Page 64 of The Beast’s Broken Angel

Of course he was. Harrison had shaped me; he knew I'd come for him eventually. Probably had contingencies planned, final manipulations designed to save his life or destroy what remained of my sanity.

“Maintain perimeter,” I ordered. “No one enters. This is mine.”

“Adrian—” Noah started.

“This is mine,” I repeated, but gentler. “But you can watch. Bear witness, like you said.”

The office door stood open, warm light spilling into the sterile hallway. I entered with my weapon drawn but not raised, Noah shadowing me like a guardian angel with medical training.

Harrison sat behind an impressive desk, hands folded, looking exactly as he had in a thousand board meetings. Silver hair perfect, suit immaculate, the picture of distinguished success. Only his eyes betrayed awareness of what was coming.

“Adrian,” he greeted me like I'd come for a budget review. “I wondered when you'd arrive. Tea?”

The civilised offer in these circumstances almost made me laugh. “Seriously?”

“Courtesy costs nothing.” He gestured to a side table with full service laid out. “Though I suppose courtesy is rather hollow between us now.”

“Now?” I kept the weapon ready but didn't aim yet. “Not when you murdered my parents? Not when you spent decades manipulating me? Courtesy died long before now, Harrison.”

“Your parents' deaths were organisationally necessary,” he replied with that same calm tone he'd used in the warehouse.

“Your father's resistance to modernisation threatened everything we'd built. But the methodology...” He paused, maybe seeing something in my expression. “You found Müller's journals.”

“Among other things.” I pulled out the child trauma documentation, tossing it onto his pristine desk. “Your annotations were particularly enlightening.”

For the first time, something like regret flickered across his features. “Crude work by contemporary standards. Müller understood the mechanics but not the artistry. Breaking a child is simple. Shaping them into something functional afterward requires finesse.”

“Functional,” I repeated, tasting bile. “Is that what I am?”

“You're magnificent,” Harrison said with what sounded like genuine pride. “The perfect synthesis of trauma and training. Capable of necessary violence but maintaining strategic thought. Loyal to useful limits but independent enough to lead. My greatest creation.”

“I'm not your fucking creation!” The words exploded out of me. “I'm not your experiment or your weapon or your goddamn legacy! I'm a person you destroyed before I had a chance to be anything else!”

“Are you?” Harrison leaned forward, genuinely curious. “Strip away the conditioning, the trained responses, the systematic architecture of your personality. What remains? Who would Adrian Calloway be without my intervention?”

The question hit harder than any physical blow because I didn't know. Couldn't know. The fire had happened when I was eight; everything after bore Harrison's fingerprints. Every choice filtered through programming, every relationship coloured by trained responses.

“He'd be himself,” Noah said quietly from beside me. “Maybe different, maybe the same, but his. Not yours.”

Harrison's attention shifted to Noah with clinical interest. “Ah, the variable. You know, you're the first truly unexpected element in Adrian's life since the fire. I didn't account for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“Someone who'd see past the programming to the person underneath. Who'd choose him despite the damage.” Harrison smiled thinly. “Though I wonder, Mr. Hastings, are you drawn to Adrian himself or to the broken things you think you can fix?”

“Don't,” I warned, but Noah was already responding.

“Both, probably,” he admitted with that devastating honesty I'd come to expect. “But here's what you don't understand, Harrison. The damage doesn't define him. It's just part of the landscape. And the landscape is fucking beautiful, even the scarred parts. Especially the scarred parts.”

Harrison studied Noah like a specimen under glass. “Interesting. You know he'll never be normal, don't you? The conditioning runs too deep. Violence will always be his first language. Control his primary need.”

“I know who he is,” Noah said simply. “I've seen him at his worst and chosen to stay. That's more than you ever did. You saw a child in pain and chose to amplify it. To weaponise it. That's not creation, Harrison. That's just torture with delusions of purpose.”

The assessment clearly stung. Harrison's composed mask cracked slightly, revealing something almost human underneath.

“I gave him strength,” Harrison insisted. “Direction. Purpose. Would you rather I'd left him weak? Let him grow up damaged but ordinary? He'd have been dead within a year on London's streets.”

“Maybe,” I conceded, surprising everyone including myself. “Or maybe I'd have found my own strength. My own purpose. We'll never know, will we? Because you stole that choice.”

“Choice.” Harrison laughed bitterly. “Such a middle-class concept. Men like us don't get choices, Adrian. We get circumstances and make the best of them. Your grandfather understood that.”

“My grandfather was a bastard who let you experiment on his grandson,” I said flatly. “Understanding him isn't the endorsement you think it is.”

“He loved you,” Harrison protested. “In his way. We both did. Everything we did was to make you strong enough to survive in our world.”

“Your love was poison,” I told him. “Your strength was just cruelty with fancy justification. And your world?” I gestured around the government facility. “Your world ends tonight.”

Harrison straightened in his chair, dignity intact despite impending death. “I suppose it does. May I ask how?”

“Single shot,” I confirmed. “Clean. Quick. More mercy than you showed my parents.”

“Practical.” He adjusted his cuffs one final time, movements precise as always. “Though I'm curious why you haven't done it yet. Second thoughts?”

“Closure,” I corrected. “I needed to understand why. Needed to hear you admit what you did. Needed...” I paused, searching for words. “Needed to see you as you really are. Not the mentor I trusted or the monster I've imagined, but the pathetic old man who destroyed a child and called it love. ”

That finally broke through his composure completely. “I made you great!”

“You made me broken,” I countered. “I made myself great despite you, not because of you.

Every choice to be more than your programming, every moment of humanity you didn't account for, every connection that transcended your careful conditioning. That was me fighting back against what you tried to make me.”

“Pretty words,” Harrison sneered. “But we both know the truth. When this is over, when I'm dead and you've had your revenge, you'll still be what I created. The patterns run too deep. You'll still need control, still solve problems with violence, still trust no one completely.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I'll be trying.

Fighting against the programming every day, choosing to be more than your weapon.

That's the difference between us, Harrison.

You think people are fixed, unchangeable, bound by the patterns trauma creates.

But people aren't that simple. We're messier. More surprising. More...” I glanced at Noah.

“More capable of change than you ever imagined.”

“Touching.” Harrison's mask reformed, professional to the end. “Though if you're going to shoot me, perhaps get on with it? This philosophical discussion is becoming tedious.”

I raised the weapon, aiming with steady hands. “Any last words?”

“Just one question,” he said. “Was it worth it? Everything I put you through, everything I took from you. Did it make you strong enough to survive what's coming?”

“What's coming?”

His smile was cold, victorious even in defeat.

“You didn't think I was working alone, did you? The governmental connections, the resources, the protection. I was middle management, Adrian. Useful for handling local operations but hardly irreplaceable. My death changes nothing. The machine continues.”

“Then I'll destroy the machine,” I said simply.

“With what army? Your street soldiers against governmental resources? Your criminal empire against institutional power?” Harrison shook his head. “I shaped you to be a weapon, Adrian, but weapons need wielders. And the people who wielded me will simply find another tool.”

“Let them come,” I said, meaning it completely. “I've got something they don't expect.”

“Which is?”

“People who choose to stand with me without conditioning. Without programming. Without fear.” I felt Noah shift beside me, silent support that said more than words.

“That's what you never understood, Harrison.

Real loyalty can't be programmed. Real connection can't be engineered. It has to be chosen, freely, despite all the reasons not to.”

“Naive,” Harrison pronounced. “But I suppose you'll learn that truth in time. If you survive long enough.”

“I'll survive,” I assured him. “Out of spite if nothing else. To prove your programming wrong with every breath.”

“Then I suppose I've given you purpose after all,” Harrison said with bitter satisfaction. “You're welcome.”

I pulled the trigger.

The shot echoed in the small office, loud despite the suppressor. Harrison slumped forward, a neat hole in his forehead, dignity preserved even in death.

I stood there for a moment, waiting to feel something. Satisfaction, maybe. Or emptiness. Or rage that it was over too quickly. Instead, I felt... tired. Deeply, profoundly tired, like I'd been carrying immense weight and could finally set it down.

“It's done,” Noah said quietly.

“Yeah.” I safetied the weapon, tucking it away. “But he was right about one thing. This isn't over. His handlers, whoever they are, they'll come.”

“Then we'll be ready,” Noah said with quiet confidence. “Together.”

“We should go,” I said, but I didn't move. Couldn't yet. “I thought this would feel different. Killing him. Thought it would... fix things.”

“Death doesn't fix anything,” Noah observed. “Just stops things from getting worse. The fixing comes after, slowly, with a lot of work and probably a fair amount of cursing.”

Despite everything, I found myself almost smiling. “Speaking from medical experience?”

“Life experience,” he corrected. “You're not the only one carrying damage, Adrian. Mine's just less visible.”

I turned to really look at him then, this man who'd walked into my life and disrupted every carefully programmed pattern. Who saw my monstrosity and chose to stay. Who saved my life even when it meant betraying my trust.

“Thank you,” I said, words inadequate but necessary. “For being here. For seeing me as more than his creation.”

“Always,” Noah replied simply. “Even when you're being a stubborn bastard. Especially then.”

We left Harrison's body for his government handlers to find, a message written in blood and silence. Viktor's team had cleared our exit, ghosts vanishing into London's darkness before anyone could respond.

In the car driving back to Ravenswood, I found myself reaching for Noah's hand. He let me take it, fingers intertwining with careful gentleness. The touch grounded me, reminded me that Harrison was wrong about the important things.

I wasn't just programmed responses and conditioned violence. I was also this: capable of connection, of choosing trust despite betrayal, of building something real from the wreckage of systematic trauma.

“What now?” Noah asked as Ravenswood's gates came into view.

“Now we prepare for war,” I said. “Harrison's handlers, whoever they are, won't let this slide. But first...” I squeezed his hand. “First we figure out us. What we are when we're not running or fighting or drugging each other for their own good.”

“That sounds dangerously like a healthy relationship discussion,” Noah observed with mock horror.

“I know. Fucking terrifying.” But I was smiling as I said it. “Think we can manage it?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. “But I'm willing to try if you are.”

“Yeah,” I said, meaning it completely. “I'm willing to try.”

Harrison was right that the programming ran deep, that violence and control were carved into my bones by decades of conditioning. But he was wrong about it being unchangeable. Every choice to be better, to trust, to love despite the risk, was a small revolution against what he'd tried to make me.

And with Noah beside me, bearing witness to both monster and man, I thought maybe those small revolutions could add up to something like redemption.