Chapter 1106
“You can’t stop it,” the man wheezed, his face darkening. “The cycle — Ouroboros — it eats everything.”
Alistair understood then. He wouldn’t get answers. Not here. Not tonight.
He let the man drop. The assassin gasped for air, his hand groping for a hidden pistol in his boot.
Alistair didn’t look. He picked up his own gun from the floor and fired a single shot.
Silence returned to the kitchen, broken only by the dripping of water from the sprinklers.
Alistair stood there for a moment, chest heaving. The red haze began to recede, leaving him cold and hollow.
He looked down at his hands. The blood was half-dried, sticking between his fingers like paint that refused to wash off. Unbidden, a memory surfaced — the afternoon his father had taught him to shoot. Dominic had placed the gun on the table and said, “Remember, son. The most dangerous thing about a snake isn’t its fangs. It’s that it never bites just once.”
At the time, he had taken it for a hunting metaphor. Now he understood. His father hadn’t been talking about snakes. He had been talking about the organization.
His phone buzzed. He pulled it out with blood-slicked fingers.
“Report,” he said.
“We’re at the safe house clinic,” Ethan’s voice was tight. “They’re prepping her for surgery. It’s a through-and-through flesh wound, but she needs stitches and antibiotics. She’s tough, but she’s running on empty.”
Alistair closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the soot-blackened wall. “And Julian?”
“Stable, but critical. We diverted the ambulance to the safe house — the hospital is too exposed. He’s in the med-bay. They got his rhythm back, but he’s in a medically induced coma. It’s going to be a long night.”
“Secure the perimeter,” Alistair ordered. “I want Thorne guards on every floor, every exit. If a nurse sneezes, I want to know about it.”
“Understood. What about you?”
Alistair looked down at his hands.
“I have trash to take out,” he said. “And then I’m coming to her.”
He hung up.
As he walked out of the kitchen, stepping over the bodies, his phone buzzed again. A text message.
The bird has flown the coop. Check Vance Manor.
Alistair frowned. Vance Manor was where they had been keeping Parker Hayes. After pulling him from the Administrator’s custody, Parker had been recovering there, his mind fragile but slowly mending.
He dialed the head of security at the Manor. It rang. And rang.
When someone finally picked up, it wasn’t a guard.
“Hello, Alistair,” a voice whispered. It sounded like Parker, but broken. Wrong.
“Parker?” Alistair’s grip tightened on the phone. “Put the guard on.”
“The guard is sleeping,” Parker Hayes giggled — a sound entirely devoid of warmth. “The voices, Alistair. They were so loud. They told me what to do. The programming — it clicked.”
Alistair’s blood ran cold. “What did you do, Parker?”
“I took my sister,” Parker said, his voice oscillating between glee and sobbing. “Victoria. She has to see the light. We’re going to the light.”