Page 88 of Beyond Reason

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To help you understand what an amazing organization we have. Come, I’ll show you around the lab.”

The command came like he was talking to a pet, and I was tempted to tell him to fuck off. If it wasn’t so important that I at least try to figure out the layout of the building a little better than I had before, I would have.

I pushed myself away from the wall. It wasn’t Nathaniel I watched as I moved toward them though, it was Otto. His loose posture didn’t fool me.

I wasn’t going to make the mistake of turning my back on him.

“Why don’t we start with the holding cell for Otto’s playmates?” We veered from my room and made our way left. It was hard to ignore the urge to turn and run, but I had a feeling they wouldn’t be letting me roam so freely if it was that easy.

Either that, or they wanted me to leave so they could follow me back to Xavier. I couldn’t do a damn thing but play along until I got more information.

“You see, Otto was brought up in an abusive home, and when he tried to go rogue, he was captured by that same family. They kept him alive for years, torturing him, making him pay for his disloyalty. Now look at them.” In the room, there were three men. One of them looked like he was barely hanging on to life, and the other was strapped to the wall with a furious expression on his face.

The third couldn’t have been more than nineteen, and he was curled in on himself with his head buried against his knees.

“You can see them in different stages. Marco is on his way out, and we just brought Warren into awareness. And then there’s Nicholas.” Nathaniel jerked his head to the boy in the corner. “Though he still goes by London at the moment. It’s a perfect opportunity to test how prior trauma translates to old personalities coming back, don’t you think?”

I frowned. “He’s not… a killer right now?”

“Oh, no. He’s perfectly innocent. I think he was a dancer before we brought him in. He has had to watch Otto torture his cellmates, but…” Nathaniel shrugged with indifference, like what he was saying wasn’t completely monstrous.

Did he really think this was going to convince me to play along with his little game? If anything, I wanted to burn this whole place to the ground—I wasn’t a psychopath. I was just a man who was good at my job, and a man who wanted to get back to the person he loved.

“Hm, not impressive enough? Well… let’s move along then, shall we?”

Otto stayed in place. His eyes weren’t on the man chained to the wall—they were all for the boy in the corner. The hard line of his mouth twitched, but he wiped the expression away and turned to follow Nathaniel as he kept walking.

“We also have a set of twins prepped and getting their injections as we speak, if you want to watch the process.”

“Twins?” What the fuck was he on about?

“Two bodies that were supposed to be one. What do you think will happen to the soul that was meant to be reborn?”

Nathaniel West sounded absolutely enthralled with the idea of it, and I realized he wasn’t doing this to convince me to join his side. He wasn’t even doing this as a way to get information out of me.

He was showing me his experiments because he wanted to show off. He was doing it because he was an egomaniac getting to perform for an audience.

He wanted me to be impressed.

Chapter 27

Xavier

It turned out that hunting down where they’d taken Axel was easier said than done. Kade and Seth had gotten a general idea of where the new facility was, but they didn’t have an actual location. It took us a couple of hours to drive out of the city with a few essentials and rent a hotel under a fake name. We paid with cash, and the second we were behind closed doors, I wanted to scream. I’d done exactly what Axel would have wanted and kept myself safe, but it wasn’t what I wanted.

I wanted to find him.

I had to find him.

But no matter how much the flash drive I had seemed to be important to those assholes, it didn’t have any of the information I actually needed. I would have traded the whole damn thing to them if they'd just give me Axel back, but it wasn’t like I could just call them and arrange a trade.

Also, I was pretty sure if I even suggested it, Kade would kill me and break the drive out of spite.

“I know it’s somewhere in the area. We’ve been in their systems, but not enough to pinpoint the location.” Kade sounded frustrated, but I could barely concentrate. Every second I was away from him was another chance for them to hurt Axel. Every minute we were apart was a chance for them to do something that I wouldn’t be able to fix, something I wouldn’t be able to take back.

This wasn’t just people who could hurt him, or people who could kill him. They were capable of things I didn’t understand, things that would leave me looking in the face of a man I loved while another person talked to me.

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