Page 117 of Wicked Little Nightmare

But even as I said it, more of my past flickered at the edges of my mind. The endless challenges. The way they'd praised my ability to lie, to manipulate, to kill. How they'd encouraged my worst impulses, rewarding me for cruelty.

Fuck. What if Sarah was right? There’s no way humans are born as devoid of empathy as I am.Only, I wasn’t fully devoid, was I? There was my love for Lakey, my ‘feelings’ for Rose. Every day that we didn’t kill for fun, was another day further from whatwas comfortable for me. Safe. I couldn’t decide if that was a gift or a curse.

I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the world, but all I could see was that foster home that went up in flames. The overcrowded rooms, the constant fear. And Lakey — tiny, vicious Lakey — standing over a woman in a lab coat with a book of matches and murder in her eyes.

Had that been part of the plan all along?

"We need to dig deeper," Sarah was saying, her words barely penetrating the fog in my brain. "Find out how far this goes, who's really behind it all."

I nodded mechanically, not trusting myself to speak.What if we were exactly what they wanted us to be?

And what the fuck did that make us?

Rose's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts, sharp and tinged with desperation. "But what about our families? Our parents? They can't all be... fabricated, right?"

I opened my eyes to see her looking frantically between Sarah and Lakey, searching for reassurance.Back to this fucking question.

"Oh, sweetie, I’m just going to be honest since you keep fuckin’ asking," Lakey said, crossing her arms. "I hate to break it to you, but if they haven’t found you by now, they’re probably dead, or wishing they were. Or probably didn’t even exist, in which case, count your lucky stars."

I snorted, grateful for Lakey's twisted humor. It grounded me, pulling me back from the abyss of my own personal hell. "Look on the bright side, Rosie," I drawled, forcing a smirk. "At least you're not alone in this shitstorm. We're all fucked up together. You at least had parents. Maybe. Probably. We were likely the result of some dude jizzing into a tube and spewing out some random clump of cells, only to be injected into the bag we called our home for nine months."

Sarah shot me a withering glare. "Real helpful, Cam."

I shrugged, leaning back in my seat. "What? You want me to lie and say everything's sunshine and rainbows? That's more your department, isn't it?"

Kyle glared at me in the mirror, but I couldn't stop myself. Push and provoke — it's what I do best. Anything to keep from examining my own demons too closely.

Lakey tried to distract me with some more off-color jokes, but beneath the banter, I could see the concern in her eyes. She could probably sense the storm brewing just beneath my skin. She was trying to grab me. To pull me back from the edge of the pit that the devil was trying to drag me down into. I wanted to reach out, to feel her warmth against me, but I held back. Some wounds are too raw to touch, even for her.

Rose was going on about some mystery woman that she supposedly remembered from the orphanage. I was beginning to doubt some of her memories because she always had yet another thing she randomly remembered.

Lakey turned back to Rose. "So, this mystery woman. Any other details you can dredge up from that Swiss cheese brain of yours?"

As Rose stumbled through her fragmented memories, I felt something dark and familiar clawing at the edges of my mind. My skin crawled with phantom sensations. Blood on my hands, screaming echoing in a room. I clenched my fists, willing the memories away. But they persisted, like a cancer eating away at my carefully constructed facade.

Rose continued talking, oblivious to how her constant blabbering was grating against my every nerve. Blabbering that was stirring up some serious shit in my head.God, these fucking women need to stop with the fucking theories. Just shut the fuck up.She stopped talking, giving me an odd look before asking me a question that I didn’t even hear.

I tuned her out, lost in a memory I'd tried so hard to bury:

I'm six years old, huddled in a corner of the foster home. The other kids are screaming, fighting over scraps. But I'm different. Special, they told me. I don't feel hunger like the others. I don’t need to sleep as much as them either. Pain is just information.

A man in a white coat kneels before me, his smile cold and clinical. "You're doing so well, Cameron. Just a few more tests, and then you can go home." He pushes the back of the syringe and pain fills my veins, but I don’t scream. I don’t even blink. “That’s a good boy.”

He stands, talking to someone in a black robe, just out of my line of sight. “He’s ready for phase two. Take him to the girl.”

I try ask when I’m going home, when I can go play outside. I want to ask if I can get a hug.

But there is no home, no play and no hug. Just more labs, more shit to do, more lies.

As the others chattered on and on, I let my mind drift. The bag babies we'd uncovered triggered me into a kind of stasis. I'd spent years subconsciously burying my past, but now it was clawing its way to the surface. I tried to let it ascend slowly, so as not to rip my psyche apart, but there wasn’t much I could control about the vicious way it was invading my senses.

Lakey's voice cut through my thoughts, sharp and playful. "Hi sexy. You're awfully quiet. Plotting world domination without me? Want to let me in on your little games?"

I turned to her, drinking in the sight of her wicked smile. My beautiful little psycho. "Just thinking about how sexy you'd look in a lab coat, baby. Maybe we can steal you one and I can fuck you in it."

Her eyes lit up and she looked down at my cock as if expecting it to be naked, hard and waiting. "Ooh, role-play. I like where your head's at."

I chuckled. Kyle had finally started talking, droning on about the lab. I caught snippets about security systems and potential allies. More fucking variables. More people I didn’t want to let in to my circle. All I could focus on was the growing pit in my stomach. And Lakey. The ray of sunshine, piercing through the veil.

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