
“No! This is such horseshit.”
When she doesn’t comply, Kieran, the wanker who struck me with his baton, shoves her hard. She slams into the wall with a pained squeak, her hands forced to flatten and legs spread apart by his foot.
“You asshole!” she screeches.
Tension is at an all-time high. Some patients don’t raise their heads as they scuttle past. Whatever fire filled Harrowdean’s population before, recent displays of force seem to have tamped a lot of it down.
But others like Taylor? They’re openly defiant. Bickering and shouting. Fists swinging and arms getting pinned. It doesn’t take much to provoke a guard into getting handsy. They seem determined to prove their point.
We’re still their puppets to control.
And puppets don’t have any rights.
Her head turned to the side and cheek smashed up against the wall, Taylor’s gaze connects with mine. I’m unnerved by the venom directed towards me churning there.
This overzealous shithead is running his hands all over her, but she’s staring at me like it’s my goddamn fault. Maybe she’s right. I didn’t make this world, but I sure as hell benefited from it.
Thinking no one’s looking, Kieran skates a hand over her ass. She hisses a selection of insults, but it doesn’t deter him from grabbing between her legs next. I watch the horrified tears stream down her cheeks.
“You’re clean,” he declares.
Taylor pushes off from the wall, her wagging tongue now silenced. I look away as she leaves, her arms wrapped tight around midsection. The guard saunters off, smirking to himself like he hasn’t just committed a crime.
“Ripley,” Elon snaps.
I catch up to him with a sickening weight curling in my stomach. It’s never been hard to find examples of abuse in Harrowdean. But never has it been so blatant and relished in. Something has shifted.
“Did you see what he did?” I demand.
Elon rolls his eyes. “Just move it, inmate.”
He grabs my bicep and tows me across the quad. My scalp prickles when I spot a familiar headful of ash-white hair. At least his vantage points are getting more creative.
Xander sits on the grass, back against a tree trunk. He’s pretending to be occupied by the thickly bound maths textbook in his lap, but instead, his narrowed eyes follow me across the quad.
We stare at each other for a brief, tension-laden second. Just the sight of him causes my heart to speed up to a traitorous gallop. Whether in fear or some twisted sense of anticipation, I don’t even want to know.
The memory of him sitting at my bedside in his bloodstained clothing rushes to the forefront along with the ghost of his hand grasping mine. As my world fell apart, he ensured I wasn’t suffering alone.
Was it real?
Does the infamous iceman… care?
That can’t be right.
Xander doesn’t know how to care. That would require far too much emotional range. I don’t know what he feels for me—hatred, fascination, a desire to torture and maim—but caring isn’t a remote possibility.
His perched form disappears as we descend farther into the institute’s grounds. The stirrings in my chest morph into a nausea-inducing pitter-patter of anxiety. Blood pounds in my ears with each step towards what I know is coming.
It’s unassuming. Nondescript. An abandoned fa?ade coated in ivy, cracked brick and signs of disuse. Even the once sparkling stained glass windows have been boarded over and eaten alive by overgrown shrubbery.
To the untrained eye, it’s another relic of Harrowdean’s colourful past as an asylum in the nineteenth century. Most of the unrestored buildings scattered across the grounds hail back to that sombre period of time.
“Wait—”
“Shut it,” Elon snips.
“Please. I can’t go in there.”
“I said shut it, inmate. That sedative can still be arranged.”
Tucked out of sight in a cluster of glossy ivy leaves, I recognise the blinking eyes of several CCTV cameras. Why protect an empty husk? It can’t be for the cobwebs and ghosts of inmates long past that live inside.
The most sinister of evils always hide in plain sight. Hidden behind politicians’ smiles and their empty promises. Glossy brochures with photos of therapy rooms, green forests and happy, smiling patients.
As I stare up at the disused exterior of Kingsman dorms, I understand how this place and so many like it have operated under the radar for all this time. Even those who pay attention fail to see the truth that’s right in front of them.
Harrowdean isn’t real.
It’s just a well-crafted disguise.
“You don’t have to do this.” My voice trembles pathetically.
“Scared, Ripley?” Elon laughs. “Come and see where you sent your little friends.”
I send a silent prayer into the unknown as Elon tugs me up the crumbling stone steps, his head swivelling to ensure no one has followed us.
There isn’t even a padlock on the door. They want it to look inconspicuous and blend in with the other worthless ruins. These people are truly shameless.
“We’ve had plenty of curious inmates wander in here over the years,” he explains conversationally. “Most get bored though. There isn’t much to see upstairs.”
The interior of Kingsman dorms, once a lavish oasis for upper-class, privileged kids packed off by their parents to receive an extortionate education, is now an abandoned wreck.
Sagging wallpaper lines the corridor, yellowing and water-damaged. Bare, cobweb-covered bulbs hang from the ceiling, though they aren’t lit right now. The early afternoon sunlight illuminates the dusty old signage denoting the different floors.
Elon heads in the direction of the basement, causing more dread to bubble inside me. It takes several twists and turns to reach a wrought-iron door protected by a security system. He scans a black keycard, unlike any I’ve seen before.
“Down we go,” he announces jubilantly.
I stare down at the aged, concrete staircase. No fucking chance. People who go down there do not come back up. The fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up, while my skin suddenly feels too tight for my body.
“Please, Elon. Let’s talk about this.”
“Now she wants to talk.” He snickers to himself. “The time for cooperation has passed.”
“No! I’m not going down there!”
“I was hoping you’d make this difficult.”
With a sinister grin fixed in place, he bends his knees and wraps his arms around my legs. I squawk as I’m lifted off my feet and slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“Get off me!” I howl.
“Make as much noise as you want.”
Battering my fists against his back, I thrash and shout, trying anything to break his hold. The bruising across my ribcage and stomach screams in protest at his shoulder digging into me.
After slamming the heavy-set door shut behind him, Elon begins to descend. The temperature plummets as we’re devoured by darkness. It’s like all the warmth has been sucked from the world and spat back out as clear, freezing fog.
Thick concrete swallows all sound and light until it feels like we’re following Dante on his quest deeper into the seven circles of hell. I start to shiver violently, trapped by his arm banded across my legs.
“No! Stop!”
“Come now, Ripley,” Elon croons. “You don’t want to see what all your hard work is for?”
The terrain levels out, and I’m yanked back over his shoulder. My joints ache with the force of being dropped back on my feet. All around me, locked cells line a seemingly endless, subterranean hallway.
“Welcome to the Zimbardo wing.”
I spin to face him. “Let me go. I’ll keep my mouth shut, I swear.”
He smothers a chuckle. “When has that ever happened?”
“I don’t belong here!”
“Just walk.”
Shivering, I take a tentative step into the corridor. The floors, walls and ceiling are all made of polished concrete. Thick sheets of steel carve each cell door, fitted with sliding hatches so guards can peer inside.
I’ve barely taken a step when the first yells ring out. Unlike the wails of whoever occupied the adjoining cell to mine in the solitary wing, this sound is guttural, inhuman. Like someone has pulled the very life from the poor bastard’s soul and set it alight.
“While you’re out there, pushing our product and creating a steady supply of material for the team to examine, the real work happens down here.” Elon shoves me forward. “The rest is just an added bonus.”
Half of the cells boast an occupied sign. The sound of someone punching or kicking a metal door reverberates with the continued shrieks. The farther we walk, the louder the cacophony of sounds becomes.
“What is that noise?” I ask fearfully.
“Sounds like Patient Three has been causing trouble again.”
Elon stops outside one of the cells where a different thudding sound is leaking through the reinforced steel. He slides back the hatch to give me a clear view inside of the brutal beating taking place.
The woman being pummelled to a meaty pulp barely resembles a human. More like a misshapen, bruised bag of organs, slick beneath a curtain of fresh blood. She doesn’t even grunt in pain at the blows being rained down.
“Afternoon, Professor,” Elon calls jovially.
Beyond the man delivering the beating, another stands, watching on. I don’t recognise him from the clinical staff. With silver-streaked, gelled hair, a thin but strong nose and square-framed glasses, the professor wears a pressed white lab coat over his suit.
Seemingly enraptured by the show being put on for him, it takes him a moment to look up at Elon. The moment he does, his curious smile blossoms, creasing weathered lines and wrinkled skin.
“Elon! What a surprise.”
“Just making a delivery. Ripley, this is Professor Craven. Lead researcher of the Z wing here in Harrowdean.”
Craven turns his attention to me. “My, my, she is a fine specimen.”
Disgust crawls over me. He’s looking at me like I’m some five-course tasting menu to be savoured and dissected, dish by dish. I tear my gaze from his ebony eyes and look at his thug, dressed in all black.
“Harrison.” Elon nods in acknowledgement.
The man delivering the beating pauses, his vacant gaze briefly flickering up. “Elon.”
Harrison uses the back of his black glove to swipe sweat from his brow. He leaves a thick smear of blood across his face, his gnarly features resting beneath a sharp military buzz cut. He seems unfazed as he looks me over.
“Got some fresh meat for us?”
Elon jabs a thumb over his shoulder at me. “Just giving our stooge a little tour of headquarters.”
“She still causin’ trouble?”
“Not if she’d like to avoid the same fate as Patient Three.”
To illustrate his point, Elon flashes me a sick leer. My blood freezes in my veins as his friend nods, casting a critical eye over me again. With a glance at Professor Craven, he ducks out of sight to retrieve something.
“Bring her closer, Elon. This’ll teach her not to bite her master.”
I’m dragged close to the door before I can think about fleeing. Elon pins me against the steel slab, forcing me to look directly through the hatch and into the dank, padded cell, lined with bloody handprints and deep scratch marks.
I can now see a table of instruments tucked in the corner. Harrison inspects the selection, humming lightly under his breath. When he picks up a medieval looking pair of shackles, the inner circles lined with wickedly sharp spikes, I recoil.
“Fancy those cuffs, Rip?” Elon breathes in my ear.
I gulp hard. “What are you doing to her?”
“Reconditioning.”
Harrison nods agreeingly. “The human mind can only endure so much pain before it splinters apart to cope. We reform those shattered pieces and create something new. Something useful.”
Booting the semiconscious woman in the stomach, he kneels down and grabs her wrists. She’s still conscious despite looking like she got shredded by a violent woodchipper. Something tells me this isn’t her first beating.
But when Harrison clamps the torture cuffs around her wrists, the scream it elicits makes me fear for the integrity of my eardrums. The spikes inside the cuffs sink deep into her flesh, causing blood to ooze down her arms.
“Why are you h-hurting her?” I ask despite the boulder in my throat.
Craven produces an amused chuckle. “Ah, it’s been so long since we had a new recruit. I forgot how entertaining their na?vety can be.”
They all share a laugh.
Fuck you, Professor, I respond mentally.
“Patient Three failed to complete a recent assignment for the corporation.” Harrison snaps the cuffs into place. “We don’t tolerate such failure in Harrowdean.”
A hand slapped over my mouth, I watch in horror as he drags her around the filthy cell by the chains connecting the two halves of the cuffs together. She howls in agony until eventually, she passes out.
Harrison drops her unconscious body like she’s trash to be discarded. He then proceeds to boot her in the stomach for good measure, verifying that she’s unconscious.
“How dull.”
“Should’ve paced yourself,” Elon snickers.
“She’s proven to be a resilient one. But no matter.” Harrison shrugs indifferently. “They break all the same.”
A throat clears. “Gentlemen. You’re keeping us waiting.”
Still holding me prone, Elon spins us both to face the scowl I know awaits. I’d recognise the warden’s voice anywhere. Here I was, thinking he kept his hands clean and didn’t get involved in this side of the business.
“Ah, Miss Bennet.” He flashes a PR-perfect smile. “So good of you to join us.”
Frozen by terror, I can’t make my tongue move to form a response. All I can see is the patient being dragged around her cell, leaving a trail of blood.
Davis tuts like I’m a mannerless schoolchild. “So quiet now, eh? Let’s take this elsewhere. The professor has work to be getting on with. Harrison, Patient Five is prepped and ready for you both.”
“Sir.” Harrison bobs his head.
Moving his hands to my shoulders, Elon pushes me away from the two men watching me like I’m some delicious delicacy to be consumed. With wobbly legs, we follow Davis to the bottom of the corridor.
I don’t dare look over my shoulder at whatever Harrison does to that poor woman next. I can hear him talking to Craven, the pair exchanging light-hearted conversation as they continue to inflict a brutal atrocity.
Through another door, we enter a hallway housing several different offshoots. A glimpse into the first room is enough to turn my mouth into sandpaper. I quickly look away and focus on the warden’s footsteps.
“Don’t fancy a trip in there?” Elon goads. “The submersion tanks aren’t so bad once you learn to function on ten percent oxygen. The lungs quickly adjust.”
Fear like I’ve never felt before coils around my lungs. Those huge, two-metre glass tanks were full of murky water and sealed tight with barred lids. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine what floats inside. I doubt they’ve ever been emptied or cleaned.
The next room, to my relief, is an office. But instead of Davis’s name on the door, it boasts the initials SJB . I’m led inside and roughly deposited in a dark-brown leather, wingback chair.
“No funny business,” Elon warns, a deliberate hand on the taser attached to his belt. “I’ll happily fry you.”
“Now, now.” A regal voice emanates from the chair behind the desk. “There will be no need for such unpleasantries. Will there, Ripley?”
With Davis settling in the corner of the office, I’m left to face the elderly figure who turns in the office chair. It takes a moment for me to place his coiffed, silvery hair, wrinkle-lined jowls and lizard-like eyes.
When I transferred to Harrowdean, I made it my mission to understand the truth behind the world I’d entered. It wasn’t hard to find the face behind the program. Sir Joseph Bancroft II has a spotless reputation.
Richer than God and arguably more powerful, Bancroft owns a portfolio of companies across the globe. His pride and joy, the infamous Incendia Corporation, has its finger in many pies.
Psychiatric institutes. Private schools.
International conglomerates.
Even… investment firms.
I knew I recognised him when the first news articles popped up detailing his philanthropic work and various charitable endeavours. On the rare occasions when my uncle remembered my existence, he did play the orphaned niece card to his advantage.
As a result, I attended a handful of events put on by his firm over the years. Smile and wave, right? I even met his boss. Not the guy running the daily board meetings and doling out redundancies, but the real boss. The one behind the board of directors.
“Nice to see you again.” The same man smiles at me now. “It’s been… dear me, ten or twelve years? You’re all grown up now.”
Play this smart. Stay alive.
“Sir,” I return stiffly.
“Always such a polite, well-mannered little thing.” Bancroft eyes me. “It’s a pity, what happened to you. So much wasted potential. Jonathan was most disappointed by your… predisposition.”
Of course, he’d label a chronic, enduring mental illness as an inconvenient waste of potential. Eight-year-old Ripley was already an inconvenience. But bipolar Ripley? She was a problem to be erased.
“Naturally, I offered you a place in our rehabilitative program.” Bancroft actually sounds proud. “It’s a shame that Priory Lane didn’t prove conducive. Though your transfer here was an easy request to grant.”
I peel my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Why am I here?”
“Because, dear Ripley, you were given an opportunity. A chance to be a part of something bigger. But the reports I’ve been receiving of recent disturbances here are yet another disappointment.”
“Perhaps if your men didn’t beat us at any available opportunity, the patient population would be more content,” I reply without thinking.
He chortles in amusement. “It is unfavourable to resort to such measures. But your control is slipping. Defiance cannot go unpunished.”
“I’ve done my job here.”
“Then do better!”
His voice raises several octaves as spit flies across the desk. Behind Bancroft’s well-versed speeches and charming smiles, it’s clear a predator lies coiled at his centre. I’ve seen that threat brimming in his eyes before.
“Your job is to keep your peers dependent,” he continues briskly. “Those who are dependent are compliant. Those who are compliant… don’t ask questions.”
The air flowing into my lungs halts. I cast a nervous glance around, but there are no escape routes. Not even a small basement window. This place is a concrete box designed to trap its prey.
“Our recent visitors to this wing asked many questions.” Bancroft rests back in his office chair. “I wonder if they knew they were being sent to their deaths. Did you think to warn them?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Cut the shit, Ripley,” Davis interjects.
Feeling the weight of their collective gazes searing into me, sweat trickles down my spine. “I had to give them something.”
“That wasn’t the question.” Bancroft smiles again in that creepy, all-seeing way. “Did you think twice before sending those boys to their deaths? Did it even cross your mind?”
Is there any point in lying? I don’t need to pretend to be something I’m not here. These three men know the lows I’ve sank to in order to preserve my own existence.
“No. I wanted to hurt them. Just like they were hurting me.”
While Davis looks furious at my admission, Bancroft seems positively thrilled. Like I’ve somehow ticked a box only he can see. It makes me want to scrub a year’s worth of invisible bloodstains from my skin.
“Interesting,” he muses, fingers tapping his lips. “Perhaps we still have use for you after all.”
“Sir.” Davis steps forward to address his superior. “Our program here is compromised enough.”
“Which is precisely why it’s a bad time to be training a new stooge,” Bancroft responds. “I will not add another unstable element into an already difficult situation. We have enough to contend with.”
Picking up a stack of folded newspapers from the corner of his desk, he slides them across the gleaming surface for me to take. I reluctantly accept them and begin flipping through the papers.
“Our future is compromised, Ripley.” Bancroft rests his chin on his folded hands. “Therefore, your future is compromised too.”
The blazing headlines catch my attention, one after another. All of the papers are dated within the last few weeks.
Deadly riot at Blackwood Institute.
Incendia Corporation under investigation by Sabre Security.
Allegations of abuse and malpractice across Britain’s six institutes.
“I see a problem for you.” I shrug. “Not me.”
Bancroft swipes a hand over his silvery coiffure. “Do you think the authorities would agree with that assessment when they hear what you’ve done on our payroll?”
“I don’t get paid. You’re the ones profiting.”
“Your continued survival is not payment?” he challenges. “You could have been disposed of long ago. But we maintained Jonathan’s request to keep your situation quiet and… controlled.”
The newspaper judders in my hands. I lay it down, attempting to disguise the fine tremble.
“Ah, now you get it.” Bancroft observes my obvious nerves. “Uncle’s protection has expired, hasn’t it? I am surprised that his patience for your continued disruptions has lasted this long.”
“Disruptions?” I repeat.
“If only his colleagues and investors knew that his very own niece was confined to the institute he endorses. Rather embarrassing, isn’t it?”
I want to shrivel up and disappear. But I won’t give him the satisfaction of humiliating me. So I decide to parrot the disgruntled warden watching our exchange.
“Cut the shit. If you’re going to threaten me, get on with it.”
“I have no need to threaten you, Ripley. Look around at where you are. If Harrowdean falls, don’t doubt that we will all fall with it.”
The broken part of me that’s endured the cost of surviving the past two years wants to throw open the fucking gates and let the authorities march in here. For the lives I’ve exploited, I owe them that much.
He’s right, though.
The world needs a scapegoat. As humans, we assign an outlet for our rage long before we think of compassion. It’ll come down to blame. Incendia won’t protect me from the wolves. We will burn together.
I’ve come too far to let their crumbling empire take me down. Sacrificed too much. I didn’t care that a different Ripley would be leaving those gates, as long as I walked out at all. So I wilfully destroyed the person I was to become the person they needed.
The stooge.
The instigator.
The blame .
“What do you want me to do?” I grit out.
“Sir, I really must insist?—”
“Enough,” Bancroft cuts the warden off. “Ripley has proven herself to be an asset despite recent transgressions. These are dangerous times. We cannot squander loyalty.”
Gaze catching on the nearest newspaper, I study the mugshot of an escaped detainee from Blackwood Institute. Another chess piece in this eternal game of moves and counter moves.
Staring into the dead-eyed stare of Brooklyn West, the so-called instigator of the riot that engulfed Harrowdean’s sister branch, I wonder what this stranger would do in my position. If she’d tell me to let it all burn, even if that included myself.
“Help us weather this storm, Ripley. Control the patient population. Manipulate. Instill fear. Exploit. If Harrowdean survives, you will have your freedom.”
“And if I refuse to play my part?”
His wrinkled mouth pulls taut. “You will make an excellent addition to the professor’s Z wing program. I do hate wasted potential. But repurposing? Now that’s just good business.”
I look into Bancroft’s eyes. Full of challenge and determination. He isn’t afraid—monsters with power and money never are. This world will always be institutionally weighted in their favour. People like us are the foundation of their empires.
I’ll be his weapon.
I’ll even make it look real.
But the moment his house of cards begins to fall, I don’t intend to stick around to bear the consequences. Even if that means shedding the person I am and the life I’ve fought so hard to resume.
Instead, I’ll run.
And leave my soul behind.