Page 28 of Burn Like An Angel

“What can you see?” Xander questions.

“Well, everyone’s awake,” he replies. “Patients are gathering outside the institute.”

“Why?” I frown at him.

“They’re marching the guards out. Got them all tied up. Some look half-dead already.”

Straining in his hospital bed, Lennox shoves Xander’s hand away. “What are they doing with them?”

“Lining them up in front of the locked gates. I can’t see who’s watching beyond the barricades, but it looks like a fucking parade.” He blows out a leaden breath. “Fuck. Harrowdean is crumbling.”

Trembling all over, I glance down at my borrowed Chucks, trying to get a handle on my emotions. The buzzing noise is back and louder than ever, a cacophony of shrill decibels cutting into my brain like miniature knives.

The guards were first to fall.

They’ll come for me next.

The sound of the guys conversing is swallowed by my foggy brain, a spiralling cyclone dragging me into the depths of destruction with it. Fisting my wet curls, the sense of acute panic rises with Langley’s words on repeat.

Harrowdean is crumbling.

I’ll be crushed beneath the rubble.

He’s right; the riot will end. When it does, everything will implode. The regime I’ve enabled was already hanging by a thread. If Sabre Security really is investigating, that means the institute will fall.

I may not be the monster behind this program, but I’m sure as fuck no angel either. I’ll burn for their sins. There’s guilt in culpability, and for every drop of suffering my fellow patients endured… I benefitted.

My gaze swings around, searching for an escape route. Reason dissipates as the instinct to run takes centre stage.

“Ripley.”

His ice-cool voice laden with an odd softness, Xander abandons his best friend to follow my retreating steps. Each time I move, he closes the distance between us.

The look on his face could almost be described as concerned. But that can’t possibly be right. I must be imagining the curve of his pale brows, the creases marring his marble forehead, all indicating fear.

“You need to stop and take a breath,” he advises, studying me intently. “This isn’t the time to make a rash decision.”

“A rash decision?” I huff out.

Head tilted, his throat bobs. “I’m not letting you run away from us this time.”

Features hard with determination, his thin lips press together. Each minuscule clue points to a far more petrifying reality beneath his stoic expression. It’s pouring through the cracks in his mask.

“You want to talk to me about rash decisions, Xander Beck?”

He opens and closes his mouth, eyes swirling with a confusing maelstrom of ice-cold detachment and red-hot anger. For once, he has no smart retort or threat to levy. Not this time.

“I became Harrowdean’s stoogeto make myself untouchable. To protect myself. To honour the woman who became my family when my last relative abandoned me. I did this for her.”

I can’t tear my eyes from Xander, the slight twitches and near-invisible tells offering a glimpse of the man behind the machine. His human alter-ego, not the soulless psychopath who runs the show.

“Why did I have to do that?” Tears spill freely down my cheeks. “Because of yourrash decision.” I gesture to Lennox to include him. “Because of what you two did to survive. Because you killed her.”

“Rip–” Lennox tries to intervene.

“Do you know what the worst part is?” I cut him off.

Both men stare at me, waiting for the guillotine to slam down on their necks. They’re willingly giving me the fatal blow. Only this isn’t a victory. Not for me. The time for revenge has passed.

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