Page 95 of Infamous

He lifts the syringe and flicks it once. A bead of liquid blooms at the tip, catching the light like a warning. Then he steps closer.

His fingers clamp around my jaw, unforgiving, forcing my head to the side and exposing the soft line of my throat. I can feel his breath ghost against my skin when he leans in.

“You should have kept your head down, Dr. Reed,” he murmurs, almost pitying. “You could’ve had a long, quiet career here. But now?”

His grip tightens.

“Now you’ve bought yourself an expiration date.”

The syringe descends.

The world shrinks to the thin, glinting needle hovering above my pulse. A cold thread of terror zips through me as themetal kisses my skin - a single point of icy fire. My breath locks in my chest, torn between a scream and a sob.

I twist instinctively, wrists burning against the straps, but my body won’t obey the way it should. The drugs drag through my veins like sand, weighing down every limb. Panic claws at me, frantic and useless.

Kellerman doesn’t flinch.

His thumb digs into my jaw, tilting my head to the exact angle he wants.

“Hold still,” he whispers. “Let’s not make this messier than it needs to be.”

My vision pulses, edges blurring. The needle dips. Cold fire blooms beneath my skin.

My breath punches out of me in a broken gasp. The straps cut deeper as instinct makes me jerk hard, but his hand holds me steady, thumb pressing cruelly into the hinge of my jaw.

“Good girl,” he croons, as the plunger depresses. “Let it happen.”

The drug hits fast. It surges through my neck, a burn that turns to numbness, then to something thick and heavy that spreads like ink in water. My vision wavers. The ceiling swims. My limbs melt into the gurney.

I try to fight. I try to scream. But nothing works the way it’s meant to.I’m going to die here.

The fog curls around my thoughts, dragging them down, down, down.

Kellerman’s face blurs. The room tilts. My eyelids grow impossibly heavy.

My last thought splinters through the fog - not a scream or a prayer… just a single, desperate truth:I don’t want to die like this.

Then the dark takes me.

56

LUCIAN

Fury hums under my skin like a live wire. I’m a coiled animal, pacing the length of the room on feet that don’t feel like mine, teeth bared. Nadia’s gone. Kellerman - the man she trusted - is gone, too. He left his shift without a word, shoved her into a suitcase like garbage, and drove off into the dark. There’s no other explanation. Nothing else makes sense.

Mason peels off the walls, shoulders set, voice low and flat. “Lucky’s got a kid scraping tolls and cams. If Kellerman hits a booth, we get a vector. We’re not flying blind here.”

“Hours,” I spit. The word tears from me like a blade. “She’s been gone for hours. She’s out there somewhere, and we don’t even know if she’s breathing.”

The words hit the room like a grenade. I stalk the floor, every step a small explosion. “If that bastard so much as breathes in her direction,” I say, and my voice is hoarse, raspy, “there won’t be parts left of him to bury.” I drive my fist into the table. Wood cracks. It tastes like something holy and animal at the same time.

Mason’s hands clamp me before I can move. “Calm down,”he snaps. “You lose your head now, and we won’t be able to find her.” His grip is iron. “We will find her.”

Scar sits at the head of the table like a monument to patience, scotch untouched, eyes the slow burn of coals. His calm is a blade that grates against whatever is left of me. I want him to roar. I want him to tear the city open. He only nods, small and certain.

“We’ll get her back, Jude,” he says. “Then you’ll get your vengeance.”

The promise sears my gut. My breath thins to a wire. “If he touches one hair on her,” I whisper, not a threat but a law I’ll enforce with blood, “I’ll roast him on a spit and invite the whole city to watch.”