Page 93 of Pulse Zero
I scrub a hand down my face while Felix, traitor that he is, starts eating his kibble like nothing about this is concerning. Grabbing a glass out of the cabinet, I fill it with water and down the whole thing. After that, I push away from the counter and start checking.
It doesn’t take me long to find the cameras. Becauseof coursethere are cameras. They’re hidden well, better than most people would ever find, but not better than me. I move through the apartment methodically, ignoring the way my body protests every step. One by one, I find them and disable them and throw them in the trash. The one in the bedroom, the one in the kitchen, and even the one in the fucking bathroom.
But then I find the one in the living room and stop.
It’s tucked neatly into the corner beneath the top shelf of my bookcase, angled just right to see most of the room. I stare at it for a long moment, take a step back, and stare at it some more.
Reese let me escape.
Now that I’ve survived most of the emotional turmoil from the past few days, I can see that actually makes sense. He putcameras in my apartment and let me go, hoping I’d give him a way to get to Malcolm.
Of course it would be so he coulduseme.
“You know what?” I mutter at the camera. “You can keep that one.”
I think of Reese watching me now, like he did before. Like he’s done a lot of times before. But I think the one that will stick with me most didn’t even involve a camera. Just him watching while his shadows touched me, ghostly hands exploring my body, getting me off.
Fuck, it was hot.
But it was alsonotwhat I wanted.
After all this time, after being without him for so long and then having him back, I wantedhistouch. I wanted to feel his body against mine, feel his arms surrounding me. Fortunately, the weight of his cock in my mouth was the only thing that kept me from spiraling. It was confusing being so turned on, so many hands on me while experiencing the unnerving things they made me feel, and also wanting everything Reese refused to give me.
And now I’m going to keep this damn camera out of nothing but spite so he can watch me without being able to touch me even if hedidfucking want to.
Felix jumps onto the couch, staring at me like I’ve finally done something worth his approval.
“To be clear,” I say, voice still wrecked but steadier now, “this is me choosing chaos.”
The camera, shockingly, does not respond.
I turn my back on it and head to my desk in the corner of the room. Because apparently, when my life falls apart, my coping mechanism is cyber warfare, which is probably only slightly less healthy than using humor.
My computer hums to life, the familiar glow of the screens washing over me. For a moment, I just sit there, staring, wishingI could blame them instead of me for what I did to Reese.
Maybe then our reunion would have gone differently…
But it doesn’t help to dwell, so I shake those thoughts away and get to work. My fingers start moving. I don’t even fully know what it is I’m looking for. Just…answers.
It turns out that the Bellrose Institute systems are harder to crack than they used to be. That’s new. And annoying. I frown as I push deeper, bypassing new security layers that definitely weren’t there before. It takes a bit of time, but I finally break my way in.
“Okay,” I mutter. “Who’s been busy?”
The data starts to unfold in the form of sealed files and restricted protocols, things I absolutely should not be able to access. My jaw tightens as I open one.
POST-RESUSCITATION ANOMALIES
I blink, and a chill sends a shiver shooting down my spine as I read through the clinical language that’s cold and precise. References to subjects who exhibited “non-baseline manifestations” following death.
My stomach swoops.
Ascension.
It’s real. Reese wasn’t lying about Malcolm. It’s all here, documented and studied and weaponized. Everything right in Malcolm’s pocket.
My fingers move faster, pulling more files, cross-referencing, digging deeper. Efficiency reports pop up on one screen while operational metrics get dragged to another. Patient evaluations, experiment analyses, test subject cases. I run timeline comparisons on all of it.
When the data comes in, I can’t breathe.
