Page 25 of Stay Scared

“He built much of the behavioral architecture.”

Owen accepts the description without reacting.

The masked man continues. “I built the experience around what you refuse to show your audience.”

“You wanted to expose me.”

“I wanted to see who you were when there was nothing left to edit.”

The filtered voice reaches me from across the open doorway, and my body reacts the same way it did beneath the entrance arch. Apparently seeing part of his machinery fail did nothing to cure that response.

“Take off the mask.”

He stays exactly where he is.

“I opened the exit.”

“You gave me a rule. Follow it.”

Cade looks at him. Owen watches the fastening beneath his ear.

The man reaches for a control at his wrist. The white lines around the mask’s mouth go dark as one clasp releases near his temple and another beneath his ear.

“Do not make me say it again.”

He removes the mask.

Ash Langston looks nothing like the Voice I built in my head.

Dark hair has been pushed back from his forehead, flattened slightly where the mask sat. His face is controlled without becoming unreadable. Muted green eyes hold mine beneath the operational lights, and a shallow mark runs along one cheek from the mask.

My eyes catch on his mouth, and Ash notices.

“You were not supposed to see my face yet.”

Without the distortion, his voice is lower and much closer.

“But I told you to remove it.”

“You did.”

“And you listened.”

“I gave you the rule.”

He lowers the mask onto the chair. “If I ignore it when it becomes inconvenient, it was never a rule.”

Three men stand inside the room now. Cade stays near the open route without filling it. Owen positions himself where he can see both the corridor and the chair. Ash faces me.

His authority survives the missing mask irritatingly well.

Cade shifts his weight. Ash glances toward him, and an order almost forms before he seems to reconsider it and folds his hands behind his back instead.

Cade notices and stays where he chose to stand.

Ash has controlled him with little more than a raised hand since I entered this room. Now he deliberately keeps those hands behind his back and leaves Cade’s choices to him.

“No one blocks your exit,” Ash says. “The route stays open.”