Chapter 23 A Message Through Time
Niklaus
“Easy.” Young Niles holds his hands up to calm me down. “Look, I don’t like the sound of what he’s doing to her up there either.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
“…But we’re not finished here yet.”
My head begins to shake as I scoff, and blink to process what I’m seeing.
This is so far from the man I grew up with.
This is a delusional lunatic. From his pupils the size of cosmic black holes, eating up those blue-green irises, to the malnutrition thinning his skin and hollowing his cheeks.
He’s fucking insane and demented. How long have they been experimenting on him with Mind Phantoms? How was he allowed to raise me?!
“Just head back down to your chair, and I promise your friend will be brought back to the basement soon.” My father tries to guide me by the elbow to the stairs.
The fury is too much to contain my rapid movements.
I twist his arm around, nearly hard enough to snap a bone.
Sapphire’s sudden silence blisters under my skin, and I fucking lose it.
With my hands gripping the collar of his shirt, I charge my father into the kitchen, throwing his body into the cabinets.
“Wait!”
I snatch a dagger from a half-sliced apple on a cutting board and align it perfectly with his throat. The fast beating of his pulse makes the blade tremble as he gasps.
“I know what’s been done to you to turn you into…this,” I say, fighting to swallow down the lump in my throat. “But I don’t care. I don’t.”
Niles opens and closes his mouth, unsure how to respond.
I ignore the sudden flashbacks of the man who compassionately raised me. Ignore the deep, throbbing wound in my chest that sings at the sight of his withering appearance and tortured, glazed-over look behind his eyes.
“Now you get to live the rest of your life knowing you weren’t as strong as Charles. Don’t ever forget my words. Because I’ll never forget what you’ve done here.”
I shove my father to the side and race to find the woman who is my ticket home.
If he somehow remembers what I’ve said to him in his recovery, my words will haunt him forever.