Malcolm is too smart not to already know about it, so I’m not risking anything by telling him now. And I know he’s not the one behind it because he has an entire laboratory at his disposal. Whatever he does here is hidden in those internal servers Cason is currently setting fire to.
Besides, if I claimed to be here just to chat, he’d be suspicious.
If I could actually get information from him, then two birds, one stone.
“We both know we can’t let whatever’s happening continue.”
That smug look of his grows. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend?”
“Let’s not get sentimental,” I say with a forced grin of my own. “I’m just interested in not letting someone else start a fire neither of us can put out.”
Malcolm falls silent, studying me again. I can see it in his eyes that he knows exactly what I’m talking about, and he’s weighing his options and the usefulness of giving me whateverinformation he has. He knows we could fight thisat leastas well as he can. Maybe even better becausewedon’t have to worry about rules or about hiding, not in the same way he does.
“Do you want to know what your problem is, Mr. Morgan?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“You think you’re better than me, but the truth is, you and I are exactly the same.”
Well, I wasn’t expectingthat.
“I’m nothing like you,” I tell him, my jaw clenched.
“Are you sure about that?” He rises from his chair and rounds the desk, leaning back against it two feet from me, his unnerving gaze locked on mine. “Like knows like. Similar minds and all that. You see the signs of a potentially new Ascended force, a messy one at that, and your first instinct isn’t tohelpthem. It’s to stop them, to destroy them.”
It takes me too long to answer because…
He’s not wrong.
I may not want to own them like he would, but I also don’t want them unleashed. Me and the others, we give Ascended a choice. They’re free to join us or to go about living their lives. However, they choose the latter knowing that Malcolm and the Institute are never far behind. Either way, we always keep tabs on them. If they were to start another faction, well…we wouldn’t be able to allow that.
Just like Malcolm doesn’t want to allowourresistance to continue.
“The difference is,” I say finally, accepting my role, “I don’t pretend it makes me righteous.”
“No. You just pretend it makes you different from me.”
I push to my feet, slowly. “Careful, Malcolm. You’re starting to sound like you need me.”
“I don’t need you,” he replies, his tone suddenly a little toocasual. “I’m offering you a choice.”
When it comes to Malcolm, it’s always a choice that’s never really a choice. But I stay quiet and let him get it over with anyway.
“Shut it down. Your resistance. Work for me again, and we can fight against this together. You’ve built something unstable, as we’ve already learned once, and you’re simply repeating the same cycle and hoping for a different outcome. You gather power without discipline, without hierarchy. The best thing for you to do would be to dismantle it before what happened last time happens again.”
An image of Ash flickers in my mind, accompanied by the bitter taste of smoke and loss.
“You lost control,” he continues. “And your people died because you were overly ambitious.”
Before I can stop myself, I shoot a scowl at him. “They died because of you.”
“They died because they were a risk.”
“And you think that’s going to make me stop?”
He shrugs. “I think you’re smart enough to learn from your mistakes.”
“That doesn’t exactly sound like a choice, Malcolm. Isn’t there supposed to be something in it for me?”
