Anarchy Found (SuperAlpha, #1)(46)

I shrug. It’s all I can do. “I used to keep count, but—”

“Oh, my God.”

“—a lot.”

“And that lab out there? The one with the mice?”

I shoot a look at Sheila and she stares back, unaffected.

“Tell her,” Sheila says. “Tell her everything, Lincoln.” And then she turns to look at Molly. “I’ve begged him for years to stop. I’ve tried reason, I’ve tried threats. I’ve tried to be supportive. I’ve done it all, Detective. He’s not afraid of getting caught. He has a death wish. And if you weren’t his long-lost partner from Prodigy, he’d be playing a cat-and-mouse game with you right now. Just like he’s done with the other detectives who tried to figure it out.”

Molly glowers at me, but I have nothing to say except, “I am the monster they made me.”

“Bullshit,” Molly yells. “Bull-f*cking-shit, Lincoln.”

“How would you know? You don’t even remember what they did to you, let alone what they did to me.”

“I remember enough—”

“You don’t remember shit,” I growl at her. It comes off so animalistic, she takes a step back. Then she looks over her shoulder at Sheila and retreats to her side, assuming, correctly, Sheila will keep me at bay. “I have always needed a control, even after I sent you away, Molly. And maybe Sheila isn’t my Omega. I gave her severe limitations. But if I’m in the cave, she can… dissuade me from acting. You don’t have to fear me. Ever.”

Molly directs her anger at Sheila now. “Then why did you allow this?” She points to the printouts and photographs that paper the wall from floor to ceiling. “Stop him, for f*ck’s sake.”

“I can’t be everywhere, Detective. All things have limits.”

“What is going on here, Lincoln?” Molly sets her jaw and grits her teeth, determined to figure out the truth. “What is all this?” She sweeps her hands wide. “What is all that?” She points to the cave outside my room. “And what are you doing in that operating room?”

Fuck. She saw all of it. “I wanted to explain—”

“But what? You wanted to f*ck me first?”

“Stop it,” I bark, scaring her into a backwards step. “Don’t get vulgar with me in front of Sheila.”

“Sheila? Fuck you and your stupid robot minion! What the f*ck is going on? Are you really keeping me here? Am I your prisoner? Is that why you told me to come find you? To save yourself the trouble of luring me out here?”

“Of course not,” I snap. “What happened to, ‘You’re my Alpha, Lincoln. I’m your Omega?’ I mean shit, Molly, if you’re just looking for an excuse to bail, fine. But the truth is all those people I killed were associated with Prodigy. Every one of them is guilty. Every one of them was f*cking there, Molly. With you. With me. With Thomas and Case. They killed my parents. Burned my goddamned house down so I’d never have a home again. This lab, this cave, this work. This is all I have left. This is the only thing on this whole motherf*cking planet that’s still mine.”

“So you kill them. Pick them off one by one and make it look like a suicide.”

“I didn’t make it look like a suicide. They really did kill themselves.”

“But you helped them do it.”

I shrug.

“How?”

I have to turn to hide the diabolical smile. Because what I’m doing is life-changing, world-shattering, and downright evil. Does she really want to know?

I turn back and eye her.

She stares me in the face and says, “Tell me.”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“Tell me,” she repeats.

“Did you know,” I start slowly, barely a whisper, “that some species of jellyfish can regrow their own bodies?”

She swallows and backs up a step.

“Did you know they can even regenerate their own brains? Even after you detach them from their bodies? It’s practically a miracle, Molly. Scientists have declared it unnatural. But those neurons are completely natural, and so is everything I’m doing. I can take those cells out of the jellyfish and replant them into the mice. I can grow new parts to their little mousey brains, Molly.”

“I feel sick,” she says, her hand going to her stomach.

“And did you know that you can drive mice to violence if you stimulate a certain gland in their brains in just the right way?”

“You c-c-cannot be serious,” she stammers.

“That gland is in every brain. It’s a part of you, of me, of every human being on this planet. And did you know that there’s a serum you can inject to make people more violent?”

“You’re sick,” she says, her eyes searching my face for the Alpha she once loved. “You’re sick. I was right the first time. You’re some kind of deviant maniac.”

“The lab, the jellyfish, and those mice, the computers, all of it—everything you see in here is what Prodigy School was doing, only better. More advanced. They made me smart. The smartest of all the kids they had. They made me that way, Molly. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you gotta use the gifts you’ve been given.”