CHAPTER 7

Ren's throat went dry. His lips parted, but no sound came out. The room still rang with the echo of the gunshot, the metallic tang of blood heavy in the air. Cypher's body was a crumpled heap at Axton's boots, and Ren couldn't tear his eyes away from it.

Axton stepped over the corpse as if it were nothing more than a discarded coat, his polished black shoes leaving faint streaks of crimson on the smooth floor.

"I asked you a question, Renault," he said, his voice quiet, almost patient—but the weight behind it pressed against Ren's chest like an anvil.

Ren forced himself to meet those silver eyes. His heart was hammering so loud, it was a miracle Axton couldn't hear it. A tremor spread from his legs up through his arms, but he kept his jaw locked.

"I've already told you," Ren rasped, "If I give you his name, you'll hunt him. And if you hunt him, you'll find my sister. I'm not—"

He cut himself off, realising too late what he had revealed.

Axton's head tilted the slightest degree. The faintest twitch of interest flickered across his otherwise unreadable face. "Your sister."

Ren's breath caught.

The captain didn't raise his voice, didn't step closer, yet Ren felt stripped bare. It was as if Axton had reached inside and exposed something he hadn't intended to ever show.

"You think you have the right to negotiate with me?" Axton's tone didn't change, but his gaze sharpened to a blade. "You come into my territory, you steal from me, you accuse my soldier—correctly, as it turns out—and yet you still believe you hold the upper hand?"

"I'm not—"

Axton closed the distance in a single stride, his hand gripping Ren's jaw with cold precision. His thumb pressed against Ren's cheekbone, forcing him to look up.

Ren gasped at the contact—not only from the force but because of that strange sensation again.

Axton felt it again__that fleeting vibration in his head, a dull ache stirring as though their touch pulled something alive from deep inside him. He remembered feeling it days ago, when he had touched Ren before. And now, again.

"You are still breathing because I am deciding if you are worth more alive than dead," Axton murmured. His voice was low, intimate even, though it carried the weight of a verdict. "Every second you waste my time, Renault, that balance tips toward death."

Ren's heart raced, his mind scrambling. He wanted to recoil, but Axton's hand held him there, and the proximity—it was unbearable. The silver in Axton's eyes wasn't just cold. There was heat buried deep, buried under layers of discipline and cruelty, like coals smouldering under ash.

"If I die," Ren said carefully, forcing the words through a throat that wanted to close, "you lose the only person who can get you into Base7 without spilling more of your men's blood."

Axton's eyes searched his face for a long, suffocating moment. Then, slowly, he released Ren and stepped back. The absence of his touch burned almost more than its presence.

"Corvin," Axton said without looking away from Ren. "Now I'm curious. Why have you kept him alive?"

The silence that followed was heavy. Not dread, exactly—something denser. Something binding.

Ren turned his head stiffly to the doctor. He wasn't just afraid anymore. He was horrified.

Corvin's eyes glinted, a suppressed excitement flashing there. "I want to understand, captain," he said, voice even, measured. "I want to understand why he survived a gunshot wound that should have been fatal. I want to understand what makes him different."

Axton's stare didn't waver. But Ren swore he felt the captain's focus sink deeper into him, as if peeling away his skin and muscle and bone.

"Your bullet should have killed him, Captain," Corvin went on. "It didn't. His regeneration is… remarkable."

Ren's stomach twisted. His hand instinctively brushed against the scar at his abdomen. The dull throb he'd felt, the way his shoulder had begun knitting together on its own—it was true. Something inside him was changing.

"He's a mutant," Corvin said, clinical, dispassionate. "Or something close to it. He is the key. The key to understanding what's happening to us. The key to controlling it."

Ren's jaw clenched. A specimen. That's what he was to them. Not a man, not a brother—just a resource.

And yet… when he looked back at Axton, he did not see the cold detachment of a doctor's curiosity. He saw hunger. Interest. A different kind of possession.

Axton's eyes narrowed, as though he, too, was coming to terms with something unspoken. "What an imbalance," he muttered almost to himself.

Ren shuddered. He didn't want to be anyone's imbalance.

"My sister," Ren whispered, gathering the last threads of his strength. "What about my sister?"

Axton pinned him with a gaze heavy enough to choke him. "She is a problem you no longer have to worry about. She's not important—"

"Then kill me now."

The words cut the air like glass. Even Ren flinched at his own audacity.

Corvin's head jerked toward him in horror. "Don't—"

But Ren pressed on, voice shaking but steady in intent. "Kill me now and forget about ever experimenting on me. Forget about your cure. Forget about controlling anything."

For the first time, something shifted in Axton's stillness. His hand twitched, barely perceptible, as if suppressing the instinct to strike him.

The room seemed to shrink around them, just the two of them bound together in the weight of that dare. Ren's pulse thundered, but beneath the terror, there was a strange clarity. If he was already condemned, then he had nothing left but to carve a space for Mira's survival.

"And what about your sister?" Axton asked at last, calm but edged.

Ren froze. He couldn't tell if it was a trap. But Axton's tone had softened—fractionally. As if he wasn't asking out of strategy, but… curiosity.

Corvin broke in, flustered. "Captain, we can't afford to kill him. He's right—he's our only chance at a cure. And…" He hesitated, glancing between them. "There's potency in him that might be of great use to you in the future."

Ren caught the glance. It wasn't scientific. It was knowing.

Axton held Ren's gaze for what felt like an eternity. And in those silver eyes, Ren swore he glimpsed something frightening—something far more dangerous than hatred. Want.

"Very well," Axton said at last. His voice dropped, low and deliberate. "You wanted a deal with me, Renault? You have one night to prove your worth. Fail…" His lips curled, not quite a smile. "And your sister won't be the only one buried."

Ren's knees trembled, though he locked them in place. The captain's words were meant to terrify, and they did—but there was something else coiled inside them. A promise. An obsession.

Axton turned back toward his desk, leaning against it just as he had when Ren had first been dragged into the room. A posture of ease, of control—but Ren couldn't shake the feeling that every ounce of the man's focus remained fixed on him.

The room still smelled of blood. The air was still heavy with threat. And yet, beneath it all, Ren could feel the pull—unwelcome, terrifying, and undeniable.

Axton had spared his life not for science, not for strategy, but because somewhere in the steel heart of the captain, Ren had sparked something he couldn't name.

And Ren knew, with a certainty that chilled him: the most dangerous place he could be was not at the end of Axton's gun.

It was in his hands.