Page 65 of Dying to Meet You

Exactly, B. “All of that. Are you coming?”

Sarcastically, he quips, “Why do I feel so seen, heard, and validated right now? Let’s go get our family.”

Chapter Forty-Four

Choosing violence

Eden

Clatteringcanbeheardfrom the lab next to mine, which makes me bang on the cabinet and yell again. There is a high-pitched screech back…and another. I realize I’m hearing them because there is a fume hood attached to an airflow system that must connect to the other lab. I lean closer to where the hood is, trying again. There is more than one person indistinctly yelling things. The pounding across the hall starts again. How many people are here?

Harrison’s voice comes over the speaker. “Would you like to see each other?”

This is a game to him. He’s playing with us because he can.

It’s been dark, with just one bulb lighting the vast lab, but suddenly it lights up completely. I have to blink to adjust to the glaring brightness. I turn to see Waverly and Zinnea huddled together, bound to a bar secured to the wall in the lab next door. I swivel to see where the continued banging is coming from. It’s Hutton. He has a gash on his cheek, a bruise covering the side of his head, and his knuckles are bloody.

Does he have all of us? Me, Hutton, and the kids? Or the whole family?

The thick glass doors and windows don’t allow us to hear what we’re yelling to one another, but it doesn’t stop us. Tears of frustration fall.

Then Hutton and I are forced to watch Steve walk into the lab where the girls are, releasing them from the bar and binding them more tightly before leading them roughly out of the lab. I lose my mind, screaming and kicking the cabinet, when he’s rough with them, half dragging them out of sight. The look on Hutton’s face is downright murderous.

Good…we’re on the same page. We’re not going to lie down defeated. Harrison is likely to hear us, but I don’t care. I scream at the top of my lungs, “Whatever he wants, don’t give it to him! I mean it, Hutton. If he says he’ll kill me, don’t give in! Don’t give in!”

He can’t hear what I’m saying. We both continue to yell until Steve is back, standing between the two labs while loading a clip in a handgun. He’s eerily calm and expressionless, reminiscent of when I met Hutton at the center. Devoid of human emotion.

We’re going to die here. Maybe that’s all he wanted from the beginning-not to use us but effectively end us.

He props the lab door open, then moves to do the same to the lab Hutton is in. He positions himself back between both of them. We stop trying to yell to one another, focusing on our captor.

“Are you wondering what you’re doing here?” His tone is flat, his eyes dead. “We’ve never stopped watching you, tracking you. Did you think we’d invest millions of dollars in both of you, then let you walk off into the sunset? No. You belong to us.”

I’m shaking with rage. We’ve been under surveillance…We’ve never been free. Hutton shouts, “Who is this ‘us’ you’re talking about? The Realists disbanded into pockets of losers!”

Harrison looks at him, unbothered. “The Realists? No. The only purpose they ever served was to draw attention away from the work we were doing. If the public focused on their beliefs, we could remain a secret.”

“You’re demented!” I yell.

He shrugs. “It may look that way to you, but we’ve always seen the big picture. We were developing a human race capable of withstanding disease, the elements, psychological warfare…that we could control. But it never ended with Camp Carroll. Halcyon’s scope has the potential to change all the things wrong with the world.”

Hutton responds, “A crooked government gave you a limitless budget to torture children, but you can’t see that because of your subpar intellect. Because you swallowed their rhetoric. Because you’re a puppet.”

I see a crack in the mask Steve is wearing, his jaw twitching. Hutton is going to get him so angry he lashes out.

If I can keep him talking, I hope an idea about how to escape will come to me. “What do you get out of these…these ideas?”

He steps closer to the lab I’m in. “I’ve dedicated my life to finding solutions. In fact, I joined the FBI in counterterrorism as an intelligence operative. I’m their original boy-wonder hacker…long before X was ever dreamed up.”

He’s jealous? Is this all about Hutton’s abilities…they were grooming?

Hutton starts laughing. “You really are insane, aren’t you?” I watch Hutton’s face contort in distaste. “The FBI tapped me because I can run circles around anyone they already had. You’re angry I made you obsolete.”

Steve’s face reddens, the tendons in his neck protruding as he spits, “You were paid millions to take code I’d started and bastardize it. That was mine. The money should’ve been mine. But no, this is bigger than a science experiment stealing my money. This is about how valuable your blood is to our continued work. We can cage you and your offspring to farm your biological materials. It could be the end of disease as we know it.”

Chills run up my back. Farm? Cages? The worst part of this is he’s not speaking about just himself. There is a whole shadow division of a government entity dedicated to these Machiavellian schemes. My heart feels twisted inside me thinking about what Weston may be going through.

“Why now?” I manage to ask in a seething tone.

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