Page 61 of No Asylum Here

My jaw snapped shut, teeth shredding into my father’s face. Blood gushed into my mouth. It tasted sweet, like juice to a hypoglycemic diabetic.

I picked up his body like a rag doll and tore a bite off his face, flinging him into a shelf of wet specimens. Glass shattered, and a putrid odor tainted the air.

I stepped over the wreckage, glass crunching beneath my shoes as I stood over him, and spat a mouthful of his blood back onto him. For a tense stretch of silence, he didn’t move.

Had I killed him?

No. The Treatment had not only given me new strength, but it had also sharpened my senses. His heart hammered so hard, it was like a jet engine in my ears.

After several seconds, Rook lifted his head, and I saw what I’d done to him.

I’d ripped his nose clean off, leaving a bloody gaping hole in the middle of his face.

“P–please. I’m your father.”

“You disowned me, remember?”

He shook his head.

I smiled, but I knew it didn’t reach my cold eyes. “Isn’t that convenient?”

Rook held up a bloody arm. Under the tattered sleeves of his lab coat and shirt, I made out the veins etching his skin.

“You’ve taken the Treatment too?”

“I tested it on myself before anyone else.”

My blood burned hot beneath my skin. “You mean, you can turn into a monster too? You saw its effects firsthand, and you still chose to poison your own son?”

“No! It doesn’t affect me the same. I suspect it will have varying results depending on the subject.”

Of course, he was still planning on giving it to more people. Malcolm Rook didn’t care how many lives he ruined, so long as it was in the name of science.

I lifted my foot, placed it on my father’s head, and pressed. I was going to crush his skull.

Realizing what was about to happen, he began to sob. Never in all my thirty years had I seen my father cry.

Fuck.

I lifted my foot from his head, snarling in disgust—more at myself than at him. He said the Treatment would eat at my empathy. Too bad it didn’t act faster. This bastard didn’t deserve my pity.

But there was no pretending that a war wasn’t raging inside me. My humanity and the new monster he’d created were at odds. He needed to be punished, but was this really the way to do it?

Catching my internal conflict, he pulled himself onto his knees and clasped his hands, as if in prayer. “Please. I’ll do better by you. I’ll support you in allowing Miss Reed to carry the baby to term, if that’s what you want. I’ll even help with the delivery.”

“You won’t touch her ever again! I’ll deliver the baby. You can see your child afterward. I’ll decide then what to do with you.”

His head bobbed, a fresh torrent of blood pouring down his chin and soaking into his shirt collar. “Yes, whatever you want.”

“If you break your word, and you so much as lay a finger on that poor girl, it will be more than your nose that I take. Next time, I’ll tear off your balls and make you swallow them while all the patients you harmed watch.”

“Well, well. The prince has come down from his tower to have lunch with us lower lifeforms…”

I glanced up from my lunch tray to find Rook in the doorway of the staff lunchroom.

The former facility director strode across the cafeteria with a dark cloud over his head. He wasn’t adjusting well to our recent dynamic shift. He kept most of his temper to himself, as he hadn’t figured out yet that I wasn’t in control of the thing inside me. Rook walked on eggshells with the constant fear that, any minute, I could release the mad thing he’d created.

Every nurse and orderly in the room fell silent. The rare promise of a public confrontation had them turning in their chairs to watch.