Page 55

ADRIAN

T wo steps into the hall and the stench of urine smacked me in the face, hard enough to have me stumbling back. I was more than used to the odor of rotting flesh and human meat patties. But this was something else. Sharp and musty in a way that had my nostrils watering and my eyes tearing up.

I looked over at the kid in the chair, his hospital gown ballooning slightly at the hem each time the AC kicked on, and he grinned back at me.

Didn’t know where he was taking us. Just that it required us using an elevator before we were navigating what appeared to be the lowest level at Briarwood. A basement.

It was more than that though. It was its own separate ward. More zoo than hospital.

“There ain’t much you can do about most of ?em.

” The kid shrugged, as he continued to guide me around various cages, arms stretching towards us and fingers clawing at the metal bars.

“But I think my friend over there has real… potential. Might be able to help you do whatever it is you’re trying to do here. ”

I eyed the man in the far corner, hunched over in a ball and talking to himself as he rocked back and forth.

So forcefully he was shaking the floor beneath him too.

His mannerisms infantile while the rest of him…

wasn’t . The fucker was nearly seven-feet tall—my best guess going off what I could see of him—the muscles in his arms larger than his head and his shirt so tight it was ready to bust off his torso.

But it was all the chains that caught my eye.

Wrapping around him like a snake and keeping him from getting farther than a few steps from the concrete wall.

“Don-Don misses the voices.” The blonde kid leaned over in his seat to whisper in my direction. “They haven’t been back since they cut into his brain.”

“Don-Don?” I lifted a questioning brow without taking my glare off the man in front of us.

“Yep, Donnie . Don’t know his real name. None of us do. But figured it was fitting for a schizo who prefers imaginary voices over real people.”

I nodded, and not because I understood the reference but because I understood the significance of carving out your own identity. What you called yourself, what other people called you , was all you had when they stripped everything else away.

I was a Prescott by birth. But I was Adrian Lambert by choice. A last name I’d picked out of an astrology book as a kid after I was told I needed one for the old man to register me in school. Something he never considered until the fucker realized I’d taught myself to read.

I might have not had any respect for my father. But at least he was smart enough to pick up on the fact Tate would never be anything more than a breeder. A cum deposit filled to the brim with useless DNA. But me? The old man could use me. Shape me. Mold me into something worth investing in.

Point was, if the kid wanted to be named after a cartoon ghost , it wasn’t on me to tell him it was a dumb idea. Guess it made more sense than a five-year-old idolizing some French mathematician.

“How long’s he been down here?” I turned back to Casper, my voice raised enough to carry over the continued clanking of metal and constant wailing.

“As long as I’ve been here. Probably longer.”

I flicked my eyes towards Donnie again. “And what do you expect me to do with him?”

Another smirk, followed by another lift of a shoulder. “Fix him. Or don’t. I don’t really care. But at the very least you should use ?em.”

“For what?”

“To scratch your balls, dumbass.” Casper shook his head. “To take over. Think it’s time for new management. And something tells me you’re the guy to do it, Doc.”

I threw my head back on a laugh. It was all I could do, seeing as the kid wasn’t just antisocial.

He was delusional too. “First of all, why the fuck would I want to take over…” I gestured around the room.

“…this place? Second, even if I want ed to, how is that guy…” I threw a thumb towards the giant-sized ball of fluff one quick blow away from crying out to his mommy. “…supposed to help me do it?”

Casper’s lips unfurled like a spool of yarn accidentally tossed down the stairs.

The transformation just as quick too. Until I was staring at nothing.

Not a smile. Not a frown. The type of blankness you see on a corpse before you cut into it to look at what’s inside.

And then he twisted his neck to the left, calling out, “Hey, Don-Don, that pretty nurse you like is back!”

He’d barely gotten the words out when the pile of muscle and limbs rose from the dead and started yanking against the chains, bending metal and causing the ceiling above to start to cave in.

Splintered wood twirling through the air as the rafters creaked and cracked with the force of Donnie’s blows.

I should have been running in the opposite direction or at the very least calling up for help. Instead, I was transfixed. Riveted. And so very fucked the moment the man in front of us broke free of the chains around his hands and ankles. While the kid beside me appeared more amused than fazed.

“Don-Don fucks like a rabbit in heat. Problem is… he’s much larger than any rabbit I’ve ever seen,” Casper mused. “The last girl he got his paws on ain’t doing so good. But that shit sure is a great incentive in the right hands…”

“I bet it is,” I agreed on a hum, glancing to my right when I felt a quick tug on my lab coat, which was now scrunched up in a palm five times the size any human palm should be.

One closed-fist punch to the face, and Donnie wouldn’t be the only one suffering from brain damage.

This guy could literally bend my body in half and not break out in a sweat.

But for some reason, he seemed to trust me.

Or maybe just trust that I was his key to getting some pussy.

“So, Doc, are yours the right hands?” Casper asked.

I didn’t reply, all the possibilities bouncing around in my head, as part of me was settling on the reality that this kid might really be on to something.

Maybe Briarwood was what I needed. A way for me to make a name for myself, without the story of how I came to be following me around like the ghost of a woman whose legacy ended shortly after she opened her legs for the last time.