Chapter Twenty-Five

Sera

After Cade came to talk to G, I wandered around for a while on my own. The base—Fort Hannity—was much different than I imagined. First and foremost, there was no actual Infinity. There was, but it wasn’t a place or an entity on its own. It was a project conceived and overseen by this world’s version of Cora Anderson, Noah and Kori’s mother, in cooperation with the military.

They didn’t harm anyone with the science, instead using it to learn and explore, but the idea behind it still scared me. The evil Cora—what G had started calling her—had used that same technology to steal me away from my home. I had no idea if there’d been an Infinity Division where I’d come from, but I’d had firsthand dealings with evil Cora, and it was terrifying. When I thought about the damage she could do if she were to let the poison out into the world—any world—my blood ran cold. That same technology, the one the Infinity of this world used for good, she could use to destroy millions. Those fears were probably why I found myself back outside the door to Dylan’s cell.

“What do you want?” He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with his ankles crossed over each other. His jeans and T-shirt were gone, replaced with a dark blue jumpsuit.

I sank to the floor just on the other side of the bars. “Honestly? I’m not sure.”

“Come to poke the lion?”

“No.”

This time he sat up and faced me. There was venom in his expression, but also pain. He’d been so close to getting the girl he loved back. “Gloat?”

“That would be petty.”

He slid off the cot and stalked to the bars, wrapping his fingers around until they were white as snow. Placing his face against them, pushing so hard that it made him look almost alien, he said, “Then, What. Do. You. Want?”

“To talk.”

His gaze lingered, hard as stone and cold as ice, before he let go and took a step back. Slowly he sank to the ground in the center of the cell, facing me, and folded his hands in his lap. The turnaround was crazy. One minute he’d been rabid, the next it was like he was ready to chat about the weather. “So, talk.”

“I’m not going to pretend to understand what you’ve been going through since losing Ava. But I do have to wonder what you think she would have thought about the way you handled it.”

For a minute his expression turned stormy, eyes narrow and brows drawn, his lips mashed into a tight, thin line. His posture was rigid, and the set of his shoulders taut, arms so wound that you could see every vein. He held it for a long time before breathing out audibly. His face didn’t change, but his body relaxed some.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t wake up one day and decide to go on a murder spree.”

“So why do it?”

“I was angry. On top of keeping me from her, they were going to put me to death.” He let out a horrible sound. Somewhere between a snort and a strangled cry. “All because I couldn’t live without her.”

“You killed Noah’s sister. The girl your own brother loved. Your friend. How can you possibly justify that? How could anything that happened have been her fault?”

“It wasn’t,” he said softly. For the first time since I’d met him, Dylan looked young. Almost innocent. He looked tired and beaten down and utterly lost. “None of it was Kori’s fault, and not like it’s any excuse or consolation, but I felt horrible. Each and every time, I hated myself a little bit more.”

“Bullshit,” I said, folding my arms. “If that were the case, if you felt any kind of remorse, you wouldn’t have done it over and over again.” I grabbed the bars and leaned into them. “You don’t continue to murder people if you feel bad about it!”

“I went to the house that day to see her—our Kori. My only intention was to talk to her. To tell her what my brother had done. Ava was her cousin! She missed her, too. She was family—and I was trying to get her back. I thought if anyone could talk sense into Cade, it’d be her. I was—”

“You couldn’t get her back, Dylan. That’s what everyone kept trying to tell you. You wanted to skip out and find a different Ava. The key word is different. She would never have been your Ava.”

He glared at me but kept going. “I got there, and we started talking. I told her right off the bat that Cade had freed me. That I was going on the run…”

“Did she threaten to call the police?” I swallowed. I hated hearing the pain in his voice because it humanized him—and that wasn’t something I wanted to happen. Not after everything that he’d done. Everything that he continued to do by not giving us the antidote.

Dylan laughed, a grating sound that tore right through my flesh and gutted my insides. “Kori? God no. She offered me money. Supplies. She even tried to give me the keys to her car…”

“I don’t understand,” I said, sickened. “How could you… Why…”

“I just lost it,” he shouted, jumping up and launching himself at the bars. With a pointless shake, he sank to the ground again, shuddering. “I snapped. I saw her standing there, still alive, still breathing, and I thought about Ava. I thought about my brother and the council that had so callously sentenced me to die when all I wanted was the girl I loved back.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“I know it’s not. And every single second I live—no matter how much longer that will be—I will hear her pleas. I’ll hear all of them, begging me to stop. Crying and screaming for me to think about what I was doing.”

If I was going to do it, now was the time. I’d come here for a reason, and that reason wasn’t to hear his confessions. “Dylan, I’m not your Ava, but you said before that you don’t want to see me hurt.”

“I don’t,” he confirmed. He folded his arms and frowned, and I knew he understood exactly what my reason for coming was.

“Then please, please, tell me where you hid the antidote for G. Don’t make me go through what you did. Don’t be the reason I lose him…”

“The antidote isn’t hidden, Sera.” It was the first time he hadn’t called me Ava. “I don’t have it anymore.”

The entire world came to a screeching halt, and the air in my lungs turned to cement. I would have accused him of lying if not for the utter torment in his expression. “You—”

“After I left you, Cora found me. I told her I’d used the poison. Gave her the antidote back.”

“Why would you do that?” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to curl into a ball and cry for days or rip open the door and shred him limb from limb.

“Because I wanted G to suffer like I was.”

I jumped to my feet and punched the bars. Pain bloomed in my knuckles, radiating to each finger and up my wrist. I ignored it. “I’m the one suffering, Dylan. Me!”

“I know and I’m sorry. Let me help you. That’s why you came here, right? To get my help with Cora?”

I didn’t respond, not trusting myself to open my mouth.

“I can get the antidote,” he rushed on. “I saw her snap it into the back of the locket she wears around her neck.”

He was playing on the one thing I wanted more than anything. Did I dare believe him? “How do I know I can trust you not to screw us over?”

Instead of the trademark grin I’d grown so accustomed to, Dylan frowned. There was so much pain in his eyes. So much suffering. Still, that didn’t ensure his loyalty. Dylan was faithful to himself—and to Ava.

“I’ve done enough damage in the name of her memory. Let me do just one good thing. Something she could be proud of me for.”

I hoped to God that Ava—that I—was enough motivation for him to stay on the straight and narrow. At least for a few hours.

Now came the hard part. Selling the idea to Karl Anderson…