Page 75 of Pulse Zero
But then he stands, looming over me, and my body reacts before my brain can stop it. Every muscle tightens, instinct screaming that the shadows around his feet are about to lunge.
Reese notices.
“Relax,” he says, his tone flat. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be a memory.”
“Comforting,” I mutter. “Real romantic. You practice that line in the mirror or—”
“You still think this is a fucking joke?”
“I think my uncle arranged my kidnapping, my presumed-dead twice-kidnapper is apparently a walking paranormal event, and I just woke up on a basement floor for the second time in my life.” I narrow my eyes in an act of retaliation. “So, yeah. Humor feels like a reasonable coping mechanism.”
He stares at me in silence for several seconds before something flickers across his expression too fast for me to name.
Then the shadows move.
Cold pressure slams into my chest so suddenly that the breath punches out of my lungs, that same awful, heavy weight pressing against my ribs as before I passed out. I gasp, doubling over as the air thickens around me. It’s not just fear. It’s worse than fear. It’s a deep, bone-level terror that doesn’t belong to me, like my body suddenly remembers every nightmare it’s ever had all at once.
“Reese.” I barely manage to get any sound out, let alone words. “Please.”
The shadows tighten around my chest. I canphysicallyfeel them, as though they’re as real as he is. I cough as the pressure creeps up my throat, clawing its way up. Any other sounds that come from me dissolve into choking. It feels like I’m drowning in smoke, as though the shadows areinsidemy lungs.
Reese watches me struggle, his face unreadable.
“You don’t even understand what it is you’ve done, do you?”
The shadows ease off enough for me to drag in a ragged breath that tastes like ash and metal.
“I fucked up,” I wheeze. “Not really anything new there.”
Pain sparks through my ribs as my lungs seize, like they’re being filled to the brim with his darkness. White spots flash around the edges of my vision as the dread grows stronger, coiling tighter around my spine.
“You destroyed everything,” he says, almost too quietly to reach me over the excruciating pain. “You have no idea how many lives you ruined.”
My chest heaves as I force air back into my lungs in one of the rare moments he lets me actually breathe.
“Look,” I croak. “In my defense, anonymous internet revenge plots rarely come with a mass casualty disclaimer.”
His expression doesn’t change, not even a flicker. The next time he speaks, his voice is low and steady, but there’ssomething colder and more jagged beneath it.
“And yet they’re still dead. Nearly forty of them.”
The words drop like a hundred lead weights into my gut. My stomach twists. The tears blurring my vision grow thicker until he looks more like the man I left behind in that basement, his face distorted as all I could do was cry.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper.
“It doesn’t fucking matter.”
The shadows slam into me again, this time so hard I swear it cracks a rib. I think I scream. I’m in too much fucking pain to worry about how I’m able to physicallyfeelthem, but it’s one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever experienced. They crush all the air from my lungs as my pulse roars in my ears.
After nearly a minute of that—though it feels much longer—the shadows let me breathe again. Kind of. Just enough to keep me from blacking out.
“Malcolm.” I’m fighting just to breathe, let alone speak. “He tricked me.”
“And if I could get to him, he’d be the one crying on this floor and fighting for breath right now. But look how easily I could get to you. You were so eager to take revenge on the person who hired me for the sake of your uncle and the Institute, but look how quick he is to protectyou. If you thought Malcolm ever cared about you, you were wrong.”
That’swhy he thinks I did it?
To avengethe Institute?
