53. Weaponized
FIFTY-THREE
WEAPONIZED
Seven
“ N o,” I breathed. This could not be right. This wasn’t real.
But it was.
Two stood behind that panel of glass. Her hair was the same as always: short, black, straight. She wore what looked like the training suits they used to get us to wear back in G Block. The stretchy ones that allowed us all the movement we needed to fight.
Had she been there the whole time? Had I imagined that we’d both been relocated that day?
“What …?” I managed, but couldn’t actually work out how my question ended.
I couldn’t stop staring at her. I could feel Jack watching me, could practically feel his fear for me pulsing between us. But I couldn’t look away from Two.
Something was off about her.
She hadn’t moved. She stood stiff and tall, her eyes staring straight ahead but … unfocused. Could she see me?
She must not be able to see me. But if that was the case, why wasn’t she looking around, wondering why she was stuck inside a glass box?
Something was very wrong.
I took a step closer, and then another. She would see me soon. She had to. Jack could see me, and I’d been further from him than this.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t even blink.
“What have you done to her?”
“Two here has been one of my most successful E Block graduates,” Baxter explained. “We have so many different studies going on in here at any given time. Aside from the … strengthening program we’ve been running with some of my agents—the ones that you just took out, I might add—we do a lot of weapons development. Killing immortals is not a straightforward process, as you would recall from your own training. Beheading is the only swift, foolproof way. But for a human to get close enough to even have a chance at beheading an immortal? It’s a suicide mission.
“But I digress. We moved from inanimate weapons to the only real solution. Weaponizing our hybrids. The Guardian Program was very successful at teaching you how to kill Purebloods. But there was one major stumbling block. You still had free will. And you, Seven, are a perfect example of why retaining free will prevents you from truly becoming a weapon of value.”
I wanted to throw up. I pressed a hand to my thundering heart.
“What have you done to her?” I asked again, although I already knew. I already knew, but I couldn’t let myself believe it.
“I’ve weaponized her.”
I did vomit then.
Death is too good for him, the whisper choked as I retched violently. The little I’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours spilled out onto the concrete.
“Oh, come on, Seven. You just tore into a man’s groin and stood back to watch him suffer for a moment too long before you finished him. You can’t seriously find this the most unsavory thing that’s happened to you tonight,” Baxter said. His tone was conversational, but there was a thread of tightly held hatred underneath the pleasant voice.
“That was my choice,” I muttered, spitting to clear my mouth, wiping bile from my lips. My shock was rapidly morphing into something worse than hatred. Something that painted my vision red.
That red gaze honed in on him. On his bloated face, full of my Jack’s blood. On the victorious smirk that he wore. I couldn’t look at Jack. The only thing I wanted to focus on was this vile, evil creature and the death we would slowly wring from him.
We will peel that smirk from his face and stand back to watch him suffer, too , the whisper vowed.
“And it will be my choice just how long you live after you’re begging me for your death,” I promised him, my voice a dark rasp.
A boom, louder this time, and the accompanying shudder of the floor punctuated my words.
His smirk faltered for just a second before hitching up higher than before.
“Well, I’ll give you another choice, Seven,” he said, lifting his remote again. The glass separating me from Two slid away. “You kill her … or she kills you … and then I make sure she takes her time with your mate here. Once I’ve harvested his blood, once I’ve used him all up.”
The red in my vision became a burning through my whole body.
“I will not kill her!” I snarled.
Baxter shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He lifted another remote, pressing a button.
Two’s head twitched. Baxter spoke into the remote.
“Two, kill Seven.”
Her head twitched again, the movement unnatural. Immediately she advanced on me, her gait purposeful. There was no hesitation in her movement. Her eyes locked on mine. No recognition shone in them.
I can’t kill her.
I swallowed back the bloodlust, the rage.
Save it for him , the whisper agreed, pulling her own fury back, too. And try to save her.
“Two,” I pleaded, backing away from her. I had to get through to her. Had to do something—anything—to try and break her out of this … trance she was in.
“Hey, remember the day we got picked for the Guardian Program? And to celebrate, we stole one of the enormous jars of peanut butter from the kitchen and hid under the bunk to eat it?”
I laughed, the sound utterly forced. My hands shook. I held them out in front of me. “We got so sick that we had to spend two days in the infirmary, and we missed the first day of G Block orientation.”
Two didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. She was close enough that I could see the black flecks in her gray eyes.
“And … remember how we’d always said the black in your eyes looked like feathers? And then, when we finally had our first shift, and you were a raven, we decided that we must have known all along.”
She stalked closer. I backed away.
“I remember how jealous I was of you because you got to fly, and the best I could do was climb those stupid wooden posts in the training room.”
She continued to advance.
The building shuddered more violently this time around, more cracks forming in the concrete. I put a foot back to steady myself, letting out a ragged gasp as I slipped in the slick pool of blood from the three men I’d killed.
If Two even noticed the building shaking, breaking around us, she gave no sign. I took another step and slipped again in viscous goo. This time I couldn’t get my balance. I fell, landing hard on my backside and sucking in a breath, trying to scramble to my feet, finding no purchase on the slippery floor.
She was right in front of me. I scooted backward.
I can’t kill her.
Her hand shot out, gripping me by the throat. I gagged, clawing at her fingers, my face going hot. My nails shot into claws of their own accord, piercing the backs of her hands. Her blood coated my fingers, the copper tang of it overpowered by the same bitterness I’d tasted in the men’s blood.
Even injured, she still squeezed. Tighter and tighter. My chest ached from not getting enough oxygen.
I can’t kill her … but she can absolutely kill me.
“Two,” I pleaded, my voice a rough, desperate wheeze. “Remember, please !”
Her eyes pierced mine, and the deadness in them sent ice shooting into the center of me.
“I remember everything, Seven,” she said, her voice low, monotone. “But I don’t care.”
An ominous cracking sound reverberated overhead. But Two just kept squeezing.