Page 49

“I was more than that!” He leapt to his feet, anger making his strange features all the more frightening.

“He chose me out of hundreds at that orphanage to be his weapon against the GUP. He took me in, gave me a home and food, lessons. He made me into something when I was nothing. I bled for him, his dreams became mine. And then he tossed me away!”

He lunged at me on the last word and I couldn’t even move out of the way. Cypher’s hands were on either side of me pressed to the back of the couch, his face so close that his breath was making my eyes water.

“Do you know why, huh? Wanna take a guess?”

“Because of me,” I whispered.

“That’s right! I was one of his first students, his greatest creation.

I did everything he ever told me to do, no matter what it cost me.

We were going to reshape the universe together, make it fair, and then he threw it all away because you came to live with him.

I tried to get rid of you, tried to make him see that you were nothing, but he’d lied to me.

Told me you were someplace you weren’t…” His gaze became distant, seeing something else entirely.

“He told me that I needed help, that I had gone too far. But I was just trying to save him from himself! He told me that attachments were dangerous, that they diluted our purpose and talents. I killed people I loved to expunge them from my life, to be the weapon he needed me to be. And then,” he growled, focusing on me again, “he became a hypocrite!”

“So that’s why you killed my team. Why you killed him. And why you’re going to kill me.”

He snorted and sat back.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Your team was getting too close to finding Norris, and I needed to find him first. Your uncle had it coming. And as far as using you to deliver the virus? Well, I call that poetic.”

I frowned at him in confusion.

“You thought what?” he asked. “That I lured you here? I had no idea where you were, I was sated when I sliced the commander open and left him for the carrions. I didn’t need to hurt you any further.”

“But the drive, the way you dogged my every fucking step.”

“Well,” he shrugged, “tormenting you is a different story. Did I take pleasure in sabotaging some of your missions and depriving you of your team? Yes, of course I did. And I was after that drive. For a long time that K’Tavi traitor was the only one who knew where Norris was hiding.

But I got a lucky tip, and I didn’t need it.

So you see, you found me because your need for vengeance outweighed everything the commander taught you, every opportunity to just walk away and get on with your life.

You’re like me in more ways than I knew. ”

“I’m nothing like you!”

“But, unlike me,” he continued without acknowledging my words, “it will cost you everything and you won’t even get what you were after.”

He shook his head and stood up, towering over me.

“Pathetic really,” he continued. “And you’re the one he tossed me aside for.”

“I’m pathetic? You sell yourself to the highest bidder while sulking about what some father figure didn’t give you.”

“It’s not about the money! I still believe in the mission the commander once had.

The GUP is corrupt at its core, it needs to be destroyed and rebuilt into something better.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted. The K’Tavi are the perfect weapon to dismantle the GUP.

King Sylthor wants Norris to make him more of that virus, but to get him back to the K’Tavi, I had to play Lady Seraph’s game.

She pays well, and what the fuck do I care about this syndicate?

She gets her power, I get the means to destroy the heart of corruption in the galaxy. Your death is a bonus.”

The intricate web that Cypher had been spinning around the GUP this entire time was stunning in its singular focus.

I saw the connection between the attacks, the way in which he’d sabotaged projects on one hand and stoked the fires of distrust on the other.

They had seemed random at the time, until later, when the fruits of his efforts began to show.

I had assumed it was mere coincidence, and I was ashamed by that.

I knew better, but thinking that it had been personal had blinded me from seeing the full picture. Now, it might be too late.

I watched in horrified fascination as he typed a command on the same tablet Lady Seraph had held before pressing a chip to his right temple.

He flinched a little as it dug into his skin and likely connected to a part of his brain.

Then he slid a headset on, a small arm on the headband attaching to the chip.

“I prefer voice commands. There’s something so much more…visceral about it. Come on,” he said. “It’s time to run the test.”

I stood and followed him out of the suite, a chill running down my spine at the glee on his face.

It was incredibly disorienting to not have control of my body, to feel it moving outside of my will.

I kept trying to find a way to get back control of my systems, even just a small one might give me the chance to eventually override what they’d done to me.

But the AI wouldn’t respond to my internal commands, and I was helpless as he brought me into the darkened ballroom. There was only one reason to bring me here, and it lay on the other side of that protrusion at the back of the room.

“No…No I won’t…”

I was sweating from the effort of trying to get control of my feet, a headache starting to bloom behind my eyes.

“No…I’m not…” I gasped, trying to move my hands, my fingers, anything.

“Yes, you are. Stop fighting.”

A shock went through me and I stumbled but kept moving forward. When we walked through the pop out door and into the small room of cells I was desperate to try and stop this. I knew what he was going to have me do, and I would be a passenger in my body, watching as I shattered my entire world.

“Wake up,” he cooed with a grin, expelling a gas into the cell.

In a few seconds, Zelena and Sherrod stirred. It took Sherrod a bit for his eyes to focus, but when they did, he sprang up and pounded on the glass of the cell.

“Let her go! She’s got nothing to do with this, take me!”

“Too late,” Cypher hissed, “she’s already primed for the mission. Whereas you two are simply extraneous filth.”

“Leave them alone,” I begged, “I’ll do whatever you want, just let them go.”

“Yes, you will do whatever we want, whether I let them go or not.”

He placed a long, vicious looking knife in my hand and then popped the lock on the cell.

“Don’t do this, please!” Tears fell in hot drops down my face. “You don’t need to do this. You’ve got control of me!”

“I do, and I didn’t realize until this moment how much I want to see you break. I want to see his favorite pupil utterly defeated before she turns into a mass murderer. You’re his legacy,” he sneered at me, “and I’m going to destroy it. Go into the cell.”

Every muscle inside of me tensed and my steps became stiff, resistant. I thought that maybe I could beat this if I just pushed a little bit more.

“I was hoping you’d fight it. Punish.”

The electric charge this time was extreme, causing me to shake and scream from the pain.

Sherrod lunged out of the cell but his body was still groggy from the sedative. He made it one step before Cypher punched him in the stomach and shoved him back.

“Leave him alone!” I demanded

“Shh, don’t worry.” He ran a hand down my head like he was soothing an animal and bile rose in my throat. “I’m not going to hurt him. You are.”

“Don’t…”

I knew there was nothing I could say, no humiliation that would be enough to dissuade him, but I had to try nonetheless.

“I’ll do anything…give you anything. I’ll…I’ll stay with you, be your puppet forever if you just let them live.”

“No…Zephyr, don’t do this,” Sherrod groaned, struggling to stand. “Don’t give him anything.”

“Please,” I ignored Sherrod, even as my insides were ground to dust as I spoke. “I’ll be…I’ll be yours in every way you want. Just let them both go.”

There was a moment when it looked as if Cypher was considering my offer and I thought that maybe I had saved Zelena and Sherrod. But he’d let hope start to bloom inside of me, only to crush it with a cruel laugh.

“You think you can tempt me? I have no desire for you other than to see you in agony. Now,” he gave me a little kiss at my temple that I couldn’t flinch from, “Zephyr, be a good girl and kill Sherrod for me.”

My body moved fluidly now, obeying because I had no strength left to fight after that shock. Zelena was still sitting in a corner, head lolling to the side.

“Please, run,” I sobbed. “I can’t…control it.”

“I know,” he said with that smile that had made me so angry a few weeks back, but that I now loved. “It’s okay, it’s all going to be okay.”

I was within reach now, the knife raised.

“Sherrod…please!”

“I love you.”

“Fight me at least! Knock me out!”

“It’s okay…it’s going to be okay,” he whispered, half to himself.

“Please!” It came out on a cry as my arm lowered.

The knife sunk into his chest, blood spurting from the wound as I screamed. He raised his hand to cup my face as I pulled the knife out.

“Again,” Cypher commanded.

“No…that’s enough!”

But the knife came down again, the warm blood pouring over my hand.

“I love…you,” he gasped.

“No…please, don’t…!” I sobbed.

I memorized the roguish smile he gave me just before his eyes closed and his body slumped to the floor. My heart gave a violent lurch, and I swore I could feel the fractured pieces of slice through my body. It couldn’t end like this, not after we’d found one another again!

“No, no…”

I went down with him, my hand still around the knife lodged in his chest. I longed to hold him, to kiss him but my body wouldn’t move.

Instead, I was left only with the ability to scream as the grief pulled me under.

It was now that Zelena’s eyes widened and she blinked over and over before lunging toward me.

“No, I don’t want to hurt you!” I screamed.

“Stab her too.”

I jerked the knife out and sunk it into her shoulder.

“Please, stop,” I pleaded to them both, squeezing my eyes shut.

Zelena’s breath left in a wet gasp and she fell onto her back, the knife sliding out of her body.

“It’s…okay…” she said, but I barely heard her.

I knelt there between them, ears ringing and my heartbeat pulsing through my body in a dreadful thrum as I screamed myself hoarse.

My sense of time was warped, everything drawn out and too present all at the same time.

It wasn’t until the tears were dried on my cheeks and the blood was cooling on my skin that I looked up at Cypher.

“There,” he breathed with delight, as if he were viewing a work of art, “that’s what I wanted to see. That emptiness, your soul devoid of everything but raw pain.”

“I’m going to kill you.” I didn’t recognize my voice, the chilly hollowness of it.

Cypher laughed at me, and while I couldn’t move, that agony he’d glimpsed began to harden into a sharp, hot blade in my heart.

“Come, we must make sure you’re ready for tonight. I wouldn’t want to wear you out too much, even if you are a rather fun little doll to play with.”

He made me get up and leave the man I loved, the woman who had become such a good friend, bleeding out on the cold floor. My entire body rebelled at this and I threw up all over myself and Cypher.

Instead of being disgusted by this, he was coldly clinical about it.

“Hmmm…we will have to make sure the Befflein is still inside of you. After a bath, of course. Sleep.”

And I fell to the ground, darkness sweeping me away.