Page 20 of King of Lies (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #6)

August

Every muscle in my body locked tight when the door opened again, as I waited for the shit to hit the fan.

But it was just the food Oz had promised earlier.

He stayed the perfect distance away as he deposited a bowl of soup in front of us.

His previous experience obviously informed the carefully calculated gap, which made me wonder how many other people he had kept here, and what had happened to them.

“Vegetable,” he said, with that same smile I was already growing sick of.

And the reason I was growing sick of it was that, as one conman to another, I recognized the phoniness of it.

“I have a little greenhouse where I grow vegetables. It’s the perfect place because it gets the afternoon sun.

I’ve got potatoes, leeks, carrots, and cauliflower.

I even got some asparagus to grow. It wouldn’t win any prizes for its beauty, but it tastes good.

My mother started growing things there, and I’ve carried it on as a tribute to her.

Well, that and it’s always good to eat healthily. ”

“What happened to your mother?” Keaton asked.

I knew what Keaton was doing. He was trying to find some common ground with Oz. He hadn’t yet realized he was beyond reasoning with. Anyone who went to the extremes of riddling the surrounding area with booby traps wasn’t suddenly going to say whoops, my mistake, and let us go.

“My father got out one day, and he ate her.” Oz let out another of those little giggles. Given the statement that had prompted it, it turned my stomach. “Which is kind of sweet when you think about it.”

“How so?” I asked, surprised by how conversational I made it sound when what I really wanted was to tell him what a sick fuck he was.

“She’ll always be a part of him. It’s romantic.”

Keaton didn’t look like he found it romantic. He looked like he wanted to bash Oz’s brains in with his bare hands.

Oz backed away. “Enjoy.” The door closed, and footsteps disappeared down the corridor.

“It just gets better and better,” Keaton said.

“Yeah…” Oz’d left a chipped mug full of water by the soup. I picked it up and sniffed it.

Keaton laughed. “I don’t think he’d bother drugging anything else when he’s got syringes at his disposal.

” He maneuvered the bowl of soup onto his lap.

Despite his words, there was a noticeable hesitation between his dipping his spoon into the liquid and bringing it to his lips and tasting it.

When he did, his eyebrows shot up. “It’s good!

” He ate a few more spoonfuls. “We should probably keep our strength up. We’re not going to be ready to escape if we’re as weak as kittens. ”

“I’m waiting to see if you drop dead first.” All I got for that was a toothy grin, Keaton too busy eating to comment.

Eventually, I gave in, eating all the soup—which was good—and drinking all the water.

“We need to spend less time tied up,” I observed once our bowls were empty. “It’s getting ridiculous.”

Keaton snorted. “True. First you. Then me. Now, both of us.”

I kept thinking I could hear footsteps, my gaze lifting to the door, only for it not to open.

The sensible thing would be to tell Keaton the truth before it came out any other way.

But I was hanging on to the hope that Oz’s credentials as a scientist were as phony as the rest of him.

Being honest would create bad blood between us.

We needed to be united against Oz, not locked in the inevitable battle the truth would create.

The pipe dream of Oz having zero abilities as a scientist lasted until mid-afternoon, Keaton and I having filled the time by discussing things so mundane it was a miracle we’d remained awake. Mid-afternoon was when Oz burst through the door.

“You!” he said, immediately rounding on me, his hair even frizzier, like he’d been running his hands through it non-stop since the last time we’d seen him.

“I should be angry with you, but I’m too damn happy to be angry.

You are going to be so useful. I’ve been waiting for a man like you.

I’m not a religious man, but if I were, I might have prayed for your arrival. Dad’s over the moon, too.”

“What’s he talking about?” Keaton asked.

Oz answered for me. “Tobias has been telling a few porkies. Haven’t you, Tobias? He’s immune!”

I watched Keaton’s face, his expression passing through confusion, realization, and then settling on annoyance.

I expected that annoyance to grow, to become fully fledged anger by the time Oz worked his excitement out of his system.

“Do you know how many people I’ve caught in my traps?

” he asked, aiming the question my way, as if Keaton had ceased to exist.

I shook my head.

“One hundred and three.”

“That’s a lot of people.”

“And do you know how many of those people were immune?”

I shook my head again.

“A big, fat zero.” Oz started pacing within the confines of the small room.

Maybe he’d get so carried away, he’d come close enough that Keaton or I could strike.

Maybe this revelation could be a good thing.

So far though, he’d been careful to maintain the gap.

There were keys in his lab coat pocket; I could see the outline. To the door? To the chains?

“So imagine my surprise,” Oz said, gesticulating with his hands as he talked, “when I added the virus to a drop of your blood and examined it under the microscope. What do you think happened to your blood cells?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice flat. “I already told you I’m not much of a science person.”

Oz shot me a disappointed look. “You could at least have a guess.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing,” he said, accompanying the announcement with an excited little hop more befitting a toddler.

“It was beautiful. Two separate entities existing in the same space but unable to mix. Not that the virus didn’t try.

It was everywhere, looking for a weakness.

I almost felt sorry for it, but try as it might, it just couldn’t get in.

And then along came your T cells and your antibodies and boom!

They ate that virus all up until there was nothing left of it.

” He came to a sudden stop, smiling as he placed his hands on his hips. “You’re going to cure my father.”

I doubted it. Immunes might be rare, but they existed. Scientists had been working on a cure for years with no success. The likelihood of one scrawny red-headed boy, who relied on kidnap to get his test subjects, achieving what they couldn’t didn’t seem likely.

“We’ll get started right away,” Oz said, his eyes gleaming. “I have so much to do, so many things to prepare.”

I wanted to ask what they were, while simultaneously fearing the answer. Perhaps it was best not to know. Ignorance is bliss, and all that jazz.

If I were that valuable, I assumed he’d want to keep me alive. But maybe that was worse. None of my dreams for the future had ever involved being locked up for twenty-four hours a day like some sort of lab rat.

Oz bounced out as quickly as he’d arrived to leave silence. There was no relief in that silence. Only unanswered questions that grew more spiky the longer it went on. To avoid having to look at Keaton, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall.

One minute. Two.

Maybe Keaton simply wouldn’t talk to me ever again.

Which shouldn’t matter. We were, after all, nothing to each other.

He was just another mark. One who’d gone out of his way to offer himself up as a victim by first breaking into my room, and then demanding more of me.

But somewhere along the way, between spending the night trussed up like a turkey because he’d gotten the better of me, crashing the motorbike, weathering the red rainstorm and all the problems that had brought with it, and then sharing some truths in this room, Keaton had become more.

“You’re not even going to explain yourself.”

Sometimes in winter, the temperature dropped so low that the red rain dripping from the roofs of houses turned into icicles.

Pink icicles. Like a deadly, virus-ridden reminder of how even Mother Nature had turned against people.

She’d had a lot of help from some reckless scientists who’d clearly not done their due diligence with safety procedures. But still…

That’s what Keaton’s voice reminded me of. Pink icicles. Cold and deadly.

“What do you want me to say?” I opened my eyes, his expression as hostile as I’d expected.

“Something… Anything.”

“What do you want me to explain?” I sounded tired. I was tired. And not just because sleep had been extremely scarce since the start of this journey.

“How about you start with how you can be immune when I saw you step out into the rain. I saw how it affected you. And I saw how the suppressant stopped those effects.”

“You saw what you wanted to see. Everyone did.”

“You were acting?” Beneath the anger was a note of disbelief, like Keaton still expected me to claim that Oz had been mistaken.

“I’m a conman,” I said. “It’s what I do.” If I ever said those words, I normally brandished them like armor. They didn’t feel like armor today. They felt like an apology.

“And the suppressants?”

“There’s no such thing. They were ancient injectors I stumbled across and filled with water.”

Keaton’s nostrils flared. “You really are the king of lies, aren’t you?”

The title stung. But only because it was true. “I’m sorry.”

“Were you going to tell me? Or were you just going to hand them over, and if I turned, I turned?”

“I have a stash of them,” I admitted. “But they’re north. We’re not even going the right way. You wanted to go south, so we went south. I planned to steal your ring and ditch you after that first night, but you already know that part of it.”

“You’re a piece of shit.”

“I am. I lie. I steal. I do bad things.”

“All those people,” Keaton said, with a shake of his head. “The ones you sold to. How many of them are going to think they can go out in the rain? What if just one of them turns when they do, and they take down other people? Their deaths will be on you.”

I searched for guilt, just as I’d done so many times before, and this time I found it. Keaton pointing it out made it different from all the other times. It felt like something cold and slimy slithering around in my gut. Not a pleasant feeling at all. “I…” There was nothing I could say, though.

Keaton lifted the chain and jangled it. “If I weren’t attached to this damn thing, I’d come over there and punch you in the face.”

“Lucky for me then that you are.” As an attempt at humor, it fell flat.

I tried for sincerity instead, which wasn’t something that came naturally to me.

“You can get to Dover without suppressants. I have safe houses dotted all over up to a certain point. There’s a map on the bike that shows the location.

Find the bike, and you’ll find the map. Oz said he brought it here. ”

A muscle ticked in Keaton’s cheek. “You’re talking as if I’m going to be able to escape from here. Neither of us is going anywhere. We’re chained to a damn wall in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah…”

We lapsed back into silence after that. And over time, while they might not have gone away altogether, the waves of anger coming off Keaton diminished. More like waves lapping on a beach than those whipped up by a storm.

I waited another couple of minutes to be on the safe side. “I really am sorry.”

“Are you?” Keaton’s stare was searching.

“Surprisingly, yes, I am.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Surprisingly?”

“I’m not big on thinking of others.”

“Yeah, I get that about you.” He crossed his arms. “Why do it?”

“Why do what?”

“Con people.”

“Because I can.” The answer slipped out all too easily. So easily I grimaced. “Even as a child, I found it easy to make people do what I wanted.” I let out a noisy breath. “Even in this world, smiles are a powerful currency.”

“And you’ve perfected yours.”

“I have,” I admitted. I waved a hand at my face. “This helps.”

Keaton’s stare was hard this time, his eyes narrowed. “You’re not all that.”

“You didn’t seem to mind when I had my hand wrapped around your cock.”

“Oh, please. You know how the rain…” He stopped and then laughed.

“That’s right. You don’t know. You acted it.

” He leaned forward slightly. “Well, I hate to burst that bubble of arrogance you’ve worked so hard on, but I would have let a chimpanzee give me a hand job.

I probably would have fucked one as well. ”

There was no keeping a straight face at that. He might have meant it as an insult, but it had missed its mark. “I think that says more about you than it does about me.”

Keaton rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

“You―” Footsteps sounded in the corridor again. I changed tack quickly. “Remember what I said earlier.”

“Which part? You say a lot… most of it lies.”

“The part about getting away if the opportunity arises.”

“Like that’s going to happen.”

“Well, if it does, don’t look back. Go to Dover.

Kill the bastard who took your sister and then live a good life.

It might not feel like it right now, but there is life after the army, and once you’ve had your vengeance, you’ll see that.

Find a nice man and settle down. Have some kids.

” I was running out of time, so I spoke faster.

“Stay out of the rain. Don’t turn. Live to a ripe old age. And remember…”

“Remember what?”

The door was already opening, Oz’s grinning face appearing in the gap, like he’d decided now was a good time for a game of peek-a-boo.