Page 104 of Pride
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m going to take you home.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” she mumbled. “I don’t deserve it.”
“Of course I should,” he clipped. “I won’t leave you again.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m bait.”
“Then we better hurry.” He picked up her chains and yanked until they snapped, his metal fingers making quick work of crushing them. Daisy gave his bionic hand a quick, curious look. She’d missed so much while entrapped by Julius.
Snarls somewhere behind him.
Little hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He checked down the solitary pipe he’d come. If whatever had snarled came through here, there would be nowhere to hide and little room to fight. The sense of Julius’s deadly pridesurgedin Parker’s gut.
“Can you move?” he asked his sister.
She nodded, but when she tried to stand, she couldn’t. Concern bloomed in Parker’s chest. “Stay here, D. Stay safe. Alice is coming. She’s my mate. You can trust her. I’ll be back.”
Then he ducked back through the pipe and followed the snarling and sense of pride until he made it back to the intersection. Alice’s and Axel’s footsteps drew closer, but were still a few minutes out. He must have run fast to create such a big lead… or Alice’s leg was bothering her. He frowned as worry for her wrapped around his heart.
Better deal with Julius and whatever belonged to those snarls before she arrived.
A shadow emerged from the gloom of one tunnel. A tall, pale man with a head of uneven white hair. The chunks cut out were worse. Almost no hair was left.Julius. Dirty suit—the same one he wore at Parker’s party. Probably hadn’t slept. Probably because he was down here, messing with things he shouldn’t. The iPad in his hands blinked with a running software program.
The replicate program?
Parker glanced down the tunnel with snarls and workers. Not workers. Replicates.
“I thought you were in jail,” Julius said casually, his hair-tied index finger inching toward a button on the device’s screen.
“Touch it, and you die.”
Julius launched into fits of laughter. “You won’t win. You can’t.”
“And why not? I can rip those replicates apart with my hands. And then I’m coming for you. Surrender.”
More laughter. Parker bared his teeth and snarled.
“Whoops.” Julius lifted the iPad as Parker stepped forward, ready to decimate. “I wouldn’t come closer if I were you.”
“You’re a dead man.” Parker hurtled forward, reached with his bionic hand, wrapped it around Julius’s throat and just when Parker’s fingers should have crushed the man’s windpipe, Julius tapped his screen. A tap. That’s all it took, and Parker’s metal arm became a dead weight, dropping to his side.
What the hell?
Shock barreled through him as he tried to lift his arm. It wouldn’t respond. His wild eyes shot to Julius’s satisfied face.
“You see,boy, you had your reasons for coming to that party, and I had mine. And they weren’t to get Gloria’s research. Maybe they were a bonus, but I’m beyond her now.” His lips curved. “I wanted to know who I was up against and how to beat you.”
He tapped the iPad again. Parker’s arm made whirring sounds. The lights along the seams glowed in warning. The same thing happened when he serviced it. Cold horror washed through Parker. Was Julius controlling his arm? “What did you do?”
“How could you forget that arm came from a Syndicate lab? I recognized it the moment you attacked me at the party. I thought you were the one to beat. The king of the Lazarus family. But you’ll always be the apple that fell far from my tree.”
Parker blinked, still disbelieving. He had completely rewired and recoded the technology. Hadn’t he? Or hadn’t Flint or Sloan?Goddamn it.This was what happened when someone else took over a jobhecould do better. Loopholes. Weak spots to exploit. There must have been a back door.
Parker’s pride took a serious hit. His Yin-Yang tattoo itched like hell as it adjusted to his new equilibrium. He wanted to roar his furious shame through the tunnel, but bit his tongue until it bled.
“Oh,” Julius laughed. “And don’t forget this part, too.”
He tapped the screen and then Parker’s arm detached from his stump and dangled in Parker’s torn shirt. Then the shirt ripped under the weight and the arm splashed into the waste water. Like blind snakes, wires in his stump searched for the couplings they just lost. Nausea washed over him as the metal arm sank.This can’t be happening.How could he not have predicted this? Or planned for it? Or made the arm goddamned unhackable?
