Page 56 of His Asset
For one impossible second, I’d seen him break.
My pulse thundered, grief and fury tangling into something wild.I slammed my fists against the glass.“You killed her!”The words ripped out of me, but no sound came, only a pressure, a vibration so sharp it hurt.
The camera above my head sparked, then shattered.
I froze as the air warped, invisible waves rippling through the walls, bouncing back to me.For an instant, I saw everything—the corridors, the guards, the sealed labs beyond my own—like the building had unfolded itself inside my skull.
Then it was gone, leaving only the acrid smell of smoke and the echo of my heartbeat.
I sank to my knees, shaking.I didn’t know what I’d done.I didn’t want to.
When I looked up again, Adam was staring through the glass, the faintest furrow in his brow.Not anger.Not disgust.Something closer to sorrow.
He reached for the control panel, and I thought he might step inside and say something.Explain.Thought he might care.Instead, the reinforced shutter slid down, sealing me away from the scene outside.
The wind off the water bit through my clothes, dragging me back to the present.The river shimmered black beneath the oppressive clouds that now covered the moon, an old wharf jutting out over the water like something dark and skeletal.
I drew my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around them, my wings hanging limp against the wet earth.I hated that I could still see his face, the moment before the mask.That small, human fracture in his expression.
Had I imagined it?
Maybe I’d been desperate even then, searching for something—someone—who could prove they weren’t the monsters.But he’d been the one standing over her body.The same man—scientist—who’d created so many of the younger ones like me, before he’d caged them too and watched them die.
I let out a shaky breath as another burst of rain splatted against the river.
“I’m such a fool,” I whispered into the night.
For wishing he was the man I saw in that heartbeat of compassion.
For wanting him to be human when he couldn’t be.
When I wasn’t.
The increasing wind caused the river to lap against the posts, soft and steady, seemingly in synch to the steadily increasing, drumming rain.
I sniffed.Mother nature didn’t care who was monster and who wasn’t, so why should I?
Yet, despite everything, I wept again, quietly this time, my tears vanishing into the rain until there was nothing left inside me but the hollow space where hope used to live.
The rain faded sometime in the night, leaving only my shivering body and the whisper of water, and the low murmur of wind through the reeds.
I didn’t remember falling asleep.Just the slow unraveling of exhaustion until everything went black.
When I woke, it was to harsh, unrelenting heat.But though the sun blazed overhead, pressing against my skin like it was punishing me, I ached from the still-cold ground, my wings stiff and heavy with dried mud.
Then I heard voices.At first, distant, then closer.Human voices.
“Jesus, whatisthat?”
“Is she hurt?”
“Oh my God, are those real?”
I blinked into the light, my vision swimming.Shapes became people, at least a dozen, maybe more.Men in work clothes, women clutching their phones, all staring.
One woman gasped.“She’s got wings.”
I pushed myself upright too fast, the world spinning as my wings flared wide.They caught the sunlight, black and iridescent, too large, too wrong.A collective murmur rippled through the crowd.A woman crossed herself even as a baby suddenly cried.But as some people stepped back, others leaned closer, their curiosity like knives.