Page 25 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

I was starting to overheat. I should have turned on the A/C, but there was no time now.

Any second, Resi was going to figure out I was here.

Fuck, what was I thinking, standing here lost in memories like some sentimental idiot?

This kind of research took years , normally.

And here I was, trying to do it in one night, on zero sleep, and in fear that any second some thug could burst in, grab me from behind, and slit my throat with piano wire.

Well. No less pressure than on a typical day with the professor, then.

A noise behind me came like a whip cracking against metal. I scrabbled for the gun like a paranoid madman, my slick palms fumbling with the safety.

But when I saw who had entered, I dropped the weapon and turned my back, fingertips digging violently into the metal countertop.

The petite girl in the doorway looked taller and older, somehow, in a black tank and jeans, boots clacking on the tile. Ebony hair pulled back slickly. Meticulously. Like the cold, calculating creature she was.

Lemaya said nothing. Maybe she’d just come to watch me fail.

“I—”

“Let me guess,” I cut her off, the anger in my voice rising over the hum of lab equipment. “You’re sorry.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I know there’s no excuse for what I did.”

Actually, there kind of was. Not that it helped.

“I know,” she offered. “Go fuck myself.”

“Please do.”

“Deserved. Anyway, you’ll never have to see me again, if that’s any consolation. I’m leaving. Forever. Right now.”

“Where?” I turned my head slightly, unwilling to reveal any curiosity.

“As far away from here as I can get.”

“But—”

“My owner’s dead, and no one else knew he had me. It won’t be easy, but if I lie low, I’ll be fine.”

It would be half a life, at best, a pale shadow of what she’d been promised. But it would also be away from Resi, so it might be okay. And it was no consolation at all.

“What are you here for, anyway?” I growled. “A hug goodbye?” I’d rather hug a king cobra.

“No,” she said, squinting at me curiously. “You wore that shirt to dinner?”

With a groan, I remembered Felix’s contempt toward my wardrobe. “ You told me to buy it! And not the point.”

“Sorry. Anyway, I’m here because of Maeve.”

“Maeve?”

“She really was my friend.”

“Oh,” I said. “So then it makes total sense that you betrayed her and us because you wanted to marry a millionaire.”

“Okay, yes. I did want that,” she blurted out.

She was sounding younger by the minute. “But I loved Max, or at least, I thought I did. And Resi said he loved me, he just wouldn’t admit it, and that if I gave her more time, she could make him admit it.

And that’s why I went along with her, at first. But once I realized she was lying about everything, it was too late. ”

“Too late? How?”

“Either I did what she told me to do, or she’d kill me.”

I supposed I should have gathered that.

“Anyway, I wasn’t lying about Maeve. I-I don’t lie about everything.

” There was desperation in her voice. To be believed.

To be trusted. To be looked at as more than a con artist, as more than what the world had made her be.

Something I inherently sympathized with, despite everything.

“She was my best friend. My only friend, probably. And if there’s one thing I regret about what happened, it’s that I’ll never see her again. ”

“So what?” I said stubbornly. “You want me to take the message?”

“No, I want you to take this.”

I turned completely, and she approached with a computer printout with a jumble of letters and numbers.

I scanned it rapidly. “But this is—” I snatched it out of her hand. “The formula was wrong.” I raced to the computer, rapidly punching buttons until the molecule burst onto the holographic screen, staring at them in disbelief.

Now my solution worked, of course. Cue the professor’s nod. “How did you know about this?”

“Because I’m the one who left you the formula to begin with.”

“What?”

“Well, after Resi found out Corey wouldn’t be coming back, she ordered me to go comb through his office and take back anything he left that looked like it might be important.

And I found the tablet. And I almost took it, but I decided to leave it there.

For you. I-I mean, Max told me you were good at that kind of thing. ”

“Well, shit,” I said, jaw hanging open. “Thanks for almost getting me and Louisa killed before I could do anything with it.”

She grimaced, then asked in a tiny voice, “Water under the bridge?”

I groaned and ran my hands through my limp hair. “We still need to synthesize a catalyst. To make the serum.”

“Good thing we’re in a chemistry lab, then.”

“I’ll need your help,” I said, returning to the cabinets and removing more compounds. “What do you know about electrolysis?”

“Surprisingly? A lot.”

I turned back, raising my eyebrows.

“I worked here for like a year, you know. Ammonium persulfate, right?”

I smiled. “You’re almost forgiven.”

I carefully measured out the ammonium sulfate solution and added the freezing-cold liquid to the beaker.

Lemaya prepared the grainy precipitates and handed them over so we could immerse them in the solution.

As I combined them over the burner, the mixture began to bubble and hiss, the heat of the reaction spreading through the beaker.

A thick, gooey slurry formed, coated in a yellow hue whose smoke stained my fingers as I tried to stir it with a glass rod.

As the reaction continued, the air grew thicker and heavier, pressing down on my chest and throat, making it more and more difficult to choke out words.

Of course, under normal circumstances, we would have been using goggles, masks, maybe even full-on protective suits. These were not normal circumstances.

I tried to breathe through it, I kept working, but it was no use. Each inhale felt like trying to pull air through a faulty oxygen mask. Next to me, I noticed with alarm, Lemaya’s face was already turning purple. She gasped, her chest heaving as she tried to breathe.

“How do we ventilate this place?” I demanded. My own lungs felt weighted with lead, a slow, wheezing asphyxiation.

She rushed to a control panel, slamming one random button after another. “I-I don’t know. There are supposed to be fans. Why aren’t they working?”

“I don’t know. I might have disabled that somehow when I disabled the codes.”

She punched the wall in frustration, then turned. “Turn off the heat.” She gasped. “It’s the only?—”

“No,” I bit back, dashing to the window and throwing two of them open, knowing I’d regret it, but that I’d regret stopping the reaction that much more.

With a final burst, the reaction was complete. I switched off the heat with relief as the fumes dispersed on the slight breeze, watching as the mixture settled into a cool, opaque texture and a calm, clear golden hue.

Lemaya and I looked at each other. For a few seconds, our grateful breaths were the only sounds. The gratitude soon morphed into dread. The dread I’d been trying to shake off since I’d arrived in the lab.

Because the serum needed to be tested. And there were only two possible guinea pigs. But really, there was only one. And I’d known that from the second I’d jumped off that helicopter.

It was why, when describing the plan to Max, I hadn’t mentioned myself.

“You said I was almost forgiven,” Lemaya was saying, God bless her, steeling her delicate mouth into a line. “Well, I want to be completely forgiven.”

I shook my head. “Not this way.” I’d been angry at her. I may have thought I hated her. But still, she was a slave, overwhelmed, like me, by a slave’s desperate dreams and impossible choices, and nothing she’d done came close to warranting death.

As for me? Well, I’d done a lot wrong—recently, and just altogether. I didn’t know about deserve . But the point was that nobody knew better than me how to take pain. And the worst pain was worse than death. If I had to choose between the two, logic told me to choose death.

Hell of a choice to make, but that was my life.

Robotically, I went to the computer. It only took a second to print out the formula.

I went to a drawer and removed a neodymium magnet, a matte metal disc shaped like a roll of tape, and handed it to Lemaya.

Then I walked purposefully over to the fire extinguisher and opened the glass case.

I gripped the metal handle tightly, and with a quick twist, removed the silvery canister with its long nozzle and valve.

“Stand back.” With one thrust, over the screaming of my aching shoulder muscles, I heaved the extinguisher at the computer and its holographic display, shattering it into a million luminescent smithereens.

“Just to be safe,” I explained. “Here.” I reached for the suit jacket I’d draped over a chair and dug into the silken inner pocket for what I’d carefully stashed there before meeting Max up on the helipad.

First, the cash I’d removed from my safe: three weeks’ pay plus a “signing bonus,” as Max had phrased it. Lemaya’s eyes widened at the sight of the bills as I counted some out into a separate pile.

“This is yours,” I said, glancing up. “For your new life.”

“I can’t?—”

“Yes, you can.” I left her share on the table and shoved the rest in a flimsy manila envelope.

I added one of three flash drives I’d hidden, containing the files from Corey’s tablet.

And on top of that, the printout of the complete formula.

“I won’t need these, either,” I said after a pause, slipping off my gold watch and rings and handing her those, too.

Then I paused, staring down at the envelope. Lemaya silently handed me some blank paper and a pen.

“Thanks.”