Page 87 of Beyond Reason

Anything was apparently thirty minutes of getting the shit beat out of me in between Nathaniel West asking more questions. My only consolation was that he was either bad at his job, or he’d been told to take it easy on me. I ached—I was pretty sure I’d be black and blue in more than a few places—but I wasn’t so broken that I couldn’t move around. And the restraints holding me in the chair clicked open once I was alone in the room so I could do just that.

I groaned, trying to stretch and see exactly how hurt I was. I was getting too fucking old for this shit.

It had been a long time since I’d taken a beating, if I was being honest. The last person who’d gotten the upper hand with me was…

Well, it was Kade Neil.

With another low grunt, I sighed and looked around. The room I was in was blank—there was just the chair, and it was bolted to the ground. So this wasn’t exactly a holding cell as much as an interrogation chamber.

It made me wonder what they needed a place like this for, unless they were using their knowledge to bring people back just for questioning. It was diabolical, all the uses they could find for their little drug. From the way Seth spoke and the information on Xavier’s flash drive, they’d just planned on bringing back killers and turning them into weapons.

It was arrogant to think they’d be able to control every person they brought back, and downright suicidal to bring back someone like Kade and assume they’d have any say in what he did or didn’t do.

Well, I had serious doubts I was going to get any answers from the people who worked here, especially when they were focused on getting answers out of me. The likelihood of someone else with a conscience like Marshall Lister was slim to none.

There was something entirely too villain-esque about a building that was underground—the people who worked here had to know that they were doing something nefarious.

I’d examined every corner of the room by the time the door opened again, and I had my back to the wall when Nathaniel West and a new man stepped through the door. This one was dressed in a suit, and his brown hair was pulled back in a perfect tail. There was something about the cold expression in his pale green eyes that told me he was more dangerous than the asshole I’d had a run in with earlier. He’d just wanted to hit me—the man standing beside Nathaniel West radiated the same kind of danger as so many of my clients.

It made me wonder if he was part of the experiments.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Fetterman. How are we feeling?”

Did rolling my eyes count as communicating? The best I could do was cross my arms over my chest and try to make sure that I didn’t lunge at the asshole. The last thing I needed was to set off his new guard dog. The man was willowy, but tall. Even his stance looked almost… elegant.

He also held his hands loose at his side, and I didn’t have to look hard to see the outline of a gun holster beneath his well-tailored shirt.

“Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m aware that you’re a professional. You know how this business works—you’ve probably seen more of the dangerous side of it than I have.” Nathaniel laughed, his lips turning up in a charming smile, like we were just old friends having a casual conversation. “I thought maybe we could try a different approach. Come on, Axel, what do you say? I can promise you it’s better to work with me than against me. For everyone involved.”

He didn’t have to say Xavier’s name for me to know that he was talking about him, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he was going to let him get out of this unscathed, no matter what I said or did. The fact of the matter was, they wanted the information in his head—information that was no longer there.

As sure as Seth was that they wouldn’t be able to bring Marshall back, I wasn’t going to risk them trying and failing and fucking up everything.

My continued silence made the charming smile on Nathaniel’s face twitch into something ugly for a brief moment before he firmly plastered it back into place.

“I wonder, perhaps, if we could change your mind if we showed you more of what we do. This is truly a unique opportunity. I’m sure you realized that when you saw Xavier Benham walking and talking again.” Nathaniel sounded so sure of himself, so entranced in his own bullshit that he didn’t realize any normal person would be horrified by what was happening.

Yes, getting Xavier back was the best thing that had happened to me, but I wasn’t exactly a normal person. If I looked at it objectively, if I cared about anything other than his green eyes looking back at me, I might have been horrified that Marshall Lister was just snuffed from existence.

I’m sure if Marshall had anyone who cared about him, they would be horrified.

Still… if he was talking about taking me on a tour of the building, I could definitely use that to my advantage. I knew Xavier was going to try to save me, but if I could get out of here before he put himself in danger?

If I could get back to him, I’d drain every account that I had and we could just… disappear somewhere together. I’d buy us new identities, new lives. If he wanted to pick back up his work as an assassin, he could do it in another country under a new name.

The two men in front of me waited silently until I finally uncrossed my arms and gave a brief nod. “Fine.”

I hated even giving him that much, because I could see the victory burst through Nathaniel’s eyes the second I spoke. Surely he understood that I wasn’t doing it because I was giving in?

Or maybe he really was that arrogant. Who knew?

“Perfect. Of course, I brought along a little insurance—I’m not fool enough to think that you might not try something if you're given the opportunity. Otto here is a product of our hard work, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” The man’s voice was soft, lyrical even. He sounded calm and in control of himself, and I couldn’t read behind the mask he had in place to know if he really meant the respect in his voice, or if it was there because it was just another paycheck.

“He’s one of the first people we brought back here at this facility, and he’s been more than happy to cooperate with us in exchange for the opportunities that we can provide him with. You see, his death was far uglier than most of the people we’ve acquired. We can offer the unique chance for him to bring back men and women long dead to exact his revenge.”

Beside him, Otto’s expression remained passive. I had no idea how he could just sit there while his boss was talking about him like he was so much meat, a bug beneath a magnifying glass… but he did.

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