Page 23 of King of Lies (Mayhem Manuscripts Season One: 1nf3ction #6)

August

Consciousness came more easily this time. Either my body was adapting to whatever drug he kept introducing into my system, or he’d given me a lower dose. I kept my eyes mostly shut, feigning still being under, while gathering as much information as I could.

I wasn’t in the room with Keaton anymore.

Had I gotten the keys to him? I couldn’t remember.

If I had, had I done it without Oz realizing?

Another unanswered question. I was chained again—this time to a pipe, not a ring in the wall.

I spent some time studying it, gauging how easy it might be to tear free.

Not likely was the answer. Not unless the drug Oz had given me had the side effect of turning me into a superhero.

My shirt and leather jacket were gone, leaving me bare-chested. Nobody enjoyed waking up to missing clothes, and I was no exception. I might whore myself out occasionally, but that was on my terms. The thought of Oz doing anything while I was unconscious made my skin crawl.

I turned my attention to the rest of the room.

It was white, startlingly so, like everything had been bleached to within an inch of its life.

It didn’t smell of bleach, though. It smelled as if something had died in it.

Counters formed a horseshoe, their surfaces cluttered with glass containers and other bric-a-brac.

At the center was a microscope. I might never have seen one, but I’d seen pictures.

Oz hunched behind it, absorbed in his work—which suited me just fine.

A metal slab sat in the middle of the room with an arm dangling from it, the hand blunt-fingered and male.

At least I’d found the source of the smell.

Something had died in here, and someone had either already completed an autopsy or was still working on it, based on the open chest cavity.

The sight churned my stomach. Would that be me once Oz finished with me? I wouldn’t bet against it.

The floor told its own story, the dark stains beneath the table evidence that the corpse on it wasn’t a one-off. How long had Oz been doing this? Whatever this was. I hadn’t pieced it all together yet. But I could feel the wrongness of it.

A large dog cage was in the far corner of the lab. Eyes stared back at me from behind the bars. Human eyes. Oz’s father. Jesus Christ! I hadn’t had the easiest relationship with my father, but I couldn’t imagine keeping him in a dog cage, no matter what his infection status.

My sharp intake of breath had been a mistake, Oz’s head snapping up.

“Hi,” he said brightly, like we were old friends.

He hopped down from his stool and strode toward me.

If the wall hadn’t been at my back, I might have scooted backwards.

There was such a thing as being too pleased to see someone, and Oz had it in spades.

“What happened to my shirt?” I asked, unable to let it go, even if it pissed him off.

“Oh!” He blinked, then grinned. “Would you believe me if I said it fell off?”

“No. I wouldn’t.”

He gave a sheepish shrug. “You can’t blame a boy for taking an opportunity when it comes along.”

“An opportunity?” My voice was ice, and I couldn’t find it within myself to temper my reaction.

Consent mattered. Choice mattered. And as twisted as it might be, getting something out of it mattered as well.

So unless Oz intended to let me go in exchange for whatever it was he’d done to me, he could forget it.

“I kept it above the waist.”

“Oh, well, that’s alright, then.”

“Exactly.” He smiled too wide as he skipped closer. “We’re friends, right? Friends do each other favors.”

“We’re not friends. Friends don’t chain each other up.

” Not unless you were Keaton and me. But that was gone now, buried beneath the lies I’d kept telling.

I just hoped he understood that my apology had been in what I’d done for him.

If he made it to Dover, I hoped he’d look back one day and appreciate the small part I’d played in him getting his revenge.

“I put you by the photos,” Oz said. “So you’d have something interesting to look at.”

Photos? I turned my head and froze. I’d been so busy examining the rest of the room that I’d missed what was right next to me.

The wall was plastered with photographs—not landscapes, not family portraits, but blood and bone, internal organs on the outside that should have been inside, horrors framed in glossy prints.

My stomach clenched. I’d seen some things while I was on the road, even done some things, but I’d seen nothing quite like this.

Oz tapped a photo. “This was Robert. I don’t use numbers. I like to use names, Tobias.” I was glad I hadn’t given him my real name. “Names are more personal. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I forced out, my throat sandpaper.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. The boy in it looked no older than twenty.

He had the expression of a man who’d long since come to terms with his fate.

Which was understandable given the rest of the photo.

He was bare-chested with a crude snake tattoo curling over one pec.

It cut off suddenly at a series of messy stitches, where another limb had been grafted on.

“One of my first experiments,” Oz said proudly. “I replaced his arm with that of someone who’d turned.”

I swallowed the instinctive why?—afraid of the answer. “What happened to him?” A pointless question. He was half-dead in the photo. I doubted he’d lasted more than a day or two after it had been taken.

“I thought he’d turn,” Oz said. “But the results were inconclusive because he died before that happened.” He shrugged.

“I didn’t let it deter me. Science requires perseverance.

Great discoveries are born of failure.” He pointed at another photo.

“This was Benjamin.” He frowned. “Or maybe it was Nathan. Same procedure. He lasted a week. Then he turned.”

The man in this photo was older, his hair graying at the temples. Just like Robert, he’d mentally checked out. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

“What did you learn from it?” I asked.

Oz blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You said yourself that science is about discovery, that great things come through perseverance. But if you’re not learning, you’re just…” Butchering people. Playing God.

“That’s confidential.”

“Right.”

Oz didn’t like that, his expression clouding.

I decided I didn’t want to see what remained after he shucked off his sunny facade like a snakeskin.

Someone who could remove someone’s limbs like it was nothing was damn scary.

Remember who you are, August. You’re the person who knows how to appeal to someone’s ego.

“I wouldn’t understand it,” I said quickly. “I’m not a scientist like you. It’s all so complicated.”

Oz brightened again. “It is. I’d have to use lots of big words.”

Like murder and psychopath. I held my tongue.

“Anyhoo,” he said, skipping to the next photo. “This is Clive. I injected infected blood straight into his brain. It was one of my most interesting clinical trials…”

I tuned him out, refusing to look at the next photograph and burn more faces into my memory. Robert and Benjamin were enough. How long had they been here before he’d gone all Frankenstein on their asses? I hoped not long.

A snarl came from the opposite side of the lab, Oz’s dad growing restless. Oz turned with a frown. “Shush, Dad. I already fed you. I’m talking to Tobias. He’s interested in our work.”

I jerked my chin toward the photos. “Is this what’s going to happen to me? Are you going to chop off a part of me and substitute it for something else?” It was on the tip of my tongue to make a jibe about ending up with the cock of someone who’d turned, but I didn’t want to put ideas in his head.

“No!” Oz looked taken aback by the suggestion. “You’re different. You’re immune. You’re like a… a golden egg.” He grinned, pleased with his metaphor. “The things we’re going to do with your blood.”

“And this?” I rattled the chain around the pipe. “Is this my life now? Sleep here, piss here, shit here?”

Oz chewing on his lip said I’d created a logistical problem that hadn’t occurred to him.

“I tell you what,” I said, softening my tone.

“I’d love nothing more than to be instrumental in creating a cure.

It would be an honor.” Yeah, right? What did a man like me know of honor?

“We could be partners. You do all the science stuff and I provide the magic blood, and maybe I could…” I thought fast, trying to come up with something that might be of use in a lab.

“I could take notes for you or something. Dictate your findings, and record them for posterity.”

“You can write?”

He said it as if I’d confessed to levitation. “Yeah… So can you. You wrote on the clipboard.”

Bright spots of color appeared on his pale cheeks. “It looks official, doesn’t it? I like to look the part. I have an excellent memory, though,” he said defensively. “I could tell you everything you said.”

“So, notes?” I suggested again.

He shook his head in awe. “Immune and literate. You truly are blessed.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I muttered, unable to keep the note of cynicism out of my voice. “So what do you say?”

He stared at me, his pale blue eyes slightly narrowed in contemplation. “This partnership… I assume it means letting you roam free? No chains. No tranquilizers. Like a… house share?”

“Well, yeah. We’d be friends.” I offered him my most charming smile. “United in our goal to rid the world of the blight that’s plagued it for over seventy years. And as the first person cured, your father would be famous. You’d be rolling in money, able to live wherever you wanted to.”

“I like it here,” Oz said defensively. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

“Then you can stay,” I added quickly, sensing him slipping away. “Money just gives you choices. This could be your base, and then you could have a holiday home somewhere nice.”

“Where?”