Chapter 263
The next morning, I can’t get Wake’s words from last night out of my head, but I try not to let his fatalism poison my whole day. Besides, the tank’s quiet today. No mutations clawing their way out. No sirens. No screaming. That alone makes it the perfect time to poke at the real monster in the building.
Lily.
I find her exactly where I expect—in her office, hunched over one of her many cluttered desks, typing furiously with one hand while the other hovers over a digital tablet filled with rotating 3D models of what looks like the Eldritch eel-spider hybrid from last night. She doesn’t even look up when I knock.
She doesn’t look up. “I’m busy.”
“Too bad,” I say, stepping in and letting the door slide shut behind me. “We need to talk.”
Her eyes finally lifted, sharp and pale and not even a little surprised. “I’m guessing you’re not here for a friendly chat about the weather.”
“No,” I say. “I want to know how you ended up following him.”
Lily raises a brow. “You’ll need to be more specific. Unfortunately, I follow a lot of hims.”
“Shoal,” I snap. “You’re not exactly the sidekick type, Lily. So why throw your lot in with him?”
She leans back in her chair and folds her arms. “You want the truth? Or the sanitized version you can weaponize later?”
I wait.
She exhales through her nose, slow and sharp. “You left me in the rubble, Phoebe. You and Wake. I was the one who supported you when no one else did, and you ran off without a word.”
I blink. “I was dying,” I say. “I would’ve been dead if Wake hadn’t—”
“You owed me more than that,” she says, ice sliding back into her voice. “After everything I did for you, the least you could have done was leave a goddamn note.”
I feel my pulse rising. “What, you’re mad that I didn’t give you credit? For what—figuring out my DNA sequence? Running tests behind my back? Keeping secrets from me every step of the way?”
She laughs—sharp, bitter, and way too loud for a room this small. “It’s adorable that you still think you did any of this yourself. You unlocked your latent DNA? You uncovered your heritage? That happened because I paved every damn road for you. I gave you the tools.”
“I made the choices,” I shoot back.
Lily’s smile twists into something meaner. “You love to think I’m the megalomaniac in this equation, don’t you? But you’ve spent so long lying and manipulating everyone around you, you don’t even see it anymore. You’re so high on your own self-righteous fumes, you actually believe you’re the hero of this story.”
I cross my arms. “Tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night, Lily. But let’s not pretend I’m the one who’s deluded. You’re the one playing God with people’s lives. Maybe it’s for the best you’re not the one calling the shots around here anymore.”
My words hit a nerve.
Lily doesn’t say anything for a beat, just goes that awful still way she gets when she’s furious but trying not to show it. Her nostrils flare just slightly. Her hands clench once before relaxing.
“If you’re referring to my arrangement with Shoal,” she says, voice like a scalpel, “It’s a partnership. And an advantageous one, at that.”
I snort. “Really? How about you tell me more about that? I can’t imagine your first meeting went over well.”
She actually smiles at that, just a flicker. “It did not. We discovered him the same way we found your pathetic little band of nomads, skulking around the subaquatic entrance to the old facility—alarms started tripping that I didn’t even know existed, a hardwired system that I was told was obsolete. I hadn’t known that this facility had been built over an older one, much less how to access it.”
I say nothing, allowing her to continue.
“So when people started walking out of the ocean,” she continues. “We were unprepared. Especially considering we were still recovering from Wake’s attack.”
I bristle. “He was protecting me.”
“Sure,” she says flatly. “Tell that to the half-dozen men we shipped back to their families in body bags. All thanks to that merman of yours.”
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