Chapter Thirty-Three - Lincoln
I watch her sleep. I watch the way her chest rises and falls and feel her life force in my arms as I hold her tight. It’s completeness. It’s wholeness. It’s a sigh of relief and a relaxation that I can’t describe because I have never experienced a moment quite like this one.
After we blew up the Prodigy School Thomas left Case and I on the side of the highway. He went his way and we went ours. It was too dangerous to show up back in Cathedral City together. Thomas was not… part of the system, so to speak. He was part of Prodigy from the time he was born. He didn’t have a family like Case and me.
We never saw him again. We talked to him. Emails and phone calls. But that’s it. Case and I were picked up by a trucker on the highway when we left. And when we got back to town, we told his parents everything and told the authorities something else. We spun a story that was atrocious and heartbreaking. We are both of those things, so it never felt like a lie.
But everything we’ve done since then has been a lie.
Molly will find out sooner or later. She knows a little bit about the project, like who she is to me and what I am to her, but she doesn’t know any of the why. That’s what Case and Thomas and I have been hiding. The why.
Oh, she’s perceptive. This whole superhero fantasy she has, it’s cute. But she has no idea how close she is to the truth. It’s just not the truth she imagines in her fantastical delusion of superheroes, justice, and the rule of law.
I look down at her naked body. It’s not hot in here, the heat is not on, but I generate a great deal of heat from my hands. They bathe her perfect breasts in a glow of amber yellow and she’s sweating slightly from my touch. I lean down and kiss the top of her head, suddenly feeling possessive. She needs to come home with me. I can’t imagine not knowing where she is every minute of the day.
You should be ashamed of yourself, Lincoln.
I know I should, but I’m not. I want what I want and I have always wanted her. Prodigy did a good job on me, that’s for sure. I fell for her. I fell for her soft hazel eyes looking up at me when she was five. That’s when they started making her into my killer.
There was a long progression of experimental Alphas before Case and I came along. Decades of research and development. Decades of failures and successes. But no one, until Molly, had ever captured the heart of an Alpha.
Case hated his Omega. Thomas killed all of his—that inhibition shit never worked right on him anyway. That’s what makes him our leader. Thomas was a total failure at Prodigy, and if he wasn’t so important to the project, they’d have killed him before he turned ten. The inhibitor that prevented Case and I from causing harm to our Omegas never took effect on Thomas. Not in any way that mattered. He could kill indiscriminately and he never even had to be present. He was the first victim of Project Super-Alpha and his biological modifications are significant.
They shut down most of his emotional responses, most of his ability for empathy for example, and just about all of his give-a-fuck gene. That’s what I call it anyway.
If he’s been following protocol and injecting himself regularly over the years like Case and I have, then he can’t kill me. But he’d get damn far in the process if he wanted to. And who knows if he’s even been doing it? We haven’t seen him. He’s been a voice on a phone or words in a text or email.
But Case and I decided if we can’t trust him then we might as well give up. We need Thomas to complete this final act of revenge. So we take our chances.
Case and I were less extreme examples of Prodigy’s program. We have those same modifications, but at a much more controlled level. Thomas is not capable of caring and I wonder how he’ll react to me bringing Molly home.
Because she’s definitely coming home with me.
She stirs, as if she can sense that her life is changing as she sleeps. I kiss her head again. Thomas can’t take her away this time. I won’t allow it.
“Why are you still awake?” she asks, turning her body to face me.
“My hands are glowing. It bothers me.”
“So put your gloves back on and go to sleep.”
“No,” I say, kissing her mouth. “You said you liked to feel my touch and I want to give you everything you want.”
She smiles, her eyes still closed. “Hmmm. I love you,” she says in a sleepy murmur.
Hold that thought, I think to myself. Hold that thought, gun girl. Because I’m guaranteed to be one long string of disappointments. And even though I love her more than I love myself, I still have a job to do.
She slips back into her dream world where everything is perfect.
I want her there. That’s where she belongs.
But I have work to do. So little by little I inch away and let her go. And an hour later, when she finally rolls over onto her stomach and we break the last of our skin-on-skin contact, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and get dressed.
When I’m done I walk down the stairs and find my gloves on the kitchen table where I left them. I pull them on, dimming the light and feeling relief. I didn’t want to show Molly my hands, but it was an act of trust. It helped her believe in me.
I needed that. Tonight of all nights, I needed her to believe in me.
I grab the gun I stuffed under the sofa cushion in Molly’s living room and it connects with the magnetic plates in my hands and gives off a single chirp telling me that Sheila is engaged. I slide it into the waistband of my jeans, slightly relieved that she showed up. I don’t use it much. I don’t have to. I have my own way of killing people. But I like to have it and I like Sheila to be with me.
Sheila wants me to end this madness. She thinks Molly can save me. But she’s got it all wrong. Now is the time to step it up and the person being saved will never be me.
I walk out the front door and click the alarm on my car as I cross the street. When I slip inside, the computer comes to life and Sheila says, “Assignment commencing,” in what might be a weary voice.
Is that considered a human emotion? Weariness? They left a lot off that list if you ask me.
The car starts up and she pulls out, taking control of the vehicle as we head over to the other side of town where a man is about to get a phone call on his cell. We only have a few more on the list, so it’s just about over.
Sheila doesn’t want to help me anymore, but I don’t care. She can stop if she wants, but that won’t stop me. “Better to go down together,” she says through the car’s sound system.
“You got that right,” I say back. And then I take control of the wheel and head over to Atticus Montgomery’s house to watch the final act commence from a front-row seat.