“Until you,” Ben corrected. He peeled away Connor’s damp clothes and threw them onto the floor. He pulled up a rolling table set up with gauze and clean water. He dabbed at Connor’s open wounds with disinfectant, but Connor saw he was mostly bruised rather than cut. Except for his wrists, which were a bloody mess. The pills did nothing; the disinfectant stung like hell.
“Edith, she…well, you weren’t planned.”
“I figured that out a long while back.”
“We discussed an abortion,” Ben said. “And I figured since all the fetuses were dying anyway, I could get some valuable information out of your termination. I brought Edith to the lab and injected the latest serum into you.”
A sick feeling turned Connor’s stomach. “Did she know what it was you were doing?”
“No.”
Connor had to swallow past a thick lump in his throat. “And the one time it was supposed to kill the baby, it didn’t. I survived.”
“You didn’t just survive; you thrived,” Ben said. “You grew fast, you were healthy and hardy, and all of your vitals were pitch-perfect for the entire pregnancy. After you were born, we had just enough genetic material left to replicate the formula, and it worked the same. Austin was injected even earlier than you were. We think that’s why he showed more obvious changes when born. We’ll have the chance to investigate the changes that happen using the genetic material of the newest subject.”
“Did Mom know?” Connor asked, his throat closing in. She went in to get an abortion and ended up with a genetic experiment in her womb.
“I explained it… she was somewhat hysterical about it when I told her she couldn’t abort you,” Ben spoke in the same calm manner he always did. Dispassionate. Uncaring. Like he wasn’t telling Connor something horrifying.
“And then?”
“We had to keep her in the lab, of course. To make sure she didn’t try to abort you on her own. It meant she was very stagnant for much of the pregnancy—and we all worried about the effect that might have on you—but your health never declined.”
Connor couldn’t prompt the next question. He couldn’t—
Ben’s gaze flicked up. He must have been waiting for another question, but his expression hardened as he laid eyes on Connor. It must have been in Connor’s expression, in his eyes. His absolute disgust.
He’d been awful to Edith. He’d always thought she was a horrible mom, and that was how he’d treated her. How did she feel looking at him? Looking at the thing that had caused her to go through imprisonment? The thing she had been forced to give birth to after taking measures to avoid being a mom?
There was no way to hide how he felt. No way to backstep.
“Are they okay?” Connor asked. His voice didn’t come out calm or level. It wasn’t a scientific enquiry or a question that Ben could answer with any interest. “At the house. I heard there was fighting, but I blacked out.”
Ben turned his attention to bandaging Connor’s wrists. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, as in they’re okay? Beaten up? Or—”
“I didn’t check,” Ben replied.
“You didn’t check if Edith was okay? I heard her coming down the stairs.”
“I didn’t check,” Ben repeated in that same indifferent tone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
After Ben patched up his wounds, Connor was given plain grey clothes to change into. He wasn’t in good shape, and his mind was in an even worse place after hearing what Edith had gone through to give birth to him. Ben left, and Connor heard the lock click into place on the door. Knowing he’d just messed up his chance to use Ben dampened his hopes. He cursed himself for not hiding his disgust. If he’d kept control of his emotions for a little while longer, he could have manoeuvred Ben into showing him around…
Connor wanted to lie down. Shovel enough of those pills into his mouth to blackout into oblivion. Instead, he forced his aching body to explore the room, to look for any way of communicating with others to contact the outside world. There were no windows and no clocks. All he had was equipment and drugs.
Connor dug through the drawers, and he was only a few seconds into his search when he found an entire drawer of scalpels. Connor examined the room, searching the corners for any signs of cameras. This seemed too easy. Way, way too easy.
He picked up the nearest one. Just to test it, he cut the sleeve of his new jumper. It sliced through. Connor let out a heavy breath as he slipped it into the pocket of his jumper. He tucked another into his other pocket and then placed a third one up his sleeve, holding onto it by pinching it between two fingers. The sleeves were long enough to hide it.
It was careless to leave him in here with sharp objects. Wasn’t it? So careless that it seemed like a trap. Maybe they thought he was too injured to search for a weapon? Or, Connor thought, maybe the man running this operation wasn’t the brightest bulb on the block? His mind lingered on Cessair walking the deck, and he thought back to all those interviews Laurence had shown him. Cessair was arrogant, smug, richer than he knew how to manage, and an obvious showman.
They had set Connor up because his blood test showed changes in him, and they wanted him close by to observe him. The set-up had been larger than life and elaborate, where a text from Ben would have brought him back into the area without a thousand eyes turning their attention onto the town.
Ben was a fanatic researcher and often ignored important things in real life. Arthur was the same. Maybe their billionaire boss had that same one-minded obsession? He had certainly seemed unhinged in his interviews. Connor had the impression that Cessair was even less in touch with reality than Ben was.
