C5

"Where the fuck is the knife?"

I gritted my teeth. The bathroom tiles were cold against my bare knees. Evangeline stood by the tub, her hands over her mouth. Her eyes were wide, tracking the silver blade in my hand.

"Kai, don't. Please. We can just"

"We can't do anything if she thinks I’m soft." I grabbed a towel. Folded it. Shoved it into my mouth. I didn't want to wake the guards. Or the house. Or the ghosts in the cellar. I positioned the tip of the blade against the meat of my thigh. Right where the Archive photo showed Subject 14’s jagged reminder of a hunting trip gone wrong.

I pushed.

The steel slid in. Hot. Electric. My vision sparked white. I bit down on the towel until my jaw groaned. Blood dark, thick, honest blood bloomed across my skin. It ran down my leg, staining the white grout of the Blackwood estate. I twisted the metal. Just a fraction.

"Go," I muffled through the cloth. I spat the towel out. My breath came in shallow, jagged stabs. "Call them. Scream. Tell them a man in a mask came through the balcony."

"You're bleeding too much." Evangeline knelt, her fingers hovering over the wound. She didn't touch it. She looked at the red on the floor. "Kai, your face. You’re gray."

"Call them!" I hurled the knife into the hallway. It clattered against the wood. "Now!"

She ran. Her scream ripped through the silence of the east wing. I slumped against the porcelain of the tub. I reached out, dragging my bloody palms across the walls. Smearing the lie. Making it look like a struggle. Making it look like I’d fought for the life Elinor wanted me to take.

By the time the boots thundered down the hall, I was swimming in the dark.

"Alexander!"

Elinor’s voice. She didn't sound worried. She sounded annoyed. She stepped over the knife, her silk robe billowing. She looked at my leg. Then at the open balcony door where the wind whipped the curtains.

"He... he had a blade," I wheezed. I clutched my thigh. The pain was a living thing, gnawing at the bone. "He went for her. I stepped in."

Elinor knelt. She didn't use a bandage. She pressed her thumb directly into the puncture. I screamed. A raw, wet sound that rattled my ribs.

"A phantom assassin." Elinor pulled her thumb back. She wiped the red on my own bedsheet. "Convenient. You didn't kill the girl, but you've scarred the merchandise. Do you think I'm a fool, Subject 22?"

"Check the cameras," I gasped.

"I did. Marcus looped them ten minutes ago. He thinks he’s clever." She stood up. She looked at Evangeline, who was huddling in the corner, snot running down her lip. "Get him to the infirmary. If he loses the leg, he’s useless to me."

The guards hauled me up. My feet dragged. The blood left a trail like a dying animal.

The infirmary smelled of ozone and expensive death. They strapped me to a table. I didn't see a doctor. I saw Elinor. She was holding a tablet. She tapped a command, and the wall-sized monitor flickered to life.

It wasn't Mei in a hospital bed.

It was a laboratory. A file popped up. Project: Harvest.

"You think you were found on the street, Kai?" Elinor’s voice was a low, rhythmic hum. She walked to the monitor. She pointed to a photo of a toddler. Me. "You were born in a petri dish in 1998. You were monitored in six different foster homes. We curated your 'struggle.' We gave you that sister."

"Mei... isn't my sister?" The words tasted like copper.

"Biologically? No. She was a match. A perfect, 99.9% match for my own renal system. And my heart. And my marrow." Elinor turned to me. Her face was a mask of cold, clinical perfection. "I didn't save her from the street, Kai. I grew her. I kept her healthy, tucked away in your little 'family' unit, until I needed the parts. You were just the shepherd. The dog kept around to make sure the lamb didn't wander off."

The floor seemed to tilt. My entire history the hunger, the shared blankets, the nights I’d spent working three jobs to pay for her inhalers it was a script. A long-con written by the woman standing over me.

"She's a farm?" I croaked.

"She's a miracle of science. And she’s reaching maturity." Elinor tapped the screen. An image of Mei’s lungs appeared. They were glowing with a soft, blue light. "The bypass isn't to save her life, Kai. It’s to prepare the tissue for the transfer. By tomorrow night, she’ll be gone, and I’ll have another twenty years of 'leadership' to give this empire."

"I'll kill you." I lunged against the straps. The leather bit into my wrists. My thigh wound reopened, heat soaking through the temporary bandage. "I'll rip your fucking heart out."

"You don't have a heart, Kai. You have a directive." Elinor walked to the door. "Marcus is waiting for you in the east wing. Try not to bleed on the rugs. We have a wedding to finish."

The door hissed shut.

The guards unstrapped me ten minutes later. They tossed me a pair of clean trousers and a bottle of bourbon. I drank half the bottle in one go. The burn in my throat was the only thing I could trust.

I stumbled back to the suite. Evangeline was waiting. She had locked the door. She had pushed a heavy dresser in front of it.

"Kai." She ran to me. She didn't look at the blood. She looked at my eyes. "What happened? What did she say?"

"We're not real." I sat on the edge of the bed. I told her. The petri dishes. The harvest. The lamb and the shepherd.

She didn't cry. She just sat there, her hands knotted in her lap.

"Then there's nothing left," she whispered. "No will. No escape. Just the meat."

"No." I grabbed her shoulders. I pulled her close until our noses touched. "There’s us. The meat that bites back."

She looked at me. Something shifted. The terror died, replaced by a dark, nihilistic heat. She reached for my belt.

"Then let's be monsters," she said.

She pushed me back onto the pillows. It wasn't a rehearsal. There were no cameras—Marcus had seen to that. It was a collision of two dying stars. I moved inside her with a desperate, grinding violence. I wanted to feel the weight of her. I wanted to forget the laboratory and the glass canisters and the sister who was a spare part.

Her nails dug into my back. She was crying, but her mouth was open, drinking in my breath. We were tangled, sweaty, and ugly.

"I have to tell you," she gasped, her legs locking around my waist. "Kai—Alexander—whoever the fuck you are."

"What?" I hit deeper. I wanted to lose myself in the friction.

"I'm pregnant."

I froze. I stayed inside her, my pulse thudding against her walls. "What?"

"Two months. Maybe three." She looked at the ceiling. Her face was a wreck. "I don't know who. He... the real Alexander... he was rough. He didn't care. But it could be yours. From that first night."

"You're carrying a Blackwood?"

"I'm carrying a weapon." She grabbed my face. Her eyes were terrifying. "Elinor doesn't know. If she finds out, she’ll harvest the fetus for the stem cells. We have to finish this. Now."

I pulled out. I sat on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands. A child. A new Subject. A fresh page for Elinor’s script.

"We replace her," I said. The words felt heavy. Final.

"What?"

"We don't run. We don't hide. We take the empire. We kill Marcus, we kill Elinor, and we sit on those thrones until the blood dries." I looked at her. "You're the Queen. I'm the ghost. We keep the lie alive until it becomes the only truth left."

"And Mei?"

"We get her out. Or we burn the hospital with her inside. She won't be a farm."

A wet, scratching sound came from the balcony.

I grabbed the gun I’d hidden in the bedside drawer. I stood up. My leg screamed, but I ignored it. I walked to the glass doors.

Something was crawling up the drainage pipe.

It looked like a person. But the skin was wrong. It was gray, peeling in long, wet strips. One side of the face was a mass of red, bubbling chemical burns. The hair was gone on the left side, exposing a scorched scalp.

The woman reached the railing. She hauled herself over. She stood there, dripping foul-smelling water onto the stone.

She wore a tattered silver dress.

"Seraphina?" Evangeline whispered from the bed.

The creature turned. Her one good eye a bright, freezing blue locked onto Evangeline. Then onto me. She opened her mouth. Her teeth were black. Her tongue was a stump.

"B-b-blood," she croaked. The sound was like dry leaves.

"She survived the trunk," I said. My hand was steady as I raised the Glock. "She crawled out of the acid."

"Kai, wait" Evangeline started.

"No." I looked at the twin on the bed. The one with the child. The one with the soul. Then I looked at the truth standing on the balcony. The woman who had drowned kittens. The woman who would end us both.

I didn't hesitate. I didn't feel.

I aimed for the forehead.

"The lie is the only thing that matters now," I said.

I squeezed the trigger.

The glass shattered. The body on the balcony jerked and fell backward, disappearing into the dark of the estate grounds with a heavy, wet thud.

I turned back to the room. Evangeline was staring at the empty doorway.

"She was my sister," she whispered.

"She was a liability." I walked to her. I handed her the gun. "Clean yourself up. The Council is arriving for the breakfast banquet. We have a kingdom to steal."

The door to the suite groaned. It didn't open. It was being pushed.

I looked at the heavy dresser. It was moving. Inch by inch.

"Marcus?" I called out.

No answer. Just the steady, rhythmic shove of the furniture.

Finally, the dresser tipped over. The door swung wide.

Marcus wasn't there.

Standing in the doorway was Mei. She was wearing her hospital gown. It was soaked in blood. Her chest was open, held together by crude, silver staples. She held a scalpel in one hand and a human heart in the other.

"I'm hungry, Kai," she said.

She took a bite of the heart.

The heart was still beating.

"Who did you kill, Mei?" I whispered.

She smiled. Her teeth were stained red. She pointed down the hallway.

"Mother," she said.