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Burke ground his teeth together, and Nick relished it. Keep him talking. Keep him guessing. He wasn’t ready for what was coming. “It’s in the interest of self-preservation. They play with their conquests to confuse them, to tire them out. Makes them weaker so when the time comes to strike, there’s a lower risk of injury. Retaliation.”
“Oh,” Nick said. Then he brightened. “Oh.I get it! You’re the cat, and we’re the mice.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s… pretty dumb, if I’m being honest. I have a question. Want to make sure we’re on the same page.”
“Is he always like this?” Burke asked Dad.
“You mean amazing?” Dad retorted. “Yes. Yes, he is.”
Nick squared his shoulders. Burke had a few inches on him, and at least fifty pounds, but he was just a man. A stupid, horrendous man, but a man all the same. He was nothing. He was no one. He was already over, he just didn’t know it yet. “What happens if the prey fights back? Seems to me an animal cornered would do anything to survive.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” Burke said. “And sometimes they escape. I’ll give you that.” He pressed a hand against Nick’s chest, pushing him back a step. “But the funny thing about prey is the moment they know, they’re already dead. Oh, they’ll still bite and scratch, but somewhere deep inside their brains, underneath all the shrieking alarms, they know they’ve lost.”
“I don’t get it,” Trey whispered loudly to Bob. “He’s saying he’s a cat? Like, he purrs?”
“They’re called furries,” Bob whispered back. “People who dress up like animals and go to conventions.”
“Huh,” Trey said. “That’s…” He squinted at Burke. “You get, like, whiskers and everything? Those must be a pain in the ass to glue to your face. My daughter was a cat for Halloween when she was… what. Six? It tookforeverto put together. Whiskers. Tail. Face makeup. Mittens shaped like little paws.”
“Please tell me you have pictures,” Nick begged. “I need them like air.”
Trey chuckled. “Might have a few. But you can’t tell her I showed you. I like having my head attached to my shoulders.”
“Anthony,” Burke said, and before Nick could react, Anthony hit Trey upside the head with his gun. Trey grunted and stumbled into Miles, who slung an arm around his waist, holding him up. A thin line of blood dripped down the side of his head. He wiped it away, flicking his hand so that blood splashed against the side of the elevator.
“Anthony, was it?” Trey asked quietly. “You and me, man. We’re gonna have a problem.”
Anthony raised the gun again like he was going to strike Trey. For his part, Trey didn’t move, staring him down. Anthony lowered the gun a moment later, putting it back into Dad’s side just above his hip. “Counting on it,” he said.
“There are consequences for everything,” Burke told Nick as the elevator neared its destination. “You haven’t yet learned that lesson, but I will teach it to you if it’s the last thing I do.”
Nick stared at him dead-on. “It will be.”
Nick stepped off the elevator into a long hallway, the ceilings vaulted, the floor covered in a thick, lush carpet. Sconces hung on the walls, and between them, a line of photographs. An entire history captured in color and black-and-white, years passing by in the blink of an eye.
A young Simon Burke—perhaps college-age or a little older—wearing an ill-fitted suit and standing next to a model of a double helix, mouth frozen open, eyes bright.
A slightly older Simon Burke, surrounded by a group of clichéd scientists, all wearing white lab coats, goggles sitting atop their heads.
Simon Burke as he was now, sitting behind his desk, the surface covered with reams of paper, a black fountain pen in his hand.
A dozen more. No Patricia. No Owen. It was as if they didn’t exist to him.
Burke led the way to a pair of large oak double doors at the end of the hall, a numerical keypad next to it below a darkened panel. Burke tapped in six digits, and the doors unlocked with a click.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Burke said to Nick, hand on the ornate doorknob, silver with a raised circular pattern of little dots.
“Whatever turns you on,” Nick said. “I don’t believe in kink-shaming, so spread those wings and fly.”
Burke pushed the doors open and walked through. Nick and the Dad Squad followed.
The floors were made up of white stone tiles. Recessed lighting in the ceiling panels, dozens of circles beaming down light so bright, it took Nick a moment to adjust. A metal desk sat in the center of the room with three monitors on top of it. Behind the desk, on the far wall, a massive painting depicting a blood-soaked battlefield, men and horses dead or dying, dark figures standing above them with swords drawn.
The left wall was entirely glass, looking out onto Nova City from a dizzying height. The buildings next to Burke Tower were lit up from the colors of the celebration below: hues of red and white and blue dancing along brick and steel and glass.
But it was the opposite wall that captured Nick’s attention. To his right, a massive screen that was dark save for a spinning symbol in the middle: two letters,BP. Burke Pharmaceuticals. Below the screen, metal shelving above a counter that stretched the entire length of the wall. The same double-helix model sat at the far end. Next to it, a row of half a dozen computer monitors, all asleep. To the right of the monitors, a row of circles in the counter, small handles above each.
