Grayson handed him the phone. Reece watched the clip in silence, his eyes huge. “That’s your brother. That is definitely your brother, he looks just like you. He’s alive. Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Obviously,” Grayson said. “I’m not gonna have feelings about it. I’m not gonna have feelings about anything, Reece. Don’t look for them.”
Reece jerked his head up. “Maybe not,” he said, more tightly. “But I was right. You didn’t kill him. You lied to everyone when you told them you did.”
Outside the truck, the night sky was black-and-white. Grayson’s memories were blue, like the West Texas sky, red like sunlit peaks on stone mountains. Red like fire.
“You were right. I didn’t kill Alex,” he said, and it sounded like a confession.
“What really happened?” Reece asked quietly.
Grayson watched the road pass under his headlights, more of the same thousands upon thousands of solitary miles he’d driven since that day he’d been changed into the Dead Man. “Alex and I were taken to a bunker somewhere out in West Texas. To this day I don’t know exactly where it was. The people who took us said my pain was going to bring my real brother back, but Alex said they were lying, that they only wanted to use me to see how powerful they could make him, and then they’d kill us both.”
“Evan.” Reece’s voice was so gentle—not a hint of Grumpy Bear right then, just Tenderheart Bear through and through. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t waste your sympathy on me,” Grayson said. “I don’t feel sorrow. I don’t feel regret. I don’t feel anything.” He moved into the left lane, passed a car. “Alex said he thought he could make me even stronger, strong enough to break us out, but it’d mean trading my emotions away. And I said yes.”
“You let him make you the Dead Man?” Reece whispered.
“Hewasn’t lying,” Grayson said. “And it was my fault we were in that bunker. The change worked, and I got us free, but I hadn’t counted on Alex turning around and lighting the whole place up, thralling every last person in that bunker. In hindsight I should’ve—corrupted empaths don’t really turn the other cheek.”
The sound of the truck’s engine was deep and the night was cold, but Grayson’s memories still held the bunker’s high-pitched screams and fire’s heat. “Outside the bunker, Alex could feel it when the Empath Initiative and Stone Solutions showed up to rescue us, and he was laughing, because it meant dozens of new people for him to thrall. I knew Alex was still dangerous, still corrupted, and I needed to stop him before he hurt them. I had him in that room, at gunpoint. And then...”
Grayson trailed off. Reece waited, and the truck was quiet, just the windshield wipers layered over the engine.
“It happened very fast,” Grayson finally said. “I didn’t have feelings stopping me from using that gun, but I—I still had my memories. And my finger wouldn’t pull the trigger. I wasn’t ready for that and he escaped.”
“You let him go.”
“No,” Grayson said quickly. “There was nowhere for himtogo in that bunker, and there was fire everywhere. He was as good as dead.”
“Then why lie about it?” Reece said. “Unless, of course, you lied and told everyone you’d killed your brother because it would keep them from looking for him.”
“That’s not what it was,” Grayson said again. “Maybe your empathy is looking for answers based in feelings but you’re not gonna find them with me.”
Reece looked like he wanted to say a lot more to that, but he bit his lip. “What does your brother want with Gretel Macy?”
“He apparently let her go unhurt, for whatever reason. But now he’s got Officer Stensby and the airsoft manager, Keith Waller, under his thrall, and no one’s seen them since they broke into Stone Solutions, left the night shift security dead, and set another fire in their wake.”
Reece winced.
“Yeah, Alex is my brother, but I gotta stop him,” Grayson said, more quietly. “This is why the world needs the Dead Man.”
Reece held up the phone. “The president of Stone Solutions Canada sent you this. The same one who’s got that broken Dead Man blueprint on a hidden flash drive.” There were too many emotions in his voice for Grayson to pick them all out. “Is this the message from all the empath agencies? Did they tell you that you have to come be the Dead Man—against your ownbrother?”
“Yeah, they did, because yeah, I do,” Grayson said. “What happened with Alex taught me that corruption is permanent. I might’ve hesitated that first night in that bunker, Reece, but I learned my lesson and I’ll never flinch like that again. If I have to take my brother down, I will. If I have to take you down, I’ll do it too.”
“But isn’t it just so convenient for Stone Solutions and the Empath Initiative that it’s always you?” Reece’s eyes had narrowed at the corners. “How nice for a bunch of cowards who want someone to hide behind and don’t care what happens to you in the process.”
“This is what the Dead Man does. I’m just a weapon—”
“No,” Reece said sharply. “I don’t care what all those assholes keep telling you. I know it was written all over that manual on that flash drive, calling youa perfectly engineered weapon for these predators, but you’re more than a weapon, they’ve just always been afraid of us.”
“Don’t take that comment for more than it’s worth,” Grayson said. “Traynor told me about that new theory and it’s obviously wrong—”
“What do you mean,newtheory? It’s notnew, it was right there in that manual,” Reece said, over Grayson’s protest. “And you’renota weapon. Weapons don’t have compassion and kindness, but you still do. I know you do, because it’s keeping me off that ledge of corruption.Youare keeping me off that ledge. Understand? So you have to be careful, because if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Grayson didn’t know what to say to that. Reece was so intuitive, even about Grayson; unusual for him to be wrong like this. Maybe he just couldn’t bear the thought of a human weapon, even if that’s all Grayson was now. “I do try to be careful,” he finally said. “But it’s not always gonna be an option. Sometimes I’ll have to do things, or go places, where there’s danger.”
