Page 97 of Infamous

He’ll kill me with what he’s pumping into my veins - or he’ll leave me hooked on it, hollow and dependent. I don’t know which is worse. I don’t even knowwhy.All I know is that whatever he’s trying to create, I’m the experiment he’s willing to destroy to get there.

“Do you know what I hate most about people like you?” heasks, conversational, as though this is a lecture hall and I’m just another student in the front row. He doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Idealists. Always believing there’s some grand difference between good men and bad. There isn’t. There are only useful men. And useful women.”

His hand comes down on my shoulder, firm, anchoring me in place. The cold kiss of the needle hovers at my throat again.

Tears sting, but I grit my teeth, refusing to give him the sob he’s waiting for. “I’m not afraid of you,” I whisper, though my voice trembles.

His smile cuts razor-thin. “Oh, you should be terrified.”

The needle presses, just enough to break the skin. A sharp fire blooms down my neck. My heart jerks.

I thrash, the straps ripping new burns into my wrists. Blood slicks the leather. The bed creaks under the violence of my panic. “Don’t touch me!”

Kellerman sighs like I’m being dramatic. “Fighting wastes energy you don’t have, Nadia.”

The room tilts, slow at first, then violently. The edges blur and collapse inward until my vision narrows to a tunnel of shifting light. My pulse hammers in my ears - too fast, too hard - every beat a warning, a countdown to something I can’t stop. Heat licks beneath my skin, spreading through my veins until it feels like I’m burning from the inside out.

The air thickens, heavy and wrong. I can’t tell if I’m shivering or sweating. The ceiling ripples, bending like water. My thoughts slide out of reach, slipping through fingers that no longer feel attached to me.

Somewhere beneath the fever, I think I hear a voice - low, familiar, impossibly far away. Lucian.

And just like that, my world unravels.

The shadows move.

I think it’s my mind playing tricks again, my blood-starved brain clawing for hope where there is none. But then - he’s there. Stepping into the light like he owns it. Like he was carved from the very darkness that suffocates this room.

Tall. Broad. Silent.

A mask hides half his face, molded close like a second skin. It’s matte black, smooth, covering everything but his beautiful eyes. Eyes that pin me like a blade through the heart.

For a breathless second, I don’t recognize him. My panic spikes, a scream caught in my throat.

And then he speaks.

“Get away from her.”

The cadence guts me. That low curling around each word like a secret I’d buried years ago. My body knows it before my mind can catch up.

Lucian.

The name detonates inside me, ripping through denial, scattering every fragile defense I’ve built.

“No…” My voice shreds. “No, you -”

Kellerman startles, fury breaking across his features, but I barely see him anymore. The mask. The man. The monster who has haunted my every dream.

“Lucian?” I whisper, and the sound of it cracks me wide open.

He doesn’t answer. Just stands there, staring, his chest rising and falling like every breath costs a piece of him.

The mask shifts under his hand.

He peels it off inch by inch, the silence stretching unbearable. First the jawline - it’s sharper, harder than I remember. Then the mouth - stern, unsmiling, lips pressed like he’s holding back a confession. And finally, the eyes.

God, the eyes.

I know them. I’ve always known them. Dark as midnight, lit withsomething wild and broken, something that’s been caged too long. The years have carved them deeper, colder, but they’re his. They’re his.