Deception | Alias Duology

Chapter Seventeen: We Are Not Evil

There's an AAS bot following me down the hall. It takes scrunched fits and gritted teeth not to bat it away as its gaze prickles the burn on my back. Its wings hum calm blue, unconcerned to the aimless wandering I am doing. As soon as I put two corners between me and Sebastian's office, I whirl and stare it down.

It just hovers there, camera fixed on me, slightly cocked like the curious tilt of the head. All it would take is an exhale, a release, and the bot would collapse into pieces. All it would take is one slip and I could start an escape. I reach out, ice piling in my fingers, turning them white and numb, and it moves closer until my fingertips barely brush its edge.

It looks at me. I look at it. And from the absence of my memories, Edison's steady-amber-gaze prickles at the back of my head.

I'm leaving, I promise him. Even if I have to fight my way out.

"Elias?"

With a jolt I gasp and leap back, but not fast enough. In a brilliant flare of winter fire, the original components of the AAS bot clatters to the floor, echoing like shout of a thousand alarms. "Megabytes!" Clutching my ice-burning hand with the other, I whirl. "Don't do that to me!"

Deception—why out of all people did it have to be her?—raises her hands. "Woah! I didn't mean to startle you, Spades." She glances down at the chunks of ore and other things scattered by my boots then up at me, a placating smile leaping to her face. "Don't worry about the bot. Sebastian will replace it."

I fight a scowl. Yeah, and it'd probably not even dent his treasury. Crossing my arms, I glare at her, jaw clenched and fighting down a tidal wave of lavender with a squeegee and sheer force of will.

Her smile fades as she takes in my expression and she sighs. "Elias..."

My heart flutters dangerously, almost longingly and—No. Nope. Just no. Spinning on my heel, I start to walk away. I am not doing this. Not now, not ever.

"Wait!"

A hand lands on my shoulder and I spin, wrenching away and snarling and ice sparking, and that horrid purple wave is back with a vengeance. "Don't touch me!"

Deception recoils as if slapped and puts her hands up. "Elias! What's gotten into you?" Her brows furrow, a perfect crease between her eyes.

The static dulling everything vanishes and the lava boiling underneath erupts. "What's gotten into me? Are you serious?" I jab a finger at her chest, winter snapping with each word I spit. "You kidnapped me from End where I was actually happy and then you lied to me! You and Sebastian are a thing and there you were trying to—trying to—romance me! I didn't even—I didn't—I—" Words catch on tears threatening to sizzle out the lava and I seize them and shove them down, taking several deep breaths to get a grip.

Fury curls her lip and blazes in her eyes just for a second before a mask of hurt snaps back into place. In a tightly controlled low voice she says, "No, Elias. Sebastian and I are not in a relationship. He just thinks we are because that stuck up, spoiled rich brat doesn't take no for an answer." Her eyes flicker to something deep purple. "I love you and only you."

The lava turns to acid and I shake my head, seizing the tendrils of violet reaching for her in my mind and strangling them to death. "Maybe you do but I—I—" —I don't! Sticks in my throat and tangles in the purple spiderweb strung between my teeth, and I almost choke with the effort to force them out.

It won't come. My tongue refuses to go into the right place, my lips to form the 'd', and with a frustrated hiss, I spit it out entirely different. "I'm not doing this, Deception or Fucicia or whoever you were to me. I don't want to do this. I'm done." Spinning on my heel to hide the struggle on my face and the tangle of my tongue, I take a few desperate purple-white strides away.