“To reach your full potential, of course.”
“What the hell is wrong with you? You can’t just kidnap people. You can’t just steal me away. The department will come looking, you know.”
He grunts. “I own that department, Molly. You’re actually quite stupid for being one of my Prodigies. I would have killed you years ago if Alpha Three hadn’t stolen you from me.”
“You’re sick.”
“No.” He laughs one of those diabolical laughs. “I’m insightful. I predicted your downfall the minute you were introduced to Alpha Three. Oh, he took to you right away, as was the plan. But everything about you said weak. Still,” he says, his tone thoughtful, “if the Alpha thought you had potential, well, he was one of my creations after all. I needed to heed his opinion. Which is why I was so pleased when Will, Alpha Four, was instructed by Lincoln to watch over you.”
“W-w-what?”
“Oh, you poor baby. You don’t know that Will was mine? You didn’t ever suspect that we’d been changing you all along? A shot here, a broken ankle needing medical attention there. That appendicitis when you were twelve?” He snickers.
“What?” I instantly feel sicker.
“You’ve been mine since the beginning, Omega Three. And I’m sorry your adopted father caught on to the fact that Martha was your real mother. That was an unfortunate accident he had.”
“You killed him?”
“What do you think, darling?”
“And Will too?”
“No.” Montgomery smiles, revealing enough teeth to make my stomach roll with a wave of disgust. “Lincoln took care of him.”
“No.” I shake my head. No. I can’t take any more of this. I seriously cannot.
“Oh, I’m sure he has lots of reasons, Molly. And I’m sure he’ll come soon, so you can ask him. But we don’t have much time. They are changing him now. Just like I will change you. And then we’ll see what happens.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The project, Molly. He’s still my Alpha. I own him. And you’re going to make him submit to me. But just in case he can overpower you, I’m going to stack the deck in your favor. Put her on the table.”
The guards come at me, and even though I kick out and even strike one or two, they are too strong and throw me down on the stainless steel table. My feet are clamped into some metal restraints, and then the bindings on my hands are cut and each wrist is slammed down into similar cuffs near my hips.
“Good night, Molly.” The Blue Boar cackles over me as I am pushed out of the room and down a long hallway. “When you wake you will finally be what I made you.” His laugh floats down the hallway with me, piercing my head with his final word. “Mine.”
Chapter Forty-Eight - Lincoln
Thump—thump, goes my heartbeat.
Thump—thump.
“Lincoln?”
A wave of pain floods through my body.
“Lincoln? Can you hear me?”
Heat builds in my core. It feels like the flames of a furnace, reaching up to lick their way down my arms and into my hands. But then the heat disappears, leaving the vents in my palms feeling like charred paper.
“Lincoln? Open your eyes.”
The relief is temporary. Because as soon as one wave dissipates, another is already building. “Fire,” I croak out. But I’m fooling myself. My lips don’t move and no sound escapes.
“He needs to wake up,” Case says from somewhere off to my left. I want to tell him I’m awake, but the inferno is back. “He needs to control it, or he’s gonna burn up.”
Too late. I feel like my whole body is building towards an explosion.
I’m dying.
“I’m injecting the antagonist. He can’t go back under,” Sheila says. “He’s too weak.”
And then in my mind, You’re OK, Lincoln. But you need to wake up and take control of it. It can’t run your body, only you can do that. You must take control.
I have that moment of relief as the heat bursts forth from my palms and I relish it. I make that moment last. I concentrate on every part of my body that is free from pain before it washes over me again. Help me, I beg Sheila. Help me.
I can’t, she says in my head. I can’t do any more. You have to wake up and learn to deal with it.
“He’s semi-conscious, but unable to focus through the pain,” Sheila tells the others.
“Well, he needs to get past that,” Thomas says. “Attach the weapons. Maybe that will bring him up. And pump him with coolant, his temperature is lethal. I don’t know why he’s still alive.”
But I know why I’m still alive. They injected my DNA with the jellyfish neurons. As fast as the heat burns me up, I am healed and regenerated.
Drills start on my outer thighs as holes are bored into the plates that have been sitting dormant for years. The robot arms clamp down on my lower leg to keep me still.