36. Spiral
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SPIRAL
Igrab Karma’s shoulders and shake, trying to snap her out of whatever trance she’s in. The scissors in her hand drop to the floor, but she doesn’t blink. She doesn’t look at me but through me.
She’s ripped out the stitches on her smile.
“Speak to me, dead girl. Come on.”
“What happened?” Soren asks, looking around the trashed room.
“Is she okay?” Arlo whines, but I ignore them. Micha stands by the entrance, staring at Karma like he can’t decide what to do.
“He is a liar,” she whispers, her hands balling at her sides. “A liar. A traitor.”
“Who, baby?” Arlo whispers, but I put my hand up, stopping him from coming any closer. She looks gone, and I don’t trust her instincts not to lash out in this state.
“Kreo,” she spits, and it’s like Karma is slapped back into herself as soon as the word leaves her down-turned lips.
She shoves me away with the strength of five men, and Soren catches me in his arms before I trip over the table.
“That lying, betraying, traitorous fuck!” she screams, hands fisting the thick bases of her pigtails. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.”
I look over the torn pages spread across the floor. The diaries. The ones I reminded her of.
Is this my fault?
“Just talk to us, Stitches,” Micha says quietly. He steps in, moving past the rest of us. “Tell us what’s the matter.” She’s about to lash out at him, but he grabs her wrists and holds her at his chest. “Calm it. Now.”
Her chest heaves, like she’s choosing to rely on oxygen when she’s never needed to before. Bright green eyes narrow on Micha, and I see her internally make a decision. Micha’s brat-taming skills work, and her body relaxes slightly.
“That’s my girl. Now tell me what’s happened.”
“Kreo, he—” She groans, looking around the room at the rest of us.
“He’s going to kill me. Or wait for death to take me.
He— Ugh!” She screams, but Micha doesn’t let go.
“He’s going to ssstudy my death! He put bellsss in my hair ssso he can hear me fucking coming!
And he won’t help Ssspiral. He’s lying. And there’s a whole other one like me. But worssse. And— And—”
“Slow down,” I urge, approaching her side. She blinks at me, and for a split second, it looks like tears line her eyes. “Just slow down.” I didn’t miss what she said about me, but right now, I don’t give two shits about what she might have found out. I only care about her.
“He won’t fix you, Ssspiral,” she whines, and the noise cracks my chest open, because she looks devastated by that fact. “He jussst wanted to keep you on a leash.”
So the pain… It’s never going to go away? The drinking, the smoking—it’s never going to stop?
The fix I’ve been so desperately waiting for since Kreo found me all those years ago.
Ten years. Ten years of lying, of secrets, of betrayal.
Twenty-eight years of constant pain and suffering that I was waiting—praying—to disappear as soon as someone gave enough of a shit about me to try and take it away.
All for naught.
“No.” I shake my head and fist my hair, the constant pounding rattling around my skull. “No, I can’t— I don’t want— Make it stop. Make it stop.”
“Fuck, not him too,” Micha grunts.
“Spiral,” Soren says calmly, like I’m a string about to snap. “We’ll sort it, okay? There are people, doctors. We’ll find someone.”
“Okay, okay,” I pant as he drags me to his chest and engulfs me. “We’ll find someone. We’ll get out of here. I’ll be okay.” I repeat the words like a mantra as the panic that coiled around my chest slowly loosens. I don’t believe the pain will ever go away, but I guess there’s still hope.
“Karma, you said there’s another one like you. But worse.” Arlo closes in on her, tentative, cautious. “Can you tell us about that?”
“I’m Project Human Two. There was someone before. Someone he likened to the devil. Someone he could never let out again.”
I pull away from Soren and look at Karma’s furious face. “He had another?”
“They were too much for him. But I was just his test. Not hisss child, not something he cared about. Just a fucking test.”
“But you’re not a test to us, Karma,” Micha says sternly, forcing her to look at him, really look at him.
“I thought you were a monster. I thought you were wrong in the head. Hell, I was terrified of Arlo’s attachment to you.
But I was wrong. And Kreo? He’s wrong. You’re more than experiments and words on a page.
You’re what holds this freaky little group together. You’re our stitching, Stitches.”
“That was corny,” I mutter, and he narrows his eyes on me.
“I still have the muzzle, runt.”
I’m going to ignore the fact my cock twitched in this unfortunate situation.
“Come on, Karma. I think it’s time we left, don’t you?
” Soren suggests, and she looks between the four of us, an internal debate being settled.
I knew she was scared to leave Kreo, to leave this circus, but we’ve both been made aware of the evil that he truly is, and now she can soundly make the right decision.
“Yeah. It isss,” she says firmly, tearing herself away from Micha and squaring her shoulders. “You four need to wait by the trailer for Snake.”
“What are you doing?” I ask as she stomps to the exit, determination set across her face.
“Finishing what my predecessor started.”
There’s no way we’re letting her go into whatever she’s planning alone.
“We better follow her,” I grumble, grabbing Arlo’s hand and running. Micha and Soren are hot on our heels, but Karma is considerably faster than us.
“What is she going to do?” Arlo pants.
“Probably something murderous and deadly,” Soren answers. He’s likely correct.
“Whatever it is, I can’t imagine it’ll end happily. Worst comes to worst, Soren swoops her up and we run,” Micha says.
Karma’s rear is all I see before she dashes through the dressing room and out onto the main stage as the grand finale is announced.
This isn’t going to go well.