I step back as if she’s struck me. The betrayal is a suffocating weight. I want to reach out and wrap my hands around her neck to silence the honesty that’s stripping me bare, but my fingers won't move. I’m paralyzed by the image of us in that bed, the one moment I thought I was something more than a weapon, something more than Charles’s shadow.
"A monster," I repeat, the word tasting like ash.
"Is that what I was to you last night? A research project? A case study in depravity?"
"Last night was..." she starts, her voice breaking, but she stops herself.
She looks at the monitors, at the glowing proof of my lineage, and then back at me with a look of pure, agonizing pity.
"Last night was a mistake. Because I forgot for one second that no matter how you touch me, you’re still a cold serial killer."
The air in the morgue turns freezing. The rage is still there, but it’s mutated into a cold, hollow void. I don't want to hurt her. The thought of bruising that skin again makes my stomach turn.But that one part of me is screaming for order. For control. If I am the monster she says I am, then I should act like one.
I reach out, not with violence, but with a terrifying, slow finality, and grab her chin, forcing her to look at the screen where the DNA results are still pulsing.
"If I'm his son, Madeline, then I've inherited his talent for keeping what belongs to him," I whisper, my voice cracking with the strain of not breaking.
My voice has changed. It is no longer the deep, passionate rasp from last night, nor the rage-filled roar from a moment ago. It is a dead, mechanical tone. The tone of a man who has just started to carve away pieces of his own soul to survive.
"Delete it," I say, gesturing to the monitor.
"All of it. Now."
Madeline looks at me, her eyes a mix of resistance and disbelief.
"Deimos, this is evidence. It’s your family..."
"This isn't evidence. It’s a death sentence," I interrupt, stepping toward the control panel until I have her pinned back against the cold metal.
"Do you think Charles doesn't know what you're doing? Do you think this data will remain safe in this godforsaken morgue?”
I grab her hand, forcing her fingers toward the keyboard. I can feel her trembling, but I don't let her pull away.
"Lucy is not a sister to me, Madeline. She is a liability. She is a weakness you just plunged into my back like a knife," I growl directly into her ear.
"Everything I was building. The wall between me and my father. You just tore it down. You’ve made her a target. And yourself, too."
I watch her face stiffen with horror. This is no longer about our feelings, about how much I hate her for this betrayal, orhow much my skin burns where she touched me. This is about survival within a design that is falling apart in our hands.
"Delete it, or I will destroy this morgue myself," I add icily.
"And then I will find Lucy. Not to embrace her like a long-lost brother, but to tuck her away somewhere where no one will ever find her. Including you."
Madeline wrenches herself away, tears of frustration in her eyes, but she begins frantically wiping the files. I watch her fingers fly across the keys, destroying the results that changed us both forever.
"You’re just like him," she whispers as the screen displays Deleting...
"You’re destroying everything that could possibly make you human."
"Maybe," I reply, watching the percentage bar nearing one hundred.
"But at least I will survive to watch this world burn. Charles created me in his own image? Fine. Then I’ll show him what happens when his greatest creation loses its last reason for mercy."
The final file vanishes from the screen with a mocking, digital blip. I let go of her hand as if it had suddenly turned into ice, stepping back. I don't look at her. I can’t. If I look at her, I’ll see the woman who held me last night, and right now, that version of Madeline is a ghost I need to exorcise.
"Don't go home, Madeline," I say, my voice low and hollow, devoid of any of the heat that usually defines us.
"Stay here. Stay in your sanctuary of the dead. It’s the only place the Elite won't look for a living girl."
