Chapter 33
CIPHER
The secondary lab felt wrong, sterile and unfamiliar compared to my primary workspace that now lay in ruins. Another mess I’d created.
I stared at the display even as my eyes burned from lack of sleep and my muscles ached in protest at last night’s exertions.
The response came almost immediately: She’ll be dead within the hour.
I leaned back in my chair, a strange hollowness replacing the rage that had fueled me for the past twenty-four hours. One less problem to worry about. One less loose end that could expose what I truly was.
My hand trembled slightly as I reached for my coffee. It was cold now, but I drank it anyway. The bitter taste matched my mood perfectly. I hadn’t felt this physically drained in years but I’d pushed too far, burned too hot.
“Sir, the primary lab restoration is approximately thirty-eight percent complete.” Twenty-six’s voice came through the comm system.
“Double the crew if necessary. I want it operational by morning.”
“Already done, sir.”
I leaned back in my chair, fighting the pull of sleep. My mind was quieter now, as quiet as it gets, anyway. The threats Baron Ash had delivered to Annie no longer echoed in my head. They’d been replaced by the screams and pleading of the bastards who’d worked with him.
A smile tugged at my lips as I replayed those sounds.
The way they’d begged. The way they’d offered money, information, anything to save their miserable lives.
The way they’d died at my hands anyway. I fucking enjoyed every second of last night’s massacre.
Twenty-seven lives extinguished, each one connected to what happened to Annie.
Each one deserving exactly what they got.
My body ached in protest as I shifted in my seat. Wiping out an entire criminal network in one night was exhausting work, but the calculations had been perfect. 27 targets, 8 locations, 4 hours.
My phone pinged with a notification, Annie was active on her laptop. I reached for the device, fingers hovering over the notification. One tap and I’d have full access to whatever she was looking at.
What the fuck was I doing?
I pulled my hand back like the phone had burned me and my brain helpfully supplied possibilities about what she was doing.
Maybe she was reading fanfiction about other Villains.
Maybe she was looking up ways to get bloodstains out of silk.
Or how to tell the asshole you’re fucking you don’t want to see him anymore.
I stared at my phone, the notification still glowing accusingly.
With a muttered curse, I swiped it away and tossed the device onto the desk.
I jerked in my chair when the phone buzzed again.
Christ, I was jumpy. It was a clear sign I needed to fucking sleep before I started hallucinating or my body simply shut down on me.
The phone buzzed again. Probably Menace, texting for the fiftieth time today. I should let him know I was still alive, at least. The man had been blowing up my phone since the news of my rampage broke, alternating between congratulatory messages and concerned inquiries about my mental state.
I reached for the device, ready to send a quick “not dead” confirmation, when I saw the name on the screen.
Sparks. My throat went dry as I unlocked the phone, pulse quickening.
Sparks
I got your gift. Thank you.
Nothing to indicate her emotional state or what she thought of receiving a pair of severed hands in a box.
My brain spun through dozens of possible responses, calculating the probability of each one being the right thing to say.
But the numbers kept blurring, my exhaustion making even basic calculations feel difficult.
What the hell was I supposed to say anyway?
“You’re welcome” felt grotesquely inadequate.
“Glad you liked it” was worse. And “There are more where those came from” probably wouldn’t go over well, even if it was true.
I set the phone down without responding, then immediately picked it up again. Three dots appeared, indicating she was typing something else and I found myself holding my breath.
The dots disappeared. No additional message came through.
“Fuck,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair.
I set the phone down and closed my eyes, drawing in a slow, measured breath.
The Villain persona, my shield, my armor, I needed to slip it back on.
When I picked up the phone again, my hands were steady.
The tremor of uncertainty had been banished to whatever dark corner my weakness always retreated to when I needed clarity.
I’m glad you appreciated it. Consider it a small token of my esteem.
Detached. A hint of that villainous flair without crossing into territory that would make her uncomfortable. I hit send before I could overthink it.
My esteem? Oh fuck, I should have overthought it. Who the hell talks like that?
I stared at my own message, cringing. I sounded like some Victorian-era nobleman offering a handkerchief to a lady with the vapors.
Not a man who’d just delivered severed hands as a murder trophy.
I immediately thought of multiple better responses, ranging from darkly humorous to genuinely sincere.
All of them vastly superior to whatever nineteenth-century bullshit I’d just sent.
The minutes ticked by with no response. Each passing second felt like another nail in the coffin of whatever this thing was between us.
I groaned and dropped my head into my hands.
I’m supposed to be fucking smooth. Make her wet with my words, not sound like I’m about to invite her to a goddamn cotillion.
My phone finally buzzed and I snatched it up.
It was thoughtful. In a disturbing way that I probably shouldn’t find comforting.
There she is. The woman who keeps surprising me at every turn. The only person who could receive severed hands and respond with something resembling gratitude.
I’m glad you found it comforting. That was the intent.
Better. Not perfect, but at least I didn’t mention my fucking esteem this time. My eyes burned from exhaustion as I watched the screen, calculating a 78% probability she’d end the conversation there. The remaining 22% split between her being disgusted upon further reflection or—
Are you okay?
I froze, fingers hovering above the screen. When was the last time anyone had asked me that? My first instinct was to deflect with something cocky. I just killed 27 people in a single night, sweetheart. I’m fucking fantastic. But the words wouldn’t come.
The truth was simpler and more pathetic. I hadn’t slept in 38 hours. I’d pushed my body beyond what even my Trueborn physiology could handle. And somewhere between the blood and screams, I’d started wondering if I’d finally crossed a line that would make Annie look at me differently.
I stared at my phone. Lie and say I was fine? 87% chance she’d know it was bullshit. Brush it off with something flippant? 92% chance of making things worse. The truth seemed both impossible and inevitable.
I don’t know how to answer that question.
My thumb hovered over the send button for 4.2 seconds before I pressed it. Her dots appeared almost immediately. She was typing, deleting, typing again. My brain helpfully supplied potential responses, none of which prepared me for what actually came through.
That’s not a yes.
No, it wasn’t.
I stared at the phone, waiting for those three dots to reappear. Seconds stretched into minutes. Five minutes. Ten. Nothing.
The conversation was over.
I set the phone down and a hollowness began spreading throughout me. What had I expected? That she’d keep pushing? That she’d somehow extract the truth from me through text messages? That she’d care enough to pursue an answer I wasn’t willing to give?
Fair enough. She owed me nothing. Less than nothing.
I closed my eyes, the events of last night replaying behind my eyelids.
The way she’d reached for me, the fucking heat of her pussy taking me.
Followed immediately by the wall I’d erected between us.
The cold dismissal. The way her face had fallen, confusion and hurt evident in those beautiful blue eyes before she’d masked it.
I’d fucked her then fucked her over. And why? Because I’d been terrified that she hadn’t turned away? That I’d begged her to tell me to stop, and she’d clutched me tighter?
Annie filled something in me I hadn’t even realized was missing.
Some fatal flaw in my construction, some empty space I’d never acknowledged.
She saw me, not just Cipher the Villain, not just Cipher the man, but something deeper, something I tried not to look at too closely myself.
I didn’t know how to handle that aside from pushing her away.
I forced my attention back to the workstation, trying to focus on the lines of code scrolling across my screen. The text blurring no matter how many times I blinked.
A notification pinged. Dread again.
Nightshade has been eliminated. Status update on the Warden files?
I wanted to tell him to have some fucking patience. Instead: Soon. Working through the final encryption layer.
My program working on the decoding could only go so fast. Dread would just have to wait.
I turned back to the project I was attempting to work on, fingers moving across the keyboard by muscle memory more than conscious thought.
The algorithms were complex but nothing I couldn’t handle.
I glanced at the timestamp on Dread’s message again and froze.
An hour and twenty-seven minutes had passed since I’d responded.
The project on my screen had advanced significantly, but I had no memory of doing the work.
I jerked upright, cold sweat breaking out across my skin. An hour and twenty-seven minutes. Gone. Vanished like they never existed.
“No, no, no,” I whispered, fingers digging into my scalp.
The sound of blood rushing in my ears was all I could hear.
The familiar panic clawed its way up my throat.
The same terror that used to paralyze me as a child when I’d “come back” to find my parents staring at me with those worried expressions.
What happened this time, Tommy? You were gone again.
Then came the doctors with their clipboards and cold hands. The tests. The needles. The medications that turned my beautiful, lightning-fast mind into a sluggish, broken thing.
This will help you focus, Thomas. This will keep you present.
Present. As if absence was the problem rather than my brain working too quickly for my body to keep up.
I forced myself to breathe, counting each inhale. One, two, three. My fingers trembled as I pulled up the security footage, needing to see what I’d done during the blackout.
There I was. Working. Just working.
“Fuck,” I muttered as relief washed through me. Not a seizure or a breakdown. Just exhaustion pushing me past my limits.
I forced myself to take deep breaths. There were no doctors here. No parents watching with worried, fearful eyes. No siblings mocking me for being broken. I was Cipher now. I controlled my environment.
I closed my eyes, counting breaths again.
“You look terrible.”
My eyes snapped open. Annie stood in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest, her expression unreadable. She wore casual clothes, jeans and a plain sweatshirt, her hair loose around her shoulders.
I stared at her, unblinking. Was she really here? Or had I finally reached the hallucination stage of sleep deprivation?
“Annie?” My voice came out rough, uncertain.
I blinked, trying to process her sudden appearance. I smelled her perfume from across the room. She was real then, not a hallucination.
“What are you doing here?”
Instead of answering, Annie stepped further into the room, her eyes scanning the unfamiliar space. “What happened to your lab?”
“It’s undergoing renovations.”
Her eyes narrowed, clearly not buying it. “Renovations? It looks like someone took a sledgehammer to everything in there.”
“It’s not important,” I said, pushing myself to my feet. I needed to gain control of the conversation so I could direct the narrative away from the truth. “What matters is why you’re—“
The world tilted violently. The floor rushed up toward me as my vision tunneled, darkness creeping in at the edges. My legs buckled, refusing to support my weight any longer.
“Cipher!” Annie rushed forward, catching me before I could collapse completely. Her small frame somehow managed to support mine as she guided me back into the chair. “Jesus Christ, what’s wrong with you?”
Her mouth moved, concern sharpening to anger in her voice, but the words blurred together.
Something about “stubborn” and “idiot.” Her hands were on my face, cool against my skin.
She tilted my head up, forcing my eyes to meet hers.
The blue of her irises was the only thing in perfect focus in a world gone fuzzy at the edges.
“Listen to me,” she said, her voice cutting through the fog in my brain. “Shower. Food. Sleep. In that order. Now. That’s not a request.”
I tried to come up with a smart ass response, but all I could do was nod, too exhausted to argue, too relieved at her presence to question it.