Page 106 of Pride
Lightning surged through the water, electrocuting anything it touched. Including all the other replicates. They cooked. Steam rose.
Stupid, Parker thought. Julius had just wiped out his own army. Julius realized the same thing and worked on his iPad again. Parker expected more replicates to arrive, but he must have exhausted his supply. A sluice gate separating the offshoot pipe from the intersection dropped, blocking Parker from Alice.
“No!” he shouted, and hit the gate. “Alice!”
The metal wall was solid. No way through. He searched around and found no lever. It must be on the other side, or it was all run by a computer system. That’s how Julius had triggered it. Another wave of electricity surged, this time conducting through the metal sluice gate, zapping Parker’s hand. He jerked back with a wince.
Silence beyond.
“Alice!”
His heart stopped. It broke. This was his fault. All of it. Alice had followed him into this tunnel to save Daisy. She’d told him not to run off on his own, and look what happened. Julius outmaneuvered him at every corner. His tattoo itched as his internal sin balance shifted. Pride plummeted and shame rose. He hit himself in the head.Stupid.
His balance was changing too fast. It was Parker who’d invented the bio-indicator ink Evan used in the tattoo. This system was of his devising. He knew the consequences of ignoring it but all he could think of was the biggest shame in his life. That moment, thirty years ago, when Daisy had rushed out of the elevator and into the flame riddled room. He could have stopped her. He’d seen her lower the bonsai plant. He had time to stop her as she brushed past him, but he’d been afraid. A coward.
Parker continued down the narrow pipe to emerge in the curved, tall drain cavity. Still weak, Daisy kept her head above the increasing water by holding onto the ladder.
That’s why he’d raced ahead of Alice to get here. He had to prove that one was worth the many. They all were.
And now Alice might be dead. The sluice gate was closed, the water fell from the sky, and they were trapped. In his efforts to save one, he might have killed them all.
“Pigeon?” Daisy asked. “What happened to your arm?”
Shame exploded in Parker, tipping his internal sin equilibrium to unstable. Blackness clouded his vision and the sin in the vicinity amplified.Pride. It choked him. He sensed it pulsing somewhere in the tunnels behind the sluice gate, and all he could think was to eradicate it. Eliminate the deadly sin. There was no thought. No reason. Just instinct—Kill.
38
Daisy watchedas the change came over Parker. It started out as a small thing. He shook his head, blinked a few times, and then used his beard to scratch his inner wrist, right over the Yin-Yang tattoo. But she knew those movements. She’d felt them herself. He was blacking out, succumbing to that darker side they all held within—the uncontrolled berserker that needed to eradicate anyone with the sin of pride coursing through their veins.
When Daisy had seen his arm was missing, and that he’d come back here—for her—pride had swelled in her body. He’d grown into a hero. Her little brother, her Pigeon, saving her. This was the same little brother who’d stubbornly insisted on doing things his way, but always forgot about his ego when she called him to adventure. He’d hated how she’d called him Pigeon, thinking it was because of the way he ate. But she’d called him that because he reminded her not only of the freedom birds they played with, but of a story about Parker’s favorite inventor—Nikola Tesla.
She still remembered the two of them giggling over the book. Nikola Tesla had nursed a pigeon back to health and then fell in love with it. Nikola claimed the bird was the love and joy of his life, that as long as she was around, there was purpose in his life. Parker had liked the story because he learned about, in his opinion, the greatest inventor of all time. She’d liked the story because it made her realize what her purpose was. The joy of her family, starting with the obsessively serious, first little brother. Her pigeon. Her purpose. She knew if she could bring joy to his life, she could bring joy to all of them.
And now he stared at her like he wanted to rip her to shreds.
She glanced down at her own Yin-Yang tattoo, only just shy of the balance line. She could thank Parker for that. He’d insisted she get the tattoo to keep herself in check and she’d used the markers frequently while captive to keep herself from disappearing into nothingness.
Parker stalked her through water pouring from the storm drain above. He was no longer her sweet, stubborn pigeon. He was a hunter. A beast. But he still needed her help.
She emptied her mind of all prideful things. She thought about birds flapping their wings above her in the dawn sky. Of stars twinkling. Of freedom. She closed her eyes and winced, knowing there was nothing else she could do to protect herself from an attack in this state. Maybe a few weeks ago she could, but Julius had drained her dry with his experiments and, right now, she barely had the energy to keep herself afloat.
She held her breath and waited for his attack. It was what she deserved, anyway. She should just let him take her. But the image of a pigeon kept invading her mind. Parker was her purpose—her family. She opened her eyes and found now that she felt zero pride, he’d given up on her and had crouched to get back through the offshoot pipe. The water was rising. He would drown if he went down there.
“Parker,” she said. “Stop.”
He faced her with eyes of luminous gold. His tattoo still said it had too much light in it. That meant a lack of pride. Shame. So she had to make him feel something other than that. She had to make him feel pride. So she listed his accomplishments.
“You’re the leader of the Deadly Seven. You kept your family alive when I couldn’t. You created a Fortune 500 company. You invented many things, just like Nikola Tesla. You did it, Parker. You found your freedom.” She fired off anything she could think of, which wasn’t much. Parker advanced on her slowly, like a cat in the grass, stalking its prey. Nothing was getting through to him, but she had to keep trying. “You found your mate. You said her name is Alice.” He was inches away from her, heedless of the rain gushing down his face and splashing in the water level, now rising faster and up to his thighs. “She must be amazing. She’s a Sinner, right? Like Mary? She must be—”
He snapped at her face. She jerked back as his fangs missed her nose. Trembling, she couldn’t look at him. Instead, she kept her eyes down to the water rising and the cord of purple rope floating by his pants. The length led to an intricately knotted flower, half tucked into his pants. It was such an odd thing for him to carry that she hoped it meant something to him. She yanked it and held it before his face like a shield.
Golden eyes flickered. He frowned at the knotted flower and took it from her hands.
“Alice,” he mumbled.
“Did she do that?” Daisy asked.
“No. But she—” he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fist around the knot.
