Page 55 of Dangerous Deviance
“When you wake up tomorrow,” he said, putting hair behind my ear, “you won’t remember me. You won’t remember anything. But I will be with you, Ellie. I will always be with you. And as long as you do what I say, I will protect you. And you will end the monsters who did this to your sister. Won’t you, Ellie?”
“Of course,” I whispered.
“And if you fail,” his voice grew stronger, “if you try to escape, you will die, Ellie. Just like your sister. So it is imperative that you end the Adlers. It’s for your own good, and for the good of the program. Can you do it, Ellie?”
I nodded. “I will do it.”
His smile stretched across his face, his teeth shining in the moonlight. “Julie would be proud of you,” he said. “Let’s commence the final phase.”
Inside of a lab, white light surrounded me. The phrase,Kill the Adlers, filled my core as if Dr. Bates’s words were coming from within, until I felt nothing but those three words.
Kill the Adlers.
When I awoke, I was in the woods. A man with dark narrowed eyes and a scarred lip looked at me, his voice like an echo drifting away.
For my brother, the man had said.He’ll take care of you.
Take care of me?
I blinked my eyes. I was back in the bedroom. One of the rooms in Wil’s house.
Wil.
Wil Adler.
Wil held his cheek. Blood dripped down onto the wood floors. I must have cut him. But I felt nothing. No remorse. No guilt. Only anger. Only rage that I hadn’t seen his true self sooner.
He had done this. He had killed Julie.
“You killed my sister,” I said, my voice shaking. But it didn’t feel true. Didn’t feel right. Was it possible that Wil had known Julie? Could he have killed a woman like her?
He always killed for a reason. And there was no way he would have a reason to kill Julie.
You will end the monsters who did this to your sister, Dr. Bates’s voice said.
But what if Adlers hadn’t killed Julie at all? What if their actions had put the entire Skyline Shift into motion, but the act itself, her death, wasn’t by their hands at all?
He wouldn’t be the first person I’ve killed, but it would be for a far lesser reason than the rest, Wil had said. Could he have murdered my sister?
And I realized that under the right circumstances, he could.
“You killed her,” I repeated, my voice a low growl.
“Ellie?” he asked.
CHAPTER 14
Wil
Ellie dropped the knives, then looked down at her hands. “Wil, I—”
I raced forward, taking her wrists and twisting them behind her back until she was bent in half.
“Did you kill her?” she yelled.
“Why would I kill your sister?”
I pulled her into a headlock, then dragged her to the window. Once she was passed out, I shackled her wrists and ankles to the restraints behind the curtains. You never knew when you would need restraints, and this proved it.
