I backpedal. Fast. My boots scrape concrete. The flickering lights strobe his ruined face. Blood-soaked hand, manic grin, thatsingle remaining eye burning with something that makes my inner omega want to burrow into the earth and never come out.
"You stabbed me in theeye," he says, almost admiringly. "That's new."
"You kidnapped me in a birdcage. That's newand lame."
He advances. I retreat. My back hits a door—locked—and I dodge sideways as his hand slams into the metal where my head was.
I duck under his arm and sprint.
Three doors down. Four. The corridor stretches ahead in strobing light and shadow and every door I try is locked, locked,locked?—
He catches the back of my jacket.
I twist out of it. Leave it in his fist. Keep running in just the t-shirt and binder, the cold air biting my arms.
Dead end.
The corridor terminates in a concrete wall with a massive electrical panel bolted to it, all switches and warning stickers and a chain-link cage over the breaker boxes.
I spin around.
Stephen is twenty feet away. Walking now. Not running. The leather jacket hangs from his fist like a trophy. Blood drips from his chin onto the concrete in a steadypat pat pat.
"I've been patient," he says. His voice echoes in the dead-end corridor. "I've beensopatient with you."
My back presses against the electrical panel. The metal is ice cold through my thin shirt.
"Years," he continues. "Years of watching you. Protecting you. Building something forus."
"You're literally fucking delusional."
"I gave you The Reverie. I gave you acareer?—"
"You gave me acage!"
His mouth twists. The blood-soaked hand drops from his destroyed eye and what's underneath makes my stomach flip. The socket is a ruin. My knife went in clean but came out messy and the damage is catastrophic. Burst tissue, blood still flowing freely, the lid shredded.
"This," he says, gesturing at his face with eerie calm, "will cost you. But I forgive you. I always forgive you. And it's nothing a little nip and tuck can't help."
"Oh, you'rewayfucking beyond plastic surgery," I say with a hoarse laugh, side-stepping along the wall.
He was right about one thing.
There's nowhere left to run.
He's ten feet away.
Eight.
My fists clench. I have no knife, no weapon. It’s just me and a concrete wall and the worst person I've ever known closing the distance with the patience of a man who believes he's already won.
Six feet.
My scar throbs.
Not from Stephen.
From behind him.