Page 12 of Fuse

The explosion that blasts me free from all of them, tilting away and stumbling back over to Tyce’s memorial marker. But though I brace myself over the plaque, hands flat and locked against the stone, none of the engraved words make any sense.

Nothing makes sense.

I’m ripped open as if by a harakiri sword. I’m standing with my guts in my hand…

And my heart swollen in my throat.

“Alpha Three-Twenty-Three.” I really do want to believe my intestines have been split open more than accepting this reality. “Three. Twenty. Three.”

Somehow I manage to lift the bowl of rocks once known as my head, though I realize they aren’t rocks at all. The weight in my senses is the burden of despair—a heavier load than any I endured during those days when nothing lay ahead but hours of pain and fear atop a steel lab table.

Unbelievably, this mess is worse.

Way worse.

The feeling of knowing that over two hundred other alpha subjects have been processed by the Consortium between myself and Kane. If they’ve captured and experimented on half as many omegas, the other designation the bastards gave their prisoners, then that makes nearly three hundred and twenty-five innocents those monsters have captured and tortured in their giant hive of a cage.

A cage we still can’t fucking find.

People we still can’t save.

Horrors we’ll never reverse.

More markers we’ll have to engrave.

A force churns through me. Hot then cold, pain then nausea, grief then rage, thunder then lightning. Through foggy vision, I watch the storm of it move down my arms, surging through my muscles and burning through my blood, until it slams its bright-blue force into my fingers. I hiss through my teeth but let the tempest strike again, erupting in electric arcs as I raise my hands off the stone only to bring them back down in fisted fury.

Somewhere behind me, Mom’s stunned cry is backed by tearful gasps and gritted oaths. I don’t say a damn word. I’m not sorry for beating on my brother’s grave so hard that the boulder looks like a fallen comet from some exotic cobalt planet. Tyce would be the first one to laugh at that, asking if a bevy of blue babes arrived with the order too.

“Damn it.” I get that much out, though barely. My lungs are beaten to shit, and my throat is a tight tunnel of grief. “Goddamnit!”

Upside to the outburst: a moment of clearer vision, though that does me no damn good. As I take in the stony letters that are all I have left of Tyce, my hearing is sharpened as well—to the point that I swear I can hear the cocky bastard chuckling in amusement at all this goddamned pathos.

Which makes me pummel at his stone again.

And again.

And again.

No way, fucker. You don’t get to do this, Tyce Frederick. You do not get to laugh in my face after pulling all this bullshit. After showing me what you were really made of and then stealing every chance I ever had to know you. To honor you. To love you. Goddamn you!

“Love of Christ.” Something about the stringent command punctures through my pain, making me stop, blink, and dip my head to the side. Vaguely, I acknowledge Chase’s presence in that spot—but only for the few seconds before Foley appears, attempting to haul him back like a bystander at a car crash.

“Dude.” Foley tugs harder at my big brother. “It’s so not the time to go Good Damon on Bad Stefan right now, okay?”

“Please, Chase.” Joany sprints forward, grabbing Chase’s elbow with an impressive grip. “Listen to the man. If Reece needs space…”

I shove down a calming breath, nodding to appreciate her consideration—though right now, I need a hell of a lot more than space, damn it.

I need answers. Vital ones.

If cockroaches can’t hide forever, why can’t we find the Consortium’s nest?

If good is supposed to win over bad, why have they captured and tortured hundreds of others since I escaped—including my brother?

If love is supposed to trump evil, why was Tyce the one who died and Faline the bitch who got away?

And why am I standing here, moaning about the fact that I have none of those answers instead of being back down the hill in the lab, trying to discover them?