Chapter 981
Skye screamed — a primal sound that tore her throat raw. She dropped the flashlight and fell to her knees, clutching her head. The pain was blinding, as though her skull were splitting open along its sutures.
“Skye!” Alistair was there instantly, wrapping his arms around her. “Skye, look at me! It’s Alistair!”
“Get away!” She thrashed, striking out blindly. “Don’t put me back! Don’t put me back in the box!”
She wasn’t seeing Alistair. She was seeing the man in the mask. The Elder.
“Alistair, sedate her!” Julian shouted over the comms. “The neural block is collapsing! If you don’t knock her out, the shock will kill her!”
𝘔оs𝘁 𝗋𝖾а𝗱 𝗍𝗵i𝘴 𝘄e𝖾𝗸 o𝗇 g𝘢𝘭𝗇𝘰𝘷𝗲𝗹ѕ.𝘤𝗈𝘮
Alistair hesitated for a fraction of a second, searching her eyes — seeing only agony. Then he pulled a syringe from his tactical vest. Julian had insisted they carry it.
“I’m sorry, Skye,” he whispered.
He pressed the needle into her neck.
She stiffened, arched her back, and went limp. Her body collapsed into his arms.
Silence rushed back into the attic, heavy and suffocating.
“What did you do to her?” Alistair whispered, pressing two fingers to her pulse.
“We saved her brain,” Julian said grimly over the radio. “They installed a kill switch in her subconscious. If she remembers the cage without the proper deprogramming keys, it kills her. Get her out of there. Now.”
Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
Arthur burst into the attic, flanked by three armed guards. He stopped short. He saw Alistair. He saw Skye, unconscious on the floor. He saw the uncovered birdcage.
His face went white.
“You,” Arthur breathed. “You weren’t supposed to see.”
Alistair rose to his feet, positioning himself between the guards and Skye’s body. He drew his gun.
“One step closer and I blow your head off, Arthur,” Alistair said. His voice was dead calm.
Arthur’s eyes moved from the cage to the guards. “Kill them,” he ordered. “It’s self-defense. They broke in.”
The guards raised their weapons.
The attic window shattered inward.
A figure swung through on a rope, crashing through the glass and landing in a low crouch. Shards sprayed across the floor. He straightened, brushing glass from his coat. He held a lighter in one hand and a canister of gasoline in the other. He wasn’t wearing his usual suit — he was dressed in tactical gear.
Lucian Graves.
“Stand down,” Lucian said.
“Lucian?” Arthur stumbled back, eyes widening. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in hiding. If the Administrator finds out you’re interfering —”
“I’m cleaning up your mess, Arthur,” Lucian said. He looked down at Skye’s unconscious body with an unreadable expression — pity, or calculation, or something caught between the two. “You let them find it. If the Keepers discover she saw this, they won’t simply kill her. They’ll extract her brain to study the break.” He paused. “I won’t let that happen.”
“Let them go,” Lucian ordered.
“But they saw!” Arthur protested.
“They saw nothing.” Lucian flicked the lighter open. The flame trembled in the still air. “Because there is nothing here.”
He threw the gasoline canister onto the heap of old furniture beside the cage. Then he tossed the lighter.
.
.