Page 22 of He Is Jensen: Part One

Layla

For the next fewdays, Tad comes for me, and I’m taken to a lab where I work alone. Each day, Julian and his wolves come to me. Each day, I’m snarled at and stared at with black, expectant eyes, as if I can work miracles overnight. I’m not a doctor, and I, in fact, scream that at him. His wolves all but rip my throat out. One even bites me. I’m taken back to my room with stitches, and Jensen is furious. I’m barely able to calm him down.

“We’ll find the ICE stock,” he whispers. “Then we’ll get out of here, but we have to move fast. The Renegades will come for me. For us.”

Apparently, they’ve been taking Jensen to walk the facility and act like one of their own, trying to convince everyone the Renegades are joining them, as Jensen is close to Caleb. No other explanation would seem possible. He’s looking for the ICE stock as well, but I’ve been captive in a tiny room. I have no recourse to find anything. He has more than me.

I push to my toes and whisper, “What if they think we’re dead?”

He doesn’t comfort me on this. In fact, when I pull back and look into his eyes, I know he fears the same. But our food arrives before I can press. Steak and potatoes tonight. I wonder how many more days I have of learning nothing to help Julian before we’ll get bologna.

By day four, I’m placed in a lab with about a dozen scientists, all working under clear duress. The room is a ball of tension, racing about and growing bigger and stronger each moment. When lunch is called, everyone is taken away but me and one other scientist who has been the only one who’s dared be friendly.

We eat our sandwiches together, and he tells me a bit about the top secret military lab he’d run for years. Neither of us are doctors, though, and we feel the help of Chin, whom I met once, would offer us more success, but we both agree we don’t dare ask. “I’m sure we’re being recorded,” I say, eating the Twinkie they gave me for dessert. “Hopefully they know we need him. You think the others are coming back?” I ask, looking around the large empty space.

“They seem to test how we perform in small and large groups. Obviously, we’re being tested.” He runs his hands down his legs. “I better get to work.”

An hour that feels like an eternity later, I sit at a table in the confines of a laboratory, staring at the slide under the viewer, studying what I’m told is Julian’s six-month-old, Dorian’s, DNA. After only a glimpse at Dorian yesterday, I can say definitively that he looks more like he’s twelve. Per the medical reports I’ve been provided, he’s estimated to be aging at the rate of two years a month. And the only thing more terrifying than his growth rate is the fact that I now know that it’s his DNA that’s supplying the drug I’m ingesting to stay alive.

A folder lands on the table in front of me, and hot breath touches my neck from behind. “Open it.”

Tad.

I know his voice as well as one might know a recurring bad dream, and all too vividly. I flip open the file to find a photo of Jensen, Julian, and Julian’s wolves, not sure what the point is, though I’m certain it’s a threat I’ll soon understand. I flip to the next photo and the next, all of which are more of the same. Jensen with Julian and his wolves, all seemingly taken at different locations.

Tad rotates my chair around, his hands planted on the table on either side of me, his big body too close. I can feel the heat of him, and it turns my stomach. I want to shove him away, but I tamp down the desire, fully aware of how he’ll punish me if I do. “That’s Julian he’s with,” he says, as if I don’t know this already. “He’s one of us. He wants to be Julian’s second, and he’s promised to fuck you into submission to get that title.”

He clearly missed Jensen telling me about the change in Julian, before he shocked Jensen by becoming a modern-day Hitler, or the fact that Jensen’s been paraded about the facility in a manipulation tactic, which means that be it past or present, the photos mean nothing.

And I wonder if there is no audio recording in the room. Just a visual? Whatever the case, deep down in my core, I trust Jensen. “Why would you tell me this if it’s what Julian wants?”

“Because I’m Julian’s second,” he says. “And Jensen means to replace me. I’m going to kill him before he has the chance. So, I suggest you make it clear you’re loyal to me, or I’ll see you thrown in one of the sex camps.” He shoves off the table.

I have no idea why I do it, but I challenge him. “I know he worked with Julian while he had his wolves. That proves nothing. And isn’t this being recorded?”

The next thing I know, he’s whipped my chair around again, and he’s pressing his hands to the arms. “I turned off the cameras. I could kill you, and he wouldn’t know.”

He being Julian, I assume. “He’d figure it out.” I sound brave, but I’m quaking inside.

He grinds his teeth and pushes off my chair, removing his cellphone and doing something before he says, “Listen up.” He hits a button with his thumb.

A recording starts to play.

I hear Julian say, “Then you’ll join me?”

“Yes,” Jensen agrees, and my stomach knots with that one word. “I’ll join you.”

“Fuck her into submission,” Julian orders. “I’ll turn off the cameras.”

Now I want to be sick.

“How will I know they’re off?” Jensen asks. “I’m not your freak show.”

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“I’ll rip them out,” Jensen promises.

“Fine. Do it. You will walk out of this room with me and stand before my men by my side. Understood?”

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