Chapter 116
Lirael
The ship's captain responded over the loudspeaker, voice dripping with the kind of arrogant contempt that made me want to punch something. "Mr. Gray. Your request is denied. These specimens are Genesis Foundation property, acquired through entirely legal channels. If you attempt to board this vessel, we will consider it an act of piracy and respond with appropriate force."
I could see Damian's shoulders tense even from this distance, could practically feel his frustration radiating across the water. He lowered the megaphone and said something to his guards, his body language screaming barely controlled anger.
Then the entire upper section of the ship's superstructure exploded in a ball of flame and twisted metal.
"Holy shit!" I ducked instinctively as the blast wave rolled over us, debris raining down in a deadly hail that sparked and hissed where it hit the water. My ears rang, my heart hammered, and for a moment all I could do was stare at the inferno that had been the bridge.
Alarms shrieked, voices shouted about fire suppression and containment, and somewhere someone was screaming about the captain being dead.
Before anyone could process what had just happened, another explosion rocked the ship, deeper this time, somewhere in the cargo holds beneath our feet. The deck shifted violently, metal groaning like a dying animal, and I grabbed the railing to keep from falling as the vessel listed hard to port.
"There's a third party," I whispered, my tactical training kicking in even through the shock and fear. "Someone else is on this ship. Someone who wants everyone dead or scattered or—fuck, we need to move, now."
The lower explosion had blown open the cargo hold doors, sending them flying outward in twisted chunks of metal. Prisoners were streaming out, faces masks of terror and desperate hope, and I felt something fierce and wild surge in my chest because this was it, this was chaos, this was our opening—
"Now!" I grabbed Elwin's arm and yanked him forward hard enough to make him stumble. "Stay close to me and don't stop running, no matter what you see, no matter what happens!"
We pushed through the panicked crowd, my shoulder slamming into someone's back, my elbow catching someone else in the ribs, and I didn't care, couldn't afford to care because the ship was sinking and we had minutes at most before the ocean claimed us all. Guards were shouting, trying to restore order, but they were too scattered, too focused on the fires and the flooding to worry about escaped cargo.
We were halfway to the starboard railing, my lungs burning and my legs screaming, when a figure stepped out of the shadows ahead and my entire world screeched to a halt.
No. No, no, no, this can't be happening—
Sebastian blocked our path with the casual certainty of a predator that had cornered its prey, and moonlight caught his face—pale as death, dark circles like bruises under his eyes, lips stained almost black with his own poisoned blood.
He looked like a corpse that refused to lie down, like something that should be dead but was too stubborn or too obsessed to accept it. But his amber eyes were still sharp, still focused, still locked onto me with an intensity that made my breath catch and my heart stutter.
"You," I heard myself say, and I hated how my voice shook, how it betrayed the tangle of emotions surging through me—shock and fear and anger and something else I refused to name. "You—how are you even—you should be fucking dying right now, not standing here—"
"Dying?" His voice was rough as gravel dragged across raw flesh, but there was dark amusement in it that made me want to hit him. "I should be a lot of things, little one. Dead, for instance. Unconscious at the very least. Certainly not standing on a sinking ship in the middle of the goddamn Pacific chasing after a woman who tried to poison me." He took a step closer, and I saw the way the movement cost him, saw pain flicker across his features before he locked it down. "But I've never been very good at doing what I should."
Elwin moved to step between us, his injured hand forgotten, but I grabbed his arm and held him back because this was my fight, my mess, my responsibility to handle. "You need to let us go," I said, forcing my voice steady even as my heart tried to hammer its way out of my chest. "You need to get the fuck off this ship and get medical treatment before that poison finishes what I started."
Sebastian laughed, and the sound was wrong, brittle, edged with something that might have been madness or desperation or both. "Let you go? When you're the only thing keeping me alive? When you still have what I need?" He swayed, pressing one hand against the wall, and I saw fresh blood seeping between his fingers where he'd bitten through his own lip. "You know what the worst part is? You left me just enough to keep breathing. Just enough to stay conscious. Just enough to come after you. Was that intentional? Or did you miscalculate?"
The question hit harder than it should have because I didn't have an answer, because I didn't know if I'd left him that partial formula because I couldn't quite bring myself to let him die or because some part of me had wanted him to follow, had wanted—
Fuck. I didn't know. I didn't know anything anymore.
"You still haven't given me the complete antidote," he continued, and his hand shot out to catch my wrist, his grip light but unbreakable, his fingers trembling against my skin. "Those two ingredients you left on that mirror—they're keeping my heart beating, sure, but they're not neutralizing the poison. You know that. You're too smart not to know that." His amber eyes bored into mine. "Without the third component, I have maybe four hours left. Less, if I keep pushing myself like this."
He stepped closer, close enough that I could smell the sickness on him, the way his blood had turned toxic. "So now you have to choose, little one. Do you watch me die here on this sinking wreck? Or do you save me one more time?"
I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with his ultimatums and his manipulations and his dying declarations, to tell him to go fuck himself—
"She doesn't need to choose. Because I'll help her."
The voice cut through the chaos like a blade of ice, and we all turned. There she was—Specimen S-07 from those horrifying Genesis Foundation files. Silver hair whipping in the wind, eyes the same silver-gray as mine, fixed on me with recognition that went bone-deep and made something in my chest clench tight.
She was real. She was here. She was free.
She descended the ladder with fluid precision, and up close I could see the details—roughly shorn hair where they'd probably cut out tracking devices, scars crisscrossing her exposed skin where restraints had bitten deep over and over, the heavy metal shackle still locked around her wrist that she wore like a trophy or a warning.
Her face was similar enough to mine that we could have been sisters, but where I still had some softness left despite everything, hers had been carved sharp by suffering, honed into something cold and merciless.