Page 98 of Shattered Omega: Part Two

TWENTY-FOUR

SHATTER

“This is everything we have.”

With Ransom at my side on the couch, I stared at the pile of documents. Umbra had been concerned when Dusk sat us down, worried I wasn’t ready—that I needed more time to recover, but he didn’t understand.

I needed this.

I tentatively reached for the top paper, eyes scanning the sheet, my heart sinking as I read. The words before me wiped everything else away. Paper after paper outlined fragments of trials: alpha experimentation.

Illegal practice… Shut down upon discovery… No survivors…

My heart turned to stone as I understood, at last, the connection between us.

“You were…” I trailed off, looking up at them. “You were at the same facility?”

They were like me? All this time…

“Same place, different owners,” Dusk said. “The Institute took over after it was shut down. That’s when you arrived.”

I read through everything: the snippets of logs of what was done to Umbra and Dusk, the pain they had suffered. The information was sparse, some were accounts from Dusk and Umbra, compiled by Decebal. I drew up as I read about the death of… shit. “Your pack mate died?” I asked.

“We didn’t really know him,” Umbra said quietly.

“But the pack bond didn’t break?” I asked.

That should be impossible. There had only been three in the bond at the time.

Itshouldbe, and yet, I was in that very bond right now. Dusk hadn’t spun fantasies the other night. He was right. Theywerethe impossible—a green sprout breaking through snow.

Umbra was sitting at my side, and I was glad for his arm around me as I read on. He’d been the most present in this new bond that occupied a part of my mind. I leaned on him, needing to be reminded that no matter what I read, hehadcome out the other side.

Ransom had the smallest list. He hadn’t been a part of the experiments. He’d been injected with Atropa’s Poison when they were leaving. His symptoms came on more rapidly, but they were clear-cut.

For Dusk and Umbra, that wasn’t the case. The symptom list was long, even if many had been crossed off with dates beside them.

Insomnia, headaches, seizures that were unique to Dusk, and Umbra used to get phantom pain that would last for days. PTSD wasn’t crossed out. Decebal had drawn an arrow toward it with the scrawl that read:

Dissociative flashbacks, sometimes entirely impossible to rouse them from. Auras become unstable and shift to something unrecognisable. Same aura instability progressing over time. Patients claim the aura is

—I frowned.

“Hostile to its own host?” I asked, looking up. Decebal had to be the one who’d done the examinations on them.

“It’s not an official diagnosis. They can’t risk seeing a real doctor. I have a bit of experience, but I’m out of my depth.”

“I saw the sickness.” I glanced at Dusk. He was seated in the armchair, one leg propped up. His chin rested on his knees as he watched me and Ransom scour the notes. “When you collapsed. That’s what it felt like, like it was trying to destroy you.”

I looked up to Umbra.

“I manage them with the knife,” he said. “Keeps me grounded. And Dusk…”

“I lose time.” Dusk shrugged. “It’s not as bad as Umbra. Barely happens anymore. He… he took most of the experimentations.”

“These are mostly the symptoms,” Decebal said. “The aura shit, that’s the real sickness.”

“That was more extreme than it’s ever been. It’s slower usually, creeping closer.”

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