“As you can see, Ms. Durham, your brother is alive. For now. We’re holding him at a private facility. Quite secluded. No one will hear him scream.”
My fingers tightened around the phone, knuckles white. “If you hurt him...”
“That depends entirely on your cooperation. I suggest you hurry. The address has been sent to your phone.” There was a pause, and I could almost hear his smile. “Oh, and Maeve? Don’t involve the authorities. Xavier won’t survive the wait.”
The line went dead before I could respond, leaving me alone with Reaper’s unconscious form and the knowledge that my time was running out.
I collapsed against the wall, my legs suddenly unable to hold my weight. The phone slipped from my hand, clattering to the floor beside me as my mind reeled from Brock’s revelations.
No antidote. The poison wasn’t meant for Reaper—it was designed for me. For my “conditioning.” And Xavier… oh god, Xavier. After all this time searching, I’d found him only to put him directly in the crosshairs.
The video of my brother replayed in my mind. His vacant eyes. The way he had flinched. What had they done to him?What were they still doing? Was there still a way for me to save him? Or was he too far gone?
No, I refused to accept that possibility. That was my brother, for God’s sake. He taught me to throw a punch when I was twelve. A boy kept pulling my hair. The teacher told me he was doing that because he ‘liked’ me, and Xavier taught me to fight back. When I got my first real job interview, he waited outside because he knew I was nervous. And when I told him it had gone terribly, he had taken me out for ice cream. I landed another job two weeks later. All because he taught me that one failure wasn’t the end of the world. He’d read everything I had ever written, too. He’d call me, just to tell me how damn proud he was of me when my articles made it to the newspapers. He’d always been the one person I could count on when the whole world turned its back.
And I’d done this to him. My investigation, my pursuit, my refusal to believe he was dead—it had brought Brock’s attention straight to us both.
A strangled moan from the bed yanked me back to the present. Reaper thrashed weakly, his body twisting against unseen restraints. The blue-black lines had spread further, creeping up his jaw toward his temple like toxic vines. His skin glistened with sweat, flush with fever.
“Reaper,” I called, scrambling to his side. “Can you hear me?”
No response. Just the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest and the accelerating spread of poison through his veins. I pressed my hand to his forehead and yanked it back—his skin burned like fire.
“Shit, shit,shit.”
I grabbed my phone and dialed the informant’s number again. Nothing but static, then a mechanical voice: “This number is no longer in service.”
“Damn it!” I hurled the phone onto the bed. What was I supposed to do? I had less than two hours to save both Reaper and Xavier, with no resources, no backup, and a homicidal organization hunting us.
I rushed to the bathroom, soaking a towel in cold water. When I returned, Reaper’s condition had deteriorated further. The veins at his temples pulsed visibly, starkly blue against his too-pale skin. His breathing came in short, ragged gasps.
“Hold on,” I whispered, laying the compress across his forehead. “Just hold on. You can’t leave me now, alright? I need you. I need you with me.”
His eyes flew open suddenly, unseeing and unfocused. “System… compromised,” he gasped, voice mechanical and detached—nothing like the man who’d held me hours before. “Initiating… countermeasures.”
“Reaper, it’s me. It’s Maeve.” I gripped his shoulders, desperate to break through whatever programming had taken over. “Stay with me. Fight it.”
His body went rigid beneath my hands, back arching off the mattress as tremors seized his muscles. I frantically tried to keep him from hurting himself, struggling to hold his larger frame as convulsions ripped through him.
“No, no, no!” I cried, using my full weight to stop him from toppling off the bed. “Please!”
His seizure intensified, violent tremors shaking the entire bed frame. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth, tinged with blood. The blue lines pulsed visibly now, spreading faster across his face. I watched in horror as they branched across his cheeks, down his throat, following the paths of veins and arteries.
I raced to the bathroom again, dunking every towel I could find into ice-cold water. When I returned, Reaper’s body had gone completely rigid, his jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth. I laid the cold compresses wherever I could—his forehead, neck, chest, wrists—but they seemed to make no difference. His temperature continued climbing.
“Help me,” I whispered to no one, tears streaming down my face as I watched this man—this weapon turned human—dying before my eyes. “Somebody help us.”
I tried to pry his jaw open to keep him from biting his tongue, but his muscles were locked tight. More blood-tinged foam leaked from the corner of his mouth. His eyes had rolled back, showing only whites shot through with blue-black lines.
I frantically wiped Reaper’s face with another cold compress, trying to lower his temperature while monitoring his seizure. His entire body convulsed again, nearly throwing me off the bed.
“Please,” I sobbed, unsure who I was begging. I just knew that I desperately needed help. I needed someone to tell me what to do. How to proceed. “Please don’t die. I can’t lose you both. I can’t do this alone,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to his burning chest. “I need you to fight. Come back to me.”
His only response was another violent spasm, his limbs jerking like a marionette with tangled strings.
“What you’re doing is useless.”
The voice came from directly behind me—low, authoritative, completely unexpected. I whirled around, heart hammering against my ribs.
