Page 94 of Infamous

The straps bite into my wrists as I thrash, panic flooding me, every breath shallow and sharp.

He watches calmly, as though my terror is expected. “Don’t waste your energy. The drugs will still be in your system for another hour at least. Your body can’t fight what your mind wants.”

Tears sting my eyes, hot and angry. “What happened to me? What do you want!?”

For the first time, his smile falters, just a fraction, and something colder creeps into his gaze. “Your submission.”

The confession scrapes across my bones like razors. “My…?”

I close my eyes, fighting the scream rising in my throat.

Lucian.

The name rips out of me like a prayer - raw, involuntary, dragged straight from somewhere dark and deep. Because in that instant, one brutal truth crashes over me: fate has finally caught up with me. And it’s decided I’m the price. Collateral for Lucian’s sins.

The tray rattleswhen he moves it closer.

My pulse slams against my throat, a wild bird trapped in a cage. My wrists burn where the straps bite, but it’s useless - I can’t move more than a fraction. My body is heavy, my muscles sluggish, the drug still coating my veins like lead.

Kellerman hums under his breath as he arranges the instruments. The sound is soft, almost cheerful, and it makes my stomach pitch. Metal taps against metal, a delicate chiming thatfeels obscene in the silence - like he’s setting the dinner table instead of… whatever this is.

I force my aching brain to work, to remember, to find some thread that explains how I ended up strapped to a gurney under the care of a man I trust. Every thought slips away the moment I reach for it, leaving only fragments and panic.

What did I miss? What did I do? Whyme?

All I know - all that cuts through the haze - is that he drugged me. I’m restrained. And he’s calmly laying out tools that look far too precise, far too cold, for anything that resembles help.

It looks like he’s preparing for surgery, and I have no idea what he plans to carve out of me.

“What are you going to do?” I choke out, my voice rough. “You don’t have to…”

He tilts his head, amused. “Oh, but I do.”

His eyes slide to me, cold and clinical, as if I’m nothing more than a pound of meat waiting to be cut open. “You’re clever,” he murmurs, almost like he’s complimenting my technique in surgery. “Too clever. But you were stupid not to take the senator up on his offer.”

He picks up a scalpel and studies the blade against the light, turning it slowly. It gleams like it’s proud of what it’s about to do. “Which means there’s only one way to handle this.”

My voice rips out of me, shrill, raw. Panic punches through my ribs. “What are you talking about?! Why did you drug me?”

He steps toward me, and instinct takes over. I thrash, hard. I kick at the restraints, jerk my wrists until my skin burns, scream so loudly my throat cracks.

“No-one can hear you down here, Nadia.”

“Stop! Get away from me! Help! Someone help me!”

He grabs my shoulders, trying to pin me down, wrist slipping as I twist beneath him. “Nadia - Nadia, stop.” His voicesharpens into something colder. “If you move like that, the syringe won’t go where it’s meant to. You could really hurt yourself.”

“I don’t care - let me go!”

“You should care.”

He lifts the syringe between us, the barrel catching the light. The needle looks impossibly long, wicked. “If this enters the wrong place… if your arteries aren’t still…” He clicks his tongue as though the thought inconveniences him. “It could paralyze you. Blind you. Stop your heart entirely.”

The words slam into me. He’s not threatening. He’s explaining what I already know. Like a teacher walking me through a disastrous outcome he’d rather avoid for the sake of clinical neatness.

I freeze. My breath hitches on a sob I didn’t feel coming. He waits for the moment my muscles go slack, my body trembling but still.

“That’s better,” he says, satisfied. “I need you complacent for what comes next.”